Site reshuffles

[Dog Pants]

We're way overdue a bit of a site jiggle, partly to try to counter the slow decline in numbers and partly because there's a few bits that just need updating. There's been a brief discussion in the admin forum, but mainly just to decide whether it was worth doing - the exact nature of the changes are preferred to be out in the open where everyone can make suggestions or comment. So, a rough outline of proposals are:

Moderators - A reshuffle of the forum mods and a redefenition of the roles they play. 5punk doesn't need an awful lot of moderating, and the site mods have covered what little does need doing. Forum mods would better serve the site as champions of their particular forum, generating interest in their area both within 5punk and ouside in the game, attracting like-minded randoms.

We're well aware that we have plenty of mods at the moment, and don't require any more as far as numbers are concerned. We're also aware that removing someone's mod status could be seen as degrading, so nobody will be just removed. However, if you are an existing mod and simply don't have the time or inclination to pimp your particular forum then please offer to relenquish your position so that someone who does may take your place.

As a forum mod you need to be, first and foremost, enthusiastic about your subject. This will have the result of naturally wanting to generate interest in order to have things to discuss or play. If you browse through the news feed and always click on a particular type of post, then that's a good indication. A good breadth of interest is also useful, e.g. the FPS moderator might know everything there is to know about UT, but if they only ever play that then it isn't going to serve the forum as a whole. Obviously a mod of any forum needs to be able to act with decorum, and needs to actually visit the site fairly regularly too.

Pay attention to the forum section below, as places may be created or removed when forums are created or merged. Also, some forums may have special needs; the hardware doesn't really need someone generating interest as much as it needs someone with a good technical knowledge and a willingness to help, while the MMO forum might have several moderators who focus on a particular game each.

Forums - There are now quite a few obsolete forums, so a cleanup and merge would make the site clearer and more easily accessible. Categorising by game type rather than specific games will be clearer and more consistent. With that in mind, this is the suggestion for an alternative forum layout:

5punk
- General Chat
- Introduce Yourself
- Computers & Gadgets
- Entertainment
- News Feeds
- Discussion

Gaming Chat
- Shooters
- MMOs
- Other Games
- Game Reviews
- LAN Party

Hidden
- Waugh Room
- Mods
- Site Admin

Obviously existing forums would be merged into the most relevant new forum, so nothing would be lost.

Site - The site layout is still in a sort of intermediate stage from last time we spruced it up, and the front page is somewhat neglected. Machinations are in motion to address the slow patches the site goes through, both locally and with the hosts, which provides a great incentive to give the old girl a bit of polish.

The front page needs to be more of a draw. With that in mind there have already been a few suggestions as to what can be done with it, but hopefully many more from 5punkers.

- A small guide to new users registering and introducing themselves, linked to the introduction sticky.
- Highlight posts, chosen by respective forum mods for being amusing, interesting, or containing pictures of horses or CDCs.
- Current title holders. Competition winners, bummer of the week, and other such accolades. More about that later.

Competitions - Just to add a bit of interest, and because there've been some good ones lately. We could appoint a Minister of Fun (as coined by FJ) who dreams up competitions for us, and can act as referee, or we can all chip in, which takes the pressure off one person but has a higher likelyhood of petering out. The 'Current Title Holders' thing mentioned earlier could provide incentive for your name in lights on the front page as the winner of the most recent competition(s).


Since that's taken me all afternoon I'll leave that for everyone to chew over. What do you 5punkers think?

[Dr. kitteny berk]

looks good to me.

[Chickenz]

Like the look of that

[HereComesPete]

Looks good, streamlines the forums into easy to find stuff, but will it need sub-forums for ease of finding posts? I was thinking it'd make initial navigation clearer but after that might be a gang fuck of posts. It kinda is in some areas already.

For that minister of fun thing, hows about a forum where stuff like the quotes meme and the drawing compo we just had all go, we all generally supply stupid yet brilliant ideas at some point. I know it ups the forum levels and would seem a bit weird as a forum title, but given it's own space the stuff that the likes of grimmie/shada/mr j etc draw won't be dropping off the disco. We could also dump particularly lolsome disco board stuff in there for looking back at and lolling at some more. If we have a minister of fun then decisions are final and singular, not too 5punky, if we have a compo, we all vote and a winner is decided that way, communism and bumming wins again!

We do need rid of the news feed front page imo, looks boring, isn't us. Some grimspired 5punk art and wiki quotes about regulars along with the welcome message maybe?

Is the decline in activity a symptom of the site? Or more that the regulars are getting age and kids and houses and shit? I think the latter personally. We do need to play more different stuffs though to grab more players, maybe ease off the in-jokes and such a bit if someone says hello? I know I dived in like the spamming ginger cupcake I am, but some people like to sidle up to the site touch it a little have a taste and then rape it or run, if you see what I mean.

