[headdie]

re: this IRC chat

20:13   polpolion   man
20:13   polpolion   I still have no idea where anything is in this new layout
20:14   polpolion   anyone remember the stink everyone made when they changed "the pub" to "general discussion"?
20:14   MatthTheGeek   should have named it "the trash"
20:15   headdie   personally my only issue is that FS modding should be higher up the list buts thats is, and as for the pub that was before my time ;P
...
20:33   Fury`   board layout is confusing as hell
20:34   Fury`   I stick with "show unread posts since last visit"
20:35   headdie   thats what I always do anyway but when I need to find something old the main board is usually my first stop
20:38   Fury`   in those occasions I just use ctrl + f
20:38   Fury`   I'll be damned if I could find the right board otherwise

I had a thought, would a quick navigation drop list of the items on the main board hyperlinked be possible to help users navigate to the section of the boards they want be feasible/a good idea?

[Mongoose]

I think those guys are wusses...it took me all of a week to get used to the new setup.

[mjn.mixael]

I think those guys are wusses...it took me all of a week to get used to the new setup.

Truth

[Goober5000]

I'm not sure that a navigation drop would be feasible, considering how slowly Sandwich is improving the theme.

Now that the forums have been organized this way for some period of time, I think it's quite appropriate to assess how successful, or not, the new organization is.  I have found it sub-optimal, but I can't really put my finger on why.  It's useful to hear feedback from other people.  I'd be interested in hearing whether anyone can suggest specific things that they dislike about the new layout or that they would change.

Also, topic renamed.

[FreeSpaceFreak]

I think those guys are wusses...it took me all of a week to get used to the new setup.

Truth

What they said. I just read all the boards that interest me, and it really doesn't matter (to me) in which order they're placed.

Now that the forums have been organized this way for some period of time, I think it's quite appropriate to assess how successful, or not, the new organization is.  I have found it sub-optimal, but I can't really put my finger on why.  It's useful to hear feedback from other people.  I'd be interested in hearing whether anyone can suggest specific things that they dislike about the new layout or that they would change.

Two things come to mind:

• a rather inhomogeneous distribution of the, uh 'sections' on the front page - the FS mods list is huge now, while there's several other sections with just a couple boards. The old layout was more equally distributed (IIRC).
• The mod boards, with usually little activity, at the top of the forum - while the (usually) more active SCP/modding boards require scrolling down.

Like I said, I'm not complaining about them, but I could see either of these leading to a perception of suboptimality.

[Fury]

More than index layout, I'd love to see more efficient use of horizontal space in the era of widescreen displays. I hate how much vertical space is used up before even first board is shown.

In addition, if you get rid of number of posts and topics and last post by information on the index, you can use that horizontal space to display more relevant information, like moderators, board description and child boards. This in turn frees up vertical space and shortens the index listing considerably. I'm sure there would be more clever ways to change index to make better use of horizontal space.

Also, someone please get rid of that eyesore of blue news. It totally destroys look of the forums and takes up way too much space. There's plenty of horizontal space available to right of "Hello <Name>" box. Move news or highlights there to free up vertical space. In addition, it very much looks like the HLP logo at top left is taking up more space than the "Hello <Name" box, again wasting vertical space.


Bottom line? Compact! Compact! Compact! Less scrolling down and up, thank you very much. After that, you can start mucking with index layout again, preferably in way that uses less space. The longer the index is, more tiresome it is to browse through it, no matter how boards in the index are ordered.

[Black Wolf]

The "Modding, Mission Design and Coding" section should be immediately below Freespace. It applies to all the standalone games, but presently, finding the general modding board means scrolling past the Diaspora modding board, but hell, even past the Mech Commander board. First and foremost, we're a FS modding board. Therefore, FS modding ought to be among the easiest things to find, IMO. At the moment, it's really, really not.

Unlike Fury, I'm not to worried about vertical space and scrolling, although I wouldn;t mind seeing the archived forums being compressed somewhat. Possibly reduced to a list of links rather than full forum information.

[headdie]

The "Modding, Mission Design and Coding" section should be immediately below Freespace. It applies to all the standalone games, but presently, finding the general modding board means scrolling past the Diaspora modding board, but hell, even past the Mech Commander board. First and foremost, we're a FS modding board. Therefore, FS modding ought to be among the easiest things to find, IMO. At the moment, it's really, really not.

