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Do you agree with this plan for forum organisation?
Yes 50%  50%  [ 4 ]
No 50%  50%  [ 4 ]
Total votes : 8
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 Post subject: Re: AU Revival: Forum Organisation
PostPosted: April 2nd, 2011, 9:56 pm 
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Apart from the fact I think we still need a Miscellaneous Movie Discussion for LOTR (where else can I swoon over Weta? :teehee:) as Misc. LOTR just doesn't seem to me to be the place for non-specific FOTK, TTT or ROTK talk, I think Darky's way of doing it looks pretty good to me. :yes:

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Last edited by Johnny's Fan on April 3rd, 2011, 6:27 pm, edited 2 times in total.

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 Post subject: Re: AU Revival: Forum Organisation
PostPosted: April 3rd, 2011, 8:31 am 
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I get what you guys are saying about the index being slightly overwhelming, but I have to admit that I think people would be more confused as to where things are located if they didn't see them right away. For someone completely new to the concept of a forum, it can be very confusing, and having to search for specific subforums will only add to that confusion. As for people who have been using forums long enough to know how they work, I don't think they mind the index page being cluttered, so to speak.

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 Post subject: Re: AU Revival: Forum Organisation
PostPosted: April 3rd, 2011, 2:05 pm 
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This is based off of Darkie's suggestion.
I took out the LotR-related gaming and put it in the general gaming forum under RPG and gaming. This would be inconsistant in that the rest of the forum is seperated in LotR and non-LotR...

Also, generally I'm not a fan of having 'hidden' sub-forums that only show up when you click them.


Announcements
The Halls of Mandos (Announcements) + "The Tower of Ecthelion (Member Awards)" and perhaps "Parth Galen (Polling)" Perhaps as sub-forums only visible when you click on "Announcements"??
Dwimorberg (Suggestions and Comments) Or more like Suggestions, Comments and Heeelp!!!

Introductions
The Prancing Pony (Introduce Yourself)

Book Discussion
Bag End (The Fellowship of the Ring)
Helm’s Deep (The Two Towers)
Minas Tirith (The Return of the King)
The Hobbit New
Doriath (Other LotR-Related Book Discussion)

Movie Discussion
Bagshot Row (The Fellowship of the Ring)
Ithillien (The Two Towers)
Mount Doom (The Return of the King)
The Lonely Mountain (The Hobbit)

Miscellaneous LotR Discussion
The Grey Havens (Soundtrack Discussion)
The Party Field (LotR Gaming) Put it under "LotR and non-LotR Gaming"
Imladris (Languages)
The Misty Mountains (Completely Miscellaneous LotR) Minor detail, but simply call it "Miscellaneous LotR"?

RPG & Gaming
Caras Galadhon (LotR RPG)
Sharky’s End (Non-LotR RPG)
The Barrow-downs (New Characters) + Osgiliath (Help and Ideas) I'm not a roleplayer, so tell me if it is a criminal offense to combine the two! :P
(LotR and Non-LotR Related Gaming) This would include "The Party Field (LotR gaming)"

The Actors
Dol Guldur (LotR & Hobbit Actor Discussion)
Caradhras (Miscellaneous Actor Discussion) Includes "Miscellaneous Actor Discussion" and "Non-LotR Actor Discussion" and "Swoon Board"

Life Outside LotR
Mirrormere (Movies & TV)
Michel Delving (Literature)
The Golden Hall (Music)
The Green Dragon (Your Life)
House of Bombadil (Miscellaneous Randomness)

World Wide Web
Dwarrowdelf (Favourite Tolkien Sites) Rename to "Tolkien Sites" and have it include member Tolkien sites too?
Haradwaith (Favorite Non-LotR Sites) *Perhaps combine "Favorite Non-LotR Sites" and "Your Site"?
Bree-land (Your Site) *
Amon Hen (Site Help) + Orthanc (Resources and Tutorials) Combine the two?

Fan Section
Bucklebury (Fan Art)
The Hall of Fire (Fanfiction & Poetry)
Numenor (Requests)
Dale (Resources & Tutorials)

Other
The Glittering Caves (Clubs)
The Old Forest (Contests)
Parth Galen (Polling) Could be moved to Announcements
The Tower of Ecthelion (Member Awards) IMO "Member Awards" doesn't need to be displayed on the main forum index but only when you click the Announcement board?

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Last edited by on April 4th, 2011, 10:16 am, edited 1 time in total.

