Forum suggestions

[Pyro]

We've been pretty busy lately and small things like the occasional nudge to keep the forums in order have been slipping and it shows.  It's not practical for us to spend too much time in this pursuit, and things just got a bit messed up here as we tried to move some stuff today.  This brings up a few issues that we need to address.

The first is that we've never cleaned out this board of old posts.  We've wanted to keep things around, but it really is getting cumbersome and we should do some major pruning.  If you're interested in archiving some old posts, please do so soon.

The second is that I think the board needs some reorganizing to better fill its purpose.  I think the purpose of this board is twofold, one is the dissemination and discussion of game-related ideas and information, and the second is social interaction/general chatting.  If the board is not well structured or that structure is not adhered to by participants, it becomes difficult to cut through the traffic to find what it is you've come here for.

So I'm looking for suggestions on what topics we should and shouldn't have.  Should there even be a general discussion forum?  Should there be more than 1 off-topic forum?  That kind of stuff.  This board is getting a lot of traffic and that's just going to continue to grow.  We just don't want it to grow into an unuseable state.  So put forth your ideas here on how we can make this board better and more useable.

[mason22]

Originally posted by Pyro:
I think the purpose of this board is twofold, one is the dissemination and discussion of game-related ideas and information, and the second is social interaction/general chatting.

i think maybe elminating things like "general discussion" may help with organization. When you interperet "general" that leads to many many things. I can socially chat or i can post about AH, both in a non specific topic. in other words, it could lead to garbage. But, when you have things like Hardware or Screen shots as topics, there really is not much room to stray from what should be posted under that forum. It seems to me that general has become more of a social discussion about AH, meantime the "off topic" has been the social area of life in general.

basically what i'm saying is, if the topics/ forums are more defined then there might be less  parting from the topic at hand.

of course, there are always those who defy.

[Dinger]

In the O'club, funked posted a list of new forums.  I think the one that should be adopted immediately is:
"World Forum: Boroda vs. Rednecks"

[GRUNHERZ]

I think the board is fine Pyro. If you guys absolutely have to clear out some old material for technical reasons on your end or whatever reasons you see fit thats OK by me. I for one would just let it be as is. Only the anal UBB police types really care whatever is in each forum and if something truly is off topic or innapropriate it gets worked out quickly and is moved.

You know how the saying goes, if it aint broke dont fix it.

My feeling is that you guys should focus your valuable time on the Sim and adding new planes and features and not on some massive revamp of the BBS. Its not neccesary.

PS. Natedog in particular should focus on fixing the 109 oil coolers.  

[K West]

Is there anyway to archive the existing UBB on a personal CDrom.. or two?  I was fortunate to save a lot of the AW nntp boards from 1997 but they were nntp and it's simply a matter of all downloading all the different boards messages with a news reader and saving the resultant file.

 I would only recommend possibly bringing gameplay and aircraft under the general topic forumn?  But definately drag the Special Events Forumn up so that it's listing is at least close to the top half of the main UBB page.

 Westy

[ 11-20-2001: Message edited by: O'Westy ]

[Toad]

Originally posted by GRUNHERZ:
....Only the anal UBB police types really....
 
PS. Natedog in particular should focus on fixing the 109 oil coolers.    

Well, looks like Grun would know about anal types.    

But to the topic at hand...

The board has actually worked pretty well the way it is right now. Lately there's been a lot of way off topic stuff in the General Discussion. Otherwise, the rest of the forums have worked well and stayed reasonably on topic.

So if something is to be done, I'd say it's General that needs the work.

The easiest way is simply for the USERS to follow the guidelines. Perhaps a slightly more specific characterization for what should be in General would help. As most posters are reasonably adult here, this shouldn't be a real big problem. It's just common sense and common courtesy.

With posters that deliberately flaunt the common standards and take pride in that... well, no matter how you structure the board you'll still have that problem. It's a people problem, not a format problem.

As for archiving, how much data are you thinking about pruning? Would it help if I sent you guys a spare Hard Drive?    

There's a LOT of good stuff in some of those old threads. I'd hate to see them disappear.

