I've been away for a little bit, and some changes (many of them awesome) have happened in the meanwhile. However, it also means that I don't know what the blazes is going on half the time, and combined with all the brain-frazzle that my medical shenanigans treat me to, I'm a pretty good approximation of a hapless n00b right now.
With that in mind, I have a couple of "user friendliness" suggestions / observations. Don't mean to rock the boat or cause any offense, just pointing out stuff that I think might be helpful.
Star Wars Homeworlds
When we switched over to the Homeworlds format of things, we were doing a lot of stuff that was happening on one specific planet / in one specific location, and I was a big advocate of the "lets have a different forum for each geographical location" mindset. Having let that run for a little while though, things have changed somewhat. The Jedi are still cosy on Ossus, but the "Bothawui" forum has post icons for Dac and Sullust and various other worlds, and the "Coruscant" forum is pretty much a catch-all bucket for anything Imperial. In the meanwhile, we have other specific locations (Jovan Station, Bespin) tucked away under "The Star Wars Galaxy" as sub-forums. Our usage of the forums and the intended usage of the forums aren't quite lining up anymore.
The simplest solution would be to rename the Bothawui / Coruscant forums to "Alliance of Free Planets" and "Galactic Empire" - turn them back into faction forums, which is what we're effectively using them for anyway. Any specific geographical locations like Jovan or Bespin (or Corellia/Tatooine/Mandalore/etc if we get any of those off the ground) can still be sub-forums in Star Wars Galaxy, the same way they are now. Also, if we decide that certain aspects of a faction deserve a little more attention (the Landing Pad on Ossus, a separate area for the Alliance Senate to make those threads easier to find, etc) we can have those as little sub-forums within the faction's area.
It's pretty much exactly what we are instinctively doing at the moment - just a tiny bit of name tweaking to make it more intuitive for newbies (and Jace-brain people).
Groups & Sticky Threads
Things like Jovan Station and Ossus are great, because if you want to be involved with a particular thing, there is an obvious place for you to go and get stuck in. However, information on how to get started isn't always obvious: for example, there's a list of who the main characters are for Jovan Station, but it's tucked away in the Group for that RP setting - you need to know that Groups exist, where to find them, and think of looking there for that information... which a n00b might not necessarily think of, I know I certainly didn't before it was pointed out!
What might be useful is if each forum had a single, simple, stickied thread that explains "what this forum is for". If there is a group available for that setting (especially if it's one that has discussions and information included) the sticky thread can point in that direction, and if there are major characters (Senators, senior officers, Jedi Council, etc) or "active members of the community" who are good people to pester for info, the sticky thread can outline that information too. If we keep the format very similar for each of the forums - maybe even add in a special post icon to make it really stand out - I think it'll add a nice bit of user friendliness to things, and it'll also make it look like we've got our shit together and have a consistent strategy across the boards, which is always a nice thing for a potential new member to see.
Also, I think it'd be great to see a lot more Groups for these settings, and a lot more usage of the Groups. It is a really cool feature that we have available, and encouraging people to discuss plots and plan threads within those Groups will make sure that they keep showing up in the activity feed, which will help raise the profile.
Faction Icon Emotes
If sticky threads are going to be a thing - and also with Character Plotters already being a thing - it might be cool/useful/neat to add in some of the faction logos/emblems as emotes that we can use, :Imperial: and :Alliance: and such. It's very easy for a sticky thread / character plotter / character list / etc to look boring, but a little bit of font variety (like Holly did with the Plotters already) and some icons/graphics can make a lot of difference. If it's overdone it can look tacky... but for example, being able to include the logo of your faction(s) instead of having to typing out the name(s) at the top of your Plotter will look a lot more snazzy.
I think Christin has some little faction logos kicking around from the trading cards she was working on, so maybe this would be relatively easy to implement?
General Formatting
I 100% understand the logic behind moving the Roleplay stuff higher up the list: we want to put emphasis on the fact that we're an RP board that discusses things occasionally, rather than a discussion board that RPs on the side. I dunno what it is though - maybe it's just me being Stewie Griffin and not liking change - but it seems really odd having "General Discussion" all the way at the top, so very far from the Star Wars / TV / Sports / etc discussion.
Maybe General Discussion should just scooch down to the bottom too: put all of the discussion-type threads in the same place?
Also, and this is probably another Stewie moment, but the "Star Wars Resources" thing is really throwing me off. It does have the advantage of making the Star Wars section of the boards nice and big, but for some wonky reason I keep n00b-clicking on it thinking it's going to have roleplays in, and it feels a bit strange that there's a 2:2 ratio between IC forums and OOC forums.
As I understand it, the Resources forum is for submitting new ships/races/lore/etc for approval by the powers that be before they go on the wiki. That sounds (to me) like a "Planning & Discussion" sort of activity - perhaps it would make more sense having Resources as a subforum there, next to the Character Plotters?
Suggestion Box
I'm sure I'm not the only person who has had teeny tiny tweak ideas, and has thought "Well crap, where do I post that?" Not everything seems important enough to make a whole thread for it. If you're a Mod, you can post it in the Mod forum, but not everyone has that option. Maybe it would be a good idea to create a "Suggestion Box", either as a thread somewhere, or even as a little sub-forum, for all of our board tweaks / back-end tinkering conversations to take place. That way, the Planning & Discussion forums stay entirely about RP planning/discussion, and the more logistical side of things can be elsewhere.
Added bonus: if we put suggestions / board change discussions / etc into their own special place, it emphasises how open/inviting the staff is to ideas, talking about change, and letting people know what's going on. That's always an encouraging thing to see on the forums, and it's also something that Fans hasn't historically always been the best at - positive reinforcement of the way we're doing things now, and all that jazz.
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