- What do you hope to see in a forum? What would make you want to use it? (What would put you off from using it?)
* I like to be able to switch between several design styles. inkstone posted two links to forums that use Vanilla, and one is a prime example for the a forum design I would avoid like the plague. ;) Most forum software offers several layout options, especially if you have to pay for them.
* "mark all read" link
* I'm not a big fan of threaded topics either, so I hope there would be a possibility to choose a flat display.
* Bumping threads, having a visible indication of new replies in a thread, stuff like that which makes it easier to organize and follow threads.
* Icons! ♥
- Which topics and threads would you like to have?
I guess a basic separation between chit chat and focused work would be good. Since Fanlore covers a lot of areas, I would use subforums to structure the forum better and to make finding things easier. Subforums could be: introduction & announcements, collaborations & WIPs (i.e. projects in progress), technical questions (code, formatting...), content related questions, suggestions & ideas, fan history, unrelated chit chat (sometimes lovingly called "Spamboard" *grin*), admin forum... That's what I can think of from the top of my head.
To me, very important would be a sticky thread with a brief list for newbies (and not so new, but occasional editors) with links to help and information. Something like: - What is Fanlore, what belongs here? - First Steps on Fanlore. - How to get help. - Creating a page: Text. - Creating a page: Images. - Creating a page: Categories. - etc.
Those links could either lead to other topics where in an introductory way Fanlore and its way of working is explained to the new members (for example how categories work, why they are structured the way they are etc.), or to the respective pages on Fanlore itself. What I was missing immensely when I started to hang around was a structured, easy to find and brief list of helpful links and stuff (even later on I always had to have a bunch of tabs open for various codes and infos while writing a page).
The infos I got on the main page and the portal page didn't really help me, because they were presented in a way alien to me (i.e. in Wiki style). They were already part of something I had not yet made connection to. I'm not sure, how to explain it, but some people (me included) need simpler indexes to make quickly sense of a new structure, just the key words, not entire walls of texts (those come later on ;)).
This index, if it proves to be helpful, could also find its way to the main page, perhaps in a differently colored table so it's really obvious that This Is The Help.
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fanlore
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Date: 2012-04-09 02:15 pm (UTC)- What do you hope to see in a forum? What would make you want to use it? (What would put you off from using it?)
* I like to be able to switch between several design styles. inkstone posted two links to forums that use Vanilla, and one is a prime example for the a forum design I would avoid like the plague. ;) Most forum software offers several layout options, especially if you have to pay for them.
* "mark all read" link
* I'm not a big fan of threaded topics either, so I hope there would be a possibility to choose a flat display.
* Bumping threads, having a visible indication of new replies in a thread, stuff like that which makes it easier to organize and follow threads.
* Icons! ♥
- Which topics and threads would you like to have?
I guess a basic separation between chit chat and focused work would be good. Since Fanlore covers a lot of areas, I would use subforums to structure the forum better and to make finding things easier. Subforums could be: introduction & announcements, collaborations & WIPs (i.e. projects in progress), technical questions (code, formatting...), content related questions, suggestions & ideas, fan history, unrelated chit chat (sometimes lovingly called "Spamboard" *grin*), admin forum... That's what I can think of from the top of my head.
To me, very important would be a sticky thread with a brief list for newbies (and not so new, but occasional editors) with links to help and information. Something like:
- What is Fanlore, what belongs here?
- First Steps on Fanlore.
- How to get help.
- Creating a page: Text.
- Creating a page: Images.
- Creating a page: Categories.
- etc.
Those links could either lead to other topics where in an introductory way Fanlore and its way of working is explained to the new members (for example how categories work, why they are structured the way they are etc.), or to the respective pages on Fanlore itself. What I was missing immensely when I started to hang around was a structured, easy to find and brief list of helpful links and stuff (even later on I always had to have a bunch of tabs open for various codes and infos while writing a page).
The infos I got on the main page and the portal page didn't really help me, because they were presented in a way alien to me (i.e. in Wiki style). They were already part of something I had not yet made connection to. I'm not sure, how to explain it, but some people (me included) need simpler indexes to make quickly sense of a new structure, just the key words, not entire walls of texts (those come later on ;)).
This index, if it proves to be helpful, could also find its way to the main page, perhaps in a differently colored table so it's really obvious that This Is The Help.
Ahhhh, very excited about this!