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Subforuming
09-08-2008, 01:54 PM
The suggestion has been made that we spin off the Ship Registry and the Gazetteer (at the very least) as subforums. Any objections?
-- Bob
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None from me.
We could spin the Character Thread into a subforum as well...
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Rob Kelk
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My objections to making multiple Fenspace forums waaaaay back in the day still apply here. With the low activity, splitting the forum just makes for dividing a
very small pie into even smaller chunks.
Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery
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I'm kind of in a mixed state of mind about this. For the most part I agree with Fnord in that the low activity here makes spliting the forum practically
unnecessary. On the other hand, the Fenspace forum has a bunch of sticky/pinned topics that are rarely updated (and we have the wiki now) that could be COULD
placed in a sub-forum for reference like the archived fic recomendations threads.
Not exactly the best proposal I know, but I don't see any other reason for making a sub-forum for Fenspace.
Put me down as a tentative no on the subforums. From what little I can see - and I might be wrong - it appears that new posts in a subforum don't
immediately show up on the main board. In other words, there's no immediate way to tell if there's a new addition to them. While we might have a lot of
stickied threads here, at least you can see immediately if they've been updated when you enter the Fenspace forum. If I'm wrong, or looking in the
wrong place for the indicator, please correct me. I'd love to know how to tell. But right now...I say no.
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Well, at least from what I've seen since implementing, the subforums appear at the top of the forum above the threads, and have their own "new"
flagging.
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Cobalt's mention of the FenWiki reminded me that we don't really use the stickies much any more... I still have no objections, but unless we start
using the stickies again, is there any point to making them their own subforums?
--
Rob Kelk
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them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."
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Well, if we don't want to put the Registries and the Gazetter into subforums, then we really ought to get rid of them.
You have to bear in mind my original argument: with all that information grouped together in a single thread it makes it nigh impossible to find a specific
entry without resorting to a forum search. Really, I should only have to do that if something I'm after is in an old thread several pages back in the
forum.
Now, I know that we still get plenty of use from the Vehicle Registry thread because people still post their stuff there. Not everyone has moved over to the
Wiki like I have. That aside, we can use a Vehicles Subforum to discuss the subject matter there before we post it on the Fenspace Wiki.
For that matter, you can probably split everything in here off into subforums: Vehicles, Stories, Gazetter, and etc., etc., etc. Point is, I'm getting
tired of wading through the mish-mash.
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My counterpoint to that is the Fenspace forum has just under 5,000 posts in 350 topics. We don't have the kind of commentariat traffic that would require
bouncing everything off into different forums. All we'd end up with is a gaggle of empty subgroups.
Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery
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Well then let's at least get rid of the stickies that we don't need anymore - they're kinda cluttering things up and we have the Wiki for that.
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Okay, then, nominate the sticky threads you want gone.
-- Bob
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Quote: Okay, then, nominate the sticky threads you want gone.
If it was up to me, I'd nominate "Glossary", "Gazetteer/Encyclopedia", "Places in Fenspace", and "Grand Unified Timeline" - they're the ones that have completely migrated to the Wiki and haven't been updated since.
--
Rob Kelk
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A list has been nominated. Anybody want to add or subtract from that list?
Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery
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Actually, I recently modified the Glossary before realizing that there was a copy on the Wiki. If we're going to nuke it, I should make sure my additions
(tho' not my deletions) are echoed there first.
-- Bob
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Assuming I get there first, I don't plan on nuking any threads, just de-stickying. So they'll still be *around* in the archive, just not floating at
the top of the pack.
Never know when a historical record might come in handy, after all.
Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery
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Character Thread and Contact Info. The former because it hasn't gotten any use since January and that has pretty much migrated to the Wiki as well. Contact info for similar reasons, plus who wants that lying around for any spammers to come sniffing around for?
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Okay, two categories then: Unstickying, and complete nukage. Who wants what where?
-- Bob
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My recommendation is unstickying all the current threads except the welcome, the rules & the contact info. No thread deletions.
Rationale: The welcome's traditional, so what the hell. The rules are both static and important, so they ought to be visible to first-time contributors.
The contact info... well, there's no public contact info for anybody in the wiki (I have a list of valid email addys for wiki users, but I have admin
access) and not everybody who reads the forum watches the wiki or contributes directly, so.
Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery
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What Mal said, and for the same reasons.
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Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."
- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012
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