Print

[Nezdragon]

Firstly, the changes to the board layout.  Here's how I think a good layout would work.  The boards would go in bold, followed by section listings and description.  Sections indented with a carat would be subforums to the preceding section.

Our World

Draconity.org
Ways to get involved with the community. News, questions, community opinions?
> Projects & Activities
Group projects and activities for the community, by the community!
> Special Events
The default Calendar thread. Birthdays and Holidays go here!

About You
Feel welcome here! Tell us about yourself and say hello to other members.

Chat
Got a random subject or just not sure where to put it? Try here!

Comfort Zone
Rants, raves, cries - we're here to listen to whatever may be going on in your life!

Spirituality

Spirituality
Discuss draconity and other beliefs here.

Discussion and Debate

Cooled
Talk about subjects in a cool, reasonable tone.

Heated
Burning opinion?  Controversial issue?  Let it loose here!

Multimedia can stay how it is, I don't really visit it.  I'm not wondering if there could be an additional section for spirituality type discussions, possibly an advanced spirituality forum where beliefs are examined more thoroughly.  On a board called Draconity.org, with descriptions and definitions of draconity scrolling by... we seem to have a distinct lack of spiritual discussions.  I think it would do good for a section or two devoted to spirituality and draconity.

My second issue is with the message icons that are next to topics.  Sure, they're cute, but I'm going to be frank, no offense intended.  I hate them.  They are extremely distracting when I'm looking for topics.  They are very off-putting when I'm trying to keep up with discussions, especially when I'm looking for more serious ones.  It's to the point where I'm actively avoiding boards and topics where those icons are displayed.  They bother me that much.  Sure, others may like them and use them.  I don't.  At the very least, please give me an option to turn them off.  At least there's an option for the similarly distracting smileys above my post window.

Third, can we have a separate section for the trivial/game threads (riddles, How Dare You, etc.)?  I remember way back in the old when such a section was suggested (we didn't have games back then).  It was firmly denied for several reasons.  Games were seen as unnecessary.  The forum was ostensibly geared towards the more serious and mature community.  And apparently there was another separate forum for such activity.  Now that these games are cropping up, I'm going to raise the issue again.  This isn't going into the layout suggestion because it's a somewhat separate issue.  The games hold little importance to me.  Sure, they're all good and fun... but they're crowding out other topics.  They're also inflating post counts which, sadly, people can be slightly influenced by.  "Oh, he's posted a lot.  He must be active and knowledgeable!"  So please, what is the new stance on these games?  Should games and 'trivial' threads (quizzes and such) go into another section where your post count won't be increased?

Please vote and share your thoughts on the matter.

EDIT: Changed the layout suggestion a bit, splitting spirituality into its own board.

[Fledgling]

Sounds good to me. I like the post icons, but an option to turn them off is a good idea if you hate them that much. I think we should have more threads devoted to dragons in general, not just draconity. We really don't have many of those.

[Selroth]

I dislike the recommended structure change, and would like to investigate a different way to approach the spirituality problem.  But, I don't care all that much so I'll go with what the community wants, and will look for volunteers to reorganize all the threads.

I coulda sworn I saw a way to turn off message icons in everyone's profiles, but I can't find it.  I'll see what I can do about that.

[Saq]

I have no problems with the layout or the icons. I agree with the idea of a Spirituality, and a Games/Spam thread though.

[Aurelia]

I'm glad my idea of a stand alone spirituality board seems to have gone down well.  How we structure that board though will need a bit of work - one whole board for only one forum seems a bit overkill but again if we split things into discussions, how-to's, etc then the sparseness of topics in each section (as they'll be spread so thin) can and will put people off from looking in there.  We can work on a solution to that though.

The other changes you suggested with the subforums I disagree with and also they wouldn't work forum-wise.  The draconity.org board is totally public, noone needs to be logged in to see it (hello everyone who isn't signed in! hehe). The only other board that is like that is the About You section - these 2 boards give prospective members a look into the community without just giving away people's ideas, projects (which could be stolen or used by someone else without giving the person/people here any credit) and personal information (ie: birthdays, holiday plans, sometimes even real names, etc) to god-knows-who.  The projects board and the special events board won't be made public for that reason, hence them not becoming subforums of a public forum.

