Members: What do you feel about how things are run?

Keakealani · **Posted:** Tue Jun 05, 2007 1:43 am

yes, I'll <s>second</s> third that request for spoiler tags. That's one of the main problem with having multiple skins is that inevitably the colour will be wrong on one of them.

Uncle Xyzzy · **Posted:** Tue Jun 05, 2007 2:08 am

Keakealani wrote:

yes, I'll second that request for spoiler tags. That's one of the main problem with having multiple skins is that inevitably the colour will be wrong on one of them.

Third the request, you mean.

Cranberry · **Posted:** Tue Jun 05, 2007 2:49 am

Arka wrote:

Keakealani wrote:

Okay, that's totally fair. I'm willing to try it.

Personally, besides the argument that I do think it's unnecessary clutter, I think it's way more confusing to have multiple copies of the same thread in different forums, even if it's locked in those forums. Maybe I'm just really weird, but if I see a topic while perusing one forum, then I run into the exact same topic in another forum, I tend to get really confused, like "wait, am I in the right place?" Also, if the topic really isn't at all suited for the forum it was originally posted in, then it can be confusing for members who just read "Topics like xxxx are not allowed here" and then see "xxxx" as a topic there.

But, again, I'm willing to try it - if you swear by ghost topics that much, it must be really good, and I guess I just don't really know that much about running forums.

The ghost topics that I have seen have a notation something such as "(topic name) has been moved" in the subject line. Then if the member clicks the topic, the forum redirects the click to the new location. It is not as if there is the same thread in different locations. There is only one location, and just the notice of the topic having been moved still there in the original forum. And, as has been mentioned, the notice (the ghost )sinks down since no one can post on it- it isn't there, just the ghost of it.

Exactly. Here, take a look at one of the IDB forums with a moved topic in it:

http://forums.finalhit.org/forumdisplay.php?fid=17

You can see that it says "Moved: Altador Cup?" with a lock on the topic, so it's not confusing at all. If you click on it, it takes you to the "Altador Cup?" topic in the Games forum. That is what we mean by "ghost topics."

Spoiler tags would also be awesome.

MarchingDuck · **Posted:** Tue Jun 05, 2007 3:23 am

Fiddelysquat wrote:

I think we could easily set up a system where the ghost topic is deleted by a mod after 3 days. Does that sound fair?

I think it sounds good fidds. people can find what they need and in time it goes away to keep out clutter.

Cranberry · **Posted:** Tue Jun 05, 2007 3:28 am

I think it sounds like unnecessary work, because in a busy forum like General, the topics will get pushed down by themselves in less than three days... but if that's what it takes to get the ghost topics, I'm all for it.

ahoteinrun · **Posted:** Tue Jun 05, 2007 3:30 am

Cranberry wrote:

I think it sounds like unnecessary work, because in a busy forum like General, the topics will get pushed down by themselves in less than three days... but if that's what it takes to get the ghost topics, I'm all for it.

Yes but in a forum like General which already has so many stickies and announcements, and regular threads, I really do feel that leaving shadow topics could be detrimental.

.neko. · **Posted:** Tue Jun 05, 2007 3:50 am

MarchingDuck wrote:

Fiddelysquat wrote:

I think we could easily set up a system where the ghost topic is deleted by a mod after 3 days. Does that sound fair?

I don't believe its possible to delete a ghost topic, as clicking on the link redirects you to the actual topic. I believe I accidently left a ghost behind once when I moved a topic. I tried to delete it and accidently deleted the real thread. This was a couple years ago so I may be remembering incorrectly though - but I definately recall feeling like an idiot.

Cranberry · **Posted:** Tue Jun 05, 2007 4:08 am

ahoteinrun wrote:

Cranberry wrote:

I think it sounds like unnecessary work, because in a busy forum like General, the topics will get pushed down by themselves in less than three days... but if that's what it takes to get the ghost topics, I'm all for it.

Yes but in a forum like General which already has so many stickies and announcements, and regular threads, I really do feel that leaving shadow topics could be detrimental.

How many threads are moved from General in a day? Anyone have any stats on this?

Fiddelysquat · **Posts:** 2476 **Joined:** Mon May 31, 2004 9:18 pm

Cranberry wrote:

How many threads are moved from General in a day? Anyone have any stats on this?

Heh, we don't really have a spreadsheet on the topic. Maybe it'd be wise to observe GD over a certain period of time to determine how this would work out. For other boards that aren't drowning in stickies, we might be able to test this out.

May · **Posted:** Tue Jun 05, 2007 4:42 am

Cranberry wrote:

How many threads are moved from General in a day? Anyone have any stats on this?

There are some days when I don't move any threads out of General Chat. Then there are the days where I feel like that's all I'm doing for hours. I know that I personally would hate to visit General Chat on the days that a lot of threads are moved only to see like 10 ghost threads on the first page. That being said, I would be more than willing to try it

On a side note, thank you to all of the members who have provided some really constructive thoughts! The staff has been taking a hard look at some things and we are having some of the same debates that are on this board. Please know that we are looking into everything and we appreciate your honesty

*fluffy bunnies for everyone*

Matt · **Posted:** Tue Jun 05, 2007 9:59 am

.neko. wrote:

Fiddelysquat wrote:

I think we could easily set up a system where the ghost topic is deleted by a mod after 3 days. Does that sound fair?

