What to do with the OnLiveFans.com Game folder/general discussion

[Ed]

Hello OnLiveFans.com members. I'm having a hard time trying to decide what to do about the OnLiveFans.com game folders. Currently we have a general discussion folder, which is where most people seem to post all game related topics (even though they don't really belong here). We also have the "Specific/Popular OnLive Games" folder for popular specific games (although I admit, I haven't been adding any games to this section. Thirdly we have the "All Other OnLive Games (Not listed above)" section, where all the game discussion other than those in the "Specific/Popular OnLive Games" folder should go. However, most members start new topics about games in the "General Discussion" folder instead of this one.

I'd like to know what your suggestions are.
1) We could go back to having a sub folder for each and every game - This however makes the forum rather large, with an abundance of folders, plus many of the less popular games wouldn't even have a single discussion thread in their respective folders.
2) We could eliminate all the game subfolders, and just make one "OnLive Game Discussion" folder which would be located directly under the "General Discussion" folder, so that people utilize it more often.
3) We could eliminate all the game folders and subfolders altogether and just allow all game related posts in the "General Discussion" folder.
4) We could do something completely different (as per your suggestions).

Please let me know how you feel about this.

I would also like to start some sort of review section where members can post their reviews for certain games (keep this in mind when adding your suggestions).

Let me know what you think will work best.
Ed

[IAmShaman]

I think if you just left an OnLive Game Discussion folder, it would be fine. Just make sure to leave a couple of subfolders for people who want to ask about glitches or whatever, so the folder doesn't get filled with threads.

[AdyCarter]

Spooky timing, I just posted this (http://onlivefans.com/showthread.php?13689-Reviews...) about reviews :D

Personally I think the countless subfolders idea doesn't work, it leads to a cluttered forum layout with a bajillion subfolders for each game; Personally I would be quite keen on having just a big fat "OnLive Game Discsussion" folder.

Infact, if it were up to me, the forum would look like this: (Names not final)

OnLive Discussion:

OnLive Platform Discussion (For discussion of the service itself, the hardware, the offers, the future plans etc etc)
OnLive Game Discussion (For discussion of games on OnLive, games we want to see on OnLive and games that might be coming!)
OnLive Technical Support & Help (For help and if people want to go all supergeek)
OnLive Reviews (Reviews by the community of the games, service and features)
International OnLive Discussion / Foreign Language Discusion

OnLiveFans Community:

OnLiveFans Cast (The OnLive Podcast run by OnLiveFans.com)
OnLiveNation Discussion (Discussion related to OnLive Nation.)
OnLive Tournaments
OnLiveFans.com Website News, Suggestions & Help
Everything Else

One caveat I would mention though is if you do go for one big forum for games discussion, I'd like to see it mdoerated a little more, too often are there multiple versions of the same topic, or multiple topics called "Arkham City" for example.

[xanderten50]

I'm all for a general "Onlive Games" folder - I keep forgetting about the game specific folders and posting stuff straight in to the general folder!

[thelocaluk]

You could do genre forums then add give the bigger games a sub forum like we have over at http://playstationcrowd.com/forum

[Esquire]

Ed,

Thanks for beseeching our advice. I think that's always cool.

I think this forum isn't large enough to splinter the community into a million little sub forums. If it were me, I'd have two forums. One for gaming and one for off topic things.

Gaming would seem a lot more busy and it would help foster the community into being more active. The more it seems like the community is alive, the more I feel willing to contribute. I also think it would help cut back on reposting. I don't think this forum is busy enough to warrant all these sub forums.

Offtopic is important because, hey, we're a community.

Look at NeoGAF. It's the biggest gaming forum community out there but it still thrives with just three forums.

[buddhaman]

Game folder
- glitches
-general discussion
- questions
- reviews

[wobblesplat]

I like number two! Having seperate game folders has made some threads go unseen for quite a while

[Trav]

We could have one main game folder and then have everyone put title of game in their forum topic, along with actually topic of discussion (like #2).