Same here

[Polpolion]

Current layout in a nutshell:

- Announcements
- Freespace discussion
- Freespace Mods, missions and campaigns
- Games that aren't quite freespace
- Diaspora, which is too big to be in the above category
- Mods that have nothing to do with freespace
- Freespace modding, missioning, and campaigning again
- random things that don't quite fit anywhere else
- lol more freespace mods
- mods that don't quite fit anywhere else, despite already having a section for "mods for other games"
- off topic

This layout makes zero sense to me. What's wrong with having all the subforums for mods next to each other?

And more out of curiosity than complaint why were FS SCP and FSU moved to separate sections?

[Goober5000]

Also, for reference, the old layout in a nutshell.  You can view it for comparison on archive.org.

- Announcements
- FreeSpace discussion and modding (Gen FS, FS Mod, FRED, etc.)
- Community Projects (SCP, FSUP, FSWiki, etc.)
- Hosted Projects - Released
- Hosted Projects - Unreleased
- Hosted Projects - Non-FS
- Off-Topic
- Site Management
- Archived

I liked this layout because you could quickly zero in on first the general category and then the specific board you were looking for.  And if you weren't interested in a particular area -- for instance, unreleased projects -- you could collapse that category and completely ignore its boards.

Also, I would prefer a forum layout organized for the needs of regular modders, project members, and posters, because those are the people who use HLP most often.  New members don't visit nearly as often and don't need to access important boards on a regular basis.

[karajorma]

The idea behind the move was basically to make the boards lay out everything we've produced for new people. I'd be willing to change formats again if we go ahead with the oft-mentioned Newbie forum which would basically do much the same thing but which no one has been willing to create or maintain in the past.

I hate the idea of going back to the whole Community Projects section though, I think the whole Modding and Coding section makes a hell of a lot more sense.

[Goober5000]

Well, I view the FreeSpace Support forum as almost like a newbie forum, and we have no problem getting people to moderate that.  Though that actually has a purpose, and a forum with nothing but "Hello, I'm new here" and "Welcome" threads might get boring.  Still, if you feel strongly about it, I wouldn't mind giving it a trial run.  We could ask the Grognards to nominate candidates for two moderators.

I happen to think Community Projects was one of the highlights of the old layout, as it made a lot of sense.  We had these wide-ranging projects -- SCP, FSUP, the wiki, etc. -- all of which had similar goals (generate content for the benefit of the whole community), and all of which had similar atmospheres.  These were contrasted with Hosted Projects, which are generally more secretive and whose goals aligned more with a particular leader's personal story or vision rather than a crowd-sourced consensus.  It made sense to group the two communities into appropriate groups.

The Modding and Coding category is actually a pretty reasonable section.  What I have a problem with is more the scattering of the old Community Projects boards far and wide.  The current Community Projects category works, but it's merely a subset of its former self.  The aspect that frustrates me the most is having the Missions and Campaigns and two Projects boards lumped in with all of the completed Hosted Projects.

I'd like to try out this arrangement:
1) Move Missions and Campaigns and FSCRP into the FreeSpace category.  Then move FSUP back to the Community Projects category.  That will restore the old Hosted Projects - Released to its former state.
2) Reorder the categories as follows:
--Announcements
--FreeSpace
--Modding, Mission Design, and Coding
--Community Projects
--Hosted Projects - Released
--Diaspora
--Full Games
--Mods for Other Games
--Hosted Projects - WIP
--Other Mods - WIP
--etc.

This will leave the SCP as the only community project that isn't in "Community Projects", which irks me, but I won't rule out further tweaks to the layout.

[Dragon]

I like your idea. I never liked the current layout. Your idea is much more logical.

[karajorma]

The problem is that the layout you have is based on us still being a Freespace community. We're not. We haven't been for quite some time.

We have lots of users who barely play FS2 because they're here for Diaspora or TBP (or even just to chat). This is just going to increase as time goes on and we start getting people here for Fringespace, FotG or WoD's upcoming standalone. And if you're not here for Freespace, then the mediaVPs are a community project which is largely pointless for you.

I'd suggest we move all the FSUP, FSCRP, Missions and Campaigns AND all the released FS2 mods into the Freespace section. That way if you don't care about FS you can skip the lot. I don't see the point in having a Freespace section and then a more Freespace section. Especially as in the layout suggested we have a large number of boards separating them. Instead the new order would be

--Announcements
--Newbie Forum (whatever we call it)
--Modding, Mission Design, and Coding (Let's move this back up to near the top as HLP's main focus)
--Community Projects
--FreeSpace
--Diaspora
--Other Full Games
--Mods for Other Games
--Hosted Projects - WIP
--Other Mods - WIP
--etc.

