Forum Changes

[Suicide Junkie]

Gandalf Parker said:
It was suggested that maybe the wildly OT posts that created long flamewars should be in Shrapnel General which was made for it.

There are no flamewars here in the SE4 section of the forums, "despite" the ample quantity of OT threads.

I must admit I have never seen any serious flamewars as rumours have them. But ISTM that that would increase my perception of any flaming at all.

[Gandalf Parker]

Suicide Junkie said:

There are no flamewars here in the SE4 section of the forums, "despite" the ample quantity of OT threads.

OK no flame wars. The "exubrant discussions on touchy subjects" which were different than the "helpful game support" of the forum.

[Combat Wombat]

If it wasn't for those posts I wouldn't be involded in any shrapnel stuff, I would have never purchased starfury and would probaly not have purchased SE5 when it comes out.

[Gandalf Parker]

Combat Wombat said:
If it wasn't for those posts I wouldn't be involded in any shrapnel stuff, I would