Major Forum Changes
Posted: Fri Mar 16, 2012 11:28 pm
I think we need to improve the community - make it more social, make it look better to the outside world, and make it easier for new people to fit in. There are a few changes I would make (changes to the Wiki, score lists, website organization, guestbook, etc.), and one of the big ones is to change the structure of the forum. I think the forum is currently structured in a confusing way and it would be better if it was more predictable and social. Right now, there's really no good place to put certain things. And, since almost every other community is centered around a forum, it's very likely that people come to msinfo and see how empty the forum is and assume we just don't have an active community.
Also, I think we should start posting more on the forum. That means that instead of posting things on the guestbook (or, in addition to!) people should post them on the forum. A guestbook is designed for viewing a couple of posts at a time, and not organized to allow for any real social activity. The more people post, the harder it is to find stuff, so having a large active community never happens. However, a forum is perfectly designed for lots of posts, and in fact the more people post the busier the forum will look and the more likely it is that people will post here. So, the community grows exponentially
I've seen this before. Over many years, I've watched the cubing community grow from a Yahoo group to a huge forum. I started out in 2004 or so (I don't even remember) learning from a bunch of websites and following discussions by people far more knowledgeable than me on their Yahoo group (which moved, but never all that quickly). For a while the #rubik IRC channel was the home of much of the active community. Then, in 2008 or so, the speedsolving forum was started. Ever since then, things have really expanded. We regularly get new cubes, new ideas, new solving methods, new people. The average quality of discussion has gone down a bit, but the intelligent people and great ideas are still there - and everyone has more of a reason to stay there because they have so many friendly people to talk to. There's nothing about minesweeper that prevents this from happening to our community too. Look at how big saolei is.
I'm happy to talk way more about this to anyone who's interested. I'm willing to dedicate a lot of time to it, and I've got plenty of coding experience if the website needs to be modified at all. And I'm convinced that the Minesweeper community can get big, and friendly, and even respected. All we need to do is rethink the way we communicate with each other.
Here is one possible way to organize the forum.
- Social Discussion (category)
- - Introductions (new section)
- - General Chat (new section)
- - Off-Topic (= Off Topic)
- Minesweeper Discussion (category)
- - Minesweeper Chat (= General Talk)
- - Math & Theory (= Math & Theory)
- - Personal Records (new section, people would create a new topic when they break a big record, and we could also have a "post your records here" thread like in the nonosweeper forums for smaller accomplishments)
- - - Flagging (= Stats (Flagging))
- - - Non-Flagging (= Stats (NF))
- - Software (= Clones, but also allowing discussion of non-official versions)
- - The World Ranking (= The World Ranking, we can keep the subforums)
- - Tournaments (= Tournaments)
- Site Discussion (category)
- - Announcements (new section - only moderators can post here, but all can read it, and these get put on the front page of the website... this would include new WRs and milestones, clone updates, big site changes/decisions, etc.)
- - Wiki Discussion (new section - more people should have wiki access!)
- - Website Comments and Changes
Also, I think we should start posting more on the forum. That means that instead of posting things on the guestbook (or, in addition to!) people should post them on the forum. A guestbook is designed for viewing a couple of posts at a time, and not organized to allow for any real social activity. The more people post, the harder it is to find stuff, so having a large active community never happens. However, a forum is perfectly designed for lots of posts, and in fact the more people post the busier the forum will look and the more likely it is that people will post here. So, the community grows exponentially
I've seen this before. Over many years, I've watched the cubing community grow from a Yahoo group to a huge forum. I started out in 2004 or so (I don't even remember) learning from a bunch of websites and following discussions by people far more knowledgeable than me on their Yahoo group (which moved, but never all that quickly). For a while the #rubik IRC channel was the home of much of the active community. Then, in 2008 or so, the speedsolving forum was started. Ever since then, things have really expanded. We regularly get new cubes, new ideas, new solving methods, new people. The average quality of discussion has gone down a bit, but the intelligent people and great ideas are still there - and everyone has more of a reason to stay there because they have so many friendly people to talk to. There's nothing about minesweeper that prevents this from happening to our community too. Look at how big saolei is.
I'm happy to talk way more about this to anyone who's interested. I'm willing to dedicate a lot of time to it, and I've got plenty of coding experience if the website needs to be modified at all. And I'm convinced that the Minesweeper community can get big, and friendly, and even respected. All we need to do is rethink the way we communicate with each other.
Here is one possible way to organize the forum.
- Social Discussion (category)
- - Introductions (new section)
- - General Chat (new section)
- - Off-Topic (= Off Topic)
- Minesweeper Discussion (category)
- - Minesweeper Chat (= General Talk)
- - Math & Theory (= Math & Theory)
- - Personal Records (new section, people would create a new topic when they break a big record, and we could also have a "post your records here" thread like in the nonosweeper forums for smaller accomplishments)
- - - Flagging (= Stats (Flagging))
- - - Non-Flagging (= Stats (NF))
- - Software (= Clones, but also allowing discussion of non-official versions)
- - The World Ranking (= The World Ranking, we can keep the subforums)
- - Tournaments (= Tournaments)
- Site Discussion (category)
- - Announcements (new section - only moderators can post here, but all can read it, and these get put on the front page of the website... this would include new WRs and milestones, clone updates, big site changes/decisions, etc.)
- - Wiki Discussion (new section - more people should have wiki access!)
- - Website Comments and Changes