Suggestion/Idea/Whatever? AMA Subforumy thing....?

[Emelie Shadowstar]

I wasn't really sure where to stick this here thread but hopefully this is a grand place and hopefully others will see it and chime in (even if it's just to say "Nope.")

But...I noticed we have quite a fuckton of Character AMAs and hopefully will continue to get more... and while this is cool and neato and awesome, it's also an idea I think would be neat to keep going and maybe shouldn't be clogging up the planning forums so much?

I was wondering what people thought of maybe a subforum or something of the RP Planning forum (I guess SW... though hopefully we could do this for MU and Other!RP Characters as well - I'm bad at organizing this sort of thing) where we could keep all these threads?

That way as storylines progress and such...rather than making a new thread when they inevitably get buried over time (it'll happen and I know we're all lazy with the search feature. Don't pretend we're not) people could just go to the subforum, find who they have been stalking and post "WHY YOU DO THAT?" or similar as they think of questions within that character's thread.

I'm wording this so awfully...

But yeah... AMA subforum. I think it'd be neato.

It's totally cool if I'm the only one I mean I guess in theory we could all tag our threads but someone would probably eventually forget and it'd be lost to the depths of the forums.

[Captain Untouchable]

+1.

We have so many AMA threads already, and that's not even a fraction of our characters and races covered. We may not end up asking questions every single day... but questions are bound to pop up from time to time as you're reading through posts. If we have a separate subforum for them, it'll be a hell of a lot easier than trying to search back through the discussion forum, trying to guess what the thread is called so you can search for it, etc.

[Lilaena De'Ville]

Since you asked for dissenting opinions too, I will say that I think a sub forum would be unnecessary.

[Captain Untouchable]

Do you have a reason to go along with that dissent, or is it just "I don't wanna"?

Quite a lot on Fans, there's opposition (from the community as a whole) to ideas not because the idea is bad, not because people have a valid reason to disagree with it, but simply because people "don't want to" or "can't be bothered". If that's people's opinion, then they are perfectly entitled to it: but it saddens me that we shoot down so many ideas because of indifference or resistance to change, despite the fact that they aren't going to be of any detriment to us.

This idea won't inconvenience anyone. It doesn't hurt anyone, or adversely impact anyone. However, there's a chance it will make things more convenient / better for people.

If that's the case - if there is no good reason not to do it - then we should do it.

If there's a genuine reason not to do it - "it will overtax the server", "it will take ten hours and the ritual sacrifice of a woodland creature to set up," etc - then fair enough. But if that isn't the case? We're a community. We're friends. Shouldn't making life easier for each other be something that we proactively want to do?

[/soapbox]

[Taataani Meorrrei]

It's a non-vote for me, but I'm pretty much okay with either option. I don't like clicking through extra venues but I can also see how having evaluations and character discussions separate from Thread RP-specific blow-by-blow threads (like the one for Vanguards) could be useful.

The OOC section isn't nearly as cluttery as some of the faction mini-boards are, so its probably got room for that kind of thing I suppose.

[Serena Laran]

Do you have a reason to go along with that dissent, or is it just "I don't wanna"?

Quite a lot on Fans, there's opposition (from the community as a whole) to ideas not because the idea is bad, not because people have a valid reason to disagree with it, but simply because people "don't want to" or "can't be bothered". If that's people's opinion, then they are perfectly entitled to it: but it saddens me that we shoot down so many ideas because of indifference or resistance to change, despite the fact that they aren't going to be of any detriment to us.

This idea won't inconvenience anyone. It doesn't hurt anyone, or adversely impact anyone. However, there's a chance it will make things more convenient / better for people.

If that's the case - if there is no good reason not to do it - then we should do it.

If there's a genuine reason not to do it - "it will overtax the server", "it will take ten hours and the ritual sacrifice of a woodland creature to set up," etc - then fair enough. But if that isn't the case? We're a community. We're friends. Shouldn't making life easier for each other be something that we proactively want to do?

[/soapbox]

It wasn't "I don't wanna" it was I think it's unnecessary for a new sub forum to be created for a group of bandwagon threads which are fun for a while but will not be around for probably longer than a month.