[ 11-19-2001: Message edited by: Toad ]

[Kieran]

I read this and thought, "Perhaps a 'Piss and Moan' forum" as a joke... and you know, the more I think about it, maybe there should be a dedicated place. Call it the "Vent Forum" and have it as a place where people can go and get it off their chests. You'd know the minute you went in there what you were gonna read, and it might clean up the general quite a bit.

Another forum idea is the "Dueling Forum"- no, not a place where you set up aerial duels, but a place where people verbally spar.

"Immense Sig Line and Graphic Forum" is another idea. You could even hold contests to see who can invent the most outlandish title for themselves,and create sig graphics that can bring "phat pipes" to their knees. You could list every accomplishment you ever had starting with your first steps.

A "Play it MY Way!" forum would be very popular. There users could expound mindlessly why their variety of play is more manly than others.

How can we live without a "Rush or Geraldo?" forum?

Of course there could be some blurring of the lines here and there, but it would be interesting to see how things shook out...  

[-ammo-]

excellent idea keiren!  Dont forget teh conservative forum, liberal forum, makes noe sense at all forum (but folks wont know when to post there

Seriously, the general forum is just a catch all and it recieves the majority of the traffic because of that.  

BTW Pyro, how much server space does this monster take up in its present form?

[moose]

I like the idea of the General Discussion forum. It's just... i dunno, hard to explain. It's how I get my fix. It's like walking into an open bar that has a little bit of everything compared to one that only serves that 'lite' stuff.

Trim the old stuff down, but leave this general forum!

Maybe posts that obviously belong in another forum could be moved more. You could use volunteer moderators to do that, so all the offtopic or plane posts get to where they're supposed to be?

[Rotorian]

Well, since it is all about opinions and everyone has one (just like a certain part fo the human anatomy  ).  Use the KISS principle.

hitechcreations.general
hitechcreations.techsupport
hitechcreations.bugreports
hitechcreations.events
hitechcreations.announcements
hitechcreations.<insertsquadnamehere>

Anything else is micromanaging  .

[Sunchaser]

Just dump everything once a week, it is usually repeated by then.

[Animal]

there should be an open FDB forum, to complement the private one. only difference would be the lack of porn.

oh, and there should be a PICK ON THE-WOBBLE FORUM that should be a good one.

hehe.


nah, but seriously, i think the BBS is good as it is now.

[sax]

Well probably 90% of any thing interesting, and 100% of the crappy stuff all comes out of the general discussion forum.

Would seem you can't have the good without the bad.

48 hours on a gen. disc. post, and poof, gone for good. Make the community resposible for answering and saving posts if we want them.

Sax
13th Tas

[Pongo]

If you want to change something.
Make it so that the top level link to aces high bb is available in all the areas below it. If you select general forums it disapears right now.
And put in a spell checker.
And let me filter out all the squad forums so I can get to mine faster.
Give us a work mode..
Add an Agenda field to user profiles. Make it mandatory.
Have some kind of view of the MA map available on the page.
Let me spy on those 1400 topics on the FDBs forum.
But I like it the way it is too...

[anibal]

Pyro:
So I'm looking for suggestions on what topics we should and shouldn't have.

Keep ALL the current forums, only add the following Suggestions:

1-  

Should there even be a general discussion forum?

YES, just change the Title of "AH General Discussion" to this:
General Discussion ABOUT Aces High

2-  

Should there be more than 1 off-topic forum?

YES.
 Suggested New Forums:
- Other Sims or Other Games where the LOTS of new players coming from another games can chat about the "good old days", find each other, reagroup old squads, etc. Eventually this will turn into a general discussion about other games. Comments about other existing or futures games may attract potential customers to THIS game.

- Vent Forum or Verbal Duelling Forum for Psychological Internet Therapy (you may charge to post here in the future:-)

- Jokes or Funny Forum for those non agressive but Off-Topic posts.

3- Main Arena Forum for specific gameplay issues in the MA. (there is a CT forum and should be a Forum for Every Arena)

4- Training Arena ForumTo help and encourage beginners and stop the disruptive players to ruin that place. (many newcomers are driven out of the game in their 2 free weeks because the lack of Admins or Sysop control in there) I think this will be the forum for the "Junior" or teenagers players. Youth is the base of all communities, not ever we forget to take care of them. (they grow up and will have their own credit card too:-)

5- Events and Announcements will be better placed in the same section at top.