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Howdy everyone,

In the next day or two, you'll see a fairly dramatic reorganization of the forums here on Dakka. No, this isn't an early April Fool's Day joke, its actually something we're doing, and I wanted to take a moment to explain why (and how).


WHAT'S THE POINT OF THE REORGANIZATION
The absolute worst thing for a forum-based site, in my opinion, is to have a bunch of forums that only generate a tiny trickle of activity per week (or even month), aka 'dead forums'. Not only can dead forums make a site feel like a bit of a ghost town (even if other forums on the site are red hot), but they also make it harder for users to navigate the site, as they constantly have to scroll past all these forums that really aren't being used.

Unfortunately, when it comes to new forums and activity, they most certainly do not follow the famous Field of Dreams mantra 'if you build it they will come.' We've seen time and time again that simply adding a new forum doesn't instantly spark discussion on that topic. Instead, creating a new forum is only really successful when there is already sufficient discussion happening on a topic and by making a new forum you're giving that existing discussion its own space to thrive.

A few years ago, we reorganized many forums on this site away from a more genre-based direction and instead focused them more on specific game manufacturers that were on the rise at the time. However, taking a close look at the traffic for many of these forums has indicated that in some cases, they simply do not warrant their own distinct forums here on Dakka (or least not having multiple forums for a single game/manufacturer). While some of these games/companies are wildly popular in 'the real world', they simply do not create all that much discussion here on Dakka, for a variety of reasons (usually because the manufacturer themselves hosts their own highly active discussion forums).

Therefore, the goals of our site forum reorganization are:

• To eliminate/consolidate the extraneous forums that do not generate a decent level of traffic, thereby helping to make sure that all remaining forums will feel more vibrant.
• To reduce the overall number of forums we have on the site.
• To make sure we create distinct discussion spaces for the topics that are currently being discussed by our community.


WHAT'S CHANGING EXACTLY
Before I tell you that, I want to say ahead of time that I know a lot of people will not be happy about some of these changes. You may feel that by us reducing or condsolidating forums for a game you happen to love that we are somehow downgrading its status. I want to assure you that this is absolutely not the case.

I want to reiterate again: Just because a game is wildly popular in general, does not necessarily mean it generates a ton of discussion here on Dakka, and the level of discussion a game generates here on Dakka is the only thing that matters towards whether or not a game should have a distinct forum (or even multiple forums) on this site. In all cases, we've done an incredibly detailed analysis of how much traffic each forum does, and we absolutely are not consolidating/eliminating any forum that doesn't warrant it.

And of course, down the road if discussion of a particular game/company picks back up and warrants us to create a new forum for that game/company, we will absolutely do so (as we have always done).

But enough jibber-jabber, here's a list of the major changes we're making:

• Age of Sigmar: Will be reduced down to 3 forums (with the lesser trafficked ones being consolidated together). Legacy WHFB/9th Age discussion will be split off into a new forum (see the next bullet point).

• More GW Games: We are creating a separate section for 'additional' GW games forums (Specialist Games, Hobbit/LotR, & Legacy WHFB/9th Age). For now, we're sticking with only the single specialist games forum, but if GW really does get serious about supporting their specialist range, we'll consider splitting this forum up into multiple forums as needed.

• More SciFi Games: We'll be making a new section specifically for Sci-Fi miniature game forums, that will currently have 3 forums (Infinity, Fantasy Flight's Star Wars games & a general Misc. Sci-Fi game forum). Note that Infinity will be consolidated down to a single forum, and Star Trek Attack Wing will go into the Misc. Sci-Fi game forum.

• Other Miniature Games: The 'Other' miniature games section will now contain: Warmachine & Hordes (consolidated down to a single forum), Kings of War, two separate Historical game forums (one for pre-WWI games and one for WW1+ games) and finally 'Misc. Other Miniature Games', which will be home to Malifaux, Frostgrave, Wild West Exodus, Dystopian Wars, etc. All other Mantic Games besides Kings of War will go to either the 'Misc. Sci-Fi Games' or 'Misc. Other Games' forums. Flames of War/Battlefront will naturally move into the WW1+ Historical forum.


