Restructuring the Board (Your Thoughts)

[Lex]

Hi folks,

Compared to most forums, our layouts and categorisations could be considered a bit excessive. I have some opinions about how to streamline it a little bit but I wanted feedback from the community. This is regarding tidying up the "forum tree" a little bit - I know most people don't actually use this and just rely on notifications or the "new posts" functionality, but I also know there are some people who do.

Let's start small:



I don't really see a need for this section to be divided the way it is. I can totally understand why it was set up that way, but I'm sure anyone looking at it can see the issue - the "neo final fantasy" section will continue to grow forever, while the Classic FF board won't. In this case I'd probably think about creating a new large section for "Gaming", put the "Gaming" general discussion board in there and then merge "Classic" and "Neo" together for a "mainline FF outside FFVII" (with a better name) section as a subforum. We can either keep Sub-FF or merge it and just have a general FF subforum.

If you take a look at the forums and subforums yourself (on the main forum page), I'm sure you'll agree that there are many cases like this.

Since this has the potential to affect everyone's browsing experience with the board, I would like thoughts and feedback on the matter before I plough ahead with optimisations people might be dead-set against.

 

[Lulcielid]

My board layout idea:

Everything Final Fantasy VII (Compilation stuff + Misc VII stuff)

• Everything Final Fantasy VII Remake (subforum)

Mainline Final Fantasy Series (Everything non VII related)

• Final Fantasy spin-offs (subforum)

Square Enix published games (for any other franchise or one-off game(s) developed/published by Square Enix, such as Kingdom Hearts, Nier, Dragon Quest, etc)

 

[Tetsujin]

I've been having thoughts about this for some time

We definitely have way too many subforums. All the non-FFVII stuff can basically go into a single subforum imo. Including spin-offs. Why is there even an FF Tactics subforum? Not sure even Kingdom Hearts needs its own forum. Most of these titles don't have enough discussion and activity to warrant an entire subsection. Tactics subforum has only 10 threads.
So -> All things Final Fantasy (outside VII) and maybe -> Everything Square Enix

All the FFVII stuff (outside the Remake) can go into a single subforum as well.

So ->FFVII Remake and FFVII Original+Complication imo.

 

[Claymore]

I'm a purist, I only ever use the forum tree, as I like to read things from top-to-bottom in all sections in a natural flow. I don't ever use 'new'. This also helps me to see threads that I may have dismissed and marked as read initially, but might later prompt me to have a look, post in there, and engage with a topic or someone.

Definitely agree that the current layout needs a little tidy, as does the main site once you're ready to tackle that. The way I see it:

TLS

• MERGE || News & Articles + TLS Content Releases
• SUBFORUM WITHIN MERGE || TLS Content Discussions

Anything created for the Frontpage or the YT channel is all for TLS anyway (and there isn't a massive amount of either to make this big distinction between them) so both sections should be merged into one to represent our unified output. Following on from that, the Discussions section should be made into a sub-forum within.

FINAL FANTASY

• MERGE || Classic + Neo + Sub FF

All the FF titles should now be merged into a single forum, including those sub categories.

COMPILATION OF FF VII

• MERGE || Compilation General + Pre-Crisis + Post-Crisis
• SUBFORUM WITHIN MERGE || Compilation Fan Creations
• KEEP || FF VII forum
• KEEP || FF VII Remake forum

All the compilation sections can be merged into one, with the Fan Creations a sub-category within that. I would keep the Original VII and Remake separate. Not only are they two completely different beasts, but Remake is the big draw (and will continue to be) so hiding it within a sub-category of the Original VII or something, doesn't make much tactical sense.

GAMING

• MOVE || Gaming to the new FF / Game section

Definitely agree with this idea, Lex. I would move Gaming to the new merged section of FFs.

SITE FORUMS, PROJECTS & STAFF

• MOVE || Community Events to TLS Content section
• MOVE || News Reports to TLS Content Discussions subforum

I would move Community Events to the top. It goes hand-in-hand with the Content for the site / YT and fostering a community. As for the News Reports, I can see that it might have been relevant at one time, but I don't feel like it currently is. Once news does hit, it's being talked about everywhere. However, if you wanted to keep it, I'd throw it into the TLS Content Discussions area, since that is where any content we'd create (frontpage news or otherwise) would spawn from it naturally anyway.

Any massive forum news can stick to the top, so the Forum News / Feedback / Private Feedback can remain at the bottom of the board.


Just my two pence.

 

[Roger]

I'n with Claymore on what to do with FFVII sections.

 

[Lex]

I agree with Claymore too, that was kind of how I envisioned it in my head (with some of Lulcy's ideas in there too). I'll get to work on it today and look to see if further optimisations can be made.