/stuff from brain.

[Dog Pants]

Is the decline in activity a symptom of the site? Or more that the regulars are getting age and kids and houses and shit? I think the latter personally.

I think that does come into it partly, but it really should be a constant and so isn't anything new. It's not that more people are leaving, I think, it's that less people are joining.

We do need to play more different stuffs though to grab more players, maybe ease off the in-jokes and such a bit if someone says hello?

I do think lack of decent multiplayer games has contributed to a drop in new members. Our recruiting grounds are generally B3ta, games, and friends. I think we're drifting away from B3ta now to the point where the jokes don't mesh any more, and RL initiates seem to be as common as they ever were. Are we inaccessible to new people because of our memes? Possibly, but that's what the site's about.

I know I dived in like the spamming ginger cupcake I am, but some people like to sidle up to the site touch it a little have a taste and then rape it or run, if you see what I mean.

On the one hand it's what-you-see-is-what-you-get, and if you don't like it you'll not enjoy ouir company. Also, it kind of filters out those who wouldn't fit in, those who might cause friction by just not getting it. We've had a couple in the past. On the other hand though, we might well be coming across as overbearing and loutish.

Personally I don't think we should change the way we are on the forums, it's what defines us as a group. I think we should probably be friendlier in games though, and encourage those who seem to have a similar mindset.

[Mr. Johnson]

you may not have visited b3ta in a while doggers (or you did, i don't know really) but the b3ta as you know it is gone, it's been taken over by a vicious gang of nazis.
so don't expect too much b3tards anymore.

[amblin]

.

[buzzmong]

What Mr J said.

The only place as far as I can tell that some of what b3ta was still exists is in the general ramblings on the QQTW answers, which often run on tangents, but even they've been dropping lately.

[MORDETH LESTOK]

to give the old girl a bit of polish.

Mordeth Lestokski...

[Lateralus]

Not got time to give things proper consideration, but I have a couple of observations.

Firstly, as mod of the Entertainment and Game Reviews forums, I perhaps haven't contributed much recently. I have precious little gaming time these days, so would happily step aside from the Game Reviews forum if someone else wants it.

For Entertainment, I do like to post there and spawn discussions where I can, but for me they mostly tend to focus on books. Films are easier for people to hear about and need little additional pimping from the likes of me, and to some extent the same could be said of TV shows. However there are lots of people posting about both of these from what I can see, and that seems to be a good thing to me. I know that our honourable leaders of the past have tried to prise apart separate topics into separate threads, and I think that for things like the generic TV thread, that might be a good thing for the future.

Anyway, no matter how busy my life is I always ensure space for books, and whenever I find one (or a set) that I like, I'll try to post about it hear. Basically, can I keep the entertainment forum please?

The real reason I pressed reply was from something Pete said about sub-forums. I know we've shied away from them in the past, and I see no reason why we should change that now. However, I think we have a good alternative - the post icons. We have a set of icons for various things, some generic and some are game-specific. Given that these small icons can be found for most games now (thanks xfire), I think that we should add more and make better use of them. Whilst they're a good indicator when scrolling through a forum, I think that we should be able to search/felcher according to icon and allow us to track down all relevant threads. I've suggested it at least a couple of times in the past but it's not really happened, but if we're having a major reshuffle then maybe this could be added to the list.

I appreciate that a mass of icons at the top of the posting screen isn't ideal, but how about a drop-down menu, or a pop-up like the smilies? I know it may not be great, but for some reason this idea appeals to me more than sub-forums, and would still allow someone to find all the posts about game X easily.

Grim/Shadaesque art for the front page would seem entirely more appropriate to me, as would something to prevent Trev's posts being the only ones that appear. I personally have the bookmark straight for the forums, but a good front page would give a better first impression. As for a Ministry of Fun forum, that sounds great. Due to his spectacular contributions in that gorge-crossing thread, I vote Roman for the first Minister.

So much for my brief post, and so much for writing that damn essay of mine...

[friznit]

Kill the Eve and Eve 0.0 forums, either archive the posts or merge them into the MMO's forum (most of them will drop of the bottom as it's not been touched for ages). Or keep a separate one if it scares you that much - I'd be happy to mod it if so.

And some cuntish behaviour this year hasn't contributed a whole lot to maintaining the numbers. narf I've been turned off by some of the cliquey attitude on the Disco board myself, and I'm not exactly new around here.

Casual kick around in the park is what this place is supposed to be. If the speccy geek wants to sit under the tree reading Tolstoy while everyone else is kicking a ball around, there's no reason to dis him for it.