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 Post subject: Re: AU Revival: Forum Organisation
PostPosted: April 3rd, 2011, 6:02 pm 
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If Announcements is going to include other things than announcements from the mods, would it be an idea to rename the section and include "Introduce Yourself"? Because if we think the index is cluttered, taking up space to have a whole separate introductions section seems kind of unneeded. Also, isn't introducing yourself an announcement of sorts?

Other than that I think your suggestion looks good, Eä :)

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 Post subject: Re: AU Revival: Forum Organisation
PostPosted: April 3rd, 2011, 6:29 pm 
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Johnny's Fan wrote:
Apart from the fact I think we still need a Miscellaneous Movie Discussion for LOTR (where else can I swoon over Weta? :teehee:) as Misc. LOTR just doesn't seem to me to be the place for non-specific FOTK, TTT or ROTK talk, I think Darky's way of doing it looks pretty good to me. :yes:


Just reiterating that something is lacking here. ;)


And for the record: since the new upgraded forum burst forth, this is the second time I have meant to quote one of my own posts and actually editied the ORIGINAL one. *sobs* Must be my old age.

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 Post subject: Re: AU Revival: Forum Organisation
PostPosted: April 9th, 2011, 12:47 pm 
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*pats JF*

I'm so glad this is still being discussed. I especially like Darky's idea posted above [by Eä], and I also like Ana's idea about combining the Announcements and Introduce Yourself forum. And of course, JF, we won't forget about Misc LotR. :)


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 Post subject: Re: AU Revival: Forum Organisation
PostPosted: April 15th, 2011, 8:32 pm 
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Alrighty, so as you probably know, I'm trying NOT to be the main person in the revival, which--because all of you are doing such a great job taking care of Stuff--is working out really well so far. I feel like we've gotten stalled with the forum organization, though, and I don't really want to be the one to make the final decision on how things are organized.

Can those of you who have been involved in discussing how the subforums should be ordered / which ones should go etc. put your heads together, via PM or this thread or wherever, and come up with a clear list of what should go where? I know this has been done several times on this thread, but I feel like it's always been a little waffley - i.e., maybe this should go there, or maybe we should get rid of this - and there are usually a couple disagreements. So if we can get a clear list sorted, I can go ahead and make the changes, but it would be really great if you can reach a consensus by yourselves :)

P.S. Ellie wants his video game section.

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 Post subject: Re: AU Revival: Forum Organisation
PostPosted: April 15th, 2011, 10:10 pm 
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Is it possible to have an forum option like this:

http://www.fanmail.biz/mboard/

If you click on "request celebrity address" as well that section opening, there is a sub-forum that is inside that one, at the top.

If we are intending to have things like "polling" and "member awards" in the Announcement section, would it look like that?

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 Post subject: Re: AU Revival: Forum Organisation
PostPosted: April 15th, 2011, 10:45 pm 
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That's exactly it :) That forum is built with the same software as A-U, so any options they have, we should technically be able to have.

For "nested" subforums, the way it should work is that we can decide whether members can post on the first board (the way there are a bunch of threads under Request Celebrity Address) as general topics, or have to choose a sub-forum to post in first (in which case it would look like viewforum.php?f=53 ). Like the site to which you linked, while the sub-forums aren't listed in nice friendly letters like normal boards, you do have the option to list them as Subforums: Forum 1, Forum, Forum 3 on the index page (again, just as how Not Found is listed under Request Celebrity Address).

For example, we currently have setups like this:

Category: Book Discussion --> Boards: FotR Discussion, TTT Discussion, etc.

We could set it up as:

Category: LotR Discussion --> Boards: Book Discussion ( --> Sub-forums: FotR Discussion, TTT Discussion, etc., with any misc. topics taking place on the main Book Discussion board), Movie Discussion, etc.

So basically you can go as many nested levels deep as you want to. It's like Inception, except slightly less dangerous. Make sense?

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 Post subject: Re: AU Revival: Forum Organisation
PostPosted: April 15th, 2011, 11:34 pm 
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That makes perfect sense. :yes:

I think I would vote, though we only use it for the lesser forums such as what would be found in the annoucements (polling etc) rather than for the film and books boards. I personally, like seeing all my options for the important stuff, but nest other forums, so we have a bit more room. :-)

I am working on the Ultimate Organisation at the moment to see what everyonhe thinks.

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 Post subject: Re: AU Revival: Forum Organisation
PostPosted: April 16th, 2011, 12:39 am 
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Sorry for the double post, but here is my layout for AU.