 

[Obsidian Fire]

I agree with Claymore. Especially about moving the Community Events section to the top if the forum. That would keep it from being lost and make it much more obvious when people come to the forum that we do have a community that does interact with itself.

 

[The Twilight Mexican]

I agree with Claymore too, that was kind of how I envisioned it in my head (with some of Lulcy's ideas in there too). I'll get to work on it today and look to see if further optimisations can be made.

This basically. Some combination of those ideas and Tets's observations as well.

 

[Ite]

I really like having OG, Remake, and Compilation in their on separate subforums. They are three different bodies of work by three different teams. If this were a Star Wars forum I would also imagine the OT, Prequels, and Disney so categorized, or a GRRM forum making a distinction between book and movie canons.

The Compilation Forum flags a thread as “probably not relevant to Ite’s interests” and yes there are exceptions, but I approach that section knowing that I’m an outsider, whereas I feel I can be as salty as I want in the OG forum.

So basically, I also agree with Claymore. Everything else sounds real swell.

 

[Lex]

OK I've looked into it a bit and it's not an easy process (there is no way to "merge" boards the same way you can merge threads). It's therefore going to be a case of manually moving all the threads in a board to another, renaming the board and then deleting the old (empty) board. It'll take a while but it's totally doable. I'll start some work on it tonight. I'll put out an announcement that it's happening too, with a direct to this thread so people know what's up.

 

[Lex]

Step 1 complete: All content in "news and articles" moved into TLS Content Releases and TLS Content Discussion (where appropriate). News and Articles is now gone . TLS Content Discussion and News Reports are now children of TLS Content Releases.

 

[Lex]

Step 2 complete: All content in pre and post crisis sections moved to compilation general. Both boards deleted. Fan creations is now a subforum of the compilation board. Compilation general renamed to Compilation of FFVII, section renamed;

 

[Tetsujin]

Nice~

 

[Ite]

That's an honest day's work there Lex. Much appreciated.

 

[Lex]

Step 3 complete;

- Final Fantasy section renamed as "Gaming"
- "Gaming" forum renamed to "General Gaming"
- "General Gaming" forum moved to "Gaming" Section
- "Final Fantasy Competitions" subforum archived
- All 3 subforums of "sub-final fantasy" merged into parent forum (Sub Final Fantasy) - why the hell did Tactics, KH and some other random things have their own forum anyway? :/
- Board "Classic FF" merged into Sub FF
- Board "Neo FF" merged into Sub FF
- Sub FF renamed Final Fantasy



I made a snafu here - Kingdom Hearts had its own small subforum. I should have moved this to General Gaming, but it's in Final Fantasy. I suppose it doesn't matter much but if we really care we can move those threads as and when we need/ want to.

 

[Lex]

I'll do before and afters because this is a biggie (and hopefully the final step, barring further feedback/ optimisations):

Our chit chat/ general discussion sections;




Step 5;

 

[Claymore]

Awesome job Lex!

 

[Mother]

Love it!!!!

 

[Lex]

...thinking about it, do we need a separate "Technology" forum? Should we merge it with Entertainment, or Chit Chat maybe?

 

[The Twilight Mexican]

Seeing as it's still pretty new, I think leave it for now and revisit the need later on.

If I had one suggestion for improvement, I think the sub-forum for the original FFVII should probably be called precisely that, and it should probably sit higher on that branch than the sub- for the Compilation.

Anywho, awesome work, dude. Like, for real.

 

[LicoriceAllsorts]

Shouldn't "Deepground Questions" be in the Compilation section?

Sorry, that sounds like nitpicking. Great work, Lex. It's really intuitively organised and easy to find my way around.

 

[The Twilight Mexican]

Shouldn't "Deepground Questions" be in the Compilation section?

It was posted there, though, because the original poster was asking about Deepground in relation to the original game.

 

[Lex]

^I had that same thought about the deepground questions thing and then came to the same conclusion, although the title annoys me because it does LOOK like it's in the wrong section #pedantic

If I had one suggestion for improvement, I think the sub-forum for the original FFVII should probably be called precisely that, and it should probably sit higher on that branch than the sub- for the Compilation.

I agree, but what would you call it? I was thinking something like Final Fantasy VII (Original Game) but that's like, bland and shit. Also it's not a subforum, it's a forum, it's just within a category. Unless I'm mis-understanding your meaning haha

 

[The Twilight Mexican]

Category thing, yeah, whichever. =P

And I would just call it "Classic Final Fantasy VII" or something like that.

 

[LicoriceAllsorts]

FFVII: 1997 version or FFVII: Original Game would work for me. Blandness doesn't matter; we just want to find what we're looking for.