Now that you're all here reading the forums again…..

[blinky465 17028xp 2]

Heck, if my main job wouldn’t have me sit at a PC all day I’d be gone from one or the other as well.

It feel like this is the nub of it. Because some of us can’t. So miss out on the Discord chat. And catching up on forum chat isn’t quite the same, when a few of the members aren’t posting, as they’ve already said what they want to say in the “live chat”.

So in answer to @phaidknott ‘s question

[do] you feel (like me) that the use of the Discord server has had a massive (and negative effect) on the forum traffic?

Yes. What do you want to do about it? That’s something else. I’d like to say thanks to those of you lucky enough to be able to have the time to do both! Long live the forums! (though I’m not quite sure how, just yet…)

 

[panzerkaput 33943xp 0]

Isnt the problem that this site is a little unreliable at times, a little clunky and a little difficult to navigate. There are great topics on here that people never see before the way this works. For the Forums to work then they need more love and be pushed forward more and easier to access from the front page.

Personally I use dont but use Discord more as it is easier to use, if OTT was easier to use then I would use that.

Goes back its either one of the other as I see it or you have the Discord for social chat and stuff and take all the hobby stuff away from the discord so we have to post in the forums.

[phaidknott 7027xp 2]

@blinky465 I’d be happy to see things go either way (all Discord or all Forums), it’s more a matter of getting the conversations going by the same method (rather than in two different streams).

Granted my natural preference would be for things to revert back to Forums, but ideally we would have to go where the majority would like things to be. It’s just we seem to be currently in a “Jack of all trades/Master of none” situation where there’s good conversations going on in both Discord AND in the Forums, but there little or no cross pollination happening.

Before Discord the Forums seemed to go from top to bottom on the front page in about a day, where now it seems to be about a week (so have forum posts dropped by 80%). I remember initially the Discord was for CoGs only before it was opened up to all visitors to the site.

It’s just seems to me that the Forums form part of the BoW site, whereas Discord sits apart (probably because there’s no ticker of Discord updates on the main page (perhaps something could be added there?)). And stuff from Discord doesn’t filter down to the main website.

But at the end of the day, I’d just like to see the community come back together is discussion and fact checking rather than being in two camps (as the vast majority will prefer one system over the other and tend to stick to that rather than going across both systems……that would start to feel like a full time job I guess).

 

[timchubbKeymaster 3166xp 2]

One thing im thinking of adding to discord would be a custom bot, which would allow the site search (dont worry i have a raft of improvements to unleash, see @sundancers guilty thread for a mea culpa from me regarding the stagnation of development and reliability issues of the site) to be integrated in into discord, which would return top3 search results, so that things like “how do i paint yellow” (you dont you swear it onto the mini) could be answered by the bot by driving you to the relevant post/article/thread/video on the site

Stuff like that i think could really help bridge the gulf, as otherwise there is an OTT discord, and a site and never twain shall meet.

[onlyonepinman 18072xp 1]

I used to run admin on a forum until Facebook, which you could possibly argue is halfway between a chat program and a forum, pretty much killed the forum.  Facebook is a vastly inferior tool for creating and managing discussion but it killed the forum all the same.  Generally speaking, people don’t have the time to maintain a presence on lots of media platforms so whilst discord and forums are technically designed for different things, it is still possible that Discord is killing the forums purely by being a distraction.

I don’t do discord at all – I use it for audio and video streaming whilst gaming but not as a dedicated chat program.  Until now I hadn’t considered that Discord could be a cause of reduced forum traffic

[onlyonepinman 18072xp 2]

To sort of echo the original post, Several years ago I used to be really active but then stuff happened in real life, the wheels fell off the box car shall we say and that also coincided with some areas of the forums and users getting a little silly and argumentative and certain people leaving the forum in spectacular fashion;  it just got a bit too hard to stay active.  Mostly it was real life that drove the decision, the silly behaviours were literally the straw that broke the camel’s back.  Now life has at least partly recovered, I have come back a little but it feels different now.  I am sure some of that is because maybe I don’t know some of the newer users quite so well or have just been out of touch with others for so long but it also feels quieter somehow.