[Emelie Shadowstar]

Yeahhh that's kinda the thing. I'm not a huge fan of subforums - I just can't think of another way of nicely organizing them all together in once place (Which I think would be a really nice thing to have, but fully acknowledge the fact this may just be a passing phase of interest too) So... yeah... if someone can think of a better solution... (Mine's kinda the "easy" way, I suppose?)

[Captain Untouchable]

Why is it only a passing interest, though?

Is it a passing interest because people won't have questions in the future... or is it a passing interest because they'll drop off the bottom of the roleplay forum and be forgotten about? Are there magically gonna stop being things that people have questions about as soon as the AMAs are out of sight and out of mind? Are people gonna begrudge answering questions when it's not "fashionable" to be on the bandwagon any more?

Sure, maybe we won't use the AMAs in the future. But if we don't make them easier to catalogue/find, we definitely won't. Option A seems better than Option B.

[T'yeellaa Meorrrei]

I mean I fully admit I could probably banter about OOC discussions and hypotheticals regarding characters ad infinitum so long as other folks were willing to do it too.

[Serena Laran]

I'm just going on how these sort of things have played out in the past Jace. I'm just one opinion. I think you've made your case for why you're in favor of it, but I'm not going to change my mind.

Edit:
Sarah, maybe a thread tag? I can't figure out how to sort by thread tag anymore though, do we still have that ability?

[T'yeellaa Meorrrei]

Is it something that's up for a vote?

[Captain Untouchable]

Sarah, maybe a thread tag? I can't figure out how to sort by thread tag anymore though, do we still have that ability?

Unfortunately not. That was my initial thought as well, but it's not a feature of the current version of the boards software.

[Droo]

If people want the AMA's easy to find and catalogued indefinately, a stickied post with the links to each individual thread would be far more preferable to a whole new sub-forum. Personally, I suspect even that will be unnecessary: the AMA's will probably go the same way as the character feedback threads, a bit of bandwagon fun. It can't hurt to make a sticky with links, it's less obtrusive than a new forum, and easily removed should it no longer be required.

[Dasquian Belargic]

Using the thread tagging feature might be a way to do this without needing a new forum.

[Captain Untouchable]

Doing a stickied thread would probably make the most sense, provided it's posted by someone willing to keep it up to date (which I would be).

Thread tagging is useful, but only if everyone remembers to do it / doesn't make a typo with the tag / already has the tag bookmarked. They're like categories on wikipedia: useful for finding stuff related to the thing that you're already looking at, but not so great for finding the initial thing in the first place.

A sticky thread would be good... doing both would be even better.

[Dasquian Belargic]

I was imagining the thread tag could be as simple as 'AMA' - but if you'd like to maintain a thread/index go for it

[Captain Untouchable]

It's simple, until someone forgets to add it on there.

I don't think we've used tagging enough / familiarised ourselves enough with it to rely just on that yet. An index thread also means that the race AMAs and the character AMAs can be separated, put in an easy-to-navigate order (alphabetical, etc). Also, it's not always entirely clear from the subject of an AMA who it's for, some people have AMAs for all of their characters, etc. An index post is probably more user friendly than staring at a list of threads with stuff like ""M a Cleo. Sa ask mez anythin's!!!!!!" means.

[Dasquian Belargic]

Having a thread index is also simple until someone forgets to update it But as I said, go for it.

[Captain Untouchable]

Well, that's a wonderful lack of faith in me. Thanks.

[Kale]

Because I'm in a "take a third option" mood today:

Another approach could be to open a new subforum under "Roleplay Discussion" titled something like "Character Development." It could be our catchall for character profiles, questionnaires, pseudo-in-character games (like the IC Questions game or "They'd Never Say That!"), and whatever other fun, frivolous fads we have that come and go. It could double as a place to talk about large-scale character development questions that aren't related to specific threads, or a place to talk about different roleplaying styles, or even the craft of storytelling.

I don't know if we'll actually use it for all that, but it would solve the problem of AMAs and similar fads ballooning all over the RP planning forum, and if we tidy up the Star Wars Roleplay section as we've been discussing, it wouldn't add much clutter to the front page.

This isn't a vote for a course of action, just me spitballing. It may well fall into the category of a solution looking for a problem.