I guess I just don’t see the downside of sub-forums? I just having to re-read all the thread game titles to figure out if it’s something I’d be interested in. There’s no easy way to visually separate them.
In an average forum (GQ, etc.) I’d read every title to see if the thread is potentially interesting. I’d say about 3-4 out of every 10 threads would seem at least a little interesting. In the Game Room, because of all the thread games, it’s more like 1 out of every 15 or 20 threads. It’s just exhausting, mentally, having to filter them out to find the threads of interest every single time.
Anyway, I’ll try to contact a mod soon and see if they can offer an official opinion or a way forward – maybe an official poll in TGR or something.
I disagree with your characterization that the overall majority opinion is in favor of splintering it into subforums.
I guess I just don’t see the downside of the status quo. As has been repeatedly pointed out, nothing is getting pushed off the front page. The game threads are easily distinguished at a glance by their much higher page counts.
By my count it was 21 for splitting it up in some fashion, 7 against. The rest were ambiguous or ambivalent. You’re free to recount it if you disagree with my assessment.
As for the pushing off the front page thing, it’s also been pointed out that several of us find the forum so difficult to use that we avoid posting there altogether, because of the clutter. There’s no way to measure that effect, unfortunately.
I think all these opinions are valid and I understand you disagree. That’s why I hope to put it to a more official vote.
This is a very self-selecting group. People who want a new gaming forum are obviously more likely to open the thread and reply to it.
My concern with the suggestion is that adding another forum extends the list. At my standard resolution, the link to the BBQ Pit just fits on the page. One more forum, and I have to scroll (I know, poor me). If you make it a subforum instead, then it’s an extra click to get to it. These are both minor annoyances and I’d survive just fine if I had to scroll or click. But realize there are legitimate concerns with adding another forum/subforum.
[And for the record, I’d be fine with getting rid of Elections. But every forum is someone’s pet favorite, I’m sure. Well, except the Barnhouse.]
The moderators have been discussing this over the last week and the consensus, right now, is that there just aren’t enough topics (of each thing) to warrant a split.
It may happen someday, the vote was hardly unanimous (just to show ya that all mods don’t always agree on everything all the time), but for now, it will remain how it is.
We do appreciate all the feedback, comments, and suggestions, though, and will be willing to revisit the idea at a later time.
Just throw the idea in that lack of thread on proposed sub-fora may be **due **to the clutter - you won’t find that out by observation or thread counting.
I generally don’t bother to hunt down the true board gaming and wargaming threads that would interest me as they are hard to distinguish from the RPG/video/PC gaming threads. The thread games bother me less - they are obvious from the post count usually - and have their place.
When reviewed again a poll would be good to get a deeper insight.
I’d suspect this is at least a part of it. I’d probably keep more of an eye out for videogame related threads in there (and maybe a couple of sports ones) but tend not to even open that forum because I can’t be bothered scrolling through the thread games to find something relevant.
What we really need is a way to tag threads with a “topic”. But short of that, could the mods (or original poster) put a "Thread Game: " prefix to the titles of threads that are in-thread games?
Game threads have been the bane of every forum they’ve been in. Games per se have never been banned, AFAIR, but at one time add-a-post games (count to infinity, etc.) were banned for being too hard on the servers.
I’m a lumper, not a splitter, and I don’t like having a long list of forums to click through, but it’s clear game threads need their own place. Sports and video games, not so much, I think. Why not spin them back into Cafe Society, since they’re basically entertainment, and leave The Game Room for actually playing games?
While I agree that football and Civilization V and poker don’t have a lot to do with one another, I also understand that neither generates enough posts on its own to deserve its own forum. I do think that thread-games ‘deserve’ their own sub/forum since they really don’t fit anywhere and clutter whatever forum they’re in. That’s not a value judgment against those who enjoy the games, just a point that they’re really a stand alone sort of product.
I considered this. Perhaps the icons to the left of thread titles could be colour-coded according to topic. The problem with that is that it doesn’t address the problem of thread games almost constantly being at the top of the list, attracting clicks from the front page.
There’s been numerous suggestions as to how to improve the forum software, but they’ve been almost universally shot down. We’re an extremely conservative group when it comes to how the forum displays information. Anything that adds or changes existing functionality would probably be instantly shot down not only by the mods but by 80% of the posters too.
Renaming threads might be possible, but I don’t see any form of tags beyond that happening.