Which forums should be here?

beowuuf · Post by **beowuuf** » Mon May 05, 2003 10:54 am

Edit: I decided to move this since its gone way off topic to a discussion about this site, and have created a new link post in the DMute forum (don't want to scare new people off who are looking for DMute info with a long post not related, do we? : ) )[/i]

Post by **Gambit37** » Mon May 05, 2003 2:31 pm

If Ian is agreeable, perhaps I could archive all his stuff and bring it across here too? I haven't seen him post here yet, so I'll email him and see what he thinks. At the very least, it would be good to bring the DMute stuff across; not sure anyone's too bothered about the older posts about DM2 or Pulp...

Post by **Lunever** » Mon May 05, 2003 3:24 pm

I just met Ian in MSN, and he said, he's generally willing to let Gambit do the move, but he'll be to busy for that the next few days.
But then, there is no need to hurry I think.

Well, I think a DM2 part on this site would be a very good thing, and for that of course an import of the old post would be a good start.

I don't see why other posts shouldn't be of interest as long as they are related to Dungeon Master.

sucinum · Post by **sucinum** » Mon May 05, 2003 5:28 pm

nice idea to copy ians forum over

not only because ill get some posts then in here, but theres also many useful stuff about dmute you wont find somewhere else.

Post by **ChristopheF** » Mon May 05, 2003 7:00 pm

I also agree on importing Ian's forums here. I think all the posts should be imported without any discrimination.

beowuuf · Post by **beowuuf** » Mon May 05, 2003 8:06 pm

I think there are a few interesting DMute/hex specific posts on your forums too, Christophe, that could be copied over here
By hand, of course : )

Post by **cowsmanaut** » Mon May 05, 2003 9:28 pm

just one question, Where will they all fit. Ians board is just as big as this one with different stuff. I agree all the dmute stuff should be copied over. I also think that it would be fine to have discussion groups on here about DM and CSB back in the day. Beyond that, I don't want this getting so big that it's akward or difficult to find something.

For those areas wich are the same as here, there is question of of integration. The times and posts contained here and there would conflict. How does one keep them in order how do you decide which get's buried and which does not?

I know mainly regular users come to the forums but I don't want people who have not visited before or at least not for a long while, to become overwhelmed.

So I'm not saying don't do it.. I'm just saying we should have a plan. I know Christophe you like to copy *everything* for sentimental value. However, there really is a question of worth vs effort and organisation.

I think that about 3(or has it been more?) years of posts on Ians message board is a lot to rifle through. I'd simply say go no further than a year back and the archive the rest of it. However, it's not just my choice.. I've included the you guys (Christophe, Beowuuf, Gambit, George, ZPC) and I'm not going to vito your cooperative ideas. Ian is equally encouraged to join that team of moderators and have his own group to take care of too BTW.

Just some things to think about

Post by **Gambit37** » Mon May 05, 2003 9:41 pm

For starters, can you even host it? I mean, what kind of limits do you have in terms of webspace, Cowsmanaut? The database is already 3½ MB, it'll probably go to around 6MB with Ian's stuff...

If we do incorporate all of Ian's forums (whether only from the last year, or even all of it), there will end up being another 9 forums, which with the 18(!) already here is going to become umanageable.

It may be that we can re-organise the RTC forums a bit and consolidate say, Latest Release into the Archive. Then you'd only need to post a sticky topic at the top of RTC General detailing the current version available. I'm sure we could do similar things for some of the other RTC forums if we're clever about it.

Similarly, if we bring Ians's stuff over here, I don't think we'd need one forum per game; we could probably absorb them into one of the General categories.

Anyway, just some thoughts, I'll think about this some more...

beowuuf · Post by **beowuuf** » Mon May 05, 2003 10:06 pm

First thing's first - nice new avatar Gambit : )
And lol, as I type I see you are scouting Ian's forum too!

I think when Christophe's forums kicked in with huge traffice was when Ian's started to die off (of course), and if I remember right the forums had only expanded fully for a few months before that...so there aren't a huge amount of posts there in the newer sections.

The bulk is in the Dmute forum, which we are pulling across anyway, and the DM BBS archives, which needs to be debated seperately - but I still have the original text files I used to create the archive, so that's +1000 posts that don't really need to be taken across just now...

