(Edit: First off, I feel it's necessary to point out that the outcome of the polls aren't necessarily decisive, as A&S may have intentionns with the established layout. I've primarily created the poll to help the community voice their opinion on the matter, and to better allow A&S to gauge those opinions. So if either party feels somethings wrong been going on; please leave the torture chair for me (wink wink, nudge nudge). That being said; I've adjusted the options of the poll slightly, based on further feedback: Added 4th option: "Collapsible"; the ability to collapse categories (i.e. "International") so that none of the sub-sections are visible to the user - plugin will need to be installed by Anashel, though. Added the ability to choose multiple options, as the choices are no longer strictly mutually exclusive (i.e. "Collapsible" could be used in addition to either "Child" and "Sibling" styles.) Heyho folks, As you may have noticed, two new sub-sections went up last night. I've since gotten some feedback on it - in regards to the layout - but rather than making the final decision myself, I thought I'd ask you kind folks to voice which "style" you'd prefer. Style 1,Sibling: The previous and otherwise predominant style; all sections are visible on the front page, listed one after the other, regardless of how connected two seperate sub-forums may be. E.g.: "General Section" ..A1 ..B1 ..B2 ..B3 ..C1 .. etc. Style 2, Child: This is what you can currently see; "Suspected Missions" and "Archived Missions" are 'hidden' within "Ongoing Missions", so apart from the notification that "Ongoing Missions" contains 2 sub-forums, they are only visible when viewing Ongoing Missions. E.g.: "General Section" ..A1 ..B1 -- (B2, B3) ..C1 .. etc. --> "B1" ..B2 ..B3 -- ..(Threads) Edit: There are, of course, pros and cons for both styles, which are worth highlighting. -Siblings may well clutter the front page on one hand, but give an easier overview of new activity. -Notifications from Childed sections will mix with those of the Parent section. That is, if someone posts in "Suspected Missions", it will show up on the front page as a notification after "Ongoing Missions" (as someone did technically post in "Ongoing Missions", albeit a sub-forum of that section); arguably making it harder to follow new activity, but the front-page will be neater. I'll leave the poll open for a day or two - possibly more, depending on how many votes come in, as I feel it's more important that the decision takes a bit longer but reflects the majority concensus, than it is that it's made quicker - possibly leaving out a chunk of Agents who didn't happen to visit the forums for a day or two (fat chance, I know. But just in case.) For the sake of the poll, I'll leave the sub-forums in question in the "Child" style, as the "Sibling" style is equivalent to the listed sections we've seen since the forums were established.
Just to be difficult, I'm going to vote for non-listed variants. First, is there any chance there's a forum plugin that would allow for making the front page sections (FROM THE DEV / BLACK WATCHMEN ARG / INTERNATIONAL / etc) collapsible? This could allow people to clean up their view of the front page based on the sections they actually use (I, for instance, almost never look at the International forums, seeing as the languages I actually know have been completely neglected. When will C, PHP, and Perl get their own language forums?) without resorting to nested forums. Failing that, and sticking to current forum capabilities... Right now on entering the Ongoing Missions forum we see something like: Home / Forums / The Black Watchmen ARG / Ongoing Missions * SUSPECTED MISSIONS * ARCHIVED MISSIONS - Ongoing Missions Thread 1 - Ongoing Missions Thread 2 - Ongoing Missions Thread 3 As a user, forums laid out like this have always caused problems (or at least annoyances) for me: - First, it's an ambiguous interface. On some forums the threads listed would belong to Ongoing Missions, on others Ongoing Missions isn't a thread-containing forum and those listed are a mix of all of the sub-forums. I've seen still others that use the space to list new/updated threads or as a mod tracker for the sub-forums. The result is that I always find myself fumbling for a bit trying to discover/remember which model the forums I'm currently looking at are designed to use. - Santiak mentioned the issue of confused new post indications... I find that my problem is often less with the notifications and more with following up and reading the posts themselves. I'll often open up a forum, read down through all the new messages, then, with the subforum links having scrolled off the screen, completely forget that they exist and have new messages of their own. Of course, it's also possible that this is early onset senility, but I'm not sure there are any forum plugins to treat that. - Specific to this case, while I don't see a problem with the Archived Missions subforum being tucked out of the way, I'd rather see Ongoing and Suspected missions on an on an equal level - as Suspected Missions is likely to be every bit as important as Ongoing Missions. Instead, if forums are going to be nested (and I don't have any particularly strong feelings as to whether or not they should be), I'd rather see a general top-level "Missions" forum with three subs: Home / Forums / The Black Watchmen ARG / Missions * ONGOING MISSIONS * SUSPECTED MISSIONS * ARCHIVED MISSIONS - No Threads Here - Nope. Not Even This One - Well, Maybe An Admin Thread About The Lack Of Threads Here. Also, if we're going to start getting into nested forums, we really need something more than the tab title (which is often shrunk down to a few characters and requiring a mouse hover to read the tooltip) as a "you are here" indicator. This has always been a problem when reading posts (as there's no on-page indication of the title of the thread being read/replied to), but it becomes even more important when there's a forum hierarchy to be navigated. Current version (when viewing Suspected Missions forum): Home / Forums / The Black Watchmen ARG / Ongoing Missions Proposed version: Home / The Black Watchmen ARG / Ongoing Missions / Suspected Missions This adds an (unlinked) breadcrumb to the end of the trail with the current forum or thread. Also, as Home and Forums both link to effectively the same thing (and it implies a higher tier that doesn't exist), there's no reason to have breadcrumbs for both. -Bats
I would also much rather have all sub-sections visible from front-page. I find it much clearer what goes where that way and I like to be able to see everything from the front page.
If I remember correctly, this forum uses Xenforo, and can therefore be modified easily with add-ons found here. I'm not so good at this part, but this one appears to give sub-forum read/unread indicators. This one looks interesting, but I'm not a licensed Xenforo customer and can't read the full description. I would ideally like what Bats says at the top about collapsible sections, so I'm looking for that. I'll keep track of addons I pass by that are relevant. EDIT: ToggleME appears to allow the option for collapsing different elements.
(haven't slept in nearly 24 hours, I apologize if I'm more incoherent than usual.) Better move this to the top of the post: - I've added a 4th option for those who'd prefer a Collapsible layout - I've opened the poll for multiple choices, primarily because some options (Collapsible) doesn't necessarily rule out others (Child/Sibling). As always, if you have any comments, or just want to state what you voted and why, do feel free to post them. Collapsible Sections Plugin: Whether or not such a plugin is available - or should be implemented - is something I'll have to leave up to Anashel to answer. The two options listed are the only ones available with the current forum tools, and I'd rather not start installing plugins and whatnot "on my own", as I on one hand might break something, and on the other hand might interfere with A&Ss intentions with the layout. In truth, I wasn't entirely sure whether or not the current poll was overstepping that boundary already, but felt that a vote wasn't out of the way - if only to show A&S how the community feels about the matter, and in turn helping to highlight the "concerns" of the latter to the former. I should probably mention that this also means that the poll isn't final, in the case that A&S wants the layout in a specific way, for whatever reason which might be yet unknown to us. I did feel, however, that the feedback warranted highlighting, and thus the poll, if only to highlight the concerns of the community, and making it readily visible to A&S. (I said that already, didn't I?) Speaking as an Agent and not a Moderator: I lean more towards the all on front-page option, as I feel that, while the list itself might get lengthy, it grants a quick overview of what I'm most concerned with; the goings on in regards to all things TBW, and removes the concern of whether or not I'm missing a discussion somewhere. On the other hand, if the list gets long enough, this might happen anyway, in which case a collapsible plugin would be preferable, as it would allow users to "ignore" sections they aren't that interested in, save for checking them once in a new moon. It does pose the problem of those who want a tidy front-page, but are also interested in certain sub-forums within a category (i.e. those wanting to participate in the Japanese sub-forums, but not the other language-specific sub-forums), and it would - I assume - also have to be a plugin that allowed certain categories to be un-collapsible, such as categories that might be vital to participating in the game, and how one would structure it if these "vital" sub-forums were spread across multiple categories ("Ongoing Missions"+sub-sections under the "Advanced Gameplay" category). But then again, I am fond of exerting geological forces on molehills.
Right-o, I'll close the poll in 14 hours time from now, or: 24th of January 4:00 PST // 7:00 EST // 13:00 CET // 21:00 KST And then give Anashel a poke with the results.
