Agreeing with Fenris and SenorBeef - don’t move thread games to Cafe Society. It’s not the subject matter or content, it’s the type of thread that matters, as SenorBeef eloquently explained back on page 1. It might seem odd that Cafe Society mixes food threads with movies and TV shows, but the cross-pollination works. I visit CS always hopeful for threads on wine and beer, but I still sometimes get involved with a movie thread that catches my eye. But I would never randomly decide to join a game thread - I come to read about interesting topics, not play a game.*
I would peruse the Game Room more often for interesting threads on sports, but I never do because it isn’t worth the time to scroll through all the games. It has nothing to do with how many days of posts I’m viewing. I fully understand that I can keep scrolling and eventually find a thread from a day ago that was pushed down. But I, and most other readers, don’t do that. We scroll a little ways and then move on.
And I disagree with Blank Slate. I have nothing against game threads, and people who enjoy them should be able to play all they want. Every single thread on this board is mundane and pointless to someone. But let’s separate game threads to make it easier for both sides.
Ditto on this. There’s absolutely nothing wrong or bad or pointless about Thread Games. The only problem with them is that, by their nature, they get a ton more posts-per-thread than discussion threads which pushes everything off the front page.
It’s not the posters in the Thread Games threads that are the problem–they’re playing the games! But the Thread Games threads simply don’t play nicely with discussion threads.
At least on my end, it seems like a fuss over nothing because I was under the impression that I am not unique in only browsing the board via new posts. Whether game threads are in their own forum or part of the game room or whatever means nothing to me as I only see threads ranked as a function of their popularity across the userbase as a whole.
I will be interested to see, though, if there is a change in forum layout, how much of a bump or decline the different thread types will see.
This is what I was trying to get at earlier. If you don’t see the need for it, fine, but other people clearly do, and are the costs of change really so great that it’s better to stick with the status quo than do what a lot of people clearly want?
I think it should be a compelling argument for you. This isn’t science. We don’t need statistical proof. It’s not some big project where we need a cost/benefit analysis and a strong case to justify the change. Enough people saying they don’t like it this way should be a perfectly sufficient argument, since the costs of a change are almost zero (I assume - correct me if I’m wrong).
Why would you (a) separate Sports when the problem is the activity of the game threads overwhelms discussions of any type? And (b) put anything in Side Conversations? Side Conversations is for non SD material - like Ed’s side project on his book. Game threads might be considered non SD material - it’s not discussion - but we keep MPSIMS in the Main segment, so there’s precedent.
Part of browsing by New Posts is that the board doesn’t accurately track what is new. I browse by forums, but I can pop to a forum page and there will be a few marked new, then there may be a couple threads that have been updated since I last read, but looking elsewhere on the board updated my cookie, so they are shown as not new. Does that affect New Posts?
Plus, why would I want to wade through a list of game threads or politics threads when I can browse the forums in which I’m interested?
Moderators can’t make new sub-forums, though. In the old days, Dex or Tuba could create one, but now Jerry is the only admin. And as we repeatedly keep getting told, he’s just too durn busy.
This is a really nasty sound bite that is totally untrue. That’s like saying that it only takes ten seconds to roast a turkey, because that’s how long it takes to take the cooked bird out of the oven.
First, having created new forums (and renamed forums) in the past, no, it’s more than ten seconds. But let’s start with the need to read the email explaining what we want done and why, then signing into the Admin section of the boards with username and password, then clicking through menus to the place where changes in forums are made (it’s not like he does it every day and so can zip right to it), then waiting while the $*#@(ing thing loads up, then creating the new forum (that’s the step that you think is ten seconds but you’re wrong), typing in the name and descriptive paragraph, checking that there are no typos, then hitting the SEND button, then waiting while it works ('cause these Boards ain’t whatcha call speedy) and then checking that it did what was wanted.
No, it’s not hours, but it’s nowhere close to ten seconds. And he’s swamped, totally and utterly. It’s time that he doesn’t have.
Heck, just telling him that it will “only take ten seconds,” takes more than ten seconds.
You’re not, just so you know. I use this way to browse the board a good 90% of the time I come here.
I used to it forum by forum, but after using the “new posts” way a few times, I grew addicted.
As far as I know, there’s a lot of people who do it that way.
Come on, you’re acting like no one here has experience with vBulletin. Ten seconds may have been an exaggeration, but a few minutes is not. If an admin can’t spend five minutes administrating the board then they need to share that power with other people. Learning how to delegate is like Management 101.
Is there a reason why there’s only one administrator now? Yes, I know it came about because the board got hacked, but that was almost a year ago.
And if Jerry’s too busy, what’s preventing him from granting temporary admin privileges to a moderator who can create the forum? (And fix the goddamn rolleyes smiley while you’re at it?)
As someone who also browses this way, we probably shouldn’t advocate it, since it uses the “Search” function and is much more hamster-intensive. I also regularly search posts by user using my own username in order to get a list of threads I’ve posted in, ordered by most recently bumped. I often feel guilty of hamster abuse when I do that, but I’ve also grown addicted. :o
Or you could use your subscribed threads under control panel. Of course, you might have to set the feature to automatically subscribe to threads you post in, but then it works automatically.