Forum Reorganization Thread

[Zephyrus]

If we really want to take a stab at becoming relevant again and getting new blood in, I agree that we need to modernize.

Here are my suggestions:

1. There is too much clutter on the front page. Get rid of all the specific series forums and merge them into their relevant forums. Consider getting rid of Interactive Games (billy vs snakeman is pretty dead, isn't it?) and fleshing out the General section with games, music, etc., etc.

2. Moderation should be at the top under the Official Business section. If you want to be transparent, your new users need to be able to see it at a glance instead of having to scroll all the way down to the bottom.

3. Consider retiring the Rants and Iron fic subforums. If you must keep them, create an Archive section.

4. Consider making a NSFW section and getting the nsfw stuff out of the list of regular forums. Might want to think about putting it behind a registration wall as well if TFF ever moves into ad territory.

 

[The Ero-Sennin]

I personally have considered these ideas on my own. There is considerable resistance to getting rid of the series subforums.

 

[chronodekar]

Hmmm... I have to admit, there is merit in some of these ideas. Will need to mull over them for longer, but I do support the motivation behind these suggestions.

-chronodekar

 

[Zephyrus]

I personally have considered these ideas on my own. There is considerable resistance to getting rid of the series subforums.

Out of curiosity, who is resisting? Are they staff members?

Hmmm... I have to admit, there is merit in some of these ideas. Will need to mull over them for longer, but I do support the motivation behind these suggestions.

-chronodekar

Appreciate the support! I believe TFF can be a bastion of good fanfiction again but it needs to modernize to do so.

 

[daniel_gudman]

Resistance to reorganization is grassroots; wata and Ero are actually pretty aggressive about reorg compared to other users (Insert joke about Paul here I guess).

So it's not that the Mods are resisting change, it's that there's not a lot of agreement on what changes to make... assuming change is even wanted, LOL.

2. Moderation should be at the top under the Official Business section. If you want to be transparent, your new users need to be able to see it at a glance instead of having to scroll all the way down to the bottom.

I dunno, I kind of like that I don't have to scroll past Mod Stuff to just faff about the site. I mean, it's still there, and the Announcements, News, and Rules stuff up top is what noobs need to see, not really the Mod Stuff.

4. Consider making a NSFW section and getting the nsfw stuff out of the list of regular forums. Might want to think about putting it behind a registration wall as well if TFF ever moves into ad territory.

This exists -- it's the Restricted Section -- and it used to be hidden, but that might have gotten changed in the transition? Well the takeaway is that this will be a quick and easy deliverable.

 

[Zephyrus]

Resistance to reorganization is grassroots; wata and Ero are actually pretty aggressive about reorg compared to other users (Insert joke about Paul here I guess).

So it's not that the Mods are resisting change, it's that there's not a lot of agreement on what changes to make... assuming change is even wanted, LOL.

I haven't been around for a couple of years so understandably, my opinion probably doesn't hold a lot of weight. Staff needs to decide between pleasing their current userbase or potentially opening up the possibility of new users with reorganization. At the very least, they could make all the series child boards, though that offends my organizing sensibilities.

 

[violinmana]

The Restricted Section actually is hidden behind registration, Logout and you won't be able to see it.

 

[H-Man]

Can we have more rating options than just 'like'?

 

[Watashiwa]

1. There is too much clutter on the front page. Get rid of all the specific series forums and merge them into their relevant forums. Consider getting rid of Interactive Games (billy vs snakeman is pretty dead, isn't it?) and fleshing out the General section with games, music, etc., etc.

Getting rid of series specific subforms as a rule is a mistake. A dedicated place for big series promotes discussion, investment and interest as that community grows. Naruto wouldn't be nearly half the forum content if it hadn't all been in one place.

All of the current subforums with the possible exception of said Bolt's Dad are on the chopping block for August unless there's a content revolution between now and then.

2. Moderation should be at the top under the Official Business section. If you want to be transparent, your new users need to be able to see it at a glance instead of having to scroll all the way down to the bottom.

