New ARMY LIST LAYOUT Idea

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**xSoulgrinderx**

Dear Dakka,

Ive noticed some trouble in the army lists sections. have you ever had a hard time finding lists for you army? WELL, how about we take all the army lists for each specific army and organize them into separate folders. For example, the new daemon thread is really hard to read and quite time consuming. =[

Would you all think it possible, to rearrange the format of Dakkadakka itself, to make an organized army lists section. For example, each army would have its own section, under which, all army lists for that army and the threads themselves would be in their appropriate army sections. No more searching endlessly for you army lists, theyre all in one spot!. Just an idea, I hate the new daemon thread. So hard to follow.....

Thanks

SG

**pretre**

This and other Army List organization suggestions come up a fair deal:

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/preList/486154/4932696.page

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/preList/474125/4769746.page

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/preList/467998/4626686.page

The problem is that anytime you have a system like that, you have to have someone police it.

**xSoulgrinderx**

Alright so lets get some MODs in on this and DO something about it.

**pretre**

xSoulgrinderx wrote:
Alright so lets get some MODs in on this and DO something about it.

Except, as these things go, that is a rather low priority thing for Mods to do. They already have enough crud to police, do we need to add categorizing army lists?

An example would be the Swap Shop forum. Even with the automation, they have to do a lot of policing of posts and have specific mods just for SS to take care of it. Even with those specific mods, it sometimes flows over into general mods having to do stuff there.

**xSoulgrinderx**

agreed..... the maintenance and user interfaces need to be updated. This site can be much more efficient. I have suggestions but who knows if theyll be heard and then acted upon.

MAJOR AREAS OF FOCUS:

Army Lists (seperate by army)
Swap Shop (searchable tools: tags, identifiers, keyword finds)
Painting (styles, green stuff, shading ect)

Some minor suggestions on what this site could improve upon and suggestions on how to break them down further can be described if desired. Also dont want to step on any toes, but things need to change.

**pretre**

xSoulgrinderx wrote:
agreed..... the maintenance and user interfaces need to be updated. This site can be much more efficient. I have suggestions but who knows if theyll be heard and then acted upon.

Well, this is the place to put your suggestions, if you have them.

MAJOR AREAS OF FOCUS:

Army Lists (seperate by army)
Swap Shop (searchable tools: tags, identifiers, keyword finds)
Painting (styles, green stuff, shading ect)

There is one person who handles all of the coding and maintenance of the site itself and that's Legoburner. You need to convince him that these are worth his time to implement, basically. Then you need to convince management in general (yakface) that it is worth mod resources to police all of those when people screw up and put them in incorrectly.

Nothing in life is free. Does the benefit that we get out of implementing all of your efficiencies save us anything or does it just add more work to make things look more clean?

**xSoulgrinderx**

That shouldnt be hard. Already have several people who think the same apparently.

**pretre**

xSoulgrinderx wrote:
That shouldnt be hard. Already have several people who think the same

Fortunately/Unfortunately, Dakka isn't a democracy though.

**xSoulgrinderx**

Fortunately/Unfortunately, Dakka isn't a democracy though.

But it is a public site that, if it wants to make money or publicity, it should make it more user friendly and easy to access.

**pretre**

Also, if you read those threads I posted, you'll see that yak has chimed in on this before:

yakface wrote:

It is something that we always consider and it definitely never hurts to put your voice forward that you feel a particular forum is 'too busy', but honestly we'll always tend to err on the side of too few forums than too many.

When you have too many forums it essentially fragments the eyes reading any given forum and while that can make it easier to find a specific topic, in general that will make everything feel a lot less active as people DO tend to head into one forum with the thought of looking at one type of thing and then get side-tracked into reading and commenting on something else entirely different.

The more you split topics up into different forums, the less of this you get which does tend to quickly reduce the people willing to ever go into a forum that they don't imagine they'd be interested in.

The problem with the 40K army list forum (if there is one) isn't that it is too busy...as somebody mentioned, you can always simply jump a few pages back or do a search if you're looking for a specific topic. The real issue is that far more people are interested in POSTING their army list and hoping for feedback than they are willing to GIVE feedback on other peoples' list themselves.

And on top of that, way, way too many people simply post their army list and then ask for general feedback...essentially requiring others to do all the guesswork of trying to figure out what they're trying to accomplish with their army list instead of asking specific and targeted questions that people will easily be able to identify and respond to.

So splitting up the forum into say different army list forums for every single faction would not help the problem at all. Yes, topics wouldn't drop off the front page quite as quickly in each forum, but people still wouldn't necessarily post responses simply because there are generally more topics being created than people giving feedback.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

xSoulgrinderx wrote:
But it is a public site that, if it wants to make money or publicity, it should make it more user friendly and easy to access.

Well, that is an entirely different question. I'm not sure that Yak is in it for the money or the babes.

Automatically Appended Next Post:
And here's Legoburner on the subject of classifying army lists:

legoburner wrote:
I'm certainly in favour of the idea, but it would require dedicated moderators to police, and it is a thankless and dull task to do so. Anyone want to offer some suggestions on the best way to make it work? I can code in a popup message demanding it meets that title structure, but those sorts of popups get ignored with annoying frequency.

**xSoulgrinderx**

The more you split topics up into different forums, the less of this you get which does tend to quickly reduce the people willing to ever go into a forum that they don't imagine they'd be interested in.

This. This, isnt entirely true. If you break it down to specifics sure, but a general army section would be awesome. All pts doesnt matter, just list Mono armies and then hybrid. Ill make legoburner and yakface flow charts to show how it could be done

legoburner wrote:
I'm certainly in favour of the idea, but it would require dedicated moderators to police, and it is a thankless and dull task to do so. Anyone want to offer some suggestions on the best way to make it work? I can code in a popup message demanding it meets that title structure, but those sorts of popups get ignored with annoying frequency.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2013/04/23 17:12:17

Cool, thanks for that. ill work on the flowchart for him. I want to make this site better =P

**Nevelon**

Instead of something like sub-forums, just tagging the title of posts with which army you are building would help. Might be worth adding some sort of sticky at the top of the list forums with suggestions on formatting thread titles.

Also, in a world of allies, choosing where to post could be problematic. I know I've given advice on the C:SM side of mixed lists, even if I was fuzzy on the details of the other half. If they were off in another section, I'd never see them.

**BlapBlapBlap**

I feel it's fine. Just use the search bar.

**xSoulgrinderx**

BlapBlapBlap wrote:
I feel it's fine. Just use the search bar.

Have you actually been in that massive daemon thread thats like 5-6 pgs now? All new daemons are being funneled into ONE thread and everyone has to search and search back to comment. Its a pain. All new daemon lists in one thread? The Search function doesnt work "in" thread, only at the lists main pg. Itll pull up that massive thread with all those lists.

**Alfndrate**

xSoulgrinderx wrote:
BlapBlapBlap wrote:
I feel it's fine. Just use the search bar.

Have you actually been in that massive daemon thread thats like 5-6 pgs now? All new daemons are being funneled into ONE thread and everyone has to search and search back to comment. Its a pain. All new daemon lists in one thread? The Search function doesnt work "in" thread, only at the lists main pg. Itll pull up that massive thread with all those lists.

Crtl + f, search for what you want. Or filter the thread by the user that you're looking for...

**xSoulgrinderx**

That will bring up the thread, but theres 5 pages in there. This is what your not getting. THERE ARE 5 PGS TO FILTER.

Im not going to search "Ctl F" on each page. Take a look and try it yourself before suggesting that. This thread isnt how to find stuff, its how to make it easier. I know how to find, thanks.

Lets make subthread sections for each army. How much more simple can I make it? Find doesnt bring up everything.

