Feedback for Reorganizing the Forums

Water Pokémon Master

Water Pokémon Master

I like Pokemon more than you! :p
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We're thinking about reorganizing the forums and want your feedback! Right now it feels like the more forums there are, the more confusing it is for people to post, and the less "valuable" our forums become. When you consider larger websites like Reddit, they're basically just big forums and you don't really have to think about where you're posting. Well, we're still a forum, but we're trying to come up with a happy medium. As such, we're going for LESS forums that are more ACTIVE, but with TAGS that you'll use when you make a thread to keep things organized. We would be going from 23 forums to just 14. We're proposing this structure and would love to hear what you think! Remember to keep an open mind.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1St3Ngfrbh6uh62fC9hHAT1zMSd4AeP-osS3Z0_3r4SU/edit?usp=sharing
 
I think this is a good move overall, but if it must be executed well the first time to stick with the community (I feel). I think one of the more important losses here is the ease of use of the "Does this forum have new posts in it?" image next to each one. By making each forum more general, this simple notification loses a bit of value to those of us with less general interests in the forum topic (e.g. I may only care about VGC or OU related topics in the whole of VGC competitive play, and thus I would rather know specifically when those are updated). A great improvement over our current system would be to assign these notifications some degree of user customization, such as only looking for specifically tagged content, or by giving specified tags an extra notification.
 
Looks like fan-fakes is unaffected, or not majorly affected, so this change rolls sweet with me.

On the other hand, other people use PB for other things, and this mightn't necessarily make them happy.
 
As someone who only actually uses the Forum Games and Tournament Battles section of the site, you'd think having those two subforums merging would interest me, but I really don't like that change. They are two vastly different things (a Pokémon Battle takes 5 minutes at most probably, whereas a game of Werewolf can take up to 2 or 3 months, and things like The Challenge about 6 months sometimes). I feel like it would be better to have it more like it is now with the Beach Life subtopic, only like this:
Beach Life:
Tournaments & Forum Games:
[subforum for tournaments]
[subforum for forum games]

This also helps with the issue Auride highlighted above about the worse use of the little Staryu which let you know if the subfoum has new posts or not in them, because as the tournaments subforum is less active than the forum games subforum (you can have multiple forum games running at a time, but multiple tournaments are much harder to coordinate, as teams have to be built and matches have to be scheduled between users), it means that tournament players can check the Staryu to quickly see when a new tournament has opened its sign ups.

The two things are just too different to combine into one large subforum imo, and it will be very inconvenient for the communities of both areas.

I don't really have an opinion for the rest of it since I really do only use the two aforementioned subforums, but I am strongly against merging Tournaments and Forum Games.
 
^ The idea is to have less distinction with the forums themselves and have more "this is where you do any kind of this thing." Yes, they are two different things under a classic forum sense, but they're still related in the fact that they're games, you play them, you can start topics for them, and you can have a lot of people get involved. The tags would also distinguish them. As it stands now, you might get 5 topics updated a day for Forum Games and even less for VG/TCG tournaments. That's bad for having them as their own forums and it makes things look really diluted and dead. So instead of organizing them by their own logical "thing" (TCG Tournament Forum / VG Tournament Forum / Forum Games) we organize them by "feel" (this forum is all about games and battling and stuff and it's all here). I have no idea if I'm making sense. But there would be a lot of activity undoubtedly and it would encourage people to try out things and start their own things I think. I feel like the less specialized forums there are, the less boundaries there are, and the more likely people will want to start / participate in things. Just think of subreddits like, I don't know, /r/pkmntcg. People post anything about the TCG because it's less "this is what you can only do here and you have to go to XXX to do YYY" and more "this is broad and you can do anything here." You feel less constricted and you don't have to think about where things should go, and then it's all in one place and easy to read/comment on. IDK, I could be wrong about this new mindset, but that's why I'm asking for feedback and for people to be open. :p I don't know for sure if this will work. Overall I think it will (it's more modern to simplify things), but I might be wrong about specific examples (like whether Forum Games and Online Tournaments should be together).
 
I'll admit I don't use these forums all that much outside of discussing the Pokémon news, but I've never had a problem with forums that are well organised by having a lot of different sections, as long as it has the activity to support it (which this site seems to do). My opinion on the matter is: don't fix what ain't broke. The current forums work well and are easy to navigate. There's a reason I never liked Reddit and that's because it's one huge mess of different stuff thrown together.
On the other hand, if it all does get changed to the new lay-out, I'd probably fine with that too, since like I said before, I don't use these forums that much.
 