WHAT'S THE GOOD NEWS
It may seem like that's just a big list of things that are going away/being consolidated, however there are a number of nice little benefits to this reorganization that I wanted to point out:

• Right now all the Age of Sigmar, Legacy WHFB/9th Age discussion is overlapping each other in the same forums, and I think that's helping to encourage the people who don't like AoS or legacy WHFB to post in each others' threads (thereby ruining them). With Legacy WHFB/9th Age discussion getting its own forum (and Kings of War getting a forum all to itself), hopefully whatever direction the Fantasy crowd wants to go, we'll have them covered nicely.

• While we are consolidating Battlefront/Flames of War into a forum along with other Historicals, we're also splitting up the HIstoricals into two parts. This will get all the WW2 discussion into one forum (so Bolt Action & Flames of War together), which will hopefully leave space for those who want to discuss ancients, etc.

• While several games are being consolidated back into a 'Misc.' type of forum, the fact that we'll now have a 'Misc. Sci-Fi' and a 'Misc. Other' forum should give plenty of breathing room for threads from each game to have their chance to be seen/read.


IN CONCLUSION
While I know these changes will not make some people happy, I hope you will give them a little time to settle in and maybe they'll start to grow on you.

And of course please know that we'll be keeping an eye on things, as always, and will make changes as necessary.

Thanks everyone! Oh and once the reorganization gets started, it will take the moderators a little bit of time in some cases to get the right threads moved into the right forums, so please be patient for a bit!

Having followed the discussion both in Nuts & Bolts and elsewhere, I'm looking forward to seeing these changes implemented, as they are more or less in line with what a great many wanted.

Yeah, if you have reasons behind these changes, then sure go for it! I'm sure it'll work out fine. I understand what you mean by the traffic to certain forums, so splitting some off should work out great.

Looking forward to it.

I fear change. I am frightened.

Last Chance to Post

Turn on notifications?

I hope there's a really big red button somewhere as I picture Lego thus:

So plausible, so scary.

Oh come on, now you are like GW with Tomb Kings/Bretons

Seriously, a good decision.

 BrookM wrote:

I'm only here to say I find this image to be strangely hypnotic.

I'm really excited for this! Thanks for the thorough explanation, yak

I welcome our new Dakka reorganization.

I'm going to miss the Mantic subforum, especially since 90% of people can't access their official company forum (ongoing unfixable super-cookie redirect issues), and we have quite a nice community going on there which is going to be broken up into "Kings of War", "random threads in Other Misc" and "random threads in Other Sci-fi",the subforum has gradually grown in activity and is a lot friendlier and less argumentative than the N&R threads about the company. It was really starting to pick up steam, and a lot of people playing one of Mantic's games are interested in their other games and play them, so there's a lot of crossover talk.

There's going to be KoW posts, and pretty much nothing about any other game.

I don't see how a single KoW-only forum is going to be better than a "KoW + other mantic stuff" forum. It's still one forum however you look at it, it's just that the latter option makes it easier to find things, and keeps the community there intact.

Most Mantic games discussion already goes to facebook as a result of there being no effective dedicated online forum space to discuss anything that the company does, I can't see this helping to reverse the trend. In fact I can see myself browsing less as a direct result.

If KoW is the only game getting attention in terms of mass post count, why not throw in the other Mantic stuff in with it as well and see how it goes? The current forum community there is working really well, it just needs to be allowed a little breathing space, rather than having everything that isn't strictly KoW forced into misc other.

I like the fluidity of discussion here and the loose categorization here, restricting it to "KoW only" for a forum would mean I can't post Dungeon Saga or other fantasy stuff from Mantic in the KoW forum, they have tons of games and it is great to see it all in one place. It isn't neat or pretty, but it works.

Hope the intentions of separating WFB/AoS are met...

