Board densification proposal

[Misty]

First off, for anyone who hasn't - read this post.

Okay, now that the reasoning is out of the way - I think it's for the best that we do a bit of densification. We have a lot of forums, many of them extraneous and not really adding anything. Here's a list of comparative "fullness" of forums (staff forums, archives, and #PM are exempt):

(This data was taken a few days ago.)

---
Assembly - 151/1697
Welcome Center - 123/1206
Pokemon News - 96/479
Bulbacast - 15/270
---
Pokemon Creatures - 58/1209
Pokemon World - 25/415
Pokemon Science - 17/380
Pokemon Characters - 32/984
Pokemon Fanfics - 153/3226
Pokemon Art - 46/647
--
Pokemon Anime - 404/13784
Pokemon Video Games - 120/1795
Pokemon Manga - 31/411
Pokemon TCG - 57/321
Shipping - 66/2951
---
Mind Games - 9(?!)/4453
RPGs - 28/280
Party Games - 48/25889
Diplomacy Game - 314/3087 (almost all in Archive)
Fizzy Bubbles - 33/2503
PABSL - 31/576
Evolutions - 1/11
---
Tower of Bulba - 21/1111
Entertainment - 48/3783
Non-Pokemon fanfics - 47/276
Land of the Rising Sun - 66/993
---
Technology - 34/274
Other Video Games - 100/912
Webmasters - 114/1409
Multimedia - 50/923
---
Misc - 216/8639
Debates - 108/2926
Clubs - 47/17965
---
Comics - 37/444
---

It's obvious to me that certain forums are not pulling their weight. My suggestions are as follows -

1) Abolish all subforums, except archives and #PM. Make Assembly into a general Bulbagarden discussion forum - combine it with the Bulbacast forum and maybe even the Welcome Center.

2) The Pokemon World forums were a good idea, but make them a single forum.

3) Remerge the fanfics and fanart forums (put Multimedia into Fanart).

4) Make a General Pokemon forum. I know we wanted to get rid of this before, but I think there are simply topics that need a forum like this. Merge certain aspects into it, like manga and TCG, which we're simply too weak on to justify whole forums for.

5) Mind Games and Party Games merger. Then merge it with Clubs - I know I got this idea shot down before, but simply put it's the TPM way and it worked Probably based on the principle that clubs and games are both spammy as hell...

6) I'm not going to make direct opinions on the game forums - I'm going to say that's Archaic's job to decide what to do with those, since I don't visit those forums and know nothing about how they're contributing to us.

7) Tower of Bulba and Land of the Rising Sun - into Misc and Entertainment as needed. Definitely.

8) Tech forums (minus Multimedia, already discussed) can be merged together.

9) The CCC forums, I think, are a good idea, but I know people don't know enough about them. Someone should write up a short and to-the-point description of the concepts behind them. Furthermore, we should ensure that the activity justifies the existence of the forum. I'm eh on Comics, but for now I'll let it go.

10) Move Misc up higher. Misc is a great forum for spawning discussion, and sticking it at the bottom is counterproductive. Same with debates. Also, merge the two aforementioned forums.

11) Upon advisement from the meeting in [HASHTAG]#bulbagarden[/HASHTAG], I think it's a good idea to simply remove the News forum. Bulbanews discussions would take place in BMG General; the news itself can be discussed in Pokemon General.

The resulting forums look something like this:

---
Bulbagarden General
(Welcome Center?)
Misc
---
Pokemon General
Pokemon Games
Pokemon World
Pokemon Anime
Shipping
---
Fanfics
Fanart
Entertainment
Technology
---
RPGs, Fizzy Bubbles, etc
Clubs and Games
---
Comics and other CCCs.

That takes us from 34 forums to 18 or less, and looks a lot cleaner, I think.

 

[bgt]

I actually like that format myself and think that it would actually help to draw more users in. Because if its one thing I've found, people don't usually join things that are hard to navigate through, etc.

And like smog was saying, theres only a handfew of forums that I'll visit since I'm not a big regular, but, if most of the forums would be merged, I actually would visit/post more because I would see more threads and it wouldn't be as hard to navigate.

There may be a slight staffing problem but I think that could be figured out. I seriously doubt myself that Bulbacast should have even been made into a forum in the first place, the project should have been merged into an existing project as it doesn't have a whole lot of support, atleast not as much as what was suspected.

For example, look @ the General Technology Forum's last post date... 01-14-2006 04:19 AM. Like said before, it the last post was later that 24 hours, it really should be considered for merging.

 

[Archaic]

Actually, it has huge support. It's just that the support seems to be more amongst chat users (Practically all of the [HASHTAG]#pocketmonsters[/HASHTAG] channel listens to us), rather than forum users.

My original ideas were

• Merge the functions of the Welcome Center into the Assembly
• Merge the Pokémon Creatures, World, Science & Characters forums into one general Pokémon World forum
• Merge the functions of Manga and TCG into one General Pokémon forum (which can also be used to discuss some Pokémon topics we don't seem to currently have any place to discuss, like merchandise), or spin them off as sun-forums of the general forum. They can become top level forums again if the activity picks up
• Merge Mind, Roleplaying and Party games into one general games forum
• Tower of Bulba moves to a sub-forum of Misc
• Retitle LotRS to "Other Anime & Manga", and move the general Japan centric topics to Misc or Tower of Bulba.
• Merge Entertainment back into Misc
• Merge General Tech with Other Video Games
• Merge multimedia with Creative Corner
• Merge "Community-Created Communities" back into Misc, perhaps as sub-forums

So as I see it, we should end up with something along the lines of this.

