forum reoganization for next game

example:
should we try to get a 4th subforum out of TF?
should we reorganize some forums?

why:
we could seperate some information in that one. at the moment, election polls clutter the normal polls very much, so normal polls are almost overseen.



a proposal could be to make a subforum for
* senate (sticky)
* provinces (sticky)
* counties (unsticky)
* cities (unsticky)

the election could then go as unsticky threads to the government forum.
it would hold:
* departmental threads (sticky)
* turn-chat threads (unsticky)
* elections (unsticky)

we should also discuss reorganizing the citizen forum:
no sticky threads except of:
* index to citizen groups
* index to important discussion
* judical request thread (reviews and pi-requests)
* citizen honours hall of fame

the main forum could hold:
sticky:
* citizen registry
* geographical society (maps)
* turn-chat index
* governmental index (links to departments and provinces and constitution)
* news thread
unsticky:
* census stats
* civilizational stats
* history stats
etc.

i would really like to see more sticky index-threads instead of sticky threads. we should maybe have a rule on how stickyness can be achieved (executive vote for all subforums except citizen forum, there it will be a citizen vote).

open for discussion
we may have to spawn some topics from this one

I'm not really sure I should go near a second forum reorganization discussion. The first one almost got me banned...

I'm personally doubtful that TF would give us yet another subforum... and even more doubtful that we need it. Four fora should be more than enough space to conduct a the demogame. We just need to exercise more self-control when it comes to making threads sticky, and use the existing fora more efficiently.
For example if we kept the government forum cleaner we wouldn't need to make any of the threads sticky at all, which would make it a lot easier to read and prevent people missing out on the non-stick threads because they've dissappeared off the bottom of the screen.
The citizen's forum could also do with some aggressive un-sticking. I would be in favour of letting all threads in that forum be subject to natural selection, with exceptions perhaps made for seriously game altering threads such as discussions on Constitutional changes.
The polls forum is fine as it is. Sticky-free and thus easy to browse.
The main forum is the only one which I think benefits from extensive stickiness. Most of the posts there contain useful information which deserves to be highly visible at all times, and shouldn't be pushed down by posts from brand new citizens who don't yet know how the multi-forum system here works. I'd suggest moving the "Newbies' Shed" thread onto the main forum to make it one of the first things a new citizen sees when they browse the fora.

Lecture over

Well, i believe its needed. We couldnt even see the polls of the game due to the elections being held as sticky threads in the poll subforum.

Election polls could be placed in the main forum, unstickied. There is far less dynamic content there than in any other forum.

We don't need a judical request thread as those can be posted directly in the Judiciary thread in the Government sub-forum.

the above were just examples. i put up a "judical request" thread in the citizen forum to show ppl could request things there at any time. it is the closest department to the citizens we have (from our organizational view).

having elections in the main forum with its 10 sticky threads will keep them hidden. they could even get down on other pages than 1 with the old unstickied clutter in there.

we should also investigate if only some should be allowed to open new threads there (is this possible to ensure via rights in the forum?).

Perhaps having the election threads stickied in the main forum would make it much more visible. That's the first thing people will see.

if stickied they'd obscure the informational posts that are usually stuck at the top of the main forum. I'd prefer them to be in the main forum in a non-sticky form.

We should have far fewer sticky threads.

agreed

Maybe have an "Election index" (maybe stcky) for every election (ie. Term 2 election), linking to all the Election polls (ie. Military leader). That way not only is the single threat in sticky format always visible, but would give the citizens a better Idea which ones they have yet to vote in. Such as last term some of the Provincial elections had VERY low poll counts late in the election due to the fact that they got lost near the bottom.

I also suggest the polls and the "index" would go in the Main forum.

Also I think ALL citizens groups should be Unsticked from the Citizen forum, and any obsolete or "LONG" dead threads. I agree there's too many Sticky threads. However, it seems most other people seem to be more annoyed at them than I am, probobly cause I just view it at a higher resolution than most (1024x768, when most use 800x600)

Indexes are definitely the way to go. With a sticky election index the actual polls could be left unstuck. Same with the citizen groups - have an index and leave the groups unstuck. Same with city threads.

The election-index could hold the nominations and the elections--->good idea!

The poll index is already there for polls.

We have a group index(=group registry). So there is definitely no need for stickied citizen groups.

Informational threads tend to show no activity, but are nevertheless important as sticky threads (see geographical society, though this changed there this term).

Maybe the citizen forum would really need 5-6 stickies, 2 of them indexes (important discussions and citizen groups).

Maybe even the governmental forum could work without stickyness except for an index:
One Index for departments and one for provinces (in there, the post for a province should also hold link to all cities/counties with city threads).

We should work out a process for obtaining stickyness, for example the executive council has to accept stickyness for threads or something like that (i would prefer citizen votes though, but maybe we could make poll+main+government forum decided by executive and the citizen subforum be decided by citizen poll).

It would also be interesting to find out wheter we could restrict openign rights for threads in the main forum as well as in the government forum somehow.

Having the mods open the threads is bad though, as the ownership will not be with the ppl maintaining it.

Also, just using some consistent naming conventions would help a lot. For example, using a standard naming prefix when beginning a thread would make a huge difference. Some examples could be:

"Info - ___" - informational thread, not for public reply
"Debate - ____" - citizen discussion on topical interest
"City - ___" - city thread
"Reports - ___" - offical gov't reports, similar to info, but official
"Dare - ___" - public challenge to someone to do something
"Spam - ___" - contentless drivel

You get the idea.

I agree with the many who say a big problem is the number of sticky threads.

I don't think that anyone should be able to post in needed stuff making their thread sticky. We should limit sticky's to only the most long term of topics, such as the constitution and rules, history, stuff like that.

So combining a bunch of the ideas above...

Basically keep the same setup we have now. Index everything that can be grouped instead of stickying individually. If something else is desired to be sticky, it has to be added to the appropriate section of the COS.

Does this sound basically okay?

maybe define that citizen poll decides on stickyness in citizen forum (well, its their forum no?) and cabinet vote decides on the other forums.
if we get a forum for provinces and cities, the senate should decide on stickyness there.
the guideline we should put in the COL (or even constitution?) should be to "use as less sticky threads as possible and index as many threads as possible".
we should also talk about which indexes to use. we should keep in mind that these should help finding the threads we want to find, and not confuse things even more.
maybe a department office (domestic) should be made responsible for maintaining the 1st posts of the index threads according to posts in there...?!?

i still think 1 additional forum could help alot

Putting aside for the moment the low odds that TF can spare yet another sub forum for us, I do agree with you dis, but, I am wondering if there will be a proposal coming to formalize duties for Mayors and such?

i hope so. i would like to see them RESPONSIBLE for the queues and citizen moods of their city. Also them being elected by their citizens in open vote on request by any citizen.
i would also like to see the governors responsible for provincial workers and overall organization of the province (much bigger provinces than now, good example is kashmir as of size). they would have the senate for power and a veto for any mayor's action, and also be responsible for cities without queue or mayor (note here: NOT for citizen moods of cities with mayor! if the mayor does not care for his citizens moods, then they will riot! 2 chats with riot could dispose the mayor and disqualify him for further mayor position in this city).