Forum Reorganization: Pardon Our Dust

[fencore]

The staff will be working on some forum and subforum reorganization today, starting at about 20:00 UTC, so bear with us if forums and threads are in wonky places this evening.

We will do our absolute best to inconvenience everyone.

See the second post for the complete change log regarding this forum reorganization.

[aerelm]

Major changes made with this reorganization:

• General Announcements, Mod Announcements & Server Announcements all merged into one forum.
  
• Watering Holes sub-forum merged with Stories & Biographies forum.
  
• Sirius News & Commerce turned into a sub-forum of Communication Channel. This sub-forum is mainly intended for news articles and loan services, but InRP equipment sales are also welcome.
  
• Bounty Boards were given their own forum, with separate sub-forums for blanket bounties, individual bounties and registration boards. Official factions are now required to create a registration thread for their blanket boards in the respective sub-forum.
  
• Factions were given their own forum section. Everything else regarding that section works the same way as before.
  
• Faction Feedbacks moved to a sub-forum of Discovery RP 24/7 General Discussions from faction rules sub-forum.
  
• Help Requests merged with Discovery RP 24/7 Tutorial & Support forum.
  
• Open Market and Ship Sales are merged under Marketplace forum, with one sub-forum for each, and both are now available for ooRP sales.
  
• General Gaming merged with General Discussion forum in The Community section.
  
• Signature Requests merged with Media Center.

There may be minor tweaks here and there within the next couple of days, but the overall layout of the forums is decided to stay as is for the foreseeable future.

Also, this thread is now open for opinions and whatnot. In that regards, here's a skype log to sum up the general reaction to these changes:

[1:08:14 AM] aerelm: OH GOD CHANGES
[1:08:16 AM] aerelm: NOOOOOOOO
[1:08:18 AM] aerelm: PLEASEEEE
[1:08:20 AM] aerelm: NO CHANGESSS
[1:08:26 AM] aerelm: OH MY GOD STOPPPP
[1:08:30 AM] aerelm: WHAT ARE YOU DOING TO ME????

Give it a few days and you'll start to like em, trust me.

[Duvelske]

Major changes made with this reorganization:
[*]Watering Holes sub-forum merged with Stories & Biographies forum.

Basicly i think this is a stupid idea as before you had the watering holes just as a gathering on a bar for example. (1 post for each freeport for example) Within that 1 topic it could end in some small story on the watering hole or a big story as a whole on the main section. Now it would generate many Freeport posts i guess each a new 2 posts story.. as its all another story then.

[*]Sirius News & Commerce turned into a sub-forum of Communication Channel. This sub-forum is mainly intended for news articles and loan services, but InRP equipment sales are also welcome.

Well this i would say might be a good change only the sales i would keep in the same section as it was before. Otherwise you are making 2 sections which are basicly the same. And sales are inRP anyways. Only shipsales are ooRP.

[*]Open Market and Ship Sales are merged under Marketplace forum, with one sub-forum for each, and both are now available for ooRP sales.

Hmm well see above it creates only more problems in the end.. Just read btw this:
http://discoverygc.com/forums/showthread.php?tid=97061

if you keep it inRP then you are from now on in a disadvantage due to the huge amount of posts in the inRP section. So would be stupid to keep it inRP then isn't it? This also spoils a lot of fun of the plain dealers. Which the inRP section or this old forum would made it more fun for many. Now it will just devide players and so generates less customers for the ones who want it inRP only and the ooRP posts are boring.

---

User was banned for: Permbanned
Time left: (Permanent)

[Miaou]

• Factions were given their own forum section. Everything else regarding that section works the same way as before.
  
• Faction Feedbacks moved to a sub-forum of Discovery RP 24/7 General Discussions from faction rules sub-forum.

Why was the faction section brought back to how it was previously? I enjoyed having them all in one board and not showing directly on the main forums, makes it look more cluttered that it needs to be.

Why not move the Faction Feedback to the Faction Board(s)?

---

Characters & Stories

[Marburg]

Major changes made with this reorganization:
[*]Watering Holes sub-forum merged with Stories & Biographies forum.

