Hi Michael,

Thanks for the rapid response.



- "You mention that you don't want to go through a lot of threads.... What would you suggest that I do about that, delete old threads or something like that?"


Not at all. Threads should rarely be deleted. What I meant was that if I'm only interested in WIP's, official news or whatever then I'd have a really hard time finding only those threads. As it is now, I'd have to look at the threads and hope the title is sufficient enough to tell me about the content. But even so, I'd still have to look at a list with different kinds of content mixed together.

I just did some searches to find threads about V2 beta that were originally started by you, and it was rather difficult to get a good search result. A novice user wouldn't think of using "" in the search field, and it also seems that the search mechanism doesn't look at thread titles, which only makes it even more difficult to browse the forum. available now or "available now" didn't return any of the beta threads from you.



- "There have been very few problems or negative comments about the forum for quite a long time now, even people who are complete computer novices have been able to figure out how to use it which is a good sign!"


I can only guess why there haven't been more complaints, but you may be missing out on lot's of ppl - it is a realistic possibility IMO. I'd agree that the forum is indeed user friendly, but only to a certain degree. It's easy to "get going" and get a overall look quickly, but very limiting if you are interested in certain type of content. It's very much like having a book without a table of content. You'd have to browse all the pages and spend too much time, even if only glancing at them, to find what you are seeking - and as mentioned above, the search feature isn't helping much. A proper forum is even better than a table of content due to the beauty of computers, but you aren't exploiting it.

A mixed list does have benefits, but it's just that it's the only option here.

You mentioned you don't like all the back and forth browsing like in the other forum systems. Well, I have another window open right now, so I can see what you wrote in your previous posts while typing this - and I have to open another one, because I can't remember some of the stuff I wrote myself :) It may not be "back and forth" the same way, but it isn't particularly user friendly either.

Another thing on that note - tabs are rather common these days. I don't like the back and forth thing myself, so I use tabs (I also use new/latest posts features frequently, but far from exclusively). I'd still use tabs even on this forum, as it would allow the different pages to pre-load.



- "The part that I don't like about that is that frequently people will post stuff in the wrong category and that then brings a bunch of "administration overhead" to the whole discussion, with posts about "you didn't post in the right place", etc...

If there's just one category then that issue is completely eliminated."


I agree that it requires some effort, but you can have volunteers that you trust as moderators - many do this including professionals.



- "It's actually possible to have multiple folders with the forum that I use now, but I have intentionally avoided doing that kind of fragmentation.

Also I'm not really sure what kind of categories that I would create that would not end up with the vast majority just in one general area."


While I understand what you mean by "fragmentation", I'd say the current forum is fragmented. All sorts of threads mixed into the same bunch makes it cluttered. One of the first things I was interested in when I ones again looked into MoI, was to see how others were using the app. The Gallery section is one place to turn - I could also use Google, but having a forum gallery/wip section would have made much better and easier to get a "real life" impression of the application. Current forum forces me to dig harder and not all thread titles indicate what they may contain.

Looking at how other gfx/single app specific forums are split up would be a good place to start.

I'd also suggest this forum in particular: http://www.lfsforum.net/index.php
It's game related but very nicely split up - a bit too many sub-forums for MoI, but worth a look.



- "often times all the action just happens in one "misc" or "general discussion" category and the sub-categories just languish with nothing much happening in them."


Depends on how well the forum is split into sub-forums/sections. What you are describing occurs most often in generic forums (forums that covers many applications), whereas forums that are for a single or few apps tend to work much cleaner - I wouldn't say I can recognize what you are describing on the other boards that I visit - not as a problem.

But to make myself clear - a forum with sections will be a big improvement, and I don't think you should worry too much about novice users - they can't stay novice forever and I'd dare to say that you are more likely to scare away potential costumers, than to lure someone in with this one. This forum is also the exact opposite of how MoI is.

One final note: I think you are underestimating the importance of a proper forum - I've seen bunch of sites using old forums. They ignored the problem (in their case simply by not upgrading for whatever reason) for too long, and in turn ended up with too much valuable content that they weren't OK with to lose when implementing some new forum system. The problem with that can be seen in the amount of traffic these days - very limited. Why it matters to upgrade? It's not the upgrade in itself, but the fact that software improves/changes over time. Usability improves/changes and before you know it, stuff that ones were fine, aren't sufficient any longer, because the behavioral pattern of ppl changes.


I hope I made myself clearer this time - if not then feel free to ask about more.