As for merging forums...I definitely find the number of forums on the RTC section overwhelming now they have been carried across!
As for game forums - you can probably go Games: (DM & CSB, DM 2, Theron's quest & Nexus) with Other (non-DM) games falling into the general forums section?

Post by **ChristopheF** » Mon May 05, 2003 11:52 pm

Here are the propositions I make for reorganizing forums and importing Ian's forums here:

1) As I already said, I'd prefer to see all the posts from Ian's BBS imported here however we can debate on this. If not all posts are going to be imported, then I'd like at least to see all of them in a downloadable archive (a backup text file of the phpbb database resulting from the export of Ian's BBS). Like the .zip file that Beowuuf made back when the old DM BBS was closed and then imported to Ian's forums.

2) Forums here definitely need reorganization. I think forums with only a few messages inside or similar subjects should be merged:

2a) Merge "Fantasy Art" and "Writing" into a single forum, like "Fan made art (graphics, sounds, writings, ...)"

2b) As Gambit suggested, merge "RTC Lastest Release" in "RTC Archive" and put a sticky note with only the lastest version in "RTC General".

"RTC General" and "RTC Gameplay" could also be merged, what do you think? they do not contain too much posts.

2c) Merge the clones forums in a single one called "Clones" ("DeepCave, Bloodwhych 3D, Dungeon Maker, Dungeon Master Java). For the DM Java specific case, I think we should either import these forums here also

or delete this forum. Users who wants answers to their questions should post to the official DM Java forums, currently at ezboard (a sticky note in the clones forum for that would be enough I think).

3) Merge "GamePlay" and "General DM" in a single forum, named "DM and CSB".

4) Import Ian's forums following this scheme:
Legend: Ian's forum name --> Coswmanaut's forum name

Dungeon Master --> "DM and CSB"
Chaos Strikes Back --> "DM and CSB"
Dungeon Master II --> New forum called "Dungeon Master II: The Legend Of Skullkeep"
DMute Forum --> DMute
Other Games in the 'Dungeon Master' Series --> New forum called "Theron's Quest and Dungeon Master Nexus"
Other Games --> "Other interesting topics"
Clones --> Clones forum made from the merge of current clones forums
Archive --> New forum for old archive (displayed at the bottom of the list of forums)
General Discussion --> "Other interesting topics"
Admin and Suggestions --> we can just drop this one as it is "empty" of any useful information.

In that way, we would end up with 14/15 forums.

Please share your thoughts...

beowuuf · Post by **beowuuf** » Tue May 06, 2003 12:09 am

I'd go with all the above, except I would vote to keep the other clones seperate for now, depending on popularity (certainly Wishbone's Dungeon Maker, probably also Deep Cave even though it has its own forum elsewhere).

Post by **Gambit37** » Tue May 06, 2003 1:15 am

Yes, I think this is a good compromise. I don't know how often George comes here, but George, do you have any strong views on merging some of the RTC forums as Christophe has suggested? I imagine that as long as the Bugs and Suggestions are kept seperate, it won't matter so much to combine the others??

I'm happy to do Ian's conversion over the forthcoming week, but the same restrictions will apply: the forums will have to be offline during the process. Do we have an agreement on exactly how much of Ian's stuff will come over here? Can we get Ian to join in the discussion here? I'll need him to make some changes to his forums if I'm going to run the converter scripts on them...

Oh, and thanks for the comment on the avatar, Beowuuf. I had to change my transparent one because it looked weird on different templates backgrounds...

Post by **cowsmanaut** » Tue May 06, 2003 7:48 am

Ok first things first. I have a Gig of traffic/month and 100 megs storage space.

Next, is the organisation. Can we have subsections? Like a front page with main subjects and then sub-topics onder those? So basically the subsections would look like the front of the forum now but would only each contain a few topics, and then under those it would be as it is now. All the related threads.

So fo instance on the main page we would have RTC, on the following page it would go to the topics like general, bug reports, suggestions etc.

is that possible? You would know better than I Gambit now that you've rooted through it all.

moo

George Gilbert · Post by **George Gilbert** » Tue May 06, 2003 10:48 am

Gambit - I'm here most of the time ;-)

As for the suggestions,

1) I agree that merging in Ians forums is a good idea in priciple although in practice size might be an issue.