Basicly i think this is a stupid idea as before you had the watering holes just as a gathering on a bar for example. (1 post for each freeport for example) Within that 1 topic it could end in some small story on the watering hole or a big story as a whole on the main section. Now it would generate many Freeport posts i guess each a new 2 posts story.. as its all another story then.

Even in your worst case scenario, how much is your life really gonna change? Watering Holes belong in the S&B section anyway (which is where I thought it already was to begin with)

But really, how could more possible Freeport posts screw with your zen?

---

[Zelot]

I actually liked the watering holes to be in it's own subforum, made finding them in the general muck of S&B' much easier.

---

 

[Lonely Werewolf]

I actually liked the watering holes to be in it's own subforum, made finding them in the general muck of S&B' much easier.

I agree, the two things are rather different and it's easier to find what your looking for in if they are in seperate subforums

[Commissar]

Cool stuff, I like the new look for the factions. Saves my battered old mouse a little more torture.

However; as the other folks here have said, I think that Watering Holes should have its own subforum, simply because it's substantially different from 'Stories and Biographies'. The key difference being that watering holes are generally open threads - anyone can post there, within reason. Most of the stories and biographies posts are closed RPs. It's a right pain to dig through pages of threads just to find the ones that I'm allowed to post in if I'm just looking for a bit of RP.

Perhaps its petty of me, but the idea of having my three thousand word story entry knocked off the front page by "Trent wandered over to the bar and ordered a sidewinder fang." miffs me a little.

---

May you live in interesting times.
| Sarah McFarlen | Jane Hartman |

[Thyrzul]

Adding to the previously stated points, regular story threads revolve around a specific event, played by specific people, which happens once, and once been told the thread closes. Meanwhile watering holes revolve around a location and stay as long as the place lasts, and any character who wanders to there can write into it, making these wuite open roleplay threads compared to the regular ones, as been said before me. The nature of these two kind of threads differ so much the watering holes indeed deserved and still deserve their own forum space, at least for practical reasons (separation helps organizing them).

---

[aerelm]

Feedback regarding the watering holes is noted, and unless someone has something to add, I think we've everything related to them already mentioned in this thread.

One main point people seem to be forgetting though, is that Stories & Biographies is the main forum for any sort of written roleplay (with the obvious exception of comm channel and faction threads) and since the watering holes sub-forum (as nice as it was) did not occupy a notable portion of that section's activity, it was decided to be merged, as that was the whole idea behind this reorganization - To reduce the number of forum sections by merging unneeded and underused subforums into the closest forum of similar purpose.

Even though nothing has changed regarding the watering hole (with the exception of the outdated ones being a tad harder to find now) we'll wait and see if the merge has worked as intended. If not, there's always the option of reverting it back to how it was.

Why was the faction section brought back to how it was previously?

Because it was pointed out that even though factions were part of the roleplaying section of the forums, a lot of the threads there were not roleplay at all. One idea was to give them one forum in the RP section for their RP threads, and another in the ooRP forum for their ooRP faction stuff, but since that would've been more of a mess than anything, it was decided to move them out of the RP section and put them somewhere between the InRP and ooRP parts of the forum, which's what faction subforums actually are.

As for the ooRP marketplace, here's the deal basically:

[3:30:57 PM] aerelm: the exact same arguments were brought up when Ship Sales was moved out of RP section
[3:31:05 PM] aerelm: world didn't end, RP didn't die, people didn't commit suicide
[3:31:14 PM] aerelm: everyone went on with their lives
[3:31:21 PM] aerelm: and everyone are happy about the way ship sales turned out
[3:32:28 PM] aerelm: Basically, the current policy regarding equipment sale is "It's considered part of the ooRP section of the forums, but if you really want to sell em InRP for whatever reason, we wont stop you from doin so"
[3:32:32 PM] aerelm: pretty much the same deal as ship sales
[3:32:47 PM] aerelm: if someone posts a ship sale thread with proper RP, we wont be removing it
[3:32:58 PM] aerelm: and that applies to open market now as well