forum design proposal's and discussion's

[Duke of Marlbrough]

Which brings up the Vice-President issue. Eyrei does the work of 3 men already. Please don't throw the other Leaders responsibilty on his shoulders. If the Leaders don't want to post in the "next turn" thread, fine. They probably won't get elected next term, and this way will make it easy to follow. It is a simple way of solving the problem and an easy way of keeping the Leaders accountable in thier responsibilties.

I agree that eyrei has plenty to do right now. It was a thought to be established with the next election. Instead of appointing the Leader that is next in the COC, we make sure there is either a VP by means of a runner up of the presidency, or hold a separate election for it, or allow the Pres to appoint one; as the Leaders do when they don't have deputies.

 

[Cyc]

As you can see by the 5/10 and 5/12 Chat Instruction threads, that system isn't working, as half the instructions for 5/12 went on the 5/10 thread as there was no 5/12 thread until Donsig had the sense to make one. It's easy to see everyone needs to ability to post for themselves.

 

[Chieftess]

We also need a Chain of Command thread that's sticky. I know I saw a thread that had something about the COC, but I can't find it. The COC thread should have the cabinet positions, and who's in them for the current term. It could be put in the Government sub-folder.

I think another problem is that the important turn-chat related threads are mixed in with other threads, and other forums. We had a bit of a problem in 5/12's turn chat with that. We need more stickies, but the forums might get clogged with them.

There needs to be something like this:

Sticky: Turn Chat Requests (to be cleared every time the chat ends, or made unsticky and closed)

Sticky: Provincal Requests (for all of the provinces)

Sticky: Links to current polls (maybe one person could be designated to update this list).


And one other thing that could go in the main forum (not the sub-forums).

A turn-chat "story" like the one in the Civ2 Demogame.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=22269

 

[donsig]

Originally posted by Duke of Marlbrough
I agree that eyrei has plenty to do right now. It was a thought to be established with the next election. Instead of appointing the Leader that is next in the COC, we make sure there is either a VP by means of a runner up of the presidency, or hold a separate election for it, or allow the Pres to appoint one; as the Leaders do when they don't have deputies.

You know I wondered how eyrei was 'automatically' picked to be vice-president for term two. I didn't say anything at the time because I already point out so much constitutional stuff as it is.

BUT the constitution already says that the president is a department head with all the rights of a dept. head. I had assumed that since there was no runner up in the presidential election that Grey Fox would appoint a VP based on the clauses in Section C, article 4 and Section I, article 6.

The constitution is here.

 

[Shaitan]

Here's my ideas for reorganization:

The turn instructions are working well now. Just make sure to close them after the turn chat to avoid posting errors.

Get rid of the General sub-forum. Move this info to the Government sub-forum or main forum as appropriate. Create a new sub-forum called File Cabinet. When a thread is finished, move it to the File Cabinet. That way it's around if it ever needs to be referenced but isn't getting in the way in the sub-forums that are busy.

 

[disorganizer]

just call it archive and all will know where to search ;-)

who will decide which posts to move there?

 

[Duke of Marlbrough]

The threads that are no longer being posted to will drop down the page for each forum. They do not need to be moved to a separate forum to keep them out of the way. Any relivant threads will alwasy be at the top of the forum pages.

If people do not want to see old threads, they can change the default view date to a lesser amount of days for the forums.

You know I wondered how eyrei was 'automatically' picked to be vice-president for term two. I didn't say anything at the time because I already point out so much constitutional stuff as it is.

The Domestic Leader is appointed the Vice President because it does not affect the chain of command. Since that seems to be the only real role of the VP, it does seem logical, plus that was the precidence set in Term 1, and unless it is clarified/changed that is how it will continue. I would like to think that we would actually have more than one person running for President some day.

 

[Shaitan]

Main Forum - Game play related information
Turn instructions
Save Games
Turn summaries & Chat Logs
Constitution
Census
Needed Stuff
What is the Demo Game? (intro thread)
Screenshots
Province Map

Government Sub-forum - Government related information
Government Threads
Council Votes
Elected/Appointed Officials Listing
Province Threads
Budget
Trade Table
Election threads (nominations, polls)

Citizen Sub-forum - Citizen related information
Citizen groups
Discussions
City threads

Poll Sub-forum - Polls
All polls except Council Votes

Comments? I thought polls should have their own sub-forum to keep them organized. They're intrusive in the Citizen forum and several people have commented that they'd like these better organized. It may help voter turnout too if people can go and see right away what polls are current. This proposal basically moves "General" back into the main forum. I've probably missed some of the individual threads but it should be pretty easy to see where they go with this set up.

 

[Shaitan]

Any comments/suggestions on my proposal?

