The Glade 4.0

As you probably noticed, I've moved the various PbP forums into a subforum. This was done to try to eliminate some of the main page clutter. However, I've already received one.. concern from a member here who doesn't like having an extra click to reach anything.

So, I'll ask for your input, since this is your section of the board and I don't generally mess with it. Here are you choices:
1) Go back to the previous way. (Game forums are visible on the main index)
2) Leave it the way it is. (Game forums are not visible on the main index)
3) Split onto a new board. I was messing around, because that's what I like to do. I created a subdomain inside gladerebooted and set up a clone of the Glade there, with just the PbP section. All users migrated over. You can see the other board here: http://gladepbp.gladerebooted.org. I think one advantage of having a separate board is that you can have your Glade login and you can use your character login on the other board without having to logout/login all the time.

If you want to use the new board, it's yours. There's no obligation to use it, though, nor any pressure from me. I set it up for my own purposes (I was testing how easy it'd be to rebuild the Glade). If you don't want it, I can take it down as easily as I set it up. However, I'd like a consensus. Either everyone moves or nobody does. I don't want to deal with some pbp here and some there.

So you guys can decide and let me know what you think.

_________________

Don't care much. You can probably get rid of the divider though. You don't need a pbp divider for a single pbp superforum

_________________
I prefer to think of them as "Fighting evil in another dimension"

I can't say I am thrilled with the new layout, but on the other hand, if the players and GMs still post I can manage.

odd.... I can only see this message if i go to "View New Posts"

_________________
Darksiege
Traveller, Calé, Whisperer
Lead me not into temptation; for I know a shortcut

There was a problem with the pbp games on the previous incarnation in that we had the same people in every game. Nobody ever checked the gaming board. I had the same problem with a game I tried to run over Wave. Half of the people just wouldn't ever check Wave.

The way you have the board set up now probably creates the same problem. This was a dilemma I struggled with when Kaffis activated me as an admin on the previous gaming board. If people aren't seeing their particular game forums pop up as having new posts, they are less inclined to go look. One of the solutions I came up with was to simply archive old subforums. If you take a look, a number of those subforums haven't seen activity in months. Moving those entire subforums to an archive forum would be an equitable solution. I wouldn't promote deleting them outright, on the offchance that people decide they want to revisit them, but burying them would reduce some of the clutter while still allowing the active games to show up on the main page. Then, if say, DE decided he wanted to resume running whatever game he was running, it could be pulled back out of storage.

_________________
Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

****, I barely noticed when there were new posts the way it was before, now I'll never know if there are new posts.

_________________
Los Angeles Kings 2014 Stanley Cup Champions

"I love this **** team right here."
-Jonathan Quick

I'll back Coro's idea. My subforum is shelved for the indeterminate future, and can be not on the main page.

_________________
"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

a) The mark topics as read doesn't work so hot here (I cant check off all other threads once I've read the ones i care about)
b) Coro's right, people dont notice whats not right in front of them
c) Mine can be shelved for now too

On the one hand, everybody appears to be able to find the WoW subforum under Gaming just fine, so I don't see where moving the PbP forums under an aggregation layer presents that much of a problem, except for the fact that while Gaming is high up on the page and visible upon first browsing, the PbP forums are off the bottom of the page and I think the "out of sight, out of mind" factor plays in, and will moreso if hidden behind an aggregation layer.

_________________

Apparently we only have a few people who are interested in the games - to Coro's point of the same people playing them all - and several of these players are posting less actively already. If they comment that they'd never see new posts and so wouldn't take action, then I think that's a good indication that the remaining running games are likely to lack their participation further, perhaps killing them off completely. That would be a shame.

There is another solution that occurred to me a little bit ago.

I remember there being an option to hide subforums, so that they only show up to certain member groups. Kaffis had a group set up for each individual game, which he would drop players in on request. This sort of set-up would reduce clutter considerably for the Glade at large, as nobody would see any games they were not a part of, while participants would see games they're playing on the front page. It would also create additional work for the admin staff, but that isn't an insurmountable hurdle. You could simply delegate that task to one of the gamers.

_________________
Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

I can look into that option, Coro.

edit: Ok I was able to get the result I was looking for with your suggestion, Coro. If you guys want, we can go with that. Of course, since I'm an admin, I see all forums, but I guess I'll have to live with that.

_________________

why not create 2 accounts one for admining when you need to do something, one for general posting

Ditto here.

_________________
“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

Because I find logging in and out to switch accounts is more annoying than scrolling past 10 or so extra forums to reach the moderation forum.

_________________

Can you move the moderation forum to the top? That doesn't effect anybody except for the mods, and they'd probably all like to be able to see the mod forum without scrolling past games.

_________________
Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

I'll probably move it. As you may have noticed, I'm starting to make some changes around the place.

_________________

Ok, everyone who has a gamer forum has been added to the newly created PbP Gaming group as leaders. That means you should be able to invite your players to the group. Membership in this group will give visibility to the test forum I created. Once all the players are set up, I'll fiddle with the permissions and the PbP forums will disappear, like Brigadoon.

_________________

I'm not seeing an option anywhere to invite forumites to groups.

_________________
Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

I suppose that's important information.
Glade theme:
1) Go to User Control Panel.
2) Under Options, click on Usergroups.
3) Click on Manage groups.
4) Click on Manage Users for the group PbP Gamers.
5) You should have a listbox where you can list the users. Do NOT set the group as default for anyone.

I will need to check if the other themes have the same setup.

_________________

It works in AeroBlueX, I just didn't see the Manage Groups link. Here is what I see after testing it out:

The pbp test forum is visible to group members and users that are not logged in (which by itself is not a bad thing), and invisible to a forumite who is not a group member. The pbp games discussion forum is still visible, and all of the subforums are buried underneath that link.

I assume you're going to port the pbp test forum's settings over to the individual game subforums? If that was the plan, it appears to be working.

_________________
Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

The PbP forums are supposed to be invisible to the anonymous user. I'll need to fix that. The only forum currently under the new ruleset is the test forum, since that's what it's for.

_________________

Sure. As of right now, it looks like it's working properly, aside from being visible to anonymous users.

_________________
Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

I just fixed the anonymous/guest thing. Only the PbP Gamers (and administrators) have access now. Oops I need to put the moderators in.

_________________

I just added all of the players in the two active games.

What does the "default group" setting do? I had considered checking that for the three or four accounts that I knew to be duplicate accounts created for specific characters.

_________________
Buckle your pants or they might fall down.