[phaidknott 7027xp 1]

@timchubb although a search engine might be good the real downfall of using Discord is that there no notifications of discussions going on in Discord on the main website that we can spot and join in on.

On the main website frontpage I can see the last dozen or so forum posts, so if I’m interested (or can help) I can leap in and join the discussion. However with Discord I have to basically “trawl” through the interface to see what’s been going on (which takes a lot more time vs a brief glance on the front page).

I think this is where the disjoint is happening, ideas and threads just don’t pollenate over to the main website from Discord to bring in posters. I also wonder (as I don’t use it) if Discord users just tend to use Discord as their main portal to BoW (and only take a look at the main website if articles/threads and linked in the Discord Chat? Perhaps others can provide feedback on this)

 

[panzerkaput 33943xp 2]

Is goes back to either keep the hobby element way from discord and have it only here or organise the Discord rooms into easily followable threads. Personally as a user of both, I find Discord far easily to use but I am happy to divorce chat from hobby and only post hobby on here and chat on there.

But they need to make it easier and more stable a platform on here for that to work.

Also everyone have to agree to that and the OTT guys have to remove the hobby rooms from the Discord.

Is that fair to the Discord users who dont post here? I think not and will need to attract them over to this platform, but making it easier to use and simpler to find.

[oriskany 60777xp 2]

“Now that you’re all here reading the forums again?”
Hmm, okay.

Gave the forums an honest “once more chance” shot – my own and several other people’s historical topics were quickly buried with no replies or upvotes, nobody gave a shit, while these sam topics received nice attention in the Projects, Discord, and also our YouTube channel.

So … goodbye forums.
Gotta go where the action is.

[sundancer 43074xp 2]

@oriskany I think one of the main problems with these forums here on OTT is: they are not “real” forums. It’s a forum’ish comment section.

What do I mean by that? Now, proper forums running things like phpBB or Simple Machines Forum have a very top heavy structure which makes it easy to navigate. And simple features like “show me all unread topics” or “mark all forum read” simplify navigation so much. Also finding topics with low interaction rates is much easier. If I knew it would do anything I’d vote for a proper forum under https://forum.ontabletop.com (@warzan @lloyd maybe give this a thought or two?)

Additionally what I have seen the last days is the simple fact that front end depiction does not match with the actual content in the forum. Example (not Saga, sorry): I get an email “new reply to thread”. If I, at the very moment, refresh https://www.beastsofwar.com/forums it will not show the latest reply. There is a very noticeable delay which makes navigating the forums even worse.

I hate to say it but I get why Jim says goodbye to the forums. WordPress does many nice things. Being a forum is not one of them :S

[oriskany 60777xp 3]

Thanks, @sundancer – I know about the delay in publishing and that’s totally fine.  And I’m totally fine with my content (and other people’s) getting a better reception in some areas than others.

I just created a given slice of material, put up that same material in several places, sat back, and watched.

Several times.

The results were always the same.  Unless I specifcially pinged someone, results were always better on COGs Discord and OTT Project feature.

Other examples include warhammergrimace’s “Gaming in China’s History” thread.  I think he had to ping his own thread six times before someone replied, and it was a Jackie Chan reference (*sigh*).

So this isn’t just me crying that “no one likes my stuff” …  (a) it’s other people too.  (b) people do like my material, just in other areas.

I know there’s a big top-down push to get people going in the forums again, and I wish everyone the best of success, but the data shows it’s just not for me (or my material, or whatever).  Projects for the win.  😀 😀 😀

[timchubbKeymaster 3166xp 2]

@onlyonepinman similar story for me (it’s nakchak BTW but on my admin account) the forums have deff entered a fallow period compared to the old days but that’s probably as much to do with adding projects to the site which is a much more natural fit for a lot of the old hobby type threads which often ended up with people high jacking what was essentially a hobby log thread. The thing with forums in my opinion is they all are cyclical in terms of activity.  Just look at the activity since Friday night (OK it’s basically a pay to play ploy) but still busier than its been for a while.  Maybe it will stay busy maybe it won’t.

