What do we want or need as sub forums or pinned topics on the FFG xwing forums?

We have sub forums for rules queries, battles reports etc but I often feel that people post rules queries here instead as they fell they would get a quicker response.

Equally battle reports sometimes slip in here.

Several people get annoyed about 'off topic' of 'OT' topics whether or not they have a relationship to the star wars universe itself.

I've moderated and ran forums for about as long as forums have existed (yahoo groups, live journal pages, bulletin boards, tin newsgroups, fb groups... you name it I've ran one or moderated on one at some time) and I've noticed a common group of occurrences.

With a new and small forum many people make the fatal mistake of having far too many sub divided niche areas... they 50 or 60 new 'initial posting group' end up spreading posts out so you get two or three threads in each section, entire dead sections or worse of all *everything* goes into 'general discussion' because you know no one will read it otherwise.

These FFG xwing forums however have a very large membership and a very high daily post count. Without 'pinned' or 'sticky' posts covering commonly (daily?) asked questions you see the same posts occur covering the same ground. Equally a lack of specific sub forums on a site with a large daily post count means a topic can easily go off the front page within hours... meaning that someone posts it yet again.

I have had some discussion with this with FFG and they are interested in what we would like to see.

So which sub forums from this list would you be in favour of, and, could you perhaps suggest better ones?

Here would be my recommendations:

PINNED POSTS

Forum code of conduct and posting guidelines

Glossary of forum terms and abbreviations

Guides to movement in the game

SUB FORUMS

Narrative and Scenario Play

Painting and modelling

Squadron Builds (for casual or tournament play)

Stars Wars related off topic conversation

Community general off topic

New Players - advice and mentoring to new pilots

House Rules and 'homebrew' ship stats (perhaps better as a pinned post?)

Star Wars Humour

I have been told FFG are really hoping to look into how this forum is moderated and structured so this may be the opportunity to have your say.

Please try and be positive and constructive.

Please voice what you'd like to say and if someone has put forwards a suggestion that you dont like... *please* dont derail the thread by arguing about it with them as it will make it harder for me to present a clearer view of what people as *individuals* want. I'd rather not have to wade through five pages of two people arguing about a minor point

It will be easier to do that without annoying each other if there are sections that are of *specific* interest to you.

For example. At the moment I have only a passing interest in organised play and would prefer it if the 'tournament talk' was in that section but I also understand how conversations I have on 'off topic' subjects' with others annoys others.

There are a lot of us and the current set up seems struggling to keep everyone happy.

Please let me know your views.

Cheers

Gadge

@ Gadge - I'm pretty much in line with what you posted although I'd probably add a "Tournament Play/Build" subforum or some such where people could put up their tournament builds, discuss the tournament meta, etc.

I'll add that to the list , good idea.

Two OT subforums could possible be unnecessary? I mean, technically this is an X-Wing Forum, so there should be a separate place on FF's site. But equally, the people here like to be here to discuss things with the people they know frequent this space. Regardless, most OT stuff is SW related anyway. Star Wars Humour would likely fit into that too? +1 for New Player forum. I think that'd be nice. The Repaint Thread and those who frequent it will be happy if this means they finally get their desired subforum. Doubt you'll get any complaints for that suggestion.

What I'd hope for, though this isn't to do with the sorting categories for subforums, would be 'latest post' previews for subforums. Not that it seems to explicitly state it, but these forums feel like ip.board, and I know other ip.board forums have that. It'd help make the various subforums feel more inviting, I think, if you can see without clicking that there are new posts.

I wonder if it'd feel weird if everything was sorted into sub forums. What if there's nothing left to post in the main forum?

But anyway, hopefully this happens! More organization sounds like a good thing!