I kind of feel like you're restructuring the rest of the forums just for the sake of it there because they don't need to be moved and they have no bearing on your original Spirituality forum issue.

Message icons...  Urgh.  I agree, I dislike them too and have actually stayed clear of stickying any topics that have used one because they're so distracting and take up so much space!  They're cute and fun, yes, but personally I don't use them and if there's an option to turn them off then yeah lets implement that now I know it's not just me who doesn't like them as part of the forum!  I just find them too cutesy especially when making any of the serious discussions.  That said, I don't avoid reading topics just because of them - I'd just like to turn them off if possible.

Games is a tough one.  We shouldn't have games at all really and most people will probably remember me fighting to get everyone to stick to the original ethos of no games.  This is a community though and not a dictatorship and people wanted to have a couple of fun threads.  The riddles thread may have turned into something with points but it's not really a game as such, more like the quiz we had at Christmas.  I get your point though that they should have their own forum...except if they do then even more game threads will crop up and it makes the problem worse.  The Chat forum is for everything that doesn't have a place anywhere else on the forums - general chatting, showing something new you've brought, etc so the couple of fun threads that have been started do kind of fit in there.  They're not hampering any serious topics, they're in a forum section that is for "everything else" and there's only a couple of them so they're not really crowding out the other threads.  There are a few quiz threads there at the moment but that was a very recent addition and aren't in the same category as games because people post their result and that's that, no super-boosted post count and the threads get pushed down the list after people have posted their results...and there were only 3 threads.  If we're having a Spirituality section then the few spiritual topics in Chat (that didn't have a definite place to go elsewhere on the boards) will be out of there and into Spirituality, so again it's not as if the few fun topics would hamper those discussions.  Or is there another reason that you want them removed from the Chat forum?

EDIT: Oh and just a crossover from the other thread... I agree about turning off that message that warns you when a thread is old.  We didn't turn that on by the way, it just seems to have come with the boards as standard but we can have a look how to turn it off or at least re-wording it if it can't be turned off.

[Rossenod]

You might be right about that, Aurelia.  I've been to a lot of different kinds of boards and they all have their own unique defaults.  Perhaps the red-letter messages are default for Simple Machines Forums.  I do hope they can be turned off though.

[huginkoprim]

I agree with Spiritual section because many people who registered here were maybe looking for information about draconity and with the name of this site Draconity.org. I think we should merge spiritual things into single section to ease their search for possible answers of their draconity. I agree with games/quizzes separation.

[Aurelia]

Sounds good to me. I like the post icons, but an option to turn them off is a good idea if you hate them that much. I think we should have more threads devoted to dragons in general, not just draconity. We really don't have many of those.

Just a quick message cause I forgot to add this in earlier...

I agree, we do need more dragon threads but the content of the community is down to the members - if you want more dragon threads then feel free to start as many as your keyboard will let you! hehe.  I've started a few and I know Sel, Drakenigma and Draco have started some during their time here also but we really can't start every single thread to do with dragons cause we can't know what every member here wants to discuss regarding them.

Issues about wanting specific content on the site are totally solvable by you guys and girls as you can post about dragons to your heart's content :)

[Saq]

I only started the Riddles (or quiz, which is a more appropriate name) thread as a fun idea for people to get involved in. It was not a catalyst for post count boosting, or meant to take away from the general theme of the forums, it was only started for fun. And it is fun right? Well, when you get the answers it is 

However, the spammy topics like 'How Dare You' and the likes are a bit debatable. I post in them, once again just for fun. On other forums I'm on, we have a Spam or Off-Topic board, simply for random games and sillies like that. However, proper quizzes and riddles and the likes were in their respective boards.

[Nezdragon]

I'm glad my idea of a stand alone spirituality board seems to have gone down well.  How we structure that board though will need a bit of work - one whole board for only one forum seems a bit overkill but again if we split things into discussions, how-to's, etc then the sparseness of topics in each section (as they'll be spread so thin) can and will put people off from looking in there.  We can work on a solution to that though.

I'm not sure what other forums would likely go in there, so I'm leaving it up for further discussion.

