Forum Organization!

He Fe – New Organization of the site looks great!

Thought I'd start a thread for any ongoing discussion of how to organize our Forum.

Couple small things to start:

1) the Nomination threads for Foreign and the Presidency shouldn't be stickied. (they should just float like all the other nomination threads) – at least in my opinion.

2) Also – maybe at some point you can edit your post in the "Information for New Members" sticky to include all the most important links in the first post.

Link to the Constitution, Link to Key strategy threads, etc… all right there in the first post?



Thanks again for setting this up!

The nomination threads were stickied by accident by Rik. I have asked him to de-stickify them.

The beauty of this system is that anyone can add a thread to link to relivant sections ... that way it becomes a team effort ... like sharing the washing up in the heady days of Uni sharehousing

have linked this thread to the New Members sticky

I think we need to organise the stickies so that we do not have so many stickies that we have. We could put all the government stickies into a separate thread that links to them so that we do not have a myriad of stickies on the page.

@Irongold, this thread is not needed to be linked to that thread because eventually this thread will have served it's purpose

I'm thinking that new members could write down if they are having any problems with navigation or use it to make suggestions to improve.

... and if not needed, then it will sink to obscurity.

I second c_h's proposal to sticky a single government thread and use it to link to all the others.

I think that that would become too unruly and hard to follow if a single thread is used for all links ...

My impression is that the whole point of stickies is to ease the searching of important threads ... the ones that are often used will be near the top, but things that may be useful later on in the game, may get pushed down especially around election time.

What I'm trying to create is pseudo sub-forums .. for inside you will find links to thraeds as opposed to the actual threads that relate to a topic.

Therefore I would say that I am against having a single government thread because it would require some effort to go though a mess of threads to find anything.

I agree with fe.

Here's how I envision the stickies working: Each term, the officers will be allowed to post a single post for their term with links to all of the threads they deem to be important to the flow of their section. This will allow for there to be a higher number of threads :gasp: but those threads can become more organized than other places. How frustrating can it be to have to dig through 13 pages of a thread looking for a single topic? In this format, we can divide the topics up, while still having it be organized.

For example, you want to look up the department of the army - northern front, but can't find the thread at first. Easy! Go to the Defense Ministry's latest post (the current term), and click on the link. Want to find the Southern front's thread? Just hit back, and click the other link.

Bottom line, yes it may appear to be cluttered with so many stickies, but if we do it right, it is actually easier to follow, and can be very organized.

It would be simple. We have on thread just for Government posts. That way we can have all government threads linked there and in one convenient place so that we do not have to see alot of threads being stickied, because we had this problem with MIA and we reduced the stickies and there have been no problems with it.

Seems to be a debate between those who feel comfortable with a clear hierarchy, and those who are more associative

As I'm not sure which one I am, I will only say this: I'm not a fan of stickies. Everything important and current will be on the first page of threads no matter what. It also saves precious precious calories and irreplaceable electrons! --- fewer clicks: you just click on the first unread post in an unstickied thread, rather than clicking on a link that will then open up the first page of the deisred thread. If someone needs to look up some info from 3 months ago, I'd like to think that they can take the extra 5 minutes to search for the thread. Seems a small price to pay for having an uncluttered form with 8 stickies floating at the top of each page.

But MIA has more than one sticky for government?

I don't want to go into detail about another team in another game, but do you really think that having one thread with links will be an easy way for a member to navigate with ease? and I'm thinking also of new people when they join after the game has started.

Isn't it more logical to have like links kept together?

EDIT ... It's only six stickies Peter

Being a member who joined MIA in the middle of the game, I must say that it would have been helpful to have a system like is proposed for epsilon.

It may be easy for current topics to just look on the first page, but if a new member wants to try to catch up, it helps to have all the threads indexed in an organized manner.

MIA has only two different government stickies.

The difference too is that this is a new game, so each department will have many issues and options to discuss ... I predict a lively environment with many threads asking many questions and much analysis ... remember too that there is a substantial element of the team that cannot access the game and have only the team thread to follow all the intricacies, therefore keeping these together in a logical manner will make it easy to follow.

Also it is much better to have a system in place prior to commencement of the game then try to get something happening later.

Finally having a great deal of experience as the MIA Foreign Minister, I have had to instigate and keep links updated ... primarily in order to make things easier to find. Many a time have I had to try to find beaker values and cross reference other documents with earlier correspondence when performing those duties.

It might not be a big deal for those who occasionally visit or even those who religiously keep upto date ... but for someone who wants to perform at the best of his ability and also occasionally access RL ... having sticky threads with links is essential. Frankly it is only 6 stickies we are discussing

Anyway it is really upto the Provost

... and if it does irritate members to an alarming degree, they (the stickies) can always be removed