Pretty much what Haelbard said, but I would fold the Homebrew and narrative subforum into one:

Painting and modelling

Squadron Builds (for casual or tournament play)

New Players - advice and mentoring to new pilots

House Rules and 'homebrew' ship stats, Narrative and Scenario Play

Cantina : off topic (includes humor)

plus the 4 we already have:

Organised play

Battle report

Rules questions

Mission control

I think your sub-dividing too much. I see hardly any threads for for scenarios or house rules. Don't see any reason for 2 separate sub-forums for those. Most of the off topic posts that people post have some tangential connection to Star Wars, and humor is just a sub-category of off topic, combine all those. New players are the worst offenders when it comes to not posting in the right place, and most new player advice is going to be list critiques, rules questions and basic stuff covered in other pinned threads and sub-forums so I don't see any need for a New Player section.

My divisions would be

Sub-Forums

Rules Questions

Painting and Modelling

List Building and Critique

Organized Play

Battle Reports

Mission Control Tech Support

Off Topic (Star Wars or Other)

Pinned Topics

New Player Common Questions (covers common abbreviations, definition of a "hit", difference between actions and tokens, etc.)

Useful Links (Major Juggler's thread, which includes move and strategy guides and all that other stuff)

Frankly, that is really more sub-forums than I would like, but the ones I would most like to get rid of are the ones that already exist and its probably a bad idea to dump those.

This is all good guys

Please contribute. I have been in conversation with FFG representatives and they *are* wanting to shake up the forum moderate more effectively and provide us with a better service.

This is your chance to say what you want to see before i feed a collated report back to those who actually run this forum.

Im not asking you to agree with me, i'm asking you what you want to see,in what form and shape.

Definitely in need of a repaint subforum and I'd love to see a Scenario one.

Moderation, I'd just give a few trusted members basic moderation powers. Works for the rest of the internet.

If we must have an Off Topic forum I certainly wouldn't have three.

I like the subforums idea. I would lock the topics on this main forum to force people into subforums.

For moderators I would think having moderators be posters in the community who are respected and around would help as well.

I'm gonna copy/steal/ utilise the idea of Forgottenlore

Rules Questions

Painting and Modelling

List Building and Critique

Organized Play

Battle Reports

Mission Control Tech Support

Off Topic (Star Wars or Other)

But maybe merge organised play and battle reports?

We definatly need an OT, so we can discuss twileks dancers without gettiing the thead locked.

In my not so small experience, pinned topics should be limited as much as possible. Eventually people stop reading them and then they're only taking up real estate that is best used by what brings people here: new topics.

One topic, with a bunch of the info collected by MajorJuggler. And possibly one per subforum.

Subforums also not too many, you don't want to split the userbase too much as that'll ultimately end up on duplicate discussions.

Suggested subforums:

Flight School, for the new players.

Scenario and campaign play. This would also be the best place for house rules

Painting and modelling

List critiques and upgrade discussion

Keeping the main forum for rules questions and news discussion and the odd OT topic. Don't create a special place for offtopicness as that will only drive people to that place and there's a reason it's off topic.

A little topic drift and off topic talk in a topic is in itself not a bad thing, that's the grease that keeps the topic alive.

But foremost and above all, the moderating team must be a part of the community, because then you'll hardly have to moderate at all, your presence being powerful enough. Visibility also ensures that people more easily accept the decisions.

Sterling suggestions. I'll give it few more days for people to chip in over the weekend then ill ask my wife to collate the 'overall view' to avoid me subconsciously putting in my own bias then pass it on.

Before the most recent news I wanted to see every fix the tie advanced thread in its own sub forum

Gadge, I think by now you have it pretty much covered.

As you said there is a chance of getting to many sub-forums. It is with this in mind I would bring the various Off Topic ones and the Star Wars Humour into one OT sub-forum, as it already is. The three apart will mix again eventually with the bacon, eerh...., Off Topic Sub-forum.

But well done for the time and effort put into this!

I vote for anything just as long as there is a separate modeling and repaint forum the rest is just gravy as long as I can get the meat and taters of it.

Just did a quick count:

16,517 topics

283,276 replies

Battle Reports
723 topics
4,404 replies

Organized Play
1419 topics
7633 replies

Rules Questions
1902 topics
18128 replies

Mission Control
82 topics
142 replies

Off Topic
23 topics
428 replies

X-Wing
12368 topics
252541 replies

Of the topics in main forum, I counted within the first ten pages;

13 Off topic

12 Repaints and scratch builds

63 Lists

I myself really only come for the repaints and scratch build threads. Many of those threads get missed, due to the high volume of posts/replies that filter through in a twenty-four hour period. Just in the quick ten page count I found three customization threads that I had missed and those were posted within the last three days alone.

