What if when you click FORUM on A&A.org you go to a page that asks
“Do you want the play boardgames section?”
or
“Do you want the game details, FAQ, and discussion/history section?”
not saying it’s the solution, just an option.
If the site was to be structured around this basic two-part division (and I’m not saying that it should be structured that way), I’d prefer to have the site split into two separate sections to which people could go directly. This would be quicker and less awkward than having to start each browsing session by having to choose an option, which in my mind would be an annoying extra step that I’d have to take every time I go to the site.
There are more guests than members looking up all kinds of topics that many here might call useless but obviously are of interest to many.
50% of those would be spam computers trying to click membership to join the site with nefarious website. These programs randomly click anything until a certain destination comes up, since the program can’t read. But then they are jacked because they need to read the caption and enter it. Almost 3 years ago we used to have like 13,000 new accounts ( in one month)….all spammers.
@Imperious:
There are more guests than members looking up all kinds of topics that many here might call useless but obviously are of interest to many.
50% of those would be spam computers trying to click membership to join the site with nefarious website. These programs randomly click anything until a certain destination comes up, since the program can’t read. But then they are jacked because they need to read the caption and enter it. Almost 3 years ago we used to have like 13,000 new accounts….all spammers.
Didnt know that IL. � All and all I don’t think the forum is horribly messed up. If people actually take the time to read and search, they may discover that there are a lot of cool things you can learn and do on this forum.
Secondly, addressing tripleA, I only use it offline. The OP made reference to there needing to be “cleanup” at the expense of much of the other content on the board. IMO I think the fans of tripleA would do those who want to play, and those who would probably play, a huge service by maintaining more current updates and tutorials on how to get started. As well as better info to all the aforementioned aspects of tripleA.
This isn’t a slam on tripleA, but I wouldn’t call it the most user friendly system of online play, nor is it intuitive. So that said, if some of the tripleA enthusiasts were to better organize the information available, people might be more inclined to use the system.
As for traffic mentioned by the OP. I think tripleA drives a HUGE portion of the traffic here. One thing that was not to be mentioned, is the fact that the other resources that help tripleA players understand the game is provided through the Axis & Allies forum discussions many times.
Anyways I’m glad David Jensen has given us this great site and continues to improve it.
Edited for punctuation, grammar and spelling…lol…ahh smart phones.
Yep great post as usual.
@Imperious:
Suggested structure for the current play by forum category:
Play other members by forum: Friendly or competitive
- A&A G40 league - Meet, follow and play the best A&A players in the world
- A&A G40 Tournaments
- A&A G40 Friendly gamesWhat about people not playing G40? Shall we have unique sections for those folks? I can’t believe people just can’t find games to play online as a result of the forum structure.
Hey there,
thanks for the fruitful discussion about that topic. I try to pick up as many posts as I can. As a quick start regarding the quote:
I guess we can simply remove the G40 from the forum titles. As far as I know league games are 90+% G40. However as the thread titles are supposed to tag the game anyway, league games of other variants can imo simply coexist next to the G40 games.
The alternative is of course to make a separate board for all other variants. Is there a significant amount of forum and league games which are NOT G40
Cheers,
Tobias
@Imperious:
Of course, games like D-Day and Guadalcanal are not active, but what are we to start doing here? Just combine all the games and make it impossible to find info on the game somebody just bought?
I see three options here:
1. Yes combine them. Apparently nobody is interested in those variants why reserving an inactive forum for eternity
2. Combine them and tag the game variants of the relevant threads in the title
3. At least put the variants in child boards
Further, i don’t really ever see you post in any section other than the online game. Perhaps if you participate you may gain an understanding of the benefit of the current structure.
I do post in the G40 global strategy section too and try to give beginners advice as good as I can. However its true that I only post to G40 relevant threads.
People should find exactly what they want as efficient as possible. Wait till the Forums migrate to the new software, then well have a clearer understanding of what exactly is needed or not.
Could you elaborate on that? What migration is going to happen?
This would destroy the forums!
I disagree. I have lots of experience managing huge online communities and the worst thing a forum can do is being an inactive monster. The cleaner the structure and the higher the activity level in each board the better. You might want to split forums if the traffic of new topics exceeds one page every 1-2 days. But even the active forums are miles away from that.
I suspect you want the 20% being your online tournament boards, with one mega board of every game in one section? So look at the popularity of the top boards.
I kind of receive that part of your post as offensive as its sounds like an accusation of me being selfish only interested in “my variant” to be most prominent :(
I already regret the part of my initial post I made about G40.
Believe me, I am genuinely interested in a forum structure which is the best for the entire community. I believe that in any community those sections which drive the most traffic should be treated carefully and being represented accordingly as they might drive most attraction to new members. This is under the assumption that every traffic has the same value. regarding this the G40 traffic has to be discounted significantly as 95%+ of the posts are automatically created post histories. However I still believe that the largest amount of active forum members does play G40, right?
Cheers,
Tobias
Secondly, addressing tripleA, I only use it offline. The OP made reference to there needing to be “cleanup” at the expense of much of the other content on the board. IMO I think the fans of tripleA would do those who want to play, and those who would probably play, a huge service by maintaining more current updates and tutorials on how to get started. As well as better info to all the aforementioned aspects of tripleA.
This isn’t a slam on tripleA, but I wouldn’t call it the most user friendly system of online play, nor is it intuitive. So that said, if some of the tripleA enthusiasts were to better organize the information available, people might be more inclined to use the system.
I totally agree that things that provide guidance and structure in individual forums need to be created be community enthusiasts. This is still a non-profit platform I guess and a community like that is the sum of its active members contributing.
I read from the discussion posts in total:
My gut feeling says that nothing is gonna change regardless how many posts and arguments I would raise, it’s like that, right?
I read so far:
1. Partly agree that the forum structure is suboptimal
2. Lots of disagreement about any idea to significantly clean up the structure and reduce the amount of forums
3. Despite agreement at some aspects the final decision needs to be done by Mr. Jensen and I am not sure that anybody is going to involve him? And if so he might not be interested in any change?
4. It’s partly annoying work and as this is a non profit forum it is not granted that the effort will pay off
It’s definitely fine and I am aware I am in a comfortable position to request changes in the forum I can use for free which need to be done by others which won’t get paid for doing the related work.
I would simply try to save everybody’s time in not investing more into that discussion.
I wanted to make my point and I did it.
I wanted to start a discussion and I got it.
Thanks for that and best regards,
Tobias
regarding the mentioned migration I saw this post now: http://www.axisandallies.org/forums/index.php?topic=34443.0
ignore that question please :-)
How about two completely separate websites by David J? One for online tripleA players, and one for forum boards and discussion.
@Young:
How about two completely separate websites by David J? One for online tripleA players, and one for forum boards and discussion.
I would definitely like to be able to click on “show unread posts since last visit” and not have to sort through everybody’s tripleA games. Pretty please!