I think the new structure looks very nice. It's simple and streamlined, but still breaks things down in enough categories based on interest that I think current users will be reasonably happy. I also actually rather like the combination of Tournaments and Forum Games since it will help gather activity for things that could be considered part of both, like Keeper's Kingdoms games. Having broader forums in general encourages people to participate more since they're more likely to come across something that interests them that they might not have seen otherwise if they oly tunnel vision to certain specific subforums. I don't actually care for Reddit much myself, but that's more because of their wonky post system and haphazard moderation standards than because of their forum layout.

If I were to have any suggestions, it might be to add a [Contests] tag or something similar for CW for threads like FF's Create-A-Card events. I'm not sure if that would be used enough to warrant the extra tag, but that doesn't really fit into the current tags (Projects maybe? Though that has a different kind of connotation), and there have been other art contests and the like in the past, too. Might also be nice to specifically have a tag for Werewolf rather than lumping it under the Games tag since there are a decent amount of people who are interested in playing/reading WW threads but not other games and there's enough of a distinction where it could be warranted, especially with tournaments being added to that forum too, though that's more minor.
 
I don't see any problems with the new organization. It actually seems to be more clear and collected. However would the games and tournaments be separated? I feel like having them together would be a bit of a pain, with how much games and tournaments are always going on at the same time.
 
Could try archiving everything from the past to Oct 31 and move them into a separation section so we can basically reboot/restart everything starting Nov 1 2014. I know that's how a Forum i go to for Chip and Dale's Rescue Rangers works. :)
 
I really do not mind except the problem I see will be where will all the active threads go? Who is going to be bothered to sort the appropriate threads into the new categories?

Also, should there be a Tournament category and Games category inside the Tourn and Games section? I personally do not want to be sorting through the tournament stuff and game stuff.
 
How about a new thread called "Staff Picks" that would contain every staff pick thread? There are multiple staff picks and this thread can help newcomers gain insight on what a quality thread looks like or simply for easier navigation to a SP Thread.
 
bbninjas said:
I really do not mind except the problem I see will be where will all the active threads go? Who is going to be bothered to sort the appropriate threads into the new categories?

Also, should there be a Tournament category and Games category inside the Tourn and Games section? I personally do not want to be sorting through the tournament stuff and game stuff.
Click to expand...

Our forum staff always sort threads into the appropriate section as needed. Threads won't be left in disorder.

There also should be tags for everything if it doesn't end up getting separated.

Reggie McGigas said:
How about a new thread called "Staff Picks" that would contain every staff pick thread? There are multiple staff picks and this thread can help newcomers gain insight on what a quality thread looks like or simply for easier navigation to a SP Thread.
Click to expand...

Staff picks actually serve a greater purpose that I can't speak on at this time. For now, they just serve as a staff showing appreciation for a great thread. Stay tuned!
 
Looks very nice.

For the worries on the new activity icon, could a menu be implemented somewhere on the top of each section that allows one to filter what they do and do not want to see? Like so:

VG News & Discussion - Discuss Pokemon gaming news and rumors, the world of Pokemon, gameplay, and anything else non-competitive.
--CLICKABLE MENU ABOUT HERE--
[ORAS]
[XY]
[BW2]
(etc.)
[General]

And the menu would be as simple as checking boxes. It could either completely hide the other topics, or simply bump the unchecked categories to the bottom. Say if you just want your ORAS hype. It's as simple as un-checking everything but ORAS.
 
Hmm...I'm not nearly as active here as everyone else who has commented, but I'll add my two cents. I'd imagine this could work as long as Pokebeach stays at around its current size. If there's a sudden swell in members, people could be making all sorts of threads. That would make it harder to stay organized (since topics will be all over the place), that or the active topics would stay at "the top" while new ones get shoved to the bottom where nobody sees them.

I haven't read everyone's replies, so I apologize if anyone has said this already. Good luck!
 