2a) Agree
2b-1) Agree
2b-2) Agree
2c) Agree

3) **Disagree** - Specifically gameplay includes things like Reactor and any new dungeons that come along and so shouldn't be limited to DM /. CSB only! I'd actually even go so far as to say that this forum should be split up rather than merged together so you'd have "DM Gameplay", "CSB Gameplay", "Reactor Gameplay" etc etc forums...

Post by **Gambit37** » Tue May 06, 2003 11:42 am

I think we should also take a step back and remember what these forums are for. After all, wasn't this to be your special place Cowsmanaut? It looks like all the things that you wanted to focus on (Art, Writing, etc) are being marginalised -- is that what you want? Do you mind?

As for sub-categories, it's not possible with the standard implementation of phpBB. There are MODs out there that will do it, I'll see what I can find out. It's not a quick fix though! Plus version 2.2 of the software is being worked on, which changes the way templates work and introduces new features. If we upgrade the forum software to that version, all my changes will have to be re-done anway!

I don't agree with the idea of a separate gameplay forum for each RTC dungeon. What happens when more dungeons come out? Do we have one forum for each? That would become bloated and unmanageable!

Post by **Gambit37** » Tue May 06, 2003 12:24 pm

Here's some samples of MODed forums using subcategories. Note some of them are not in English!:

http://ralendil.org/site/index.htm
http://www.merlin-huff.org/czlinux/phpBB2/index.php
http://webserv.upb.de/universal/forum/index.php

Please note that this phpBB MOD is still in beta, so if we adopt it, it's up to us (me?) to keep on top of any changes the developers make to the code. Again, I'm happy to do that...

George Gilbert · Post by **George Gilbert** » Tue May 06, 2003 12:43 pm

Fair point about the splitting of the forums leading to bloat, but the angle I was comming from is that:

1) It would be useful to be able to find hints etc for a particular game quickly; possibly 3 forums (DM, CSB and Other) would be better as there would be relatively little traffic for all other dungeons.

2) There is little point having a seperate RTC gameplay forum to the DM forum. The *gameplay* problems / solutions encountered in RTC will be the same as those from the original.

I would suggest the following (although as pointed out above, it's cowsmanaut's baby...)

General
- Art
- Writing
- News
- Interesting topics / Discussion

Gameplay
- DM
- CSB
- DM II?
- Other dungeons

RTC
- Editing
- Suggestions
- Bugs

Other
- DMute
- Clones
- Archive

Post by **Gambit37** » Tue May 06, 2003 1:13 pm

Heh, it starts getting tricky! What about gameplay problems with RTC specific dungeons? I can see that people coming here looking for help with new RTC dungeons would expect to find it in the RTC category rather than in Other?

However, I think your proposed list is certainly getting there and we could avoid sub categories too. However, something's still not quite right but I can't put my finger on it... will think some more...

Post by **Lunever** » Tue May 06, 2003 3:39 pm

If subfora were possible, it'd be best indeed. Currently they seem to be not, so how the forum will look in the end will depend much on whether Gambit is successful with his search for such software or not and whether it will be possible to do it technically without Gambit locking himself in his cellar for the rest of this year doing the code (which would be a shame since I'm looking forward his dm codex site

).
But even if not we could do this using the existing division on the main page.

General:
- News & other interesting topix
- Art: Grafix/FX and writung

Gameplay general (not dependant on specific clones/versions, includes technical support to get the games going):
- Dungeon Master
- Chaos Stikes Back
- Dungeon Master II (Legend of Skullkeep)
- Dungeon Master Nexus
- Theron's Quest
- Other Dungeon Games (EOB, Black Crypt, AmberStar)
(Importing from or merging with Ians forum and/or other related fora should be the base outline for that one. The DM and CSB part should simply merge the posts from this board (including the RTC import) and Ian's board. I don't think that those posts would conflict with each other)

RTC:
- RTC-specific gameplay and new RTC dungeons gameplay
- RTC bug report
- RTC suggestions & other RTC related topix

Editors:
- General Dungeon design and projects
- DMute
- Other Editors (CSBuild, DMEdit, Textmute and others) (Subfora would be great here. Should one of them editors get really many posts this part it can still be further divided later on although that might be difficult to sort out later on)

Other clones (not RTC):
- DMJava
- Deepcave
- Bloodwych 3D
- Dungeon Maker
(Subfora General - Gameplay - Bug report - Suggestion for each of them would be great if possible, otherwise one of them clones could still be divided later on if really growing to big, but it might not easy to do so once all posts have been gathered in one thread. Also, an import from or better merging with existing forums like ezboard's DMJava would be great).