There are 413 pages in the main forum, it would take quite a while just to sort through those pages just to find repaints and builds, and still may miss some due to the lack of a naming convention in the thread titles.

This does not stop me from coming back daily, but an impatient person might give up and go else where for repaints, tips & tricks or scratch builds; which could, in turn, drive away some community contribution that the person may have brought to the table.

Speaking for myself, I have found a lot of inspiration within this community that has helped me get back into table-top gaming. Sure FFG has done a stellar job giving us such high quality miniatures and a rules set that is easy to understand, but it is the openness and camaraderie of the community that will keep this game alive.

Excellent work Lord Cole. That is exactly the kind of info we need.

We have an off topic sub-forum now. Like I said above (as have many others) a list building and painting and modeling forums should round out the necessary sub-sections

For stickied threads, I think just Major Juggler's useful links thread and a thread specifically for New players with common questions and problems is really all that is needed. Although, i have seen some evidence that this forum software deletes threads that have not been commented on after 2 years. That could be a problem with a thread that just links to other threads that never themselves get updated. Does anyone know if this is true? If it is, we may need 2-3 more stickied threads to avoid important info getting lost in a couple years.

Incidentally, I would be willing to be a mod for the X-Wing board. I have a couple thousand posts, almost all of them in the X-Wing forum, no warning points and I have been an administrator for a 40K forum in the past.

In my view, a moderator primarily needs to be able to sticky, move, delete and lock threads as appropriate and depending on FFG's policy, be able to issue either official or unofficial warnings for egregiously bad behavior.

I'd want a different subforum for each of the sanctioned game-mode variants (Furball, Epic, and Escalation).

Oh, if mods could have the ability to add custom smileys, that would be nice too. It would be so great to be easily able to add [boom], [kaboom], [eyeball] and [evasion] symbols to posts.

I don't know if that is something that could be limited to just the X-Wing section of the boards though. Given FFGs game design, it could get kinda confusing if icons for the custom dice and stuff in a dozen games got added to the smiley list that everyone sees without any kind of organization pattern.

I'd like a speculation subforum. This would be where people could make guesses on upcoming ships, factions, upgrades, etc that aren't currently known about. Maybe also make votes or requests to FFG for future stuff.

Beyond that, I guess a customization subforum would do well for painting/ship mods/etc.

The new/beginner area might be alright as well.

Anything else I think could find a home somewhere. Definitely don't need multiple OT forums, one is plenty.

Pinned topics in each sub-forum explaining what is actually supposed to go in them would be nice as well. I know that, to me, the "Organized Play" section sounds like it should be used just for info about tournaments and leagues, but people use it as a player locator and to announce casual pick up games and the like as well. (which is fine, I can't think of where else those kinds of posts would fit and the section doesn't get much traffic as is, it would just be nice to have it spelled out so nobody gets confused.)

I would like a forum where people could ask for things from FFG. "Fixes", new ships from EU, subforums, etc.

I feel strongly that "Lists" and entailing advice and critiques should be be it's own place.

When I was new to the game, a "New Player Area" would have been immensely helpful. Perhaps a renaming of the "Rules" sub forum to be more nclusive of a broader topic?

"Repaints & Scratch Builds" should be it's own area.

I would love to see an "Epic Play" forum. I think I speak for many when I say that while I don't home brew rules, I don't play competitively either. I often play outside of 100 point games and would be very interested in reading up on strategies and tactics in games of a larger scale.

Along those lines, a "Scenario & Campaign" forum would really excite me!

Fly Casual!!

Repaint and Custom Model for sure.

Houserule, Homebrew, and Design Fixes definitely need a sub topic, there's been way too much contention over these lately. Too many of these pop up for them to be in a single pinned thread.

Merging topics. Mods need to be able to do that too. How many different threads are there speculating about the emperor card? Two compiling lists of common slang?