Hillyan News - The News Of Your Planet

I equate forum clean-up to pruning. There's good stuff in here, but as long as that good stuff is bogged down by dead threads, forums, etc. it just doesn't feel all that fresh. So here's what I'm thinking:

Revamp The Factory/Den

To be honest I wasn't even sure what the distinction was between the two places when I first saw them. Now I get it, but I still think there are some unnecessary subforums, outdated projects, etc. that make it all a bit daunting and confusing. The basic idea should still be there: one forum where anybody can bring up and discuss project ideas, another forum for official projects only moderators/admins can start topics for. Could stay as the Den and Factory, could be a forum and subforum, doesn't matter to me. But I would also add one more forum in there: an Archive for projects that are "on hold" (I won't say "dead")(okay maybe they are). I think it should be separate from the Reaper so the ideas are still there to browse through, just not getting in the way of more relevant, active projects. Of course, that means that the official projects forum will be all but empty, but I'm okay with that. Just means there's not so much pressure to do EVERYTHING.


Clean Up Stickies

There are some SERIOUSLY outdated stickies floating around. The "First Time Here?" sticky has just about no relevance whatsoever anymore. Obsolete stickies always bug me on other forums, so let's sift through and remove/change whatever stickies we need (and add some, if necessary).


Any other re-ordering/cleaning necessary

I'm actually surprised at how active pretty much every forum is, so I think we're doing okay. Except for the Den (which I think the restructuring there will help) and...The News. I mean come on admins! You can't update the News header and the Forum News topic at the same time?? :P Geez...

Other than that, we can go through the subforums and see what's unnecessary there, move things as needed, whatever. Everyone can pitch in their ideas, and admins...let's get to work! Hold off on re-organizing the Factory until we've come to some consensus, but otherwise have at it!

Sounds good, just don’t delete any threads, even if they appear useless they could still be relevant to someone, and it’s not like they hurt anything once they’re 2 pages back they’re out of the way, but can still be searched.

We might need to archive some stuff but you're right, we shouldn't delete anything. We try not to do that anyway.

If we ever get that darn website up and running, we can create a section of the site to archive some of them projects in. Some, like the YouTube Division stuff, still gets sporadic postings from time-to-time...

About the News Topic - well, basically all important news is posted in the header, because it catches the eye when you enter the board. And everything important is already written there (along with a link to a topic from which the news originated), so posting it in another topic is... rather pointless :P

I totally forgot about the "First Time Here?" topic after I read it when I was... well... first time here. We should update that part - i.e. Operation Storm link leads to The Reaper (instead of The Factory)... :unsure:

As for the rest of the pinups - some really are out of date! I'm surprised none of us unpinned the mod election topic (yeah, I started the topic, I should've done it... <_<). That one I already did, I think the rest should stay pinned in the Den.

As for the rest, I think we should unpin in The Factory those Projects: CG Videos, 2D Sidescrollers and Carlson and Peeters Handbook. Should we keep the Flash Game Project pinned since the member working on it didn't update it for QUITE some time? And I think we should pin up the Source project, since it's pretty active now.

As for revamping the Den and the Factory - we could edit the descriptions to make the new-comers better understand what is the purpose of both forums. I agree on the Archive subforum - there is a good number of topics that weren't updated in ages.

Sounds good to me.

Here's an idea. I say we get rid of the Den and Factory and just have one forum for ideas/projects in general. Any worthwhile projects can be pinned by mods/admins. It always bothered me to have two whole forums that were basically inactive and took up space. We just aren't a big enough community to effectively seperate "discussion of ideas" and "official projects being worked on" into two forums with decent activity between them.

Anything in the Den and Factory that doesn't seem to be relevant can be put into an Archive forum for resource and history purposes. Anything worth keeping on hand can be put/pinned into this one project forum. A lot of the projects in the Factory are washed-up for the time being anyways, it's not like there would be a ton of pinned topics in the project forum to start with. I think this will steamline the Revolution a bit; I honestly don't see the difference between these two forums, or at the very least, enough of a difference to have two large forums with nothing going on in them. Besides that, the only project that comes close to deserving a subforum is the Website. That would most likely be the only subforum in this one forum.

I have the same feelings towards the Lighthouse and the Akuda Bar too. Couldn't we just merge the two, and add a subforum for the Lightweight Tournament, etc. and keep the Revolution even more streamlined? Any dead threads can be stored (if so desired) or deleted outright.

The Gaming Forum can be kept as is in my opinion. So can BG&E 2 obviously. BG&E 1 can be kept by itself for now. The Guest Forum and Forum News topic can stay.

Overall it just bothers me to see the Revolution bogged down by large forums that are 95% deadweight and 5% active threads. I think that's our main priority: to merge forums and get rid of old news so we're more compressed and cleaner. Everything is like a maze here.

I agree with every word.

So how about it? Shall the Den and The Factory become one? Official projects will be stickied, ideas will simply be posted. And I agree about the Lighthouse and the Akuda Bar as well.

Any dissenters, let your voices be heard!


Also, I forgot to add about the News thing, I think it's good to post official forum news in there just so we can have an archive to look back on. Once we have our website up (someday) we'll have all news up on a dedicated news page.

I think put the Akuda bar as a sub-forum of the lighthouse rather than merging the two.

Otherwise it sounds good, I’ve always thought this place was a bit complicated to navigate.

Any idiot can have a clean desk, but it takes a genius to control chaos.

That being said, I'll give my 2 cents.

Den and Factory ---> Keep them separated! The problem with discussion is that we tend to drift off, there's a lot of stupid unnecessary stuff in there. Merging these 2 forums means, to me a least, creating chaos in the only section that's reasonably clean.
People here tend to have more ideas than they have the time, motivation and inspiration for to actually work out. That's why the 2 are separate and should stay that way.

Akuda bar and Lighthouse, oh do merge! I never got why the lighthouse deserved it's own section anyway, and I always think"well, this fits in the lighthouse as well as the Akuda bar". I think that the lighthouse should a subforum of the akuda bar, but that's just a point of view.

On streamlining the forum + archiving, I'm all for it! In fact I had some discussion about an archive forum a while ago, but I never made one. Let's give this baby a good cleaning! (not sure where to start though... :unsure: we must keep track of our process).

Ok, so it seems to me that everyone who has said something here would like an Archive forum. That, at least, should be our first step. Not everyone has said something though, so should we wait? A poll perhaps?

Archive for really old stuff is ok , i guess.

Well The Reaper is meant to be sort of a catch-all archive, right? I'm thinking more specifically an archive forum for the Factory, which yeah, I think makes a lot of sense.

As for the Den/Factory, I still vote we combine the two. When a project gets discussed that shows promise, we can either sticky it (and rename it with "Project -" at the front), or make a new topic and sticky it. There will still be a clear distinction between general discussion and official project assignments, which we definitely need. Really old projects can be archived, relatively old and quiet projects can be un-stickied and left to float around the discussion board, and active projects will be prominently placed for all to see.

I think we all agree that there needs to be a clear difference between general discussion and official projects - I just think we could go about it a different, more understandable way.

EDIT - Forgot to add, when we make the website we'll have a page dedicated to Revolution projects, so the forum will be primarily for discussion while the web page will be for action! So that'll be the clearest distinction we've got.

I'm sticking to my point, cause it works for me. It does usually mean that the real projects get little posts, but at least the posts there matter. Combining discussion in the same room just calls for more nonsense in the real topics. Even when pinning them.

When we make the website... :lol:

DON'T LAUGH AT ME. We're making that website. Naysayers will be executed.