Every forum should have a link to the archieve, which would bappear like a separate forum:

Archive & release information:
- General:
- Release information
- Gameplay general (not dependant on specific clones/versions, includes technical support to get the games going):
- RTC:
- Editors:
- Other clones (not RTC):
(Of course if every Archieve part could have subfora matching it's main forum that'd be great)

So that'd be 5 main fora with 18 subfora total + the Archieve with it's 6 subfora.

As long as there is no shortage of webspace, I agree with Christophe, that all posts avaliable at Ian's board should be merged. I also agree that Ian should join the ranks of the admins here (someone of you should invite him to do if that hasn't been done already)

Post by **Gambit37** » Tue May 06, 2003 4:13 pm

Don't we want to be more focussed than that? You're approach is logical, but it's still diversifying this board. Does that matter? I don't know!

If we don't combine clones, but instead have a Clones category with a forum for each one (as you suggest), then there's little point in RTC having it's own category. It may as well move to the clones category, and have a set of sub-forums (is fora really the plural of forum?)

Having said that, I'd like to avoid sub-forums if possible, purely because it adds another level of obfuscation.

Lunever, you may have missed my post above with links to sites using subforums; it's certainly possible to do it.

Post by **Lunever** » Tue May 06, 2003 4:37 pm

First things first: Since fora is originally a latin word I would use the latin plural which is fora when talking educated German and also I think when doing so in English. Recently I had that discussion chatting with Unkle Ka5pian from UK and he said it's forums in English and I thought "Silly me, trying to speak the educated way and getting it wrong", but a minute later K5's girlfriend who has an M.A. in English linguistics confirmed that it is fora indeed, so I think I'll stick to it.

Another thing, speaking of English: I might a bit old for it, but today I made my A-Levels (called Abitur in Germany) in English. Hurray! But the difficult part which is Biology (Friday 9) and Chemistry (Monday 12) is still to be done...

Back to the main topic:
Second, ok, subfora are possible, so I strongly recommend them. The do not add to obfuscation, on the contrary, they add to structure and thus easier accessability to the forum as a whole, in my oppinion.
I suggested to divide RTC and other clones into to seperate fora as it is now also because RTC seems to have by far the most posts of all clones. I don't know whether this would still apply should DMJava join, but until that happens, I'd leave it that way with a separate RTC forum. Besides, counting the posts, it seems to me that RTC IS one of the most important topics on that site (no insult meant to any other interesting things found on that site).

Oh, and I forgot one more important clone: CSBWin, of course only if Paul R. Stevens would be onboard. We should ask him at least.

Post by **cowsmanaut** » Tue May 06, 2003 6:30 pm

ok, let's not worry about the consolidation of Writing and art. It appears to be little used anyway. I put it there in the hopes of inspiring others to come up with artwork and stories that were inspired either by DM or the community or to talk about things they'd seen that was on a fantasy related topic. So really, in a manner of speaking, it's much like an "other interesting topics thread.

we can make the combination of a number of currently seperated categories it would seem from those that are less active. It's simply a matter of deciding what is different enough to warrant more than just a thread to it. Does it deserve it's own sub category?

Anyway, as much as this is "my baby" I've mentioned the reason for this place beore. It was to make a cohesive place where people could find most of what they needed without being blasted by ads. I included you all as moderaters/administrators to acomplish what a sinlge person could not. maintain a diverse place without too much sacrifice. By sacrifice I mean in a creative way. What we are doing right now is exactly what I intended. We all discuss it and work it out as a team and then make the changes we agree are most neccesary.

so let us come up with something most of us can agree on and just do that.

moo

Post by **ChristopheF** » Tue May 06, 2003 7:55 pm

About subcategories: it may seem a good idea at first, but I think it is just bad for two reasons:
- it encourages the creation of LOTS of forums. This will inevitably drive new users away. Personnaly, when I get on a new message board with tens for forums, I just don't know where to go, don't know where to post without annoying the regulars... And often, most forums are just "empty" with only a few messages, so navigating takes a lot of clicks and hassle. And information is scattered in so many places...
- it will be hard and time consuming to maintain. As Gambit said, we have to use an unofficial MOD for the forum software, that may become incompatible with next versions of phpbb. I know by the experience of the forums on my own site that it is just a pain to upgrade versions, change features, etc... And I also prefer to know that Gambit is working on his web site than on integrating a MOD in a new version of phpbb, fighting againt PHP and database issues... But it is up to Gambit himself to decide if he has time for this...

