Forum Reordering Suggestion.

[Shirotsume]

Alright. So this is sort of my general plan that I've had in mind for forum reordering and making this place not a absolute clusterfuck. I'm saying this as Shirotsume, for the record, not as an Admin. (And that's coming to a close soon anyway, hurrah!)

So, right now, we have Catagories(General TFF Stuff, Fanfiction, Rants, Games, Moderation)

We have forums, and then we have subforums (Like Previews/Ideas/Rants.

Now, one thing to keep in mind- Catagories can be minimized by clicking the button on the right. With that said, here's my plan.

Key: [Catagory (minimizable)]
Forum
--Subforum



[General TFF]
Announcements and Rules
The Suggestion Box
General Talk
--Rants

[General Fanfiction]
Fill As Needed
--Ideas
--Previews
--Talk
Restricted Fanfiction
--So not typing all these subforums out.
Challenges
--Challenges
--Responses

[Anime/Manga Fanfiction]
Fill As Needed
--Ideas
--Previews
--Talk

[Game Fanfiction]
Fill As Needed
--Ideas
--Previews
--Talk

[TV/Movie/Book Fanfiction]
Fill As Needed
--Ideas
--Previews
--Talk

[Cartoon/Comic Fanfiction]
Fill As Needed
--Ideas
--Previews
--Talk

[Games]
Billy Vs. Snakeman
RPG
TFF RPGs
World Of Warcraft

[Moderation]
Discussion
--Appeals
Graveyard
--Hawk's Rants/Stories/Shit


Hawk's various forums would just get thrown into the Graveyard.
The different Rants would be merged into General's Rants subforum, with General Rants itself becoming general talk, because that's basically what it is.
Ogame and World of Darkness would be merged into RPG.

tl;dr: Minimize the shit you don't care about, have the stuff you do! Thoughts?

 

[NuitTombee]

Looks alright to me, but then again, most anything would as long as it gets rid of some clutter.

Mainly because I'm here just about everyday so 'View Today's Posts' works just fine atm.

 

[PCHeintz72]

Only things to come to mind...

I've seen arguments either way on it, but some arguments can be made for combining Ideas and talk in each section...

There is the change in name from Fate Stay Night to Type Moon

GH made some comments in another thread today... he should probably copy paste that to this thread.

Note one thing that was mentioned was to have forum vote on changes to format... But I'm for the idea unless it is a major changeover in overall format (the above does not seem to be) there need not be a vote.

 

[Shirotsume]

This suggestion doesn't concern itself with actual forum contents. just the organizational structure.

That said, I'm completely, 100% against merging ideas and talk. Hell to the fucking no. That would be a clusterfuck of the highest proportions.

 

[GenocideHeart]

Shiro has already seen the comments I made. They're partly what prompted this thread.

 

[Knyght]

I think an Original Fiction section would be good to have as opposed to General Fanfiction. It doesn't really send the right message when it's typically filled with original fics and discussions on writing. It's also something I'd like to see encourages more here since I found the odd layout of the general fanfiction section off-putting.

The Challenges sections always felt superfluous since barely anyone seems to actually take them up and there's not much discussion going on there. Might as well have a Challenge thread in the Idea subforum for each section.

I hadn't considered merging Books with TV/Movies but I don't think it's a bad idea.

I wouldn't bother keeping Hawkverse at all and just remove it entirely. Not saying that out of dislike of Hawk or whatever but it's just such a tiny, inconsequential part of the forum I don't see much point in keeping it. Not a big deal either way though.

Edit: And it's likely most of this isn't actually related to the structure itself. My bad. For the most part, I like your suggestions, Shiro.

 

[Shirotsume]

I'm personally against nuking any content- it's a huge waste to delete content that only lived on TFF and people may want to look back on.
I prefer leaving it, just out of the way.

As for original Fiction, that would go under General Fanfction, along with Restricted and Challenges. I like your idea for having challenge requests in ideas though and repsonses in previews.

 

[Cherry_lover]

Presumably the "Restricted" section would contain lemons for all the fandoms regardless of category. Is there any reason not to put the restricted forums under their correct category, where the main forum also is?

I'd also second changing FSN fanfiction to TM fanfiction, we pretty much use it for that anyway. I'd also like to request a FSN lemon forum, because it seems odd that we have somewhere to put non-lemon FSN fics but not lemon FSN fics....

Also, I fully agree that we shouldn't be deleting content outright, however useless it is. Just chuck it somewhere out of the way. And, I agree with the "challenge" thing, it seems to me like people are more likely to notice the challenges if they're in the appropriate fandom's forum rather than in a generic forum that people will often not check much if at all.

 

[Zephyrus]

I'm personally against nuking any content- it's a huge waste to delete content that only lived on TFF and people may want to look back on.
I prefer leaving it, just out of the way.

As for original Fiction, that would go under General Fanfction, along with Restricted and Challenges. I like your idea for having challenge requests in ideas though and repsonses in previews.

That doesn't make sense. Why would you want Original Fiction under General Fanfiction? There's a *big* difference between original fiction and fanfiction. I'd much rather see Original Fiction get its own board.

 

[Schema]

An "original fiction" section wouldn't be remiss.

 

[Shirotsume]

The issue with that is that there would be one section under that catagory. And that's pointless.

 

[Vexarian]

I like the idea overall, but I think we can do better with the Restricted Section.

Perhaps make that a category onto itself?

 

[Shirotsume]

Then possibly-NSFW thread names would be visible, is why I didn't do that.

