I was just wondering, what's up with all the kingdom topics in the Living Greyhawk forums? Those have been sitting idle with virtually nothing posted to them ever. Have they simply never met their expected function?
Why not open them up to become more generic country-specific forums? Not necessarily limited only to Living Greyhawk material, which never seems to be posted there anyway, but perhaps they can be forums for non Living Greyhawk material, ideas, and discussion as well? It just seems they are somewhat wasted; yet forums to discuss issues related to individual kingdoms/areas is also missing. Perhaps it's merely an organizational thing, but it just seems that though basically wasted now, they could actually serve a much more useful purpose.
I've been looking through most of them as well and i agree,.. nothing is ever posted. One of my interests at the momment is the elven Kingdom of Celene which i can never find detailed info on or stir up thought about. It never got much light in LG campaigns that i ever knew of. I think opening the forums more would help them breathe better and help non-region areas come to life a little.
I'm pretty sure it is open to non-LG discussion and usage, as long as it's relevant to the region. At least that's my reading based on the first paragraph of the sticky about rules for posting LG material. Someone more official may want to confirm or crush that.
The meta-region boards are terrible. It doesn't matter what the exact discussion requirements are - no one posts in them because no one looks at them. Questions posted anywhere on these forums besides the main board are half as likely to get a reply. Canonfire has no where near the traffic to warrant so much segmentation.
As a topic browser, wading through 33 empty boards is a nightmare.
Now that we've suffered them for a couple of years, can someone please declare the meta-region boards a failed experiment and do away with them?
I'm pretty sure it is open to non-LG discussion and usage, as long as it's relevant to the region. At least that's my reading based on the first paragraph of the sticky about rules for posting LG material. Someone more official may want to confirm or crush that.
The regional forums are very much for more than LG content. We hope that anybody with LG material might post it there, or links to it, and some have done this, but we had also realize that, due the great diversity of the Greyhawk community, there are quite a few people who could care less about LG material, but that might still want to post threads on the various regions, so the regions were left fully open to any posts about them, by design. The only reason the posting rules mention LG so much is due to the legal morass that surrounds most everything LG-related, which newer folks simply might not be all that aware of.
If people are getting the impression that these forums are only for LG content/discussion then perhaps their sectional titles need to made more different from those that LG use so as to kill that (false) assumption.
vestcoat wrote:
The meta-region boards are terrible. It doesn't matter what the exact discussion requirements are - no one posts in them because no one looks at them. Questions posted anywhere on these forums besides the main board are half as likely to get a reply.
Not really true at all. Nobody posts in them because of a lack of motivation/interest. Just look at the views for even the least trafficked of the regional forums and you will note that they more than hold their own against most threads in the general forum. That has much more to do with peoples' level of interest in, or actually having an opinion on, what was posted than it does with anything else, and the page views bear that out. Have a look if you don't believe me.
Granted, it would be great if the regional forums were busier. I guess lots of people want, but not a lot want to give. Shock. Amazement. What I do know at this point in time is that last year the site had a total of 4,864,911 page views, which destroyed the totals for any years prior to that. So far this year, the site has had 6,787,426 page views, which utterly destroys last year's total- especially considering that this year is barely more than half over.
People do look around; more so now than they ever have, so the regional forums will stick around for a while. Some things might need to be changed though. I will make a point of noting that there have been a slew of old school adventures re-released for sale as PDFs recently, and I will also note that nobody has seen fit to do even something so simple as to post links to them, by region, in the regional forums. Not that that would be useful or anything, let alone perhaps start up any discussion about anything...
There are all kinds of things people could do, but one can't force them to do it. _________________ - Moderator/Admin (in some areas)/Member -
Last edited by Cebrion on Tue Jul 30, 2013 10:42 pm; edited 1 time in total
Thank you for the response. I know that I have looked there off-and-on for years, waiting for info to get posted. I was constantly disappointed, and I wonder if my mistaken impression of the forums was more widespread than just one erroneous reading. I think the idea of changing the names of the forums may be useful in getting more posts there. I know I would absolutely LOVE to post some of my own stuff there, and I would also have used them quite a bit for posting questions over the last few years, but I wasn't sure they were the right places to do so.
Anyway, I will not shy away from using them now. Hopefully, others will follow suit. Those forums are the IDEAL place to discuss more kingdom-specific topics. If you later want to see what info there is on say, the Pomarj, you have but to look there. I believe it would be much easier than sifting through the rest of the threads. Nothing like a bit of organization!
My only other though is this, should some other discussions be moved there? Is that even possible? For instance, one of the newest threads in the general discussion forum is Greyhawk City. This would be much better in the City of Greyhawk thread, wouldn't it? I know it's just an organizational question, but with 2871 topics over 58 pages, well...
so, just asking is all. Anyway, thanks, and I will try for sure to utilize them more from here on.