@daniel_gudman pretty much nailed it. We keep moderation separate from news because 99% of the users literally don't care, and half of the remaining 1% is looking for an excuse to bitch and moan.

3. Consider retiring the Rants and Iron fic subforums. If you must keep them, create an Archive section.

I have plans for Iron Fic. Rants I'll just merge to general.

4. Consider making a NSFW section and getting the nsfw stuff out of the list of regular forums. Might want to think about putting it behind a registration wall as well if TFF ever moves into ad territory.

This exists -- it's the Restricted Section -- and it used to be hidden, but that might have gotten changed in the transition? Well the takeaway is that this will be a quick and easy deliverable.

Still hidden for guests, crawlers and other unregistered folks.

Can we have more rating options than just 'like'?

On my list. Probably won't be a big list, but something closer to SV.

 

[Zephyrus]

Getting rid of series specific subforms as a rule is a mistake. A dedicated place for big series promotes discussion, investment and interest as that community grows. Naruto wouldn't be nearly half the forum content if it hadn't all been in one place.

At least consider making child boards so it doesn't look like a mix mash of an attempt at being organized and whatever happened to be popular in the early 2000s. :v

Don't delete the content. *Move* it.

 

[Watashiwa]

At least consider making child boards so it doesn't look like a mix mash of an attempt at being organized and whatever happened to be popular in the early 2000s. :v

Everything's getting tagged and put into the appropriate general category (Anime, books, etc.). We'll see if Naruto or Harry Potter still has a crowd, but everything else is getting folded.

Don't delete the content. *Move* it.

Yeah no shit.

 

[PCHeintz72]

Everything's getting tagged and put into the appropriate general category (Anime, books, etc.). We'll see if Naruto or Harry Potter still has a crowd, but everything else is getting folded.


Yeah no shit.

I'm not in favor of merging all the series groups... I could see placing them under a single subforum on the main page, each in turn with their own series subforum under that, but if they are merged, then it is going to make finding stuff near impossible, or at a minimum a pain. Especially if you are going to be including Naruto and/or Harry Potter subforums into the mix with the rest.

 

[Shirotsume]

Not in favor of merging series groups. I would be in favor of grouping them
E.G toplevel "Anime" contains Naruto which contains Talk, Previews, and Ideas.
Anime also contains, say, MHA, which contains Talk, Previews, and Ideas.
Then you have 'Books' with harry potter, etc etc etc.

PLEASE do not ever start smashing things together and think tags will solve it. That's the *single worst part of spacebattles* and what makes it completely unusable for a large portion of users who register once and never go back.

And besides, why would we *want* to be spacebattles? Just go to spacebattles if you want spacebattles.

 

[Watashiwa]

I'm not in favor of merging all the series groups... I could see placing them under a single subforum on the main page, each in turn with their own series subforum under that, but if they are merged, then it is going to make finding stuff near impossible, or at a minimum a pain. Especially if you are going to be including Naruto and/or Harry Potter subforums into the mix with the rest.

Not in favor of merging series groups. I would be in favor of grouping them
E.G toplevel "Anime" contains Naruto which contains Talk, Previews, and Ideas.
Anime also contains, say, MHA, which contains Talk, Previews, and Ideas.
Then you have 'Books' with harry potter, etc etc etc.

Mmm no, don't think so. You're proposing a middle ground that doesn't really do anything except sustain the current organization in matryoshka form. The point is to clean up the forum to maximize the usage of each subforum we do have. If it ends up not working out I'll personally and happily move things back the way they are. Until then, the only subforums that stay unmerged are the ones that see content before the change in August.

 

[chronodekar]

Something I feel is being (unintentionally) left out in this conversation is trying to decide on what we are trying to accomplish. We want to make TFF better and more popular (I hope!). The real question is, what does 'better' look like?

