Request: Please clean the forum up!

I sympathize with the argument that the present forum could perhaps be better structured.  It’s also true that some parts of the board game forums are more active than others, which is hardly suprising for a forum dedicated to a game that’s been around for decades and which has gone through many different releases.  But I get the uncomfortable feeling these argument are really being used as a justification to get rid of parts of the board that simply aren’t interesting to some board members, even though they’re being presented as being independent of an avowed passion for the play-by-forum league.

So I have trouble seeing these arguments as simply being abstract, particularly since they seem to be being made in support of the premise that “there are too many forums”, a premise which naturally implies that the solution is to cut down on the number of forums.  I respectfully disagree with both the premise and the implied solution.  I find the forums dedicated to the various board games to be both valuable and interesting, both from a current viewpoint and from viewpoint of the historical evolution of the A&A game line.

I’ve never had a problem seeing this site’s board game and historical forums (in which I’m very interested) co-existing with the other forums dedicated to other A&A topics in which I have no interest whatsoever (the miniatures, the play-by-forum league).  To me, this diversity is what makes A&A.org such a great site: the fact that it caters to all facets of the A&A hobby.  I’d hate to see A&A.org lose its diversity, and if it did so I doubt that I’d continue to be interested in it.

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 games

What 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.

Based on what it looks like now, what is the before and after for forum sections dealing with tournaments?

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?

The mistake that WOTC made is they hated Avalon Hill and with it Axis and Allies. They put no effort to cater to anybody and that site is totally dead for like 10 years ( since 2004).

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.

The only real thing i want is a few child boards for house rules for the top 3-4 games, so it would be easy to find what their is on just the main games.

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.

Independently from my passion for the league I am convinced it would be clearly preferable to reduce the amount of forums by ~80%

This would destroy the forums!  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.

We must remember that just because an idea makes complete sense doesn’t mean that IL is to blame if it doesn’t happen… not all organizational decisions are his call, and even though he is trying his best to clean up the forums, there is only so much he is authorized to do.

I can’t create new or remove forum sections. All i do if move threads that don’t belong to their correct sections, sticky them, etc. Djensen is the only one who makes decisions.

I hope to address these issues when I move everything over to NodeBB.

There are a few different themes for NodeBB but this is the default:
https://community.nodebb.org/

I’m hoping to do more organization via tags. Fewer top level forums and a plethora of tags to find what you need.

Would it be possible to have separate house rules sections for each game, with maybe a general house rules topic for broader suggestions?

Lumping all HRs together doesn’t make any sense.

I vote for that too. And separate sections for Flashmans House rules. JK

@djensen:

I hope to address these issues when I move everything over to NodeBB.

There are a few different themes for NodeBB but this is the default:
https://community.nodebb.org/

I’m hoping to do more organization via tags. Fewer top level forums and a plethora of tags to find what you need.

I’m all for updates/improvements and suggestions but Good lord please don’t use that NodeBB! Gah! (Unless it can be streamlined/organized)

Reminds me of this:

There’s so much barf on the screen It makes me nauseous! :(

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.

It would help if people would actually read through the titles of the forum sections first. Secondly, those could be cleaned up a bit. I would also encourage people to click on the “Who’s online” title of the boards. 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.

@Gargantua:

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.