[Hetan]

It is my intention to re-organise the forums to include the following :-

• A new forum at the top of the board entitled Braven Tooth’s Recruitment Ground ( thanks to Mezla for the concept name) which will be for new members to introduce themselves and meet older members. The forum will also include some stickied threads along the lines of “How to change forum skin”, “How to post a picture” etc and will include some screenshots.
  
• This forum will be introduction only – anyone wants to go off on a book tangent they will be politely shoved in the right direction.
  
• If anyone has any ideas of what else they think would be useful with regards to new members, please post in this thread.
  
• Move the Announcements thread to 2nd position in the forum, making it more prominent.
  
• Re-organise the forums to reflect the book publication dates which will mean Gardens of the Moon is at the top and the spoilers for Recent Publications and those which contain spoilers up to the latest book will be at the bottom of the forum. This will hopefully make it more difficult for people to accidentally spoiler themselves.
  
• We are also considering some re-organisation of the “General” part of the forum as well, Knoll Barrow will be moved the Games forum, Art and Writing will be combined but Other Literature will remain stand-alone and may include some additional sub-forums for other authors.
  
• We have tested out a user reputation Hook in the sandbox ( a secret orbiting satellite station). The hook allows users to leave comments along with the rep that they have given for a particular post. It also leaves the name of the person who left the rep. It’s pretty basic and the messages need to be short. In addition, you can only view the last 5 rep comments received – which means you could miss out if you’ve posted something and ten people rep you for it – but there is nothing we can do about it.
  
• The reputation comments show up in the sidebar when you are logged in and also in your profile. If members would like us to implement this on the forum then we can give it a try and see how you like it.

[Vengeance]

Hetan, all of that sounds great. I think that the publication move should keep newer members from spoilering themselves. I could see people forgetting for a while and posting things in the top book forum. But that is what the mods are around for.

[Cougar]

I'll add to Hetan's question a little too. At the moment we are unique amongst the forums I use, since we have an off topic area which also doubles as the forum 'general' section. In my opinion this means we have made non-fan discussion the main focus of the forum. In contrast other (non-fantasy) sites I use have a 'general' forum or home area which is where the main business of the forum takes place. What would people think of making the Phoenix genuinely off topic and creating a general forum?

[Illuyankas]

Might be the hours I'm working making my brain not wurk gud but I'm not seeing the difference between general and offtopic here. Sounds like you'd be making two Inns, really. Feel free to tell me how I'm wrong.

Also it all sounds great, Hetan.

[amphibian]

Those seem like basic, but fantastic changes proposed by Hetan. I'm all in favor of that.

Cougar, I do not understand what you're saying. Like Illuyankas, I'm conceptualizing a cloning of the Inn - and don't see why that'd be helpful.

[bubba]

I think he means the Inn would be moved to a new area called off topic.

[caladanbrood]

 What sort of general stuff would go into this other Inn? I am also a little confuzzled.




Other than that, I embrace change (unless is involves anything expensive) so yay!

This post has been edited by caladanbrood: 05 December 2009 - 07:51 PM

[D'rek]

I think I get it. Sounds like good ideas all around to me!

[Tsundoku]

Sounds good. I very much appreciate the all the hard work you guys are doing.

Although like others previous I am confused as to Cougars' meaning regarding Off Topic/ Inn/ General ...

This post has been edited by Sombra: 05 December 2009 - 09:52 PM

[Raymond Luxury Yacht]

I like what Hetan is saying, also a little confused about what Cougar is saying.

[bubba]

It may look like something like this at the bottom of the page

General forum area

Disscusion
Arts
Other authors
Writing
user groups


Off topic area

The Inn
Sports
Tv/Movies
Games

[Raymond Luxury Yacht]

Bubba, on 05 December 2009 - 11:22 PM, said:

It may look like something like this at the bottom of the page

General forum area

Disscusion
Arts
Other authors
Writing
user groups


Off topic area

The Inn
Sports
Tv/Movies
Games

Hmmm. How is the Inn any more off topic than Discussion or User Groups? Or Arts? I guess there's a small connection for Writing and other Authors to not be off topic, as they are at least about writing, but those are all off topic if On-Topic is SE.

It seems like the real breakdown you're going for is Frivolous and Non-Frivolous, in which case User groups should be in the lower section.

Am I making sense with what I'm trying to say? I feel like I'm not making my point very clearly.

[Silencer]

Yes, I can see what you're saying, RLY.

I think Cougar's point is that the Inn is definitively 'off-topic', in the sense that it is very lightly moderated, discussions repeatedly go off on tangents, and there is no real purpose to its existence. The other areas are not on-theme, but they are heavily moderated and 'serious'.
Whereas, if you take the recent 'who would play...' topic in the Inn, it doesn't really fit there as it is book-related, which 99% of the Inn's topics aren't. It's a general, non-book-specific thread, but it is on-theme.

[Bhurnae]

So basically there are going to be two pubs.....The Inn (Spit and sawdust, all the wiff waff) and teh General (chalkboards, high priced bottled lagers,no customers)



and yes to Hetan..........

This post has been edited by Bhurnae: 06 December 2009 - 03:03 AM

[Silencer]

Cougar, on 05 December 2009 - 05:59 PM, said:

What would people think of making the Phoenix genuinely off topic and creating a general forum?

It's not a given at this stage. Cougar is just gauging reaction to the idea.

[HoosierDaddy]

So, the General Forum would be for Malazan related stuff, that wasn't exactly book related, while the Inn would be pretty much the same without the occasional "how the hell did this find it's way here" actually topical Malazan thread?

[Illuyankas]

You just want the General Malazan Discussion forum so you can have a place to make the thread 'How big is Karsa's cock?', don't you, Cougar?

ADMIT IT

[Cougar]

Silencer has it right. The Inn in my idea wouldn't change at all, it doesn't need to. However, what I have been doing in the spirit of trying to make the forum more inviting to people is polling the odd new member about why they joined and what they thought. Naturally this was done entirely unscientifically. One of the issues that come up was that there was no logical place to 'start' as a new member. The book forums are ultra serious and intimidating, the Phoenix is all fun & games,Lolcats, injokes and cliques, which although friendly, take the Trickster crowd, are kind of puzzling (a bunch of adults pretending to be in a pub seems a little odd to a n00b)and a little impenetrable (yes, I am saying tehol and Darkwatch are difficult to penetrate )

The idea then is to move the Phoenix from being the de facto 'home' forum to its rightful place as the anything goes, lightly modded fun 'off topic' area. The idea being that we might actually encourage Erikson fans to come along to an erikson forum and talk about Malazan as well as having a place we can dick around in.

[Raymond Luxury Yacht]

Not sure exactly how that's going to work out, but I'm sure it'll be fine. As long as the inn still exists, adding new things to the site can't be a bad thing.

[Cougar]

If you want examples of what would be in a general home forum then it would be stuff like the Naina thread that caused so much friction, the thread in DoD called Lovemaking and the MBotF, the usual 'hardest character' threads and the meet up info etc. I guess that the real reason would be to create amn area that appealed to some of the fans who don't join us cos they don't like the Inn (and there are certainly a few) but are a bit worried about posting dumb threads in the very strict arena of the book discussions.