@oriskany sad to see you go, but also understandable.  Here’s a question though what if each project created a discussion thread along side it in its own forum (like a lot of other sites project log systems) or is the per project post comments sufficient? As most projects comments are empty, and I have a hunch that project wide discussions would be better suited to a thread.  Especially questions which may not fit the content of the project post.

@sundancer what are these things you say WordPress does well 😉 meaningful emails is on my snag list, wouldn’t hold your breath for a systems change I pushed hard for a change when we were deving 2.0 problem is that its very heavily integrated with the user profile system @mentions, activity wall etc and its this system which also introduces the delay you mention, the code base doesn’t handle large numbers of signed in users very well and means we hit some scaling issues (have to balance operating costs vs ux) please bear in mind the dev team is Tom and myself, Tom’s pretty much running the store these days and this has always been a volunteer side gig to my day job so there is only so much that can be done at once, while juggling work and family life too.  Thing with discord is that it’s just one of many chat programs it’s nothing special tbh, a slightly user friendlier irc at best; will it be the in thing in a few years time.? probably not just like MSN messenger, icq, yahoo chat, aim, gchat, Skype, msn chat are all either Internet history or hemmoraging users apart from Skype covid gave it a reprieve cus of vid calls so I personally am not attached to it, I’ve been online long enough to know the more things change they more they stay the same and it will cease to be relevant while the site and forums will remain.

That said I’m making steady progress on a performance reliability and quality of life update for the site watch this space…

 

[oriskany 60777xp 1]

@timchubb – I can’t argue with you that comments are scarce on the Project thread.  I submit them sometimes, people submit them to be sometimes (@damon and I ware talking about Battle Carry Sabot as we speak), but unless you are pinged on these, people often don’t see  them (comments in Project Threads).

Live Stream Community Wargame – Rasmus v. Oriskany

When starting things like a community wargame campaign or a Darkstar campaign, we’ve always debated whether we go with a projects’ “VERTICAL” orientation (one user only can submit images and content), or a forum (less organized, but more HORIZONTAL = many people can submit).

A Project thread that auto-generates Forum posts might be cool, just might really bury the rest of the forum threads by sheer volume.  (??)

[timchubbKeymaster 3166xp 1]

@oriskany It would be its own dedicated forum for project discussion threads, possibly with sub forums for hobby, game, terrain projects, just throwing ideas out to see what we can do, the nice thing would be that the thread would link back to the project and the project back to the thread, in theory it would complement each other and promote projects through being discussed, not just from being updated and appearing at the top of the page before it disappears in the content churn.

For me that would be a good addition as it would play to the strengths of both systems without trying to be all things at once.

We can filter by forum for what appears on the home page so shouldnt bury non project discussion either.

[blinky465 17028xp 1]

Interesting thread – @oriskany makes some good points. But also raises another question – what do people want from the forum/site? Discord is great because it generates responses. Forums not so much because posts don’t get a response. Projects are great. But projects don’t get comments. It seems like a bit of a paradox!

Is it that the projects system is more of a personal “project log” (plog?) so nobody really minds about the lack of interaction, because that’s not it’s primary purpose? Are forums posts with lots of interaction because they naturally create questions, or are discussion points with no “correct” answer (and so encourage more members to “stick their oar in”?)

If someone posts “here’s something I’m working on” I tend to read the post, say to myself “wow that’s pretty cool” (or even “hmm, I have no idea what this is on about”) but with nothing more to add, I don’t reply to the thread (hey, those of you saying “you’ll reply to any old thing, even if you’ve nothing to add” can pipe down at the back! Not *always*). Similarly, I have no understanding of historicals – so tend not to respond to forums posts about historicals. But if somone is publishing videos on a site primarily about historical gaming, watched by people who like historical gaming, they’re bound to get more response via that channel than here on a generic “tabletop gaming” forum?

@timchubb – multi-user projects would be really cool for collaborations. I started working on something a while back with horationoseblower (ok, printed some minis for him, which – when he’s done his thing – he would send back to me for finishing). I’ve got photos and some text written up for a project entry so when we’ve decided which of us will create the project, can either post it, or email it over to be posted on my behalf. Collaborative projects would be ace!

 

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