Flipping the question around - what are the parts of TFF that you don't like? In no particular order (for me),

• too many inactive sub-forums
• not enough authors writing here

A tangential question - what are the parts of other forums/online discussion boards you do like? (I am envious of what spacebattles (SB) /sufficientvelocity (SV) have going for them)

• very active sub-forums

SB has barely a handful of dedicated sub-fourms, glancing over we see 'creative writing' , 'index' and a few others. That's it. No separate ideas/previews/talk sections for a particular fandom. This helps them to keep recent discussions visible. Has the community moved on from Sailor Moon? The staff don't need to worry about creating/deleting new sub-forums - by nature of organization, that thread will naturally drift over to page 7 or 8.

• a monthly newsletter

SV has this and I really like the idea - a general overview of what's happening/happened in the past month. Even better is that the forum highlights it as a banner when it comes out and those who don't care for it can dismiss it away until the next issue.

• the post rating system

It's really convenient to be able to indicate I like a story/post on SB without spamming the discussion. And now that I look, SV goes a step further with more options to indicate different moods about a post - a way to indicate "bad idea" or "I oppose" without replying helps to indicate how many folks would want to read about a particular idea (or not!). Something which we probably don't want, is to tie this into a user ranking system. I am not enthusiastic about a system where person with 1000+ likes has special privileges or the such. This isn't stackoverflow.

What do I like the most about our new forums?

• mobile view

It isn't cluttered with fancy UI logos and is very readable when riding the bus.

• speedy

Could just be because we're new, but I like how fast things are. (Off-topic: folks should thank Ero/Wata for this. I've been led to understand that one/both decided to rent the highest tier server they could get for the forum.)

Is there anything I missed? Not about forum re-organizing, but about what we want to happen as a result of our actions?

-chronodekar
PS: I like our preview button!

 

[Zephyrus]

Something I feel is being (unintentionally) left out in this conversation is trying to decide on what we are trying to accomplish. We want to make TFF better and more popular (I hope!). The real question is, what does 'better' look like?

Flipping the question around - what are the parts of TFF that you don't like? In no particular order (for me),

• too many inactive sub-forums
• not enough authors writing here

A tangential question - what are the parts of other forums/online discussion boards you do like? (I am envious of what spacebattles (SB) /sufficientvelocity (SV) have going for them)

• very active sub-forums

SB has barely a handful of dedicated sub-fourms, glancing over we see 'creative writing' , 'index' and a few others. That's it. No separate ideas/previews/talk sections for a particular fandom. This helps them to keep recent discussions visible. Has the community moved on from Sailor Moon? The staff don't need to worry about creating/deleting new sub-forums - by nature of organization, that thread will naturally drift over to page 7 or 8.

• a monthly newsletter

SV has this and I really like the idea - a general overview of what's happening/happened in the past month. Even better is that the forum highlights it as a banner when it comes out and those who don't care for it can dismiss it away until the next issue.

• the post rating system

It's really convenient to be able to indicate I like a story/post on SB without spamming the discussion. And now that I look, SV goes a step further with more options to indicate different moods about a post - a way to indicate "bad idea" or "I oppose" without replying helps to indicate how many folks would want to read about a particular idea (or not!). Something which we probably don't want, is to tie this into a user ranking system. I am not enthusiastic about a system where person with 1000+ likes has special privileges or the such. This isn't stackoverflow.

What do I like the most about our new forums?

• mobile view

It isn't cluttered with fancy UI logos and is very readable when riding the bus.

• speedy

Could just be because we're new, but I like how fast things are. (Off-topic: folks should thank Ero/Wata for this. I've been led to understand that one/both decided to rent the highest tier server they could get for the forum.)

Is there anything I missed? Not about forum re-organizing, but about what we want to happen as a result of our actions?

-chronodekar
PS: I like our preview button!

This is an excellent way to approach how we should modernize TFF.

I still believe that minimalism (in the sense of limiting the amount of sub-forums) is what appeals to today's readers. No one wants to scroll past a million subforums to find something in particular.

 

[Shirotsume]

• very active sub-forums

SB has barely a handful of dedicated sub-fourms, glancing over we see 'creative writing' , 'index' and a few others. That's it. No separate ideas/previews/talk sections for a particular fandom. This helps them to keep recent discussions visible. Has the community moved on from Sailor Moon? The staff don't need to worry about creating/deleting new sub-forums - by nature of organization, that thread will naturally drift over to page 7 or 8.

This is literally the single worst part of SB and makes it a complete and utter shitshow and effectively useless as both a writing and reading platform. To be honest, if TFF moves to this, I suspect we'll lose people *very* quickly. It's just useless noise masquerading as 'activity' but the second you look deeper.... you can't. Because it's just a wall of uselessness.

I strongly urge anyone even debating doing this to rethink it. It's a usability/UX clusterfuck that should be shamed, not emulated.

 

[PCHeintz72]

Sigh... not sure I should bother with further posts, since this mashup seems set in stone, but I aree with Shirotsume...

I do not come here for a newsletter, nor would it appeal to me.

I do not look at post ratings on any forum I have ever gone to, because it relies on what others think, not what I think

Very active subforums does not do a single thing for me, I go and look at specific forums/topics of interest to me...

The SpaceBattles/Sufficient Velocity format may well work for those forums, and some may like it, but not me... As a indicator,
- Here I have 165 threads linked (well, or did until the switch, I'll need to redo them now again), I have 29 on Spacebattles, and of those 29, only 3 was being actively tracked by me
- Here I logged daily for the most part, even if did not post much in recent times, still have a bit under 20,000 posts... Spacebattles, only rarely these days, and only several hundred posts total (most of that on one story). Because finding stuff of interest to me on there is hard as heck...

Jamming the forums together is problematic (to my way of thinking)
- It will make searching and browsing through old posts a royal pain.
- Apply the same logic that is in play here for modernizing this place to some place else like FanFiction.NET... I would dare anyone to say mashing all those subsections together is a good thing.
- Even if you give all sorts of tags on the threads... and even if it is made it very clear what is what, what about going forward... you may be relying on posters to reliably tag their stories/posts/topics to find anything.

 

[violinmana]

I think the real question isn't the reorganization itself, but how it should be done.

I agree that there needs to be reorganization, but the current format isn't exactly bad, it's just bloated. If we have the ability, I think we should move entire subforums into subforums; ex. Forums->Digimon->Ideas/Previews/Talk, if moved into Anime, would become Forums->Anime->Digimon->Ideas/Previews/Talk.

This way, we can keep the folder structure of our current forum but also make it less bloated, and it makes organization and the creation of new forums more consistent.

There could probably be a monthly/bi-monthly vote (let's say there needs to be 75-80% in favor, although that may be too high of a percentage) on what forums could be moved to a general depository, and if popular enough, what forums could be moved to the top tier list and shown on the front page.

I believe, based on what I know of Xenforo, that this would keep users' threads linked/watched intact. This way, we can preserve the easy-to-find nature of subforums as well as transition to a tag-based system (which I doubt people here will use, we're lazy fucks).

 

[Watashiwa]

At the risk of repeating myself, if we're cleaning up the forum, we should try to actually clean the forum and not just nest the dead things.

Turning the current subforums into third and fourth organizational layers doesn't help with discoverability since the fandoms in question are dead. The (now functional!) search system is a superior means to find stuff. It doesn't reduce forum bloat since the bloat persists, and now it's on the dropdown tabs. It doesn't generate new discussion, since now it's an out of the way dead fandom. And yes, FFN totally has miscellaneous sections for insufficiently active series.

It's an unhappy medium that fixes the front page. And that's about it.

- Even if you give all sorts of tags on the threads... and even if it is made it very clear what is what, what about going forward... you may be relying on posters to reliably tag their stories/posts/topics to find anything.

That's the thing I'm least worried about. People are good about appropriate tags.

