Forum is "messy"

[allisapp]

I wasn't sure where to put this, but I just wanted to tell my opinion about the forum.

Aarinfantasy is a great forum, but because of the amount of users/posters, lots of the threads gets buried easily. There is lots and lots of sticky-threads, which makes it harder to browse the forum. And look, for example "Community Café" -board. There is lots of locked threads, which could be removed, or moved to a place like thrash can. (So that the post count won't drop, I think people wouldn't like that...)

To put it simply, there is so much useless threads it makes very hard to browse each board and some threads gets buried underneath the most active ones. (Mostly the chat-like threads, can't you just make a new board for it...)

Anyways, I was hoping you could give this a moment of thought. Is the suggestion totally useless, or does some users agree with me?

// Same thing, for example, with World of Yaoicraft -board. It has been closed for a long time, and last message there was in 2010.

[Schneider]

Well I would say at least the stickies need to be cleaned up in all sections and only the recent/current relevance ones kept. Many sections have really, really outdated stickies that serve no purpose whatsoever except confusing newer members who read those stickies.


As for WOY, I *think* it was kept open on purpose to allow members who played the game to access that forum and view old posts. WOY was never permanently shut down, only discontinued till its bugs fixes came out.

[AlexiaLee]

Hi!

Thx a lot for your feedback.

Just a couple of things though, the posts in the Community Cafe don't increase your post count so those threads are deleted once in a while (or never actually, some of them are important for the record, like the SAS threads).

As for the sticky threads in the Community Café... believe it or not they all need to be there ^^;; as far as I know, some of those threads (or their reincarnations) have been there since the very beginning of the forum in 2005.

And your point about making a chat-like board, well the Community Cafe exists exactly for that purpose: Rules

Also, have you encountered this problem in other subforums? If so, feel free to reply to this thread so we can check them out too.

//The WoY section is currently under revamping (info) so I don't think Dai-kun would move that one.

[allisapp]

So "Do you Tweet? We Follow!", "Life Issues/Advice VIII" or "Post ALL Youtube/Google Video links here! II" are absolutely necessary to be put as a sticky? Especially the video links -thread, as the last time someone posted there was in December, and the third person before that (two users posted in December) posted in March?

I think it's good to have sticky thread, especially for rules, guides and such threads, but I hope you dont mind, but the ones I just put as an example makes it harder for (new) users to locate the more important sticky threads.

I just quickly browsed the other sections as well, and I think the biggest, and maybe the only "problem section" is Community Cafe, because it's pretty much the most active one. I think the problem is that due to its activityness lots of threads gets full easily --> has to be locked.

Oh, and sorry, by chat-like threads I meant the umm... family threads? To be honest, I am not totally clear what is their purpose, but it's kind of weird that there's few that kind of threads, where people just talk about random stuff with specific people. But I guess making a whole new board for them is also kinda useless, as there isn't that many family-threads in the end.

And about the WOY-section. In that case, I understand! Hopefully we will see it active some time. 83

Also, sorry if I sound like I am complaining a lot. Honestly speaking, Aarinfantasy is really refreshing and nice place, but like other forums, even this forum can be turned as more refreshing, nicer and more user-friendly for new users. At this point I must admit that for a new user as myself, the "messiness" makes the forum hard to navigate.

[fataltea]

As far as the family-type chat threads go... there really isn't a purpose to those, other than to allow people to chat without a specific topic in mind. They're open to anyone, with the "family" theme being nothing much more than a way to label the thread. ^^ This type of thread is nice - it keeps the spam down in other threads, and it gives people a way to communicate outside of VM's and PM's. And yes, you are correct, the Community Cafe is exactly for this type of thread, so there would be no reason to move them elsewhere.

The stickies in the Community Cafe, like AlexiaLee said, are there mainly because they've always been there. Although I think you're right about the video links thread.. that probably doesn't need to be there anymore, but I'm not entirely sure how anyone else feels about that. As far as Life Issues and such stickies go.. well, my view is that the moment we take down those types of threads, people will start making similar new topics.. which might be why they're stickied to begin with? Maybe?

[AlexiaLee]

It's ok, actually I'm always happy to read suggestions about how to make the forum more friendly to new users

So let me see... yup these two:
"Do you Tweet? We Follow!", "Life Issues/Advice VIII"

are a good example of the millenary sticky threads XDDD, specially the life issues one. That one is like a really warming unique kind of support in AF and has been there since 2005 (the original one). And the other reason, as fataltea already said, is that if it's gone from the sticky section, more similar threads will arise.

And yes, I also agree that just the video one could be unstickied but the rest of them... will remain there ^^;;

[aarinfantasy]

Hi there, I can say there is a need to remove some stickies there now and some may need time to re-organize to somewhere else.

I am gonna remove/unsticky:
Post ALL Youtube/Google Video links here! II
Secret Aarin Santa 2013 - this is a closed thread already

Will continue to look around the forum to clean up when I can. ^_^

[Schneider]

Some threads you could review I think..some of them are actually useful or discourage individual threads about similar topics, but no one has posted in them since long so they are better being revived or removed in my opinion.

http://aarinfantasy.com/forum/f212/t...-previews.html
http://aarinfantasy.com/forum/f30/t1...r-reviews.html
http://aarinfantasy.com/forum/f30/t1...er-points.html (not sure if this is active?)
http://aarinfantasy.com/forum/f303/t...ew-member.html
http://aarinfantasy.com/forum/f203/t...iend-code.html (?? no post since 2012)
http://aarinfantasy.com/forum/f141/t...ion-drama.html (this is closed to new replied I think..? is it relevant..last post 2007)

[celtic7irish]

Hi there, I can say there is a need to remove some stickies there now and some may need time to re-organize to somewhere else.

I am gonna remove/unsticky:
Post ALL Youtube/Google Video links here! II
Secret Aarin Santa 2013 - this is a closed thread already

Will continue to look around the forum to clean up when I can. ^_^

Thanks for the heads up. I'll go ahead and copy the data from the SAS thread to my computer. We use it for each consecutive year for formatting, and we tend to just delete the old one when we make a new one. I'll go ahead and get that copied now, so that I have it for future reference. Thanks, aarin!

[fataltea]

Some threads you could review I think..some of them are actually useful or discourage individual threads about similar topics, but no one has posted in them since long so they are better being revived or removed in my opinion.

http://aarinfantasy.com/forum/f212/t...-previews.html
http://aarinfantasy.com/forum/f30/t1...r-reviews.html
http://aarinfantasy.com/forum/f30/t1...er-points.html (not sure if this is active?)
http://aarinfantasy.com/forum/f303/t...ew-member.html
http://aarinfantasy.com/forum/f203/t...iend-code.html (?? no post since 2012)
http://aarinfantasy.com/forum/f141/t...ion-drama.html (this is closed to new replied I think..? is it relevant..last post 2007)

Thanks Schneider. I took a look at these...

http://aarinfantasy.com/forum/f212/t...-previews.html should be removed unless updated
http://aarinfantasy.com/forum/f30/t1...r-reviews.html still needed? just temporarily closed
http://aarinfantasy.com/forum/f30/t1...er-points.html dunno for this one
http://aarinfantasy.com/forum/f303/t...ew-member.html still active?
http://aarinfantasy.com/forum/f203/t...iend-code.html removed from sticky
http://aarinfantasy.com/forum/f141/t...ion-drama.html no idea on this one, probably can be removed from sticky though

@aarinfantasy; Your thoughts?