The other changes you suggested with the subforums I disagree with and also they wouldn't work forum-wise.  The draconity.org board is totally public, noone needs to be logged in to see it (hello everyone who isn't signed in! hehe). The only other board that is like that is the About You section - these 2 boards give prospective members a look into the community without just giving away people's ideas, projects (which could be stolen or used by someone else without giving the person/people here any credit) and personal information (ie: birthdays, holiday plans, sometimes even real names, etc) to god-knows-who.  The projects board and the special events board won't be made public for that reason, hence them not becoming subforums of a public forum.

I kind of feel like you're restructuring the rest of the forums just for the sake of it there because they don't need to be moved and they have no bearing on your original Spirituality forum issue.

I figured it would make things look a tad less cluttered, maybe.  Is it not possible to hide subforums of a public forum?  If not, oh well.  Disregard that particular arrangement.

Message icons...  Urgh.  I agree, I dislike them too and have actually stayed clear of stickying any topics that have used one because they're so distracting and take up so much space!  They're cute and fun, yes, but personally I don't use them and if there's an option to turn them off then yeah lets implement that now I know it's not just me who doesn't like them as part of the forum!  I just find them too cutesy especially when making any of the serious discussions.  That said, I don't avoid reading topics just because of them - I'd just like to turn them off if possible.

Good to know I'm not the only one, either...

Games is a tough one.  We shouldn't have games at all really and most people will probably remember me fighting to get everyone to stick to the original ethos of no games.  This is a community though and not a dictatorship and people wanted to have a couple of fun threads.  The riddles thread may have turned into something with points but it's not really a game as such, more like the quiz we had at Christmas.  I get your point though that they should have their own forum...except if they do then even more game threads will crop up and it makes the problem worse.  The Chat forum is for everything that doesn't have a place anywhere else on the forums - general chatting, showing something new you've brought, etc so the couple of fun threads that have been started do kind of fit in there.  They're not hampering any serious topics, they're in a forum section that is for "everything else" and there's only a couple of them so they're not really crowding out the other threads.  There are a few quiz threads there at the moment but that was a very recent addition and aren't in the same category as games because people post their result and that's that, no super-boosted post count and the threads get pushed down the list after people have posted their results...and there were only 3 threads.  If we're having a Spirituality section then the few spiritual topics in Chat (that didn't have a definite place to go elsewhere on the boards) will be out of there and into Spirituality, so again it's not as if the few fun topics would hamper those discussions.  Or is there another reason that you want them removed from the Chat forum?

I was mostly concerned that the games would get together and start making more of themselves.  Granted, I really haven't been looking into the Chat section since it seems to be the most popular message icon breeding ground... yes, I dislike them that much.

I'm tempted to create another thread to figure out what spirituality sections would work best for the community.

[Rossenod]

Snipped....

I was mostly concerned that the games would get together and start making more of themselves.  Granted, I really haven't been looking into the Chat section since it seems to be the most popular message icon breeding ground... yes, I dislike them that much.

I'm tempted to create another thread to figure out what spirituality sections would work best for the community.

Now, here's one of the places I disagree with your suggestions.  I think games and little fun threads should be a part of a serious discussion board.  People can get so wrapped up in the arguments and the drama that surrounds the more serious threads that they can be severely stressed by them.  So having games or fun threads can actually benefit many of the posters who come in here.  A game can actually calm someone down, get their mind off the whole stressful thing they were involved in, many times only moments after leaving the heavier-duty thread.  If there are no games or other fun things to do, I think a lot of people would eventually lose interest in the boards because the threads would be so intensely devoted to seriousness.  A little light-hearted fun is, IMHO, a good thing on serious boards, because they can be a means of letting off steam and getting people back into a more stable state of mind.

[Aurelia]

I think maybe we should forget about sections for the time being ad just have the spirituality board and then see what kind of things get posted in there - we can easily expand that board into sections later if needed when we can see what kind of topics are posted.  If they're all falling under the same sort of category then it won't need to be split up at all.

Going briefly back to my question in the other thread though, maybe it can be split with religion and spirituality...but not sure, lets see what gets posted first and which topics people want.

[Rocangus]

Well, I think the Spirituality area could be good, and then I'm neutral to the animated icons and I like games and quizzes and so.

Games are a part of forums, without them, the place would go rather dull, I think. But shutting down the post-count could be wise.

[32-bit int]

I don't really see the point of displaying post counts at all.

[Rocangus]

I don't really see the point of displaying post counts at all.

Well, I think it is to give a way of seeing how active the members are.

[Tags:]

Tags: