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 SirDonlad wrote:
I am confuse over judging the worth of a subforum based on replies rather than views.

Dakka is a discussion forum. If a section isn't generating discussion, the number of views its getting isn't really relevant. With the exception of things like rules queries, which potentially can be resolved with a single response, a topic that generates views rather than discussion would ultimately be better off added to the Article wiki, rather than posted to the forum.

Ah, right.
I had no idea there was a tactica section on this site tbh
How about expanding it?
Feels a bit sparse, don't you think?
There's a bunch of armies/races without a category (skittarius, mechanicus, imperial knights) and those which do have one seem typically empty - the imperial guard category has an article for tempestus scions and the playing a horde quickly article from the wh40k general tactics category which is also the only article in the tyranid category.
The eldar, dark eldar, grey knights, necrons and orks categories have no topics in them and no Horus Heresy section or categories? at all? Or Adeptus Titanicus?
On the positive side, the chaos players seem fairly well catered for.

We want to create the best collection of wargaming articles on the planet

Maybe provide a generic template for passionate dakkanaughts to use/follow for creating tactica articles for the forces they're into?
Or just generate empty articles for all the armies/races and bring it to the attention of the forum members that there's a wiki attached to this forum they can sink their knowledge into?

I would have enjoyed contributing to the first edition Ordo Reductor tactica

 insaniak wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:
I know there's not a 40k Tournament Discussions Board.

There is, however, a Tournaments and Local Gaming board.

Announcements for local tournaments/stores/clubs and requests for local games. Also for general discussions about running wargaming tournaments.

I'd say that last bit fits for YMDC.

YMDC is a section for asking rules questions about playing the game. The tournament section was a place to share and talk about tournaments for any game, or to talk about how to run them. The vast majority of posts in there were the former. Rules questions for specific games systems would in no way fit in there.


So far as merging Tactics and Army Lists goes, while they are possibly a superficially better fit, giving how little life the Army Lists section has these days it would likely only be a temporary fix. Army Lists stayed for now because it's a very specific thing and may potentially pick up a little once more factions have codexes for the current edition, but given current trends I would expect that it will eventually wind up also rolled into 40K general.

It's worth keeping in mind that 40K is the only games system that currently warrants so many sub-sections splitting off different types of discussion, and it only does that because of the volume of discussion dedicated to it. When that discussion isn't happening, there is simply no good reason to have those separate sections. All it does is splinter what discussion is happening into separate silos, and discourages discussion in the quieter areas because potential posters can see that there is no discussion happening there.

If we combine sections and find later on that certain topics are crowding out other discussion, then that change can always be reversed or altered. But for the moment, this was the change that made the most sense.

If I wanted to try to sift through a confusing mix of topics I'd join a 40k discord. The advantage that forums offer is that you can organize them so people can find what they need, removing sub forums only hurts how easily somebody can find the topics they're interested in.

 insaniak wrote:

 SirDonlad wrote:
I am confuse over judging the worth of a subforum based on replies rather than views.

Dakka is a discussion forum. If a section isn't generating discussion, the number of views its getting isn't really relevant. With the exception of things like rules queries, which potentially can be resolved with a single response, a topic that generates views rather than discussion would ultimately be better off added to the Article wiki, rather than posted to the forum.

So are you counting discussion by active threads or what?

Because there's quite a few faction threads getting posted but as it's just 1 thread per faction it limits # of threads. But is it really better to have multiple different ork topics, multiple space marine topics, multiple AM topics etc?

Well. Whatever. I just can safely then ignore whole general forum for the unorganized mess doesn't exactly encourage reading it. So as it is I will now spend LESS time on general than before general+tactics combined.

Guess it's inevitable forums will be turned more toward facebook style unorganized mess. Got to ride with what's fashion

 SirDonlad wrote:
I am confuse over judging the worth of a subforum based on replies rather than views.
If someone nails the reasoning with their response does it need replies?
A bit like that stunned silence you get if you nail a point IRL.

Views are really inaccurate because they can ping for a whole bunch of reasons up too and including just attracting bots, sniffers and other things that access and view the site - not just humans.

The function of a forum is community and chatter and interaction and that generally means actual posts are the metric by which most sections will be measured; along with the creation of new threads. If a section isn't generating replies and isn't generating lots of new threads then it means its not being utilized. This might mean that conversation is happening elsewhere in the site already or it means that there just isn't much interest in that topic/subsection at that point in time.

Now this might mean that when you re-organise you can close down or combine/merge some sections so that you keep the most active on-show whilst retiring less active. Similarly you can take really active topics and give them their own section.


Oddly I've seen both sides of the coin where retiring a dead section suddenly caused a flurry of activity (that was long lasting not just a weekend) on that topic; and I've seen it where super active topics getting their own section killed them.



I figure sections like Infinity have been kept because the general perception is that the game is big enough to support an interested population and that its there for historical purposes and because of the possibility of it taking off again. So its easier to just keep it on its own than roll it into a general section and then have to try and roll it back out again.





One change I have seen is that single mega-threads are much more common today than in the past. I put htis down to the simple fact that social media sites (reddit/facebook/tiktok) have dominated the internet and a lot of the traffic that used to come naturally to forums isn't there now. Plus forums have basically 0 marketing budget so there's no resources there to grow forums outside of google rankings and people clicking through to join. Though that said whilst megathreads are popular; having a section titled up often attracts people to those mega threads in the first place. And they do at least give a potential spot for splinter conversations to branch out from.





On the specific subject of the 40K Tactics I'd also say that it could be rolled into Army lists. It feels like a natural spot to have a Tactics and Army lists section since the two are very closely joined at the hip - even if online talk about tactics is an insanely bonkers difficult thing to get people to actually talk about beyond the most generic and all sweeping simple statements (go for the objects etc...).
Indeed adding Tactics into the name of Army lists might even encourage more conversation as the active army list posting keeps it alive and just putting tactics there encourages people to start talking about how to USE the army list not just what to put into it.

I found the time to have a quick scrape through the forum and make a sticky with a bunch of links to the tactics mega threads.
https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/812937.page

Please reply to that thread or this with any I missed so I can keep it updated.

Updated the list, but have been unable to find some of the threads, though end of the day, running on fumes here hehe. If anybody can track down and post the links to the missing threads, thanks in advance! If no thread is present, feel free to start one and it'll be linked.

Have updated some more, looks like we are missing 5?

If I could make a suggestion, to help draw attention to the stickied threads (and I include all stickies, not just the Tactica one), might it be worth having them larger?

Something like this.