That's a much more compact layout and it ensures that the sections we have are much more relevant. You can see at a glance what games things are for and you don't get stupid things like people trying to install the mediaVPs on TBP cause it's much more obvious that they're Freespace related.

[jg18]

I'm a bit unclear on the purpose of the Newbie forum. Having a logical place for fundamental tutorials (such as how to install FSO) might be nice, though, and I guess there could be a stickied thread with jumping off points to other places on the site (e.g., "want to learn how to make your missions? go here").

Otherwise I'm inclined to agree that

a forum with nothing but "Hello, I'm new here" and "Welcome" threads might get boring. 

I guess you could say that currently, Support and Gen FS jointly share newbie handling, given that the install instructions and new people thread are in Gen FS.

The problem is that the layout you have is based on us still being a Freespace community. We're not. We haven't been for quite some time.

We have lots of users who barely play FS2 because they're here for Diaspora or TBP (or even just to chat). This is just going to increase as time goes on and we start getting people here for Fringespace, FotG or WoD's upcoming standalone. And if you're not here for Freespace, then the mediaVPs are a community project which is largely pointless for you.

I'd suggest we move all the FSUP, FSCRP, Missions and Campaigns AND all the released FS2 mods into the Freespace section. That way if you don't care about FS you can skip the lot. I don't see the point in having a Freespace section and then a more Freespace section. Especially as in the layout suggested we have a large number of boards separating them. Instead the new order would be

--Announcements
--Newbie Forum (whatever we call it)
--Modding, Mission Design, and Coding (Let's move this back up to near the top as HLP's main focus)
--Community Projects
--FreeSpace
--Diaspora
--Other Full Games
--Mods for Other Games
--Hosted Projects - WIP
--Other Mods - WIP
--etc.

That's a much more compact layout and it ensures that the sections we have are much more relevant. You can see at a glance what games things are for and you don't get stupid things like people trying to install the mediaVPs on TBP cause it's much more obvious that they're Freespace related.

This makes sense to me. Although the support forum should be easy to find, which it might not be if it's in the middle of the FreeSpace section.

BTW, why is "Fan Fiction and Art" part of Community Projects and not Off-Topic Discussion? Seems to me like it should come right after Programming.

Also, after the boards are rearranged, could restructuring the Tools board be looked into?

[Rodo]

Newbie forums are inherently related to the topic/game the user came to HLP looking for, such as diaspora fans will likely benefit from getting a newbie forum about just diaspora, while FS fans will be interested in different things.

For that specific task you have two options that I can think of:
1) Start a newbie forum, with all the general stuff (HLP jargon, forum rules, etc) and different subsections for every possible profile a newbie user might have (diaspora, FS, BP, Babylon, etc) included on this very board.
2) Or you add newbie boards covering specific needs of each user on their respective subforums (diaspora, fs, bla bla bla) and then add the newbie forum upwards just as the first option but with links to these boards.

I'd recommend naming these forums as I said before, "getting started". It's only natural to look there first for everyone.

[karajorma]

For me the forum would basically be a quick place to get a new user up to speed on HLP, FS2_Open and how things work around here. We'd want to have threads covering the basics but even if that consists completely of links to the relevant articles on the wiki it would still be better than what we have now.

The problem is that right now we have lots of newbies wonder in and get completely lost about how to install FS2_Open or what campaigns to download, etc. That's not really a good entry point to the community.

The old layout made that worse. We have the missions and campaigns forum and then bizarrely we have the hosted projects (which are pretty much all mods for Freespace jumbled in with TCs which aren't) and then have FSUP in yet another group with FSO which is what you need to make them all work.

Put yourself in the mindset of someone new to HLP and try to figure out how long it would take you to find all the stuff you need.

[MatthTheGeek]

Wrong argument here. I was new once and it took me 10 min tops to have everything set up correctly, and that was 2 and a half years ago.

[karajorma]

For you. Are you seriously trying to tell me that new users aren't getting lost?

[wistler]

This sight is pretty poor for getting new people sorted out. I had a problem just finding a link to an installer (which was broken) when I joined.