Author Topic: Board Consolidation  (Read 16926 times)

Offline hazelnut

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Re: Board Consolidation
« Reply #30 on: April 13, 2016, 12:18:12 PM »
Just noticed this thread,  I also like the idea of consolidating the story boards and separating the stories from the rest of the graveyard.

Edit: also, would it be possible to put topics affecting all Simmers (the building contest springs to mind) into a 'General' area - maybe renaming the current 'Member Info and Sims Announcements' area - or just to add links?  I have a feeling that the low level of Sims 3 players' participation in the building contests may be because of a lack of visibility.

Offline Magpie2012

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Re: Board Consolidation
« Reply #31 on: April 15, 2016, 04:23:09 PM »
I love that idea above and also the idea for the Story Boards!

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Offline reggikko

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Re: Board Consolidation
« Reply #32 on: April 17, 2016, 02:51:07 PM »
The thing about the Graveyard is that past Tournament Challenge threads have a ton of great strategy tips in them. I refer back to those threads quite a lot to refresh my memory. I guess I'll go in and copy/paste the relevant posts so I have them as reference. If they can't be viewed in the future, though, I kind of feel like newer challenge participants will miss out on some great tips. Then again, maybe I'm the only one who pores through old challenges to get tips. I'm a little obsessive like that. ;)





Offline Magpie2012

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Re: Board Consolidation
« Reply #33 on: April 17, 2016, 03:46:22 PM »
Reggi, you have a valid point there! I've been so worried about the stories, that I forgot about the amazing challenges and all Nutella's strategies!

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Offline oshizu

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Re: Board Consolidation
« Reply #34 on: April 17, 2016, 04:39:11 PM »
The thing about the Graveyard is that past Tournament Challenge threads have a ton of great strategy tips in them. I refer back to those threads quite a lot to refresh my memory. I guess I'll go in and copy/paste the relevant posts so I have them as reference. If they can't be viewed in the future, though, I kind of feel like newer challenge participants will miss out on some great tips. Then again, maybe I'm the only one who pores through old challenges to get tips. I'm a little obsessive like that. ;)

No, you're not the only one! I imagine anyone's whoever participated in a tournament challenge, even once, realizes the wealth of wisdom those old tournament challenge threads hold.
I have a couple from last year bookmarked and one I've pasted into an Excel file of general game data.  So very, very useful.

Will we get a timeline for when the Graveyard will be definitively closed off?

Offline Carl

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Re: Board Consolidation
« Reply #35 on: April 18, 2016, 10:19:14 AM »
@reggikko I actually had a thought about the challenges in graveyard thing. I think they shouldn't be so buried, given all the work that went into them and that plenty of people would like to try to beat previous scores even if on their own time. We'll look into perhaps adding them as a child board to challenges, which would be read-only instead of hiding them permanently!

@hazelnut This is definitely worth considering. We're moving somewhat slowly but will see how we can improve visibility. Cutting down on board totals should give every board a bit more visibility, it will be less noisy, but you're definitely right!

@oshizu nothing is on a timeline, I have realized there's no rush on this and more gradual changes can't hurt especially since it gives more time to think. Waiting has resulted in some good ideas coming up, so I'll be sure to say something if there is going to be a big change in that area. It's obvious we should try to make things that are useful available to people here :) I'm glad I reversed course on the graveyard change.

That said, I think that this Friday or so, I will move forward with the story board consolidation. Our default of 60 topics per page should keep people's stories from sinking off the first page too quickly.

We will then talk about whether we need careers, skills, and emotions boards when all of that pretty much fits under gameplay. When those are separated out, we have less activity on the actual gameplay board. Our two search functions are far more efficient than going down a page of 60 posts looking for one in particular, so there's that as far as finding things, and I may be able to draw more attention to those functions. Three of those boards have gone almost 2 weeks without a post. The only one I feel iffy about is building, but looking at the post list, it's pretty bad how far back you can go without a new post. These things being separate are especially annoying for mobile users.

Without separating out individual parts of gameplay, all gameplay talk would go on one board and people's posts are more likely to be noticed. Additionally, we may be able to just fit expansions as children of gameplay and keep it all in one area. Whatever we decide, it is clear mixing in EPs on the same board as gameplay would be annoying, people would be asking which addon something comes from, and general confusion would ensue.