[Fear]

Everything that DP wrote seems to me.

I too dislike our root or home page, and miss it out all together with a direct link to the forums root. I know I said this in the past, and got shot down, but I'll say it again - is a non-forums homepage even necessary?

Perhaps we could disassociate from beta altogether - 5punk seems to exist entirely outside of beta, even if it started from there.

What about shrinking the focus on games, or rather, expanding from games. You mentioned a lot of people have got houses and little nippers, what about moving some focus into that. Not really sure what exactly, but perhaps DIY, cooking (already here), parenting, making ends meet, best techniques for getting your better-halves to let you do things, and such.

The biggest gripe I have about 5punk is the speed of it. I'm sure you can find some nicer hosting for no more pennies somewhere. UK based hosts would make sense, or at least EU based. I've lots of experience with shared hosting providers, if you need a good recommendation hit me up.

[Lateralus]

Casual kick around in the park is what this place is supposed to be. If the speccy geek wants to sit under the tree reading Tolstoy while everyone else is kicking a ball around, there's no reason to dis him for it.

A very good point, made very well indeed.

[Dog Pants]

And some cuntish behaviour this year hasn't contributed a whole lot to maintaining the numbers. narf I've been turned off by some of the cliquey attitude on the Disco board myself, and I'm not exactly new around here.

I'll shoulder the blame for that, since it's my job to prevent it. By way of an explanation, there's occasions when I don't step in. First of all I'd always prefer to see things draw to a conclusion naturally. That way there's no festering bad feelings that only come out bigger, later. Secondly, sometimes there's a little pushing needed to point out bad form when subtlety fails. There's a fine line between that and abuse though, depending on the subject, and some are going to be more sensitive than others. However, I don't like seeing anybody made to feel bad, and I really don't like it when people feel they can't post or don't feel welcome.

However, if anyone has any constructive criticism I'd be more than happy to take it on board.

Perhaps we could disassociate from beta altogether - 5punk seems to exist entirely outside of beta, even if it started from there.

What about shrinking the focus on games, or rather, expanding from games. You mentioned a lot of people have got houses and little nippers, what about moving some focus into that. Not really sure what exactly, but perhaps DIY, cooking (already here), parenting, making ends meet, best techniques for getting your better-halves to let you do things, and such.

Well, we pretty much are disassociated from B3ta. Many of us are old B3tards, and 5punk was very much influenced by its ethos, but I think we've established our own style now.

As for non-gaming forums, personally I wouldn't like to deviate too far from the gaming aspect. Further forms of entertainment in that particular forum seem to fit, but after that I think General is a fine place for them.

[Dr. kitteny berk]

I think a small problem is a lot of other stuff is difficult to give a home.

General
News and important info, general banter, and suggestions for 5punk

reads to me a bit like a 5punk info type hole

I'd like to see it more pitched as everything else, kinda in the same way the current Gaming Chat forum is, but for everything that doesn't have its own forum.

[ProfHawking]

I agree, sounds like a plan

I don't think I've noticed getting that much quieter, but maybe its the natives that are noisy and thinking about it i've not seen many new faces for a while.
It seems difficult to get the people who make 1 or 2 posts in the intro, but don't seem to get around to posting much in the rest of the site.

Any ideas how we can work on that?

[Lateralus]

I think a small problem is a lot of other stuff is difficult to give a home.

General
News and important info, general banter, and suggestions for 5punk

reads to me a bit like a 5punk info type hole

I'd like to see it more pitched as everything else, kinda in the same way the current Gaming Chat forum is, but for everything that doesn't have its own forum.

Sounds good to me. Can we come up with a better title or subtitle for the General forum? The only ideas that briefly occur to me are too poor to even warrant repeating in my mind, let alone in text, but I support the principle.

[Fear]

Well, we pretty much are disassociated from B3ta.

Well, one day Woo Elephant Yeah decided it would be a good idea to get like minded b3tans' (b3ta.com) to all play online games together.

You do not have to be a member of b3ta to join 5punk, as it's an open gaming community, it's just that b3ta is historically a root for people to come here.

That kinda what I meant. Admittedly it says "You do not have to be a member of b3ta to join 5punk" - but the word does come out a bit much on the very first sentence in the site, followed by 3 images all sounding subset-of-b3ta-ish.

[Fear]

Can we come up with a better title or subtitle for the General forum?

"Everything goes here, unless there is a specific forum for it below."

[Dog Pants]

That kinda what I meant. Admittedly it says "You do not have to be a member of b3ta to join 5punk" - but the word does come out a bit much on the very first sentence in the site, followed by 3 images all sounding subset-of-b3ta-ish.

Ah, I see. Yeah, that's a fair point. Maybe those need reworking.