For example:
"SAINTS ROW 3: Weird Glitch"

Would make things more easier to find.

[gekko]

Some interesting ideas so far...

@Trav - the problem with asking people to put game titles in their topic headings is that people by and large won't bother. It will work for the regulars but I don't think you can expect all users to follow suit. It would take quite a lot of moderation to enforce and also I suspect just having a general forum would result in lots of topics where you haven't a clue what game is being discussed. Whilst you can of course restructure the forum further down the line, it's wise to allow for some growth especially as OnLive rolls out across new territories and becomes more popular in the countries where it operates already. I wonder how many people might be waking up on Christmas morning to an OnLive MC in their stocking ;-).

I'm not going as far as to suggest having a separate sub-forum for each game, which I think is overkill, but I like thelocaluk's idea of having genre forums so things are broken up a little bit. As someone who quite often plays niche games and isn't a big FPS fan, I'd find it a bit of a pain to have to do a lot of sifting. I know we have the 'search' function to help with that but it's nice to have some serendipity too in a reasonably organised way. OnLive nicely separates the games into genres for us so you could reuse those to avoid any confusion.

Other than that, I agree with Ady's structure for the forum. I would possibly split 'Everything Else' into 'Other Consoles' and 'Non-gaming discussion'. N-Europe has an 'Other Consoles' section, which works well as many Ninty fans also have PS3s, XBoxes and Onlive of course :-D.

[Trinexx]

Spooky timing, I just posted this (http://onlivefans.com/showthread.php?13689-Reviews...) about reviews :D

Personally I think the countless subfolders idea doesn't work, it leads to a cluttered forum layout with a bajillion subfolders for each game; Personally I would be quite keen on having just a big fat "OnLive Game Discsussion" folder.

Infact, if it were up to me, the forum would look like this: (Names not final)

OnLive Discussion:

OnLive Platform Discussion (For discussion of the service itself, the hardware, the offers, the future plans etc etc)
OnLive Game Discussion (For discussion of games on OnLive, games we want to see on OnLive and games that might be coming!)
OnLive Technical Support & Help (For help and if people want to go all supergeek)
OnLive Reviews (Reviews by the community of the games, service and features)
International OnLive Discussion / Foreign Language Discusion

OnLiveFans Community:

OnLiveFans Cast (The OnLive Podcast run by OnLiveFans.com)
OnLiveNation Discussion (Discussion related to OnLive Nation.)
OnLive Tournaments
OnLiveFans.com Website News, Suggestions & Help
Everything Else

One caveat I would mention though is if you do go for one big forum for games discussion, I'd like to see it mdoerated a little more, too often are there multiple versions of the same topic, or multiple topics called "Arkham City" for example.

Excellent suggestion, Ady. Only thing I'd like to add to it is genre-based subfolders to the Game Discussion board, to help categorize it a bit more.

[philnolan3d]

You gotta start cracking down on people who post in the wrong area or don't follow the rules. This way you could've kept the old news section. I really liked looking there for the latest news. As a mod on another forum I know sometimes we need to move threads around and give people warnings. Not often, but as you go it gets less and less.

[buddhaman]

The mods are generally pretty quick to move them

[Germaximus]

Admin its not your fault people dont know how to use a forum or take the time to find the proper section.
It happens on every single forum no matter what.
Thats actually what moderators are supposed to be for, responding and pointing the right direction and also moving things where they belong.

It doesnt matter how you set the forum up, people will always post in the wrong section, especially new people.

[Ed]

OK, using some of your ideas, here is what I came up with. Let me know what you guys think.