Sure, some discussion could be moved there, and likely will be, but before that happens, the areas will likely be fleshed out more. We'll likely move away from the LG region names too, and go with Central Flanaess, Northern Flanaess, Southern Flanaess, Western Flanaess, Eastern Flanaess, and Beyond the Flanaess will be tossed in there as well. Once that is done, then stuff could be moved about. _________________ - Moderator/Admin (in some areas)/Member -
Wasn't there discussion at one time to make it a singular selection that went to another page?
I seem to remember some limitations PHP-Nuke had that were going to be looked at for upgrading?
Don't get me wrong, as one of the instigators, I think the regions will become a great resource, its just going to go through some growing pains as to the best means to impliment their use.
Expanding each region past the LG layout is a good step forward.
Getting the collective to place the obvious questions, comment, etc into the applicible places would also help.
The concern (as also noted elsewhere) is lack of visual traffic / response. Is there a methodology that could list current postings by date (say top 20) to aid in this, instead of just relying on the "red icon" to the right?
IMO this could grow into the greatest single repository for GH materials, information, etc.... In an age of 404 error Items not found, this is important to have a place that preserves GH.
FYI, its only been a year and a half
And as the Great Greyhawk Sage Rasgon pointed out to me recently..... Be Patient....
Wasn't there discussion at one time to make it a singular selection that went to another page? I seem to remember some limitations PHP-Nuke had that were going to be looked at for upgrading?
Yes, php-nuke is the limiting factor. We really need to move to some new software. Not sure when Gary will get to that though.
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Expanding each region past the LG layout is a good step forward.
The sections have never been limited to only LG content.
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The concern (as also noted elsewhere) is lack of visual traffic / response. Is there a methodology that could list current postings by date (say top 20) to aid in this, instead of just relying on the "red icon" to the right?
There is the "recently posted in threads" window at the top right of the front page. I could see if that window could be expanded though.
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IMO this could grow into the greatest single repository for GH materials, information, etc.... In an age of 404 error Items not found, this is important to have a place that preserves GH.
That is the hope. There is a lot of LG Triad website information that even the Wayback Machine will no longer find, so stuff is just disappearing into the void. We would prefer to keep that information available for those that are interested in it. A lot of people put untold hours of time into creating the LG content, and it would be a shame for it to just fade away to nothing. But it is not just about LG content- that just happens to be the thing that the most people ask about, whether they were involved with LG or not. _________________ - Moderator/Admin (in some areas)/Member -
Last edited by Cebrion on Mon Jul 22, 2013 4:37 am; edited 2 times in total
Expanding each region past the LG layout is a good step forward.
The sections have never been limited to only LG content.
Well true, but, I think some visitors don't fully understand the LG divisions nor did they allow for places like the wild coast or Celene for example. I think your proposal to reshuffle by north, central, etc. are good, more concise subsets.
Cebrion wrote:
Quote:
The concern (as also noted elsewhere) is lack of visual traffic / response. Is there a methodology that could list current postings by date (say top 20) to aid in this, instead of just relying on the "red icon" to the right?
There is the "recently posted in threads" window at the top right of the front page. I could see if that window could be expanded though.
I've noticed that when someone adds something in the general converse it shows at the right, but if you add something into one of the "sub-threads" (such as with the LG spots) it doesn't seem to appear at the top, it just highlights the "ball" red.
Cebrion wrote:
Quote:
IMO this could grow into the greatest single repository for GH materials, information, etc.... In an age of 404 error Items not found, this is important to have a place that preserves GH.
That is the hope. There is a lot of LG Triad website information that even the Wayback Machine will no longer find, so stuff is just disappearing into the void. We would prefer to keep that information available for those that are interested in it. A lot of people put untold hours of time into creating the LG content, and it would be a shame for it to just fade away to nothing. But it is not just about LG content- that just happen to be the thing that the most people ask about, whether they were involved with LG or not.
My thoughts as well, there is a tremendous amount of information that was labored that now the devouring 404 beast consumes. We must rise up and meet this foe!!!! (insert drums and trumpet blares here) heheh
Also, could the whole of the "LG" regions (for lack of a better descriptor) be placed like a link at the top such as the down loads, articles, reviews links are? this would shorten the "first" page (appeasing some) and still leave the repository of area info "intact". Although, (again not knowing the behind the curtain mechanics) that may render those as unable to "converse in"? like within the forum... would they then become only electronic file cabinets? It does seem that you can comment on articles there though.... so again... not sure.....
I'm glad I asked this. So, I'd like to post some stuff on Highfolk and the Pomarj, but I'm not sure where to do it. I didn't see anything in the region area. Where should I put it?
Post them in the main forum for now. What I think will be happening is that there will be five regions, with every 83' WoG nation being mentioned in each region, plus a forum for any mountains, forests, badlands, etc. in those regions which are not really a part of a nation, or that are only nominally claimed by a nation. _________________ - Moderator/Admin (in some areas)/Member -
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