Yes, this does affect you. Keep reading.
Background
After a few weeks of discussion in the Mod and Admin Teams, we're making a significant change in the way THN Games works.
Since moving over to vBulletin around sixteen months ago, we switched over to a system of "subscribe for the content that interests you". We did this because we were concerned that THN was becoming too focused on a single game (at the time, BF2) and that we were damaging our diversity by drowning out other content.
In retrospect, I think we were probably in the middle of a different transition, from games that we had played before to newer games and that BF2 was just the flash point of the moment. Whatever the case, we switched to extensive use of public usergroups and specific game forums only visible if you joined those usergroups.
Thing is, we don't think that's worked too well. It was a good experiment and perhaps helped us to start with but, in the long term, it has stopped being helpful. Now, it is complex to manage, confusing for new members and divisive of our community in general. Moreover, we've done some scouting around and it's really very apparent that other communities are quite capable of holding down multiple games at once and thriving as a result. Is THN so different? We assert no, not really.
The Change
The key change will be that the vast majority of public usergroups and game forums will be removed. Posts from those game forums will be migrated into Games Chat. The board registration will no longer offer or require a method of joining these public usergroups and we'll update the FAQ, the Games Chat description and assorted guidance posts to remove reference to them.
Only Games Chat, Battlefield and World of Warcraft forums will continue to exist under the Games category. All the Team forums, which are private groups for particular clans, closed guilds, and working teams in THN, will remain untouched as they retain a fair reason to be private/closed. The sub-categories of Games will be removed, leaving everything at the top level but as that will only be three forums it won't be too heavy a load on screen real estate.
All non-private game-related usergroups will be deleted. You can still use Games You Play searches to find people who play the same games as you.
Why?
The following is almost a direct cut-and-paste of my basic reasons delivered to the Mod Team. Many reasons, in no particular order:
This change hopes to alleviate all these issues and, I fervently hope, not create any substantial new issues.
OMG, like, what can I do about it?
Like it? Just hang in there and these changes will be happening in the next few days.
Don't like it? Post here but be prepared for a detailed discussion of why you believe this change does not benefit THN. I'm just going to ignore disagreement without adequate justification.
Is that all?
Actually, probably not. However, this is all just for now. Anything else depends on the availability of Admin and Developer time and that is almost universally in short supply.
Background
After a few weeks of discussion in the Mod and Admin Teams, we're making a significant change in the way THN Games works.
Since moving over to vBulletin around sixteen months ago, we switched over to a system of "subscribe for the content that interests you". We did this because we were concerned that THN was becoming too focused on a single game (at the time, BF2) and that we were damaging our diversity by drowning out other content.
In retrospect, I think we were probably in the middle of a different transition, from games that we had played before to newer games and that BF2 was just the flash point of the moment. Whatever the case, we switched to extensive use of public usergroups and specific game forums only visible if you joined those usergroups.
Thing is, we don't think that's worked too well. It was a good experiment and perhaps helped us to start with but, in the long term, it has stopped being helpful. Now, it is complex to manage, confusing for new members and divisive of our community in general. Moreover, we've done some scouting around and it's really very apparent that other communities are quite capable of holding down multiple games at once and thriving as a result. Is THN so different? We assert no, not really.
The Change
The key change will be that the vast majority of public usergroups and game forums will be removed. Posts from those game forums will be migrated into Games Chat. The board registration will no longer offer or require a method of joining these public usergroups and we'll update the FAQ, the Games Chat description and assorted guidance posts to remove reference to them.
Only Games Chat, Battlefield and World of Warcraft forums will continue to exist under the Games category. All the Team forums, which are private groups for particular clans, closed guilds, and working teams in THN, will remain untouched as they retain a fair reason to be private/closed. The sub-categories of Games will be removed, leaving everything at the top level but as that will only be three forums it won't be too heavy a load on screen real estate.
All non-private game-related usergroups will be deleted. You can still use Games You Play searches to find people who play the same games as you.
Why?
The following is almost a direct cut-and-paste of my basic reasons delivered to the Mod Team. Many reasons, in no particular order:
- The usergroup system is too confusing for new members. We have a fair sign-up rate but fail to translate that into active users.
- THN Games indexes in search engines really badly because much of our good content is behind "closed" doors.
- The system is a bastard to administer.
- Other sites blatantly succeed in running multiple games side-by-side. Sure, we have our community, they have theirs, but are we really so different? The usergroups appear to divide our community rather than enabling us to just "do our bit".
This change hopes to alleviate all these issues and, I fervently hope, not create any substantial new issues.
OMG, like, what can I do about it?
Like it? Just hang in there and these changes will be happening in the next few days.
Don't like it? Post here but be prepared for a detailed discussion of why you believe this change does not benefit THN. I'm just going to ignore disagreement without adequate justification.
Is that all?
Actually, probably not. However, this is all just for now. Anything else depends on the availability of Admin and Developer time and that is almost universally in short supply.