 

[disorganizer]

i would say: give it a try!
the only thing we should use aditionally: the proposal for the "turn-threads".
starting a thread for each chat-turn with the old chat-turns save and the date and time it starts as first post, the following posts should be the recommendations of the departments, the next post will be the post used for interim save during chat-turn and the last posts will be a plain-text summary of the turn+log+save+maps.
after this post the thread is closed and the next thread is opened

 

[Shaitan]

Originally posted by disorganizer
starting a thread for each chat-turn with the old chat-turns save and the date and time it starts as first post, the following posts should be the recommendations of the departments, the next post will be the post used for interim save during chat-turn and the last posts will be a plain-text summary of the turn+log+save+maps.
after this post the thread is closed and the next thread is opened

That's an excellent idea for organizing and also cuts out a bit more clutter. Plus, we're already half way there with the turn chat instruction threads!

I'll wait a bit longer for more responses then I'll start up a poll.

 

[chiefpaco]

I like the 2 recent ideas. They should improve things.

One thing that causes clutter to me is the present form of the citizens forum. In it, we discuss pretty much everything. I find it bothersome though, that every odd post is often an in-game debate and every even post is a game mechanics debate. I wish the two were separated, so if I was only interested in how the game is going, I could check one spot. I think it kinda takes away from the game experience when I find debates on how the game should be played next to a city location debate.

I'm trying to imagine what it might be like for someone new who is looking at it & trying to figure out why the rules change & trying to also keep track of Phoenetica's priorities. Perhaps we do not have room for all that, but that is something I find bothersome.

After taking a closer look at Shaitan's proposal, I'm not sure if a separate "poll" forum is necessary. Stickied threads in the citizens' forum seems ok to me. Changing the Poll forum to a Game Mechanics forum might be one idea - to include the game rules & intros & also debate on the rules.

 

[Shaitan]

We have a lot of polls, but relatively low voting. I think it would help a lot if people had one place to look to see the active polls. We could move game mechanics related discussions to the main forum and reserve the Citizen forum for game play discussions. The problem though is that a lot of these discussions grow from one to the other. A discussion on whether to rush a certain improvement somewhere can turn into a debate on the rules, for example.

 

[disorganizer]

i again second the poll-subforum idea. so ALL polls should go there. IMHO, also the cabinet-polls. and the poll-related discussion should maybe also moved there.
if you want to know about the game, then you can look to the polls (sticky=active, unsticky=old) and the related threads.
btw: old threads and polls should be closed by the mods.

to get the focus to some things in the citizens forum, we could use the stickyness and maybe close some old and obsolete threads there.

 

[Shaitan]

I'd like to keep the discussions separate from the polls themselves. As some discussions lead to polls and others don't, there wouldn't be any easy way to keep this rule. Also, we should keep the poll subforum very tidy so it's a snap to take a peek and see exactly what's up there.

 

[disorganizer]

ok. so would it be ok to force poll-posters to also post a link to the coresponding discussion thread in the citizen forum in the poll (maybe last line of description)?
we could the only have polls (active=sticky) in this subforum

 

[Shaitan]

Absolutely, yes. Any poll posted should link to the corresponding discussion. Some exceptions would be emergency polls where there was no discussion or flat opinion (feedback) polls. Any poll that did have a discussion should definitely reference it.

 

[disorganizer]

well, so if we have our next constitution change, we should make this a rule. (just remember if we are far enough with our "are the cabinet-polls obsolete"-thread in the citizen forum)

 

[Shaitan]

Here's what I've got. Comments are requested.

Proposal for realignment of the Demo Game forum

Main Forum - Game play related information
Chat Turn Threads
Constitution
Census
Needed Stuff
What is the Demo Game? (intro thread)
Province Map

Government Sub-forum - Government related information
Government Threads
Elected/Appointed Officials Listing
Province Threads
Budget
Trade Table
Election threads (nominations, polls)

Citizen Sub-forum - Citizen related information
Citizen groups
Discussions
City threads

Poll Sub-forum – Polls
Citizen Polls
Council Votes


Proposal for the Chat Turn Thread (Format & Use)

1. First post contains the date and time of the chat and the save game that will be used.
2. Following posts contain chat turn instructions from the officials.
3. The next post is used to upload the intermittent saves during the chat and the final save when the chat is concluded.
4. The next posts contains the turn summary, chat log and screenshots.
5. The thread is closed after all info has been posted.

 

[Cyc]

Shaitan, you are seemingly lumping poll procedures in with your sub-forum suggestions. They are separate things and should be discussed as such. The poll procedure thread is now buried, but they are now being standardized in a thread covering a different topic. As you are a major poller (is that a word? pollist?...), you should be discussing these procedures out in the open with the rest of the citizens, not under the guise of forum reform. Please stop this and resume discussion of poll procedures in the appropriate thread.