Squig, that is a fair point and one we looked into really thoroughly. Right now, the vast majority of discussion in the Mantic subforum is focused on Kings of War.

Given that, I think you could have the same level of "miscellaneous Mantic games" discussion in one of the two new Misc sections (Sci-Fi and Other) as you do in the Mantic section right now. Some of the more "general" Mantic threads are covered by the News & Rumors topics in this section. This really was a tough call - but if the Mantic forum were left as-is, it would've been just a third "Miscellaneous Games" forum... only Mantic specific.

The hope is that having two Miscellaneous forums will let games like Gates of Antares and Deadzone get a little more limelight - and that the whole section will get more traffic with this reorganization

Whilst I approve of pretty much all of that; would a "Misc: Fantasy" make sense rather than "Misc: Other" which can only really contain fantasy?

Huh. My two major game systems (Infinity and FFG Star Wars) in one section. How... nice? Will Maelstrom's Edge go in the Sci-Fi Miniatures game section? Or continue to be its own loner forum?

 bocatt wrote:
Huh. My two major game systems (Infinity and FFG Star Wars) in one section. How... nice? Will Maelstrom's Edge go in the Sci-Fi Miniatures game section? Or continue to be its own loner forum?

Infinity and FFG Star Wars will have their own separate forums, they'll just be listed under the same section header.

Maelstrom's Edge on the other hand, will be staying put.

Herzlos wrote:
Whilst I approve of pretty much all of that; would a "Misc: Fantasy" make sense rather than "Misc: Other" which can only really contain fantasy?

It basically is fantasy, but also encompasses things like Wild West Exodus, Arena Rex, etc which kind of fall in between categories.

As Ketara said, Infinity and FFG Star Wars are definitely each keeping their own sections!

Herzlos wrote:
Whilst I approve of pretty much all of that; would a "Misc: Fantasy" make sense rather than "Misc: Other" which can only really contain fantasy?

That was debated, however with WHFB legacy/9th Age, Age of Sigmar, Kings of War, Hobbit/LoTR, Warmahordes all having their own forums, there really isn't another Fantasy game out there that generates discussion traffic here on Dakka to warrant a Misc. Fantasy forum on its own.

<delete>

I don't suppose there's a chance that someone will finally do the sane thing and split up the Painting forums by specific periods like Warseer has done, i.e. Imperium, Xenos, Fantasy, Historical.

Makes sense to me.
If a certain section has low traffic make a few merges and changes to boost it.

Dakka is run by a solid team and never seen anything that has caused issues in the past, so don't see it doing so now.

All these changes look great, though I agree with Squig about having all things Mantic in one place.

Often times, for some of the non-40k games, it just felt like once you had subfora for rules, lists, background discussion, etc. you just ended up with having nothing to really put in the general discussion.

This is unconscionable!
I have chained myself to the Infinity Rules Questions forum in protest.
The fact that I had to open a new tab while writing this to check the name of that sub forum in no way undermines its incredible importance.

Will Kingdom Death: Monster discussion still be in Misc. Miniatures, or will it be part of Boardgames?

Any chance of being able to collapse whole sections to a single line using a collapse arrow/icon? I don't read Warhammer Fantasy, Warmachine/Hordes and Infinity so it would be nice to collapse these sections so as to not have to scroll through them to get to Other Games.

Tim

That was a surprisingly quick turn around after getting notification of this. It'll take a little bit of getting used to but I like it.

Sinful Hero wrote:Will Kingdom Death: Monster discussion still be in Misc. Miniatures, or will it be part of Boardgames?

Still misc miniatures as it involves good plastic miniature models.

timd wrote:Any chance of being able to collapse whole sections to a single line using a collapse arrow/icon? I don't read Warhammer Fantasy, Warmachine/Hordes and Infinity so it would be nice to collapse these sections so as to not have to scroll through them to get to Other Games.

Tim

Well 2 of the three of those are no longer an issue!

I'm pretty happy with this, it seems like a good move and the reorganization of WHF/AoS particularly so.