OnLive Discussion:

-OnLive Platform Discussion (For discussion of the service itself, the hardware, any news, the offers, the future plans etc etc)
-OnLive Game Discussion (For discussion of games on OnLive, games we want to see on OnLive and games that might be coming!)
------- OnLive Game Glitches
------- OnLive Game Reviews
-OnLive Technical Support & Help (For help and if people want to go all supergeek)
-International OnLive Discussion / Foreign Language Discusion
------- Various Language Subfolders

OnLiveFans Community:

-OnLiveFans Cast (The OnLive Podcast run by OnLiveFans.com)
------- The Breaking Point
-OnLiveFans.com Website News, Suggestions & Help
-OnLiveNation Discussion (Discussion related to OnLive Nation.)
-OnLive Tournaments
-Off Topic
------- Other Gaming Discussion
------- Everything else

[AdyCarter]

Looks good to me

[Ed]

Anyone else have any feelings about this reorganization?

[buddhaman]

Perfect I like I much better than the current

[Ed]

Also, what do you think I should do with the folder "Request for Multiplayer Game Partners"? Should that be a subfolder in the game discussion folder?

[AdyCarter]

Merge it with OnLive Tournaments under OnLiveFans Community and call it something like:

OnLive Tournaments and Multiplayer Team Ups?

Perhaps throw "Friend Finding" in general in the name too in order to catch all those "I have no one on my fiends lists" topics?

[Ed]

Question guys.
As for game sales, where should they be posted?
-OnLive Platform Discussion (For discussion of the service itself, the hardware, the offers, the future plans etc etc)
OR
-OnLive Game Discussion (For discussion of games on OnLive, games we want to see on OnLive and games that might be coming!)

[AdyCarter]

OnLive Platform Discussion (For discussion of the service itself, the hardware, the offers, the future plans etc etc)

I'd say there (due to where I bolded), its the kind of thread that'll probably need to be actively moved though, as they will creep into the other section (and vice versa would happen)

[philnolan3d]

To me a sale is news, so it should go where ever the news is going.

[buddhaman]

OnLive Platform Discussion (For discussion of the service itself, the hardware, the offers, the future plans etc etc)

I'd say there (due to where I bolded), its the kind of thread that'll probably need to be actively moved though, as they will creep into the other section (and vice versa would happen)

I second this

[Ed]

OK sounds good. I'm am currently in the process of renaming the threads in the specific game folders so that people know what they are when they are moved to the general game folder. Once this is complete, I'll begin the reorganization. You'll probably see some done today and some tomorrow and through the rest of the week.

[AdyCarter]

Its been a while since I've had to edit the DB Behind a vbulleting forum but

Admin CP -> Maintenance -> Execute SQL Query




UPDATE thread
SET title = 'NBA: ' & title
Where
thread.forumid IN (74)


Should enable you to batch this, the above would change every thread in the NBA forum (74) to be prefixed with NBA:

ymmv depending but that should be workable

[Michael Scoates]

I know I'm a bit late, but there's a real opportunity here for OnLiveFans to become invaluable to OnLive itself, but it'll take a bit of work.

Remember the old XBox Forums, one folder for every game? It worked, even devs occasionally posted there so they could interract with the players. Far as I can tell publishers and developers have nowhere to go to interract with the OnLive community other than here, so I'd be really tempted to have a subfolder for each game, or subfolders and subfolders, e.g. A-E, F-M, N-S, T-Z with appropriate titles under each.

The argument against (aside from a lot of work) is that perhaps developers and publishers would prefer us to post on their sites and forums instead, but that's traffic going the wrong way :)

[Ed]

Thanks for this. Only issue is that I don't want to put the prefix before posts that already have the game title in them. I'm about 75% done though. Shouldn't take too much longer :)
Ed


Its been a while since I've had to edit the DB Behind a vbulleting forum but

Admin CP -> Maintenance -> Execute SQL Query




UPDATE thread
SET title = 'NBA: ' & title
Where
thread.forumid IN (74)


Should enable you to batch this, the above would change every thread in the NBA forum (74) to be prefixed with NBA:

ymmv depending but that should be workable

[Ed]

How about news guys? For example when articles are posted, if it is game related news, should it go in the Games folder or the Platform discussion folder?
With sales I think we decided to put them in the Platform folder, right?