I don't believe its possible to delete a ghost topic, as clicking on the link redirects you to the actual topic. I believe I accidently left a ghost behind once when I moved a topic. I tried to delete it and accidently deleted the real thread. This was a couple years ago so I may be remembering incorrectly though - but I definately recall feeling like an idiot.

Go into the Mod CP; you can do it from there

Keakealani · **Posted:** Sun Jun 17, 2007 11:14 pm

After this overhaul, I was thinking that perhaps another possible change (although I realize this may not be possible) could be to have some sort of announcement about major changes and some sort of help/tutorial thing to help use new features or explain the changes for existing features. I'm already feeling very neglected by the staff and frankly this only makes me feel worse. I don't want to throw blame at anyone, but it seems like nobody really wanted to update the regular users on things; being told that a giant staff party is being held for over a week really doesn't sound all that fantastic, and was really starting to make me believe that the staff was purposely shutting the forum down for regular users just to have some fun without us.

In addition, I feel rather slighted that I had several of my posts edited but the administrator who edited them didn't bother to PM me or let me know that a change had taken place. It doesn't seem far-fetched to think that maybe the reason my type was suddenly a different size was because the sizing elements of the forums were changed (something that admins ought to know about, right?) and I was not just an idiot who didn't preview (maybe it just doesn't occur to people, also, that the posts looked fine to me when I previewed?) and I do feel like I never was given an opportunity to figure out what had changed because nobody even took the time to make a post that said "some things have changed". While yes, the physical changes may be obvious, that change does not AUTOMATICALLY mean that we as users will know that other changes have taken place.

I don't really understand why if the staff had access to the forum for over a week before the users did, that at least a very small announcement/sticky could be posted somewhere relatively easy-to-find that would at least make some sort of warning to these changes. It seems entirely reasonable to ask for that five minutes, even if it means the forum needs to be down five minutes longer.

Jasujo · **Posted:** Sun Jun 17, 2007 11:23 pm

Keakealani, are you serious? A lot has been accomplished while the forum was down, including upgrading everything to phpbb3. As I posted to the other thread you posted on, the FAQ will be updated as there are many new changes, as will the rules be. We got the forum up asap and figured we could finish updating everything else while it was live so the users did not have to wait any longer. I'm sorry this wasn't to your liking and we aren't working hard enough for you, but we also have lives outside the forum. Would you rather the site was down for longer so we could make everything picture perfect when it went back up instead of passable so the users could get back to what they enjoy? If so, I'm sure taking it back down wouldn't be too hard, just say the word.

I apologize if this sounds a bit harsh, but imagine if you had been working on something and fixing it up for other people and as soon as they come to use it someone is complaining that not enough is done or not in the right way. All the touchups will be done in due time. The forum just went live about two hours ago. Give us a break, please.

Also please keep in mind that a lot is still going on now. You can't ask us to have everything perfect and do everything else at the same time. We are juggling quite a few things at once with reports from users on several issues. I'm sure the mod who took care of your posts was just as busy. Forgive us and give us a bit of time to get things going again. We hadn't tried every possible way of posting before the forum was back up, so things are bound to come up that we didn't know about.

The staff had access while the forum was down so we could iron things out and get used to all the new features. There are still things we need to work on, but it was better on a closed setting where we could test things than run it fresh live.

Siouxper · **Posted:** Sun Jun 17, 2007 11:31 pm

I think the mods and admins are doing a great job!

Keakealani · **Posted:** Sun Jun 17, 2007 11:36 pm

Yes, I realized a bit after I posted that that it was a lot harsher than I intended. I'm not going to take it back, and yes, I know what it's like to be a staff member on a forum and to do that, but that forum, which is several hundred times larger than this one, has never been down for two weeks for upgrades, either.

I'm really sorry that I posted so strongly, and I do feel that I overreacted. That being said, some of the sentiments still stand about the fact that there were zero updates and the userbase was purposely kept in the dark about many, many things, and I feel that that particular problem does need to be amended. I'm not saying that every hour needs to have a changed status message, but perhaps every couple of days during the downtime some sort of indication of progress could be made; once the upgrade is complete a very brief overview of what was changed would be really, really appreciated because it does show that someone cares enough to not just force people to make mistakes and be moderated for it because frankly, how else would we know?

On a really unrelated note, I really also think that the announcement forum should not be used to chatting, as it's really annoying to see the "new post in announcements" logo and it turns out it's just some random user chatting. I am very close to just not ever checking that forum because I think it's spam, and then I might have missed the announcement about the new features. I did actually check that forum, but it's pointless to have a separate forum if it's going to turn into a spamhole for staff members. I'm pretty sure it's easy to make a forum that staff has access to, and I'm pretty sure that such a thing exists since it does in most major forums. Why not make a spam/chat subforum there for staff members to chat about announcements? It doesn't make any sense to make the official announcement forum a spam forum too.

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