Site Suggestion Box

[anthonypero]

Hey there PTBs, I was wondering if we could get a sticky "Site Suggestion Box" thread, in addition to the Bug Report thread?

[tnh]

I don't see why not, as long as you're clear that you're petitioning the PTBs, not voting on something that has a guaranteed outcome.

[anthonypero]

Absolutely! Thanks @tnh!

[anthonypero]

I've been digging into this forum for about a week now, and I'd like to make a few suggestion for how the structure and usability may be improved.

Right now, this site (the vBulletin forum, not the site at large) contains one single forum, called Main Category, with a bunch of threads. Special threads have been created for various purposes by Admins, such as the bug report thread, the introduce yourself thread, the Game of Thrones Spoiler thread, etc... While this works in some instances, such as the Bug Report thread, in others it falls short of good forum usability.

For instance, in the Talk About Your Own Project thread, if I subscribe to the thread, comment on it, etc, and set up email notifications, I will then be updated everytime someone comments on anything in the thread. This is obviously not ideal behavior. Lets look at another example.

On the Game of Thrones spoiler thread, people are talking about lots of different things. Some people are holding conversations about a post three weeks old, while others are talking about the latest post, while others are talking about the difference between the show and the books. Unfortunately, these are all happening in the same space, and I, as the user, have to wade through 15 different conversations to find the one I'm having and make a reply. This discourages the user from participating.

One thing that can be easily set up in vBulletin to help alleviate this is to have separate Forums for different topics rather than unique Threads in a single forum. Right now, if you go to http://forum.tor.com/forum.php, you will see there is a single forum set up called "Main Forum." I propose that this page would have several forums (containers), such as General Topics, Site Suggestions, Pimp Your Own Stuff, A Read of Ice and Fire Spoilers, etc... Then users could create their own threads in these forums. This has two primary benefits:

1) When on the forums, users will be able to quickly see if someone has replied to their particular topic without scanning through a bunch of unrelated stuff.

2) When people set up email notifications, they will only be notified when people are actually responding on the thread they are interested in.

Basically, separate forums would allow us to have more targeted conversations then a single thread would allow. This is especial true for things like Site Suggestions, Introduce Yourself, the various spoiler threads for Re-reads, and the Talk About Your Own Project thread.

Based on what I see currently on the forum, I would propose the following Forums:

Site Suggestions (With a Bug Report Sticky thread)
Introduce Yourself (With a Guidelines Sticky thread)
General or Main (Everything that doesn't belong anywhere else... where most current threads would go)
SPOILERS for A Game of Thrones Read (Move the current thread to this forum and lock it down for archive purposes)
Talk About Your Own Project (Move the Current thread to this forum and lock it down for archive purposes)

New forums can be created fairly easily as the need arises. I believe that if the forums were set up this way and promoted a bit more, you would see more participation in them. Thank you for taking the time to read this suggestion!

[anthonypero]

I see based on other comments you have made on other posts @tnh, that my helpful suggestion was already in the works, lol. Story of my life... I'm late to every party

[tnh]

No, it's very useful that you made that comment unprompted.

Very useful.

[anthonypero]

You guys have GOT to at least get a captcha installed on posts for non-verified users. The spam is ridiculous. It accounts for over half the posts.

[anthonypero]

Sorry for my tone there, I just woke up to check this forum, and there's at least 20 SPAM messages since last night. I can't even flag them all because you have to wait 60s between flagging SPAM. I don't have 20 minutes to wait, so I'm frustrated I can't do anything about it, is all. I'm sure the mods who have to deal with it will be in a worse mood about it than I am.

[tnh]

You mean that low continuous growling noise? Yeah, that's me.

[Ian P. Johnson]

Gracias, Waweng, ¡y ojalá que tengan todos un buen Día de Enamorados!