Basically as you will see, this follows what Darky, Ea and others posted. But I thought it might be good for people to actually see the forum, not just a list of words.

There are a few things I have added; mainly the removal of the contests section to the fan art section. I figure if we move polling, awards, suggestions it seems silly to keep the contests in "other" when fanart calls to it. Now that leaves the clubs. As you will see, I haven't added that anywhere yet, mainly because it has not been dicussed as to what to do with this before, so that is the only thing I can see that needs adding. Also, I have added a few sub-forums to make things neater. But it might not be easier, so we'll have to decide it we want to sacrafice ease for neatness and visa versa. But for now, we are going for neat. :P

Also the only thing I didn't go with, was the Non-Tolkien and Tolkien sites as I think we might need to discuss that further. I think every AU member should be able to post their own site in a special section for them, but as to whether we should just have a general Favourite Site forum, and not distinguish between LOTR and non-LOTR, that might also be something to talk about.


http://img853.imageshack.us/i/31556112.jpg/

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 Post subject: Re: AU Revival: Forum Organisation
PostPosted: April 16th, 2011, 5:01 am 
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Looks good, thanks for the visual example.
Here's a couple of inputs for tweaking it... sorry for a long post, I tried to make it reader-friendly...


RPG & Gaming
I think it's crucial that we get opinions from active RP'ers on whether we can combine 'New Characters' and 'Help and Ideas'. Either drag a couple of them over here to have a look or post a thread in the RPG-section to get a yay or nay. There's currently being worked on attracting more RP'ers so we need to support them the best we can. :)

Minor detail: I'd suggest displaying the sub-forums like this with the actual RPGs first in order to show them off in stead of sandwich them in the middle.

Caras Galadhon (LotR RPG)
Sharky’s End (Non-LotR RPG)
The Barrow-downs (New Characters) + Osgiliath (Help and Ideas)
(LotR and Non-LotR Related Gaming)


Concerning the World Wide Web section. I agree members should be able to post own sites but the reason I would take out 'Your site' is simply based on the deadness of the board, it's a graveyard at the moment. And as such members sites might as well fit under LotR-sites or Non-LotR sites. However, there's a slight chance people will start updating their old sites/create new for the Hobbit... What'dya think?

Minor thing: I'd move the 'Fan section' up above 'World Wide Web' and have WWW as the last board. Simply based on current activity... A-U is a massive board and there's a lot of scrolling. And I think it fits nicely and logically under 'Life Outside LotR. :)


Something that has bothered me is that we have a lot of the same threads in the Club section and the Actor section. I mean we talk about Alan Rickman's movies and his sexiness equally in the actor thread, the actor's movies thread and the dedicated club thread (and Swoon board).

Idea 1: Ditch the Actors-board completely and have all fan-swooning/discussions going on in the club section.
Idea 2: If we want to keep especially the LotR-actors board to honour LotR yadda yadda :teehee: we could put it as a sub-board under Clubs - easy to find.
Idea 3: Move LotR-actors to Misc. LotR like this:

The Grey Havens (Soundtrack Discussion)
Imladris (Languages)
Dol Guldur (LotR & Hobbit Actor Discussion) <-- Here
The Misty Mountains (Completely Miscellaneous LotR)

And ditch the Non-LotR board (probably dissolve it in Club-section)


Add the Clubs to either Life outside LotR or Fan Section


So my revision

Announcements
The Halls of Mandos (Announcements)
Sub-forums: "The Tower of Ecthelion (Member Awards)" + "Parth Galen (Polling)" + "Dwimorberg (Suggestions and Comments)"


Introductions
The Prancing Pony (Introduce Yourself)


Book Discussion
Bag End (The Fellowship of the Ring)
Helm’s Deep (The Two Towers)
Minas Tirith (The Return of the King)
The Hobbit
Doriath (Other LotR-Related Book Discussion)


Movie Discussion
Bagshot Row (The Fellowship of the Ring)
Ithillien (The Two Towers)
Mount Doom (The Return of the King)
The Lonely Mountain (The Hobbit)


Miscellaneous LotR Discussion
The Grey Havens (Soundtrack Discussion)
Imladris (Languages)
Dol Guldur (LotR & Hobbit Actor Discussion) Them LotR-actors!
The Misty Mountains (Completely Miscellaneous LotR)


