I agree about compete being ambiguous, I'm not attached to the names I was just throwing them out there. I don't really see the point of the pruning though as I've not had a problem searching for old posts. Seems like there's no real gain.
Even if others don't think that it's necessary, I'd like to put in the time to do it. Personally, I think the mess and disorganisation might be a factor in determining whether new members stay or get turned away, and we should move away from the mentality that "if it's okay for me, then it's okay for everyone else".
Haha, that was me testing the default name that gets autofilled into the name field when you're not logged in. I also made the title "Unregistered" a bit less obtrusive.
Best topic EVAR! People obviously had a need to post off-topic stuff like that in the past, shouldn't that be a good enough sign that TC needs an off-topic board?
On another forum I go to, we have a whole series of threads called "Random Happenings" dedicated solely to off-topic random stuff that people want to mention but doesn't warrant a new thread. It is mainly for all the stuff one might feel like sharing about their lives. It doesn't warrant full community discussion, but some people might find it interesting. For example, I posted a picture of my TGM2 poster there. It didn't need its own thread obviously, and not everyone in the Bemani community is going to care about my sweet poster, but I can post it in Random Happenings if anyone cares to see it. Posting it was actually rather fruitful, as someone kindly reminded me how awesome the Technic Beat song/TGM2 remix "The Absolute" is. tl;dr: Either an off-topic section or off-topic thread would allow for the sort of off-topic stuff that crops up in IRC to be confined to one place on the forum. Interesting stuff shows up in random threads from time to time.
That's a really good idea. We're not big enough to have a dedicated forum, yet we still need something to discuss about things not Tetris. We have something similar on two forums where I am a regular member, and that works very well.
I like the idea of an off-topic thread too. It will probably be enough for our needs, and if it's really popular we can reconsider having an entire off topic forum. Do people want a versus/matchmaking forum or are they happy with the current setup?
Proposal: merge Amnesia'a Leaderboard Mess thread with this one. As far as I can see, there will be little to no discontinuity caused by the merge, and it places in the same place two topics that talk about very similar things. One of the things that I strongly dislike about the current forum structure is that information is scattered; there may be several threads that talk about very similar subjects, but you have to search at opposite ends of the forum for them. For example, there's this, this, and this which all talk about what music people like to listen to whilst playing tetris. Things are made even worse by the fact that someone on harddrop has created a thread that talks about the exact same thing. Point is, if I want information on a particular subject, I don't really want to have to look in 4 or more completely different places for it.
What does everyone else think of muf's prefix-happy merger in the recently renamed "Competition" forum? Personally I'd rather see multiple forums than a prefix on every single thread. Also I don't like that someone would be expected to know and understand prefixes (a rarely used forum feature) before doing something as basic as posting a friendly challenge.
Well, first of all, I did things like this to get things going. I was hearing a lot of "things aren't moving with the new TC" but few concrete suggestions. Second, it's very easy to transition from prefixes to subforums, as you can filter for a certain prefix, select all threads, and mass move them to a new forum. Sometimes it's good to go with something people don't want, just so they become more vocal on what they do want. But anyway. So prefixes are shit. How about this forum layout instead? = Wiki (link) = Discussion (category) == General (forum) === Introductions (subforum) == Strategy (forum) = Competition (category) == Records (forum) == Challenges (forum) == Tournaments (forum)
I'm a big fan of getting anywhere without excessive clicks. I'd propose: = Wiki (link) = Discussion (forum) = Records (forum) = Versus (forum) With an introductions thread, offtopic thread, and strategy discussion all happening in Discussion. And possible future forum extensions to allow for more automated leaderboards as well as tournament brackets and seeding.
That doesn't really change anything except move tournaments to their own forum. There has been previous discussion (previous as in when caffeine was still in charge) about getting a strategy forum, and last night I was looking through the Discussion forum and found quite a few of those (certainly more than the tournaments we've had so far). The problem is, you either keep things simple (like with prefixes, or by only adding one extra forum) and people complain about clutter, or you divide into proper categories and people complain that there's either too many forums to keep track of or that content is spread out too thinly.
Real strategy information should go on the wiki. I don't think a dozen people being told to use both rotation directions deserves it's own forum.
I'd combine Tournaments and Challenges (can't see either of them having much in the way of threads on their own). Strategy I don't think would work that well either as it's own board. I just don't think there are many threads that are purely about strategy. And I'd still push for some sort of non-Tetris board.
What if the "welcome to tetrisconcept" email included a link to the existing introductions thread? Then there'd really be no reason for a seperate forum. I just don't see the point of a subforum that won't even get daily posts, which discussion, records, and versus would.
What percentage of people read the welcome email? Personally, I think the introductions thread should be stickied, that way, when newcomers visit the site, they immediately see a place where they can say "hello" without fear of posting in the wrong place or being accused of creating duplicate threads.