[AdyCarter]

In the absence of a "News" folder I guess much like now the news thread goes wherever its most relevant?

[Ed]

OK sounds good

[Daecat]

I'm getting kinda confused now, there seems to be 2 sections that post news related to OnLive: OnLive game discussion, and OnLive platform discussion & news. OnLive game discussion says it has "game related news"... then where would an OnLive article about a new game go? Since it's news, should it be in onlive platform discussion and news? Onlive platform section is for game related news... That is 2 possibilities, confusing.

I know it's already done, but I don't really dig it so I will suggest, then again I never dug the "other games" section, (as if saying yeah... these "other" games aren't so great, so here's where you can talk about any/all of them)...

-OnLive General Discussion: was awesome. It had everything new that came up all in one place, games or platform-wise. and just general talk about OnLive.

-OnLive Game Discussion: click on that, and then you get to a new page with all different
----sub forums of each and every game. People say it looks cluttered, but I think the opposite. It looks organized, (look at Steam's game forum) it looks disorganized reading a forum with all different games in one. I won't even think about using them because it is such a hassle to look through one forum for a specific game when there are so many different game topics in it. I think if more threads got directed to the games' specific sub-forums, more people would start to use them. They are constantly brought into general discussion, but no one seems to mind, so they continue to disregard using the sub-forums in favor of getting all the attention and faster help with their game inquiries or even tech support.

-Tech support

-Intl discussion
----Various Language Subfolders

-OnLive Fans Cast: both pod-casts and Week-in Review.

-Fan creations: For ppl who like to upload their brag clips or random OnLive stuff. (edit: maybe even make this a sub-forum of OnLive fans cast section and they could use some of the creations for their shows.)

-OnLiveFans.com Website News, Suggestions & Help

-OnLiveNation Discussion? (I still don't know wtf this is)

-OnLive Multiplayer (Not sure how to handle this one since I do not use it)
---- sub-forums for Tournaments, request players, etc.

-Off Topic
---- their subforums

[Ed]

The game folder is for Game news, while the Platform folder is for other OnLive news. I edited the titles of the folder (removed the word "news" in the platform folder).
Ed

[wobblesplat]

The game folder is for Game news, while the Platform folder is for other OnLive news. I edited the titles of the folder (removed the word "news" in the platform folder).
Ed

It's looking good so far. I like it. Thanks for making this change, it was necessary.

[Gary13579]

The games really should have seperate forums. When I first noticed you grouped a bunch of game forums together I nearly gagged. It is impossible to find anything with a setup like that. I'd set it up like this:

Game Discussions folder
--> Homefront
--> DX:HR
--> My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic 3D
--> Other very popular/commonly discussed games (these show up on the frontpage for easy access)

--> Other Games
----> Less common games


This way, every game gets a subforum, but it doesn't clutter the frontpage. Your other option would be to hack some shizzzz and maybe add "tags" to threads, one tag per thread, with the game name, and modify search to include tag for specific game, etc. Then a single forum for less popular games would be suitable, but this is still hacky and not easy for newcomers.

Sent from my Transformer TF101

[Jotamide]

The games really should have seperate forums. When I first noticed you grouped a bunch of game forums together I nearly gagged. It is impossible to find anything with a setup like that. I'd set it up like this:

Game Discussions folder
--> Homefront
--> DX:HR
--> My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic 3D
--> Other very popular/commonly discussed games (these show up on the frontpage for easy access)

--> Other Games
----> Less common games


This way, every game gets a subforum, but it doesn't clutter the frontpage. Your other option would be to hack some shizzzz and maybe add "tags" to threads, one tag per thread, with the game name, and modify search to include tag for specific game, etc. Then a single forum for less popular games would be suitable, but this is still hacky and not easy for newcomers.

Sent from my Transformer TF101

I agree, this change just makes things way harder to find.

[Gary13579]

Glad to hear I'm not alone. Please figure out a different layout.

Sent from my Transformer TF101