Revival - what about the forum?

As you might have noticed - I love our forums. I love forums in general, but especially ours. This was my first chance to be a moderator and hopefully I've done a descent job.

Though, as our guild will be revived, get a fresh coat of paint, new rules, new members and a new feel - what about the forums? Even though the forums are great in many ways, now that it's been used for a while, I can see our needs - and what we actually have. At many points, these forums meet our needs, but on other areas, it is lacking.

So - what do you think? Shall we stick to these forums, or make new ones?

Pros for making a new forum:
- We can remake the different forum sections to fit our needs better, some of them are now confusing, unnecessary, or lacks definition
- We can, by starting from scratch, make it easier to spread news and event information. Wouldn't it be nice if all events could also be found on the forums in the future?
- We can get a new forum name which fits our new guild name
- Not all of the apoth members will be coming back to the new guild, but will still be registered on our forums. If we make new forums, only guild members will be forum members
- Right now, I think Raktokk is the one who can edit everything at these forums, and as he's not very active, it makes it troublesome to change settings etc.
- Old information like backgroundstories and guild-related art can be moved to the new forums

Cons for making a new forum:
- Everyone would have to sign up again
- All old history & threads will be "lost"

To sum it up: if we're fine with the forums the way they work today, we can stick to these. If we want to make them better and give them a revamp, making a new one and start from scratch - like we're doing with the guild - might be a better option.

...well when you put it like -that-...

Me and Hain discussed this briefly earlier, and I think new forums are needed, that would be my vote! And you're clearly the gal for the job. *munches cookies and leaves thread satisfied*

Can't we get a new domain name, put a new paint job on this thing maybe and shuffle all the boards around and rename them?

Going for the best of both here.

If not, a new one.

Oh! I vote for a new forum. I'd also love to help in both moderation and the setting up of this forum. I like stuff like that.

We could, Hain, but none of us have access to that kind of stuff, I think. And it's easier to start from scratch.

I'm more than willing to set the new forums up and continue my work with taking care on the forums, this time as an admin if that's alright.

It's a kind offer Geri! It's not up to me who's in or who's out, but I've managed to take care of these forums all by myself so far (yes we have other mods but I've never seen them actually moderating anything). Just as with how we now limit the amount of leaders in the guild, I also think it is good to limit the amount of admin/mods to the lowest number possible because a) avoid what has happened on these forums - people seeking mod status without actually using it and b) to limit the different number of "mod" styles. Different mods can react to different kind of things, which makes it confusing for the member - what is allowed and what is not?

I think you make a good point Bekka, Geri can still help you out - but he'll be busy with recruitment anyway (which means trawling through applications on our forums). Soooo... Now we've settled on a name, I grant you permission to get goin', although quite how and where you make these things I have no idea. :s

Rebekka wrote:

It's a kind offer Geri! It's not up to me who's in or who's out, but I've managed to take care of these forums all by myself so far (yes we have other mods but I've never seen them actually moderating anything). Just as with how we now limit the amount of leaders in the guild, I also think it is good to limit the amount of admin/mods to the lowest number possible because a) avoid what has happened on these forums - people seeking mod status without actually using it and b) to limit the different number of "mod" styles. Different mods can react to different kind of things, which makes it confusing for the member - what is allowed and what is not?

That's why you have a set of rules. All of the mods and admins work together to write the rules and stick by them.
Furthermore, if I'm going to be in charge of recruitment as Viatrix said it would help if I at least had moderation and administration powers over my own section of the new forums; it is possible to pick and choose where people can have power and not. That way we can create an accepted and rejected board and it will allow me to make edits to their posts and move the topics etc. without having to contact Bekka everytime.

When I think about it, you make a good point, Geri. We can set up rules, and I'll give you moderation status on the whole forum.

I do have a few questions: I fear "thespine" is taken, as a forum name. Do we have another suggestion? thespineeu? thespineshatareu? They're all so long and complicated. Suggestions? Maybe we should give the forum its own cool name?

Also, colour scheme? I found a very neat black and cyan style for forums. Is our "main" colours till black and green or is this a subject to change? Maybe we should have black and blue to match the Forsaken tabard and banner? How will our new tabard look? Do you want the forum banner to look a certain way - I'm sure I can make a descent one, either by drawing or modelviewer, but do you want it to contain something special?

All good questions, I intend to discuss the tabard tonight OOC with everyone online (since - REMEMBER - we have an IC meeting at 20:30). So... By tommorow I should have settled on a design, but I doubt it shall be green any longer. We'll see.

As for a name... Hm... Again, we'll need to chat amongst ourselves online and come up with something, I can think of nothing as of now.