Forum Structure

Alright, in my opinion the forum should be divided in more categories.The existing 2 in my opinion are hardly sufficient. A simple example for a new category is strategy and tactics. I think this one is necessary. After all this is about the gameplay of the game. The gameplay that brought us all here.

This was my proposition.

Here you can discuss the possible future division of the forum in more detailed categories.You can give your propositions and comments.

 

I'd agree on more boards, but I currently don't think that splitting the existing ones is a great idea right now. In the future when there's a little more activity perhaps, but I never felt the old board needed sorting all that much.

I also don't think there's that much with regards to strategy and tactics to talk about.

Could be a good idea for some sort of introductions board though. Also an advice/help board for new users to ask questions (and which could double up for guides on strategy and tactics).

 

Historically, TC has had all posts welcome in the General forum. The Records forum was only created after a consistent volume of records-related posting happened in General. I think this is a fair policy for us to adopt.

With that in mind the only thing with enough volume to warrant a new section at this time would be something for matchmaking. The blockbox league and various tournaments and friendcode/gamertag threads could all be moved over and have proven themselves with established volume.

 

colour_thief, I would say that there could be a sort of "if you build it, they will come" scenario with new boards. That is to say, there isn't much in terms of certain types of discussion now, but if you make a board for it, people might be more inclined to post threads on the matter.

Certainly looking to the future, and if this place gets much more active, I think it'd be better if we organised the forum a little more, and split up discussion on different types of games into different boards. Maybe right now there aren't enough posts to merit separate boards for modern guideline, clones, ARS, etc, but I think that you've got to look forward and say there easily could be in the future. And if we're going to end up splitting boards up somewhere down the line, I think it'd be best to do it now while the number of topics that need to be sorted is still a manageable amount.

 

I agree with this sentiment. I feel TC has become active enough as a community that we stand to benefit from organization of the forums.

While yes, less active forums don't need and are indeed harmed by excessive forums/subforums/categories/whathaveyou, as we are now (and as we continue to grow), we're going to find ourselves additionally cluttered with only a few forums.

In the end, it's the administration's decision--but I feel that we are large enough at this point to justify it. (Hell, I've seen less active forums get by with a huge amount of organization--while in some cases it was probably too much (there were, if I recall, about 30 subforums or something ridiculous like that), the community got along fine and it was much easier to find topics on whatever subject you were looking for.)

Just my buck-sixty on the matter (inflation).

~EI

 

Splitting the current boards is a bad idea, because things will get messy. A matchmaking board is a good idea, though. I don't really see the point of a strategy board because there's already a lot of strategy in General as well as the Wiki. If strategy, matchmaking, and records are removed from General, there isn't much left Tetris-related to discuss.

 

I'd stick an ultimate maximum of around a dozen forums. Certainly nowhere near 30. It should ideally all fit onto a single screen, or near enough.

 

Oh no, I wasn't suggesting we go with 30 forums--that was just part of the little anecdote saying that a little more organization around here probably won't kill us.

I'd say probably about 10 should be the max--any more and we start to overorganize things and the content within starts to look too sparse.

I agree on the "fit onto a single screen" metric--at the same time, I think we should work toward at least trying to fill a single screen, rather than the 20% or whatever screenspace ends up taken by two forums and a wiki link-forum. Too compact (and more importantly, probably opaque and unfriendly to a hypothetical new member).

~EI

 

I play multiplayer tetris for 6 years and I think there is enough depth in the game so that the game can deserves its own strategy and tactics category.

I`m new to the forum, but I`m left with the feeling that you want to keep up with the traditions.I understand that.Some of you have been here for a long time,but I really don't think that as a forum that claims to be the biggest tetris community on the internet can stay with just one general discussion.Records is actually records and is not even a discussion. We are not talking about 245325 categories here.Maybe just 5-6 or something like that.

That is my opinion though.

 

Well, the general section could still be there and you could discuss anything tetris related, new games or whatever. But we could also add some new sections and move topics from general.

A section for tournaments or just a place to ask if anyone is up for playing some multiplayer maybe, because well, let's be fair, not everybody uses irc or instant messengers.

Strategy, I don't know, maybe. If enough people are interested and willing to discuss it. But I see the point, there have been many topics regarding how to stack or get faster over the years.
Also like someone said earlier, making new sections might also encourage people to discuss the topic more.

 

I think you are too extreme here.Overthrow the order....

I never said we have to decide this for 5 min. Of course, there is time to discuss it, and of course if many people are willing to accept new structure,then we have no problems. That is why I made that thread so that we can discuss and after a big discussion some polls can be set so that we can see what the community thinks about that idea.

The general category is vital and of course it will not be changed.All we are talking about is adding a few more categories so that we can make the forum more organised. That's all I`m trying to say.

I hope more people will give their opinion.

 

This is very true. For people touting "if you build it they will come" arguments, I'd like to remind you all how much of a flop the old Replay forum was. But the Records forum, which got popular in General first, is thriving.

So the main points against uncontrolled expansion are:
-There would be nothing left to talk about in General.
-You can still talk about that stuff in General right now anyways.

 

It's true about the Replay forum, I can speak for myself that I liked and downloaded all replays but I didn't post any myself.
Why? I had just recently started playing and was intimidated by the likes of DIGITAL posting their replays there.

Now when they're put in general they're much harder to find.

 

I don't remember there being any call for a replay forum. I certainly never went there because I have no interest in watching old replays that aren't new records, and I can't be bothered downloading replay files and messing with them to get them to play. If it's worth watching it should be on YouTube.

I don't think we'd have enough to fill a strategy board, hence being against it, but some sort of division for different games, if sensible, would be welcomed by me. I think we could do with more than two boards.

And as stated before, a few off-topic threads or a board would be nice. It's not like all we have in common or to talk about is Tetris.

 

I'm also keen to go for a "converse, compete, connect" sort of idea, but I think the names might need a bit of a rethink - wouldn't "compete" describe online tournaments better than "connect"?

Also, regardless of the new forum structure, I think our old posts could do with a bit of a spring clean. There are a lot of old threads that contain material that is now of little interest to anybody, and personally, I would like to see it moved to an archive subforum and locked. Our old posts have a lot of really interesting nuggets of information, which will be easier to search for once all the irrelevant stuff is sifted away. If no one else is keen to do it, I'm quite willing to volunteer my services to sift away all the oily man topics.

 

If there's no general non-tetris discussion board, then I at least think people should make an effort to at least have a few non-tetris threads in the main board (sports, other games, cats, whatever).
I think it's bad that currently most of the casual chat and community bonding is hidden away on IRC.

 

not that that's a bad thing