Water Pokémon Master said:
^ The idea is to have less distinction with the forums themselves and have more "this is where you do any kind of this thing." Yes, they are two different things under a classic forum sense, but they're still related in the fact that they're games, you play them, you can start topics for them, and you can have a lot of people get involved. The tags would also distinguish them. As it stands now, you might get 5 topics updated a day for Forum Games and even less for VG/TCG tournaments. That's bad for having them as their own forums and it makes things look really diluted and dead. So instead of organizing them by their own logical "thing" (TCG Tournament Forum / VG Tournament Forum / Forum Games) we organize them by "feel" (this forum is all about games and battling and stuff and it's all here). I have no idea if I'm making sense. But there would be a lot of activity undoubtedly and it would encourage people to try out things and start their own things I think. I feel like the less specialized forums there are, the less boundaries there are, and the more likely people will want to start / participate in things. Just think of subreddits like, I don't know, /r/pkmntcg. People post anything about the TCG because it's less "this is what you can only do here and you have to go to XXX to do YYY" and more "this is broad and you can do anything here." You feel less constricted and you don't have to think about where things should go, and then it's all in one place and easy to read/comment on. IDK, I could be wrong about this new mindset, but that's why I'm asking for feedback and for people to be open. :p I don't know for sure if this will work. Overall I think it will (it's more modern to simplify things), but I might be wrong about specific examples (like whether Forum Games and Online Tournaments should be together).
Click to expand...

I can see a few problems with this argument:
1) YPPY was recently introduced, so Forum Games always has threads running, even during the night phases of werewolf etc..
2) While it's possible this site does need a bit of a clean-up (personally I'm happy on some forums with even more subforums than this (and many other users are -- what about smashboards, the largest smash community? They have 38 forum titles displayed on the first page alone)) you have to measure up whether it will also effect the quality of the forums negatively. Like I said before, I can't really talk about the other subforums, but I know that Forum Games and Tournaments merging will negatively effect those sections; bbninjas said above that he doesn't want to sift through the tournaments in order to play werewolf, which is an opinion I'm sure many other werewolf players will share.
3) Once again, werewolf and Pokémon battling are two very different things, and Pokémon battling is very different to YPPY, The Challenge... most things hosted in the Forum Games subforum right now. Athena said that it will help with games like Keeper of Night's Kingdoms game, and while it IS true that it is a forum game utilising PS! and Pokémon battling in general, it really is an exception. Of course there would be a Pokémon battling game on a Pokémon site.

Anyway, the best way I can see to get the community's opinion in the fairest way possible is through a survey! Just follow this link and have your input. Please note that this is just for the Forum Games and Tournaments subforums:

*snip by Drohn* - Please use this thread for feedback rather than a survey. *[smod]Drohn[/smod]
 
For everyone that's concerned with Tournaments overtaking FG and making threads harder to find or whatever, I want you all to go look over at the Online Play forum. There is currently one active tournament, one that had its last post made early in the month, one last month, and then there was nothing for a few months. I really don't think the addition of 1-2 extra active threads is going to make it super hard to find WW games or whatever (especially if we add a special WW tag like I suggested above :p), since we can have more variation than that just in FG alone based on how many games are running at a time.

And, yes, surveys are, indeed, a nice way to get feedback, but they don't really allow for the kind of discussions that we're having now. :)
 
Athena said:
For everyone that's concerned with Tournaments overtaking FG and making threads harder to find or whatever, I want you all to go look over at the Online Play forum. There is currently one active tournament, one that had its last post made early in the month, one last month, and then there was nothing for a few months. I really don't think the addition of 1-2 extra active threads is going to make it super hard to find WW games or whatever (especially if we add a special WW tag like I suggested above :p), since we can have more variation than that just in FG alone based on how many games are running at a time.

And, yes, surveys are, indeed, a nice way to get feedback, but they don't really allow for the kind of discussions that we're having now. :)
Click to expand...

I'm actually more concerned for the inverse. Members of the Tournaments subforum having to sift through the countless Forum Games threads, when really they just care about Pokémon battling...
 
Which is the purpose of the tags. I'm not sure if this is made clear or not, but it's very easy to filter the tags so that only a certain tag is shown in a given forum, so if people really don't want to look at any games or don't feel like looking through a dozen threads to find the one they want, they have a very simple way to do that. Of course, I don't really think having to look at approximately a dozen threads to find the one I'm participating in is a big deal to begin with; it's not like FG ever really has tonnes of active threads, either.
 
If there is an issue with a couple of Tournaments being hard to find, can't they be stickeyed?

I don't think this will be an issue for some forums. It looks like PokeBeach Marketplace no longer has an option of only having a list of items I want to buy.
 
I removed the link to your survey, Celever. We would like to get feedback from members in this thread. (That's the point of this thread. :p)
 
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