RPG & Gaming
Caras Galadhon (LotR RPG)
Sharky’s End (Non-LotR RPG)
The Barrow-downs (New Characters) + Osgiliath (Help and Ideas) Combine?
(LotR and Non-LotR Related Gaming) Sub-forum: "The Party Field (LotR gaming)"


The Actors
Dol Guldur (LotR & Hobbit Actor Discussion)
Caradhras (Miscellaneous Actor Discussion) Includes "Miscellaneous Actor Discussion" and "Non-LotR Actor Discussion" and "Swoon Board"



Life Outside LotR
The Green Dragon (Your Life)
Mirrormere (Movies & TV)
Michel Delving (Literature)
The Golden Hall (Music)
The Glittering Caves (Clubs) Here?
House of Bombadil (Miscellaneous Randomness)


Fan Section
Bucklebury (Fan Art)
The Hall of Fire (Fanfiction & Poetry)
Numenor (Requests)
Dale (Resources & Tutorials)
The Glittering Caves (Clubs) Here?


World Wide Web Moved
Dwarrowdelf (Favourite Tolkien Sites) Includes member Tolkien sites
Haradwaith (Favorite Non-LotR Sites) Includes member non-LotR sites
Bree-land (Your Site)
Amon Hen (Site Help) + Orthanc (Resources and Tutorials)

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 Post subject: Re: AU Revival: Forum Organisation
PostPosted: April 16th, 2011, 6:39 am 
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Woops! I think I've missed alot of this conversation, as I've been very busy with exams.. But I just scanned over Eä's post and the word RPG caught my intention. :P

I think the New Character and Osgiliath subforums should not be joined together. Why not? Because they are two very different sub forums, which now might seem dead, but hopefully with a revival of the RPG section, both might revive again.

Some RPGers do not really care about bios and stuff but there are many dedicated players that have the most awesome thread with character bios, and though many may have left the forum, I think their threads can still provide as inspiration or examples to others. I think almost every RPer has a character thread and at some times their are updated and sometimes not, but by joining it with the other sub-forum it would become one big mess.

The Help& Ideas subforum is the place where new ideas can be pitched or where plotting threads of existing RPGs are created. So all in all there are also a great many threads which are actively used.

So by joining two subforums which are completely different and have the potential to be quite active in the future I say no to this fusion! :teehee:

And I will try to catch up on the other things you discussed, but I just didn't have the time yet. ;)

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 Post subject: Re: AU Revival: Forum Organisation
PostPosted: April 16th, 2011, 7:30 am 
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I have a minor suggestion. . . Wouldn't it make sense to have The Hobbit book discussion above FotR, as The Hobbit is basically the prequel to LotR? Just a thought. :p

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 Post subject: Re: AU Revival: Forum Organisation
PostPosted: April 16th, 2011, 9:16 am 
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^I agree with Harthad, but it's a minor detail.

And I think Eä's suggestion looks good, but again I'd suggest moving Introductions somewhere else, like Announcements. Also, I think Clubs can be moved to the Fan Section, as that's where I think they fit best, even if not all of them are fan-related.

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 Post subject: Re: AU Revival: Forum Organisation
PostPosted: April 16th, 2011, 10:50 am 
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I'm glad that everyone asked if it was easy to amend that graphic I posted. :goofy:

Possible amendements: Separate the New Ideas & Help sections in the RPG
Move WWW above Fanart
Move Clubs


------------------------
I'm still not entirely convinced with having members post in non-LOTR and LOTR sites. I'm just not sure why they should go to the trouble of having to post somewhere and wave a banner *this is my site!!* when they should really post it in their own section. I don't know about anyone else, but when I see a new post in Your Site I shoot over there to see what's popped up. I don't think I would do that so much if it was removed.

And I don't see a problem with having a non-actors section. People might not like Alan Rickman enough (I know, it's hard to imagine) that they want to join his club to comment on the latest film they saw him in or even if they like him or not. A lot of the clubs are imbedded in their own topics usually, so it might be easier for someone to just pop into a thread about his work rather than a swooning club. Because if you are going to take away non-LOTR actors because they have clubs about them, then you may as well do so for LOTR actors as well. The Orlando Club was pretty wild in its day. :P

Also the Introductions should really go nowhere. It's one of the first places new people see, it sits on AU like a beacon of welcoming, and I think if at this point we're only looking to make AU less big, putting Introductions somwehere else is not the way to go. :no:

But anyway, all good stuff and comments and things. When we have more opinions I will edit the layout. :-)

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