If we create, as suggested, several forums for each and every fan made dungeon for example, we will certainly end up with lots of empty forums with less than 5 messages. It is very boring to browse such forums...
Moreover, users will often post to the wrong forum it there are too many to choose from.
It is not a problem to have in a single forum threads about technical issues, spoilers, announcements, gameplay, etc... as long as there are only a few posts in total.
The general rule for me is that a forum should only be created if it will certainly hold a lot of threads (say more than 30). If a forum gets too large, then we will divide it in parts.

As a summary: keep it simple, minimize the number of forums.

beowuuf · Post by **beowuuf** » Tue May 06, 2003 8:04 pm

Hi, hope you don't mind the move : )

I've just realised that we should probably have some seperation of 'shooting the breeze' posts from actual admin posts like these..ah well : )

I think that while it would be nice to have just one set of fourms, there is a definite devide that there is no reason to try to bridge just now beyond the mutual referencing everyone has on their forums.

Paul's CSB4windows and CSBuilder are firmly based in the encyclopaedia from the downloads and forums to his constant prescence...similarly Sphenx's Dmbuild
DMJava, too, is a very large forum that pretty much has a life of its own.
Here seems to be tied to RTC and DMute, aswell as some of the newer clones that have been mentioned on these pages

At the end of the day its not like we can't create new forums and move posts as needs demand. For the moment I think George's model is probably the better one, and as posts and topics grow (and the means to have sub-forums/fora crow), we can work towards lunever's model

So that's 1 vote for George's model, with a few minor alterations:

- Have the news & discussions as the same forum, and leave 'other interesting topics' seperate for general
-Leave the RTC archive on the RTC board, seperate from the unofficial BBS archive (if we go that way)
- An 'other games' section in the 'other' section for non-DM, like Ian's had

Post by **Gambit37** » Tue May 06, 2003 8:35 pm

Heh, funny that, I was going to move this post too!

I agree with the general consensus of the last three posts, and George's proposal with Beowuuf's changes. I'd much prefer to keep the number of fora smaller rather than larger, and let's face it, how many people are going to comment on Theron's Quest or Nexus? I agree too that CSBWin/Builder/DMJava have lives (and sites) of their own and there's little point duplicating that here. That's why I added the quick links at the top...

We can re-order everything now with the content that we have, and if we later merge Ian's board data, it'll slip quite nicely into the re-arranged categories. So how about this as a simplified structure:

General
- News & Discussions
- Creative (unnecessary? could all this stuff just in the above?)

Dungeon Master Games
- DM
- CSB
- DM II
- Other dungeons

RTC
- Editing
- Suggestions
- Bugs
- Archive

Other tools and games
- DMute
- Clones
- Other Games like DM
- Archive

As long as each category has a sensible description, I think this should work well enough.

Post by **ChristopheF** » Tue May 06, 2003 9:57 pm

I fully agree with your last proposition, Gambit.

Post by **Gambit37** » Tue May 06, 2003 11:05 pm

Well, unless there's any major objections, I'm just gonna go ahead and make these changes. Speak now or forever hold your wotsit.

If there's a big outcry, and/or it turns out people don't like the new structure, we can always put it back again...

Post by **Gambit37** » Tue May 06, 2003 11:59 pm

OK, I've sorted out all the forums in to a reasonably-agreed-on structure. I haven't touched RTC though; I'm still not sure what to do about General and Gameplay. Should they merge?

beowuuf · Post by **beowuuf** » Wed May 07, 2003 12:14 am

You go off for a coupla hours....

New changes are cool to my mind, for now I would leave thinking about RTC

Maybe later can have a DMuted/RTC dungeon forum to discuss gameplay in any of the custom games...

Edit: Actually, I think rather than merge with one forum, RTC gameplay should be split between the relevant gameplay threads and the RTC general - sicne they are either engine -related (general) or game related (DM/CSB or reactor)

Post by **ChristopheF** » Wed May 07, 2003 12:26 am

I think they should be merged, but George decides.

Dungeon Master Forum

Which forums should be here?

Which forums should be here?

Re: Forum organisation