Bulbagarden General
Misc
- Debates
- Tower of Bulba
- Land of the Rising Sun
--
Pokemon General (inc. News)
Pokemon Anime
Pokemon Video Games
Shipping
---
Pokemon World
Pokemon Fanfics
Pokemon Art
---
Clubs & Games
Diplomacy Game
Fizzy Bubbles
PABSL
Evolutions
---
Entertainment & Technology (a.k.a. "Geeky Misc")
Non-Pokémon fanworks
Multimedia - 50/923
---

 

[Fig]

1) Abolish all subforums, except archives and #PM. Make Assembly into a general Bulbagarden discussion forum - combine it with the Bulbacast forum and maybe even the Welcome Center.

Mostly good, with the caveat that SOME other subforums need preserved - especially for the various games (Diplomacy Game Staff Meeting, etc)

Beyond that, I really have only ONE other comment to make.

WHATEVER you do, - KEEP THE CURRENT EVENTS. They allow us to give important events all the coverage they deserve WITHOUT giving them permanent forums.

Case in point, the upcoming Olympics (for non-pokémon stuff) and Tenth Anniversary (for pokémon stuff).

 

[birdboy2000]

Diplomacy game, once one gets going again, NEEDS it's own forum. It doesn't lend itself to a single thread, and it'd spam up any forum it was in, being annoying for both.

 

[Misty]

Mostly good, with the caveat that SOME other subforums need preserved - especially for the various games (Diplomacy Game Staff Meeting, etc)

Understood, I should clarify that my comment only applies to forums that we want to draw newbies to - certainly, a staff meeting forum or something doesn't fall under this category, these would only be used by seasoned board veterans.

WHATEVER you do, - KEEP THE CURRENT EVENTS. They allow us to give important events all the coverage they deserve WITHOUT giving them permanent forums.]

Case in point, the upcoming Olympics (for non-pokémon stuff) and Tenth Anniversary (for pokémon stuff).

A possibility, although I note our last attempt - Christmas 2005 - didn't really generate much activity. Since the basis is temporary forum design, we can probably work it in for a few more trial runs if we feel it's necessary.

Diplomacy game, once one gets going again, NEEDS it's own forum. It doesn't lend itself to a single thread, and it'd spam up any forum it was in, being annoying for both.

As I said, no comment on the specific game forums - they'll probably all stay as is.

 

[Fig]

Christmas 2005 got us a lot more threads than we would have had for the holidays otherwise.

More importantly, unlike all the other forums, it did so at virtually no cost - because (and that's the great thing about CE), it stopped taking up room as soon as it was no longer useful, leaving room for new CEs for things that will actually generate more talk.

And that's the thing with CE. Even if individual forums don't work that well, the concept itself is always going to generate more posts than we otherwise would have, at virtually no cost in terms of apparent activity.

 

[bgt]

Actually, it has huge support. It's just that the support seems to be more amongst chat users (Practically all of the [HASHTAG]#pocketmonsters[/HASHTAG] channel listens to us), rather than forum users.

Yea, I would know since I'm in that channel, but just making the point that the forum is hardly used anyways, or atleast doesn't function as a forum. Theres like four threads in there that really are used and thats for the episodes #1-4. I think those threads could be easily moved to another forum to save space. But thats just my theory on Bulbacast. But I still support the whole idea of the forums being merged, atleast the useless ones.

I don't think the games should be touched at all actually, I think they should be left in tact.

 

[GrnMarvl14]

Merge "Community-Created Communities" back into Misc, perhaps as sub-forums

For obvious reasons, I HAVE to comment here.

While I would not be against the one CCC merging with Misc., I have to at least try to emphasize the sub-forum possibility (although I would prefer if we kept the CCCs where they are and actually promoted them well, instead of one vague mention at their inception and no follow up). I see two possibilities:

1. We ditch the CCC thing altogether (as it appears we're doing), and give Comics a shot as a sub-forum (there are enough big events within the year to spark a series of potentially major discussions, not the least of which are the upcoming releases of X-Men 3 and Superman Returns on the big screen. And as was shown with the changing of the Spider-Man costume, there are events outside of the movies that can spark large discussions, especially with the possible death of Flash and other major characters within DC and Marvel coming up. That's not rumor, that's Marvel and DC saying major characters WILL die, but not specifying). If you guys aren't happy with the level of discussion in, say...I dunno...a month (although X-Men 3 doesn't come out until May, and the next big Marvel event doesn't start until the summer), then just ditch it as a sub-forum.

2. We keep the CCCs and have them as sub-forums of misc. with a certain activity level that has to be reached (not counting random topics posted for the sake of trying to bring up activity) and maintained within an amount of time. If it fails, we ditch it.

I'm a reasonable person. While I really don't want the comics forum to go away, I will get over it (eventually) if it does. But I still maintain that it's had a fair amount of activity (and even resulted in at least one new member (although he seems to have disappeared). Considering it's in no way Pokemon related...I'd say that's a plus, and the fact that I still have no idea who that guy was (so he wasn't some guy I got to join to make it look better)).

And now I realize I've just made one huge, long ramble. But this is the type of subject that causes me to ramble.

 

[evkl]

Partly done. If anyone has any questions on what went where, ask me.