**Alfndrate**

xSoulgrinderx wrote:
That will bring up the thread, but theres 5 pages in there. This is what your not getting. THERE ARE 5 PGS TO FILTER.

Im not going to search "Ctl F" on each page. Take a look and try it yourself before suggesting that. This thread isnt how to find stuff, its how to make it easier. I know how to find, thanks.

Lets make subthread sections for each army. How much more simple can I make it? Find doesnt bring up everything.

I did try it, and I've done it in the 200+ page "bad days" thread we have in the DCM forums before looking for posts about skittles... (it's a long story).

Your best bet it is to tag your army lists with something easy to remember, or with a solid type of tag in the thread title like:
[Daemons][Nurgle] - 2500pts

Edit: As it has been said, more subforums means more moderators, and more split traffic to each of these individual areas...

**xSoulgrinderx**

I dont think Race Folders would be that hard to maintain. And searching is fine and dandy but its easier on the eyes, easier to search and possibly easier to maintain. Each folder would have just one race making it easier to organize and moderate.

**Alfndrate**

What if I'm posting a chaos space marine list with necron allies and I'm interested in the necron side of things? Do I post in CSM or crons? What if I post my list in crons and the CSM side of things has a glaring hole? Will I get the attention I need for my list? Should I post my list in both places? Wouldn't I save time and effort by posting 1 list in 1 board? The daemons thread you're talking about is the exception rather than the norm... we shouldn't change the entire system to accommodate 1 thread.

**daedalus**

Well, that's easy, we just need subforums of separate permutations of every possible ally combination.

...yeah.

**xSoulgrinderx**

Alfndrate wrote:
What if I'm posting a chaos space marine list with necron allies and I'm interested in the necron side of things? Do I post in CSM or crons? What if I post my list in crons and the CSM side of things has a glaring hole? Will I get the attention I need for my list? Should I post my list in both places? Wouldn't I save time and effort by posting 1 list in 1 board? The daemons thread you're talking about is the exception rather than the norm... we shouldn't change the entire system to accommodate 1 thread.

I see your concern and the solution i arrived at was to make who ever the primary attachment is, be the main deciding factor for what army type that list is posted under. For example, if you had a Cron list with allied CSM, the list would be posted under the Necron files, where as if the necrons were the allies, it would be posted under the CSM file. Who every was primary would take the lead in deciding what folder they were separated into

Well, that's easy, we just need subforums of separate permutations of every possible ally combination.

See above =P

**Alfndrate**

xSoulgrinderx wrote:
Alfndrate wrote:
What if I'm posting a chaos space marine list with necron allies and I'm interested in the necron side of things? Do I post in CSM or crons? What if I post my list in crons and the CSM side of things has a glaring hole? Will I get the attention I need for my list? Should I post my list in both places? Wouldn't I save time and effort by posting 1 list in 1 board? The daemons thread you're talking about is the exception rather than the norm... we shouldn't change the entire system to accommodate 1 thread.

I see your concern and the solution i arrived at was to make who ever the primary attachment is, be the main deciding factor for what army type that list is posted under. For example, if you had a Cron list with allied CSM, the list would be posted under the Necron files, where as if the necrons were the allies, it would be posted under the CSM file. Who every was primary would take the lead in deciding what folder they were separated into

Well, that's easy, we just need subforums of separate permutations of every possible ally combination.

See above =P

But again, what if I have primary Chaos, and Necron Allies, and I've never played necrons before. What use is it to me to post my list in the CSM section if it won't get the foot traffic that I want for the part of the list I want?

**BlapBlapBlap**

xSoulgrinderx wrote:
BlapBlapBlap wrote:
I feel it's fine. Just use the search bar.

Have you actually been in that massive daemon thread thats like 5-6 pgs now? All new daemons are being funneled into ONE thread and everyone has to search and search back to comment. Its a pain. All new daemon lists in one thread? The Search function doesnt work "in" thread, only at the lists main pg. Itll pull up that massive thread with all those lists.

I'm pretty sure you can make your own new thread...