 

[seitora]

I'd suggest the possibility of keeping the Naruto forum out on the front page just because it's so monstrously enormous compared to any other forum (35% of the forum's total posts, more than 5x any other fanfiction board), but other than that I'm game for the plan in the OP.

 

[Vexarian]

Then possibly-NSFW thread names would be visible, is why I didn't do that.

Isn't it possible to set it so that the whole category just doesn't show to those who aren't logged in?

 

[Aarik]

We could probably make an archive for the dead subforums, we have about eight of them. Since it's easier then just merging them all into another section, as that would make it almost impossible to find the threads. (even with search finding threads you don't know the name of is hard.)

Though the Sailor Moon forum seems to have started some movement again, probably because of the new anime.

There was a suggestion in a thread I made awhile ago that I agree with to make a Star Wars section, as it is all Star Wars content is spread over four separate subforums.

I agree with changing the FS/N forum to Type Moon, we've wanted that for years and basically use it that way anyway.

Fusing Love Hina with Negima, since Negima doesn't get much traffic anymore and they're by the same Author and set in the same universe so their isn't really a point for them to be separate.

I would still like a Digimon section, and can supply a link to every Digimon thread on the forum to be moved to one that I already sorted by category if it would help. I got bored and updated the links on my list to the the new forum.

 

[SotF]

I'd propose two new sections. First is something of a writers workshop area, a section for basic writing advice and original fiction. The other would to shift the restricted section to its own block.

Another thing that might work is to shift around some of the sections to more general headers, or at least add a more focused crossover area to things. With general headers, it would better fit things like Star Wars even if it didn't get a full section of its own, same with Star Trek and now even things like Defiance or Dresden Files where there are a lot of different sources that things come from. I do know some people who get rather annoyed about games characters popping up in the movie section and similar.

 

[Shirotsume]

SotF, it's blatantly obvious you didn't even read the thread. I mean, come on, it's like 20 posts dude, at least read the OP if nothing else.

 

[half baked cat]

How about:

[General Fiction]
Fill As Needed
--Ideas
--Previews
--Talk
Original Fiction
--Ideas
--Previews
--Talk
Restricted Fanfiction
--So not typing all these subforums out.

One slight change, but it makes more sense to have the original fictions be under a section that is not called fanfiction.

As for some of the other ideas suggested, I would prefer a challenge thread in the idea subforum with the responses in the preview subforum of the fandom since challenges tend to be specific to the fandom. I do like the idea of the restricted subforums going under the forum of the fandom they belong to, but I don't care too much if it stays similar to how it is.

 

[Aarik]

Thinking on it.

We might also need to restructure the Restricted section.

That's even more out of date then everything else.

 

[Knyght]

But what would the General Fanfiction/Fiction section actually contain when everything else is covered by the other categories?

 

[half baked cat]

Well, original fiction for one thing. Crossover fics perhaps? Especially the ones that contain a lot of different sources. Music (fanfiction/fiction based on songs or bands)? Mythological fanfiction (since mythology is far more of an oral thing than a book thing).

 

[Get-lost]

Maybe this is a overcomplicated suggestion, but instead of a single forum with no subforums for the original fiction give it its own section with different sub-forums. Maybe make sub-forums for the different kinds of original fiction as some sort of general original fiction sub-forum gets filled up with that kind of story (Ex: SCIFI, fantasy, horror, ASB like forum for our own timeline stories?) that it becomes necessary for a sub-forum to be made for them.

 

[Ray]

I've been thinking about this, and I don't know. On the one hand, we have waaaay too many forums and this makes board traffic spread very thin (which forms a feedback loop that affects it negatively. Board traffic spread thin -> people think there's less traffic -> people leave because who wants to post in near-empty boards?). If you look at the post dates on some of the boards, threads are made months apart.

Then there's the fact that pretty much all the anime boards were made for anime that was popular back when the board was made in 2006-2007. The crazes for some of those have died down completely, and it shows.

Consolidating all anime boards into a general anime board, all video game boards into a general video game board, and all book boards into a general book board sounds good.

As an example, I propose something like this:

Anime

Sub-Boards:
-Anime General Discussion
-Anime Ideas
-Anime Previews

You could add a sticky with rules for "tagging" threads so as to avoid clutter. For example, Code Geass fics and ideas would be tagged [Code Geass] and such for all other series. For general discussion of each series, I don't see why it couldn't all be contained into an "X General" thread in the General Discussion board. So you could have a Madoka General, a .Hack General, and an FSN General without cluttering up the forum by making almost-empty boards for each series.

This same set-up could be easily replicated for Vidya, Books, Movies, and Original Fiction.

Simple, I think, is best. And it would be a definite improvement over the current set-up, which is laughably outdated by any measure.

 

[Shirotsume]

First, Ray, that's a terrible idea. The subforums are an organizational measure. Dumping everything in one forum would be a terrible idea, just fucking bad.

Quite frankly, I would rather stick with what we have than dumping everything into one forum, would would just be a cluttered shitshow of horrible proportions. It's the very reason I refuse to use spacebattles and the very reason we have the forums in the first place. If you want Type-Moon Fanfiction, you don't want to have to wade through 4 pages of naruto to get to it.

Moving on, I'll reiterate. This is not the thread for suggestions about adding or removing forums. This is just a suggestions of an overall ordering hierarchy. This plan make absolutely no reference to specific subforums, and that is INTENTIONAL. Trying to suggest specific forums only dilutes the idea and defeats the point of the suggestion.