General Discussion VS Hangout Area

[MangaD]

Let's just move every not serious topic from general discussion and call it "improvement". Real life pic, a member who is back "Hi" thread, warcraft movie trailer, news about dragon ball super. let's merge this http://lf-empire.de/forum/showthread.php?tid=476 with another "birthday thread"
And by checking threads in "General discussion", I found that almost everything outthere is just a "hangout".
The only serious topic is LF2 IRC topic.

Real life pics should go to Hangout Area too imo. "Hi" thread probably to the Disposal?

About the other threads you mentioned, I think they are fine in General Discussion. Because they are actually debating a topic or presenting with new information.

The B-day and real life pics threads are basically just a hangout between forum members, nothing serious that everyone should be "notified" about at the Overview imo.

The Quotes thread is arguable I guess, but due to random senseless quotes being posted there, it kind of annoys me. What actually made me start this thread in the first place.

You are an active member so you may not notice it, but there are a lot of users who check this forum on a regular basis but rarely post anything. I don't think those members check the forum because of the Hangout Area, otherwise they would participate too. And having the Overview cluttered with these threads is a hassle sometimes.

But well, if it afflicts you that much, I guess we should forget all this. It seems to cause to you more trouble to move those threads than to me seeing the Overview cluttered occasionally...

[Gespenst]

Hah, did not expected this debate to live that long. There was nothing to discuss from the begining.
Saying "just messing with you" would sound as an excuse.

Admins and mods can warn me for my bad behaviour if they want.


I am actualy not against it but had to play along since it involved more and more members

[AmadisLFE]

To be honest guys, no one checks the hangout area much, Also I'm fine with anything as well, but maybe if we could get a notification for the birthday thread.

EDIT: No, I am not joking, I am fine with this, just a notification for the BT should be fine.

EDIT2: BT stands for Birthday Thread.

EDIT3: No I did not edit this three times.

[Silverthorn]

Oh boy, this escalated at an uncomfortable pace! Now everyone should sit back down and enjoy a piece of cake.

On a more serious note, though, when I wrote the last post, I was in a hurry, so let me elaborate a bit.

As an admin, it's my job to provide a platform where people can exchange ideas, discuss their opinions, and showcase their creations... or, in short, a forum. When it comes to actual content, I do read quite a number of posts but usually don't have the opportunity to contribute with anything worthwhile. Also, in terms of moderating; yes, of course, I do have the privs to trash posts, move threads, etc. It just happens that I've become relatively slow at checking the list of reported posts and somebody else is usually faster at taking appropriate actions. At this point, I really thank @Simoneon, @STM1993, @Ramond, @Azriel, and @SirFrog for their continuous efforts at keeping the forums clean! That is the reason for me saying:

considering that mods can move threads, I'll leave this up to them

Please note, this is solely related on the content. I have too much stuff flying around my head right now to determine whether thread X should go to hangout area while thread Y should remain in general discussion. If you guys come to the conclusion that the Birthday thread is better suited in the Hangout Area, then so be it.

Just as an info from my side: I'm typically not checking latter section at all, so if there were any birthday wishes directed at me, they probably go by unnoticed. As for the quotes-thread, I've stopped paying attention to it. Nowadays, it's mostly citing other websites or at least somewhat "inspirational quotes" that could very well be posted on failbook as well. In my honest opinion, its quality degraded quite heavily... but then again, each to their own.

One thing I didn't quite understand was @LutiChris's proposal:

I have a better solution. How about when its someone's birthday and you see their username displayed at the bottom of the main page we include a link to direct them to the happy birthday thread to wish them happy birthday! This way the Happy Birthday Thread doesn't need to be spamming the new post thingy in the overview box and it'll still be easy to access instead of going through the hangout area to find it.

Maybe have the birthday thread timeout after 48 hours because of time zone conflicts or if they were too late it would still list people's birthday's yesterday?

First things first, doing thread-related things is really not something I would like to do. To me, it feels like hacking a hack into a hack that's been done to hack a hack. Or something like that. But other than that, can you please elaborate? Even after reading it several times, I cannot quite follow what you're trying to tell me, sorry

Now that "Forum Games" has been renamed to "Hangout Area", the boundaries definitely blur out what goes into one forum what goes into the other. Essentially, I'm just waiting out the poll results and see what the result will be like because, really, it doesn't matter to me. I'm actually amazed that both others as well as I can write so much about a mundane thing such as "where should thread X go?"

For the record, if the desire really persists, I can add an additional field inside the User CP > Settings which will be something like "Show post of the Hangout Area in the overview". It's also a hack of a hack but eh.

Hope this helps unrustling your jimmies.

Simoneon edited this post 01-29-2016 10:31 PM because:

Oh, Blue Phoenix, you make me blush

[LutiChris]

How about when its someone's birthday and you see their username displayed at the bottom of the main page we include a link to direct them to the happy birthday thread

can you please elaborate?

Like this

[MangaD]

For the record, if the desire really persists, I can add an additional field inside the User CP > Settings which will be something like "Show post of the Hangout Area in the overview". It's also a hack of a hack but eh.

Actually having a user selectable list of the forums which should show up at the Overview is not a bad idea at all. Could give a little work to implement though.

[MnM]

My main concern was birthdays need to stay public. The thread loses it's value if it is moved to Hangouts area due to over view problem (enabling over view for Hangout area would be a complete mess given the number of posts) . However threads like "real life pics" can be moved to Hangouts area. Different people might have different opinions regarding the over view it ultimately boils down to the purpose of wishing a person "happy birthday". It might not be a matter of prime importance but whatever discussion we are having must be carefully thought of.

tl;dr: It might sound silly but Birthday thread posts being showed on overview seems more appropriate to me. Thank you!

[A-Man]

So, will 'Birthday Thread' still be moved to Hangout area? It's clear from the results of the poll and the discussion that happened here that the majority agrees to that.

[STM1993]

I think I'll just move it to Hangout Area then, in accordance to the votes. Most people who bother to post birthdays see it from the birthday list below and then go out of the way to find the thread anyway, and from the looks of it those who post there also tend to post in the Hangout Area.

However, for the sake of those in the habit of viewing the thread in General Discussion, I have left a permanent redirect link in there, and both are still stickied.