There could probably be a monthly/bi-monthly vote (let's say there needs to be 75-80% in favor, although that may be too high of a percentage) on what forums could be moved to a general depository, and if popular enough, what forums could be moved to the top tier list and shown on the front page.

My one and only criteria for the front page isn't even that high; I just want to see every subforum used. Also we could get the same result with a lot less work by featuring specific tags.

I believe, based on what I know of Xenforo, that this would keep users' threads linked/watched intact. This way, we can preserve the easy-to-find nature of subforums as well as transition to a tag-based system (which I doubt people here will use, we're lazy fucks).

Moving threads doesn't break alerts or links. More than they already are, I mean.

I don't think I'm being unreasonable by saying that a discussion and content creation forum should be set up to generate discussion and content creation. I'm ALL for archival, but making the forum less good at its primary goal in exchange is a bad deal.

 

[Shirotsume]

I'm ALL for archival, but making the forum less good at its primary goal in exchange is a bad deal.

That's exactly what we're warning against. Smashing all the forums together makes it effectively useless for working on stories.

 

[chronodekar]

At the risk of repeating myself, if we're cleaning up the forum, we should try to actually clean the forum and not just nest the dead things.

Can we consider the "nest dead things" for our existing inactive sections? I ask this because (presumably) many of us are just used to that structure for those fandoms? For new or up-coming fandoms, we can do tagging or something of the such?

- Apply the same logic that is in play here for modernizing this place to some place else like FanFiction.NET... I would dare anyone to say mashing all those subsections together is a good thing.

I went back to FFN and found this = https://www.fanfiction.net/anime/ Would you say that such a page is useful?

Having seen that, I went over to SV and discovered this = https://forums.sufficientvelocity.com/tags/

As a reader, if I were looking for fanfic discussions for a series XYZ, the FFN listing is more useful than SV's tag cloud. Hmmm... perhaps we can setup a tag cloud/table with just series names, instead of most popular tags? To avoid non-sensical tags from showing up, we would need to limit tag creation to just staff, but allow anyone to use whichever tags they like.

That's exactly what we're warning against. Smashing all the forums together makes it effectively useless for working on stories.

What other options do we have? Assume we continue as we are and create new forum sections for new fandoms as they come - sooner or later, that list is going to get so big that our front page will become a very long vertical list that will be difficult to scroll over (ignoring page load/performance issues).

Thinking things over, I want to propose a structure similar to what FFN has - our main landing page should have just a handful of sections = Anime/Manga, Books, Cartoons .. etc (the exact list from https://www.fanfiction.net/ ). Selecting any one of them should take you to a tag table page with relevant tags for that section. Now, selecting a tag should return a list of threads about that tag. So, you get to a list of threads in .. about 3 clicks? Hmm... we might be able to avoid loading the forum and just make static HTML pages for the first 2 clicks. Might be an interesting project to build out.

-chronodekar

 

[Zephyrus]

For those who are worried about improper tagging, users are generally pretty good about properly tagging things if they're serious about posting their work on a form. So long as there is a FAQ or tutorial post, I don't think it would be an issue. And of course, we have mods who would fix improper tagging issues.

I don't think the tagging thing is a big deal.

As for the nesting idea, sure, it's a bandaid compromise now, but what happens when we grow and people want tons of new series forums? It'll eventually become a tangled clusterfuck. I'm quite against that scenario.

 

[PCHeintz72]

The problem is I remember hearing similar discussion before about not tags, but links and proper disclosure of such, both in and around 2009 back when it became an argument, and to a lesser extent on the prior move... I do not feel tagging is near as good as actual sections... And the issue of mods being present to fix tags is a poor argument, as with sections that is not needed... I worry you guys are going to be making more work for yourselves...

In any case there is no way you will convince me a general mashup is going to be good for the overall forum experience. The SpaceBattles model has already exposed me to it, and I have no wish to see it also on this forum.

 

[Shirotsume]

Same. You can convince yourself all you like- tag system is inferior to actually breaking it out. SB has shown everyone it's a failed system, I'm not even sure why there's discussion about this.