Offline Carl

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Re: Board Consolidation
« Reply #36 on: April 19, 2016, 09:02:47 PM »
We've chosen to make Announcements have a greater purpose, combining it with EA announcements (and thus combining them). News will come out on this board (such as the upcoming child SP/restaurant content) and link to discussion threads on the gameplay discussion board. Even if you're just browsing there, they should be easy to find given they will be hot topics when they are first announced. The regular announcements board is stagnant when there isn't new content, so this gives it a greater purpose.

I'll merge the now-locked EA board to announcements when I do the stories consolidation. Just want to explain in case it is noticed that it's gone!

I trust our snail's pace on this is giving people time to figure out what's going on, myself included :D



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Offline Shewolf13

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Re: Board Consolidation
« Reply #37 on: April 20, 2016, 01:03:56 AM »
@Carl

Looks great! The consolidation is doing a lot for visibility already, at least in my opinion ^^ Thanks soo very much for all your hard work!

Offline Carl

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Re: Board Consolidation
« Reply #38 on: April 20, 2016, 01:06:33 AM »
Thanks @Shewolf13 The community and staff working together on this is something I am grateful for, because we can feel more confident about these decisions. Many are irreversible so we have to be cautious. Move all those posts to another board and they're stuck there unless you move them back manually!  What a mess that'd be...

Offline Shewolf13

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Re: Board Consolidation
« Reply #39 on: April 20, 2016, 01:08:32 AM »
--shudders-- yeah... I'm a mod on another forum and I know how that goes, so I'm glad it's a bit easier here and taking it slow is definitely the best way to let people get used to changes ^^

Offline CuriousSim

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Re: Board Consolidation
« Reply #40 on: April 20, 2016, 01:10:02 PM »
Hopefully, things don't become so consolidated, that they are less useful. I know that it is frustrating searching for an issue on Google, being careful to specify which game edition you need help for (Sims (X)) then you find the thread and read it with interest, only to find out it is actually for Sims (Y). That seems to happen a lot for some Sims discussion boards, that support all the versions, but are more consolidated.

Just a thought

Offline MrsFlynn

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Re: Board Consolidation
« Reply #41 on: April 20, 2016, 08:27:29 PM »
Just to be clear we are not changing the forum layout in that we're not taking away sections of the forum.

Meaning we'll still have separate sections for Sims 4 / Sims 3 / Other Sims Games and our Membership area. This will not change.

What we're trying to do is consolidate some of the lesser used childboards into the main boards. So we can help the forum become more efficient and easier to use.
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Offline Carl

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Re: Board Consolidation
« Reply #42 on: April 20, 2016, 08:59:54 PM »
What @MrsFlynn has said is accurate. I would hate to make things too hard, we'll always keep Sims 3 and 4 categories separate. Keeping them separate allows a person to click categories when in the Forums search (from the navigation bar, next to help), and eliminate the one they do not want. This is especially handy for the gameplay elements that are shared between the two titles (Such as both having children/ghosts).

Google search in the top right does both categories, as well as both guides, and that is where it could very possibly be confused.

I may relocate the Forum search button to be first in the list and stand out more, but overall I don't want people to have to 100% rely on search and not be able to browse and find things

We'd like to put all vanilla gameplay on that one board, and make EPs the children there instead of the separate categories of gameplay. From an organizational standpoint, it's nice, but having all gameplay on one board would be of help to mobile/slow internet users, while increasing the chance a request for help is seen through more activity in that area.

Offline Shewolf13

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Re: Board Consolidation
« Reply #43 on: April 20, 2016, 10:10:04 PM »
@Carl

Just out of curiosity, for the rules for player-made challenges, will they be separated somehow? It's not a big deal, either way, just wondering, especially as we get more challenges posted up here. Would they go to live with the forum challenges? Or would they stay in the story board?

Offline MrsFlynn

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Re: Board Consolidation
« Reply #44 on: April 20, 2016, 10:18:58 PM »
I think I can answer this one:

The storyboard will look somewhat like this:

Sims 4 - Stories and Projects
ChildBoards: Completed Stories / Challenge Stories / Misc. Stories and Projects /

With rulesets for Projects and Challenges out in the main board so these can be all in one thread. :)

Rulesets for Project/Challenge Stories
http://www.carls-sims-4-guide.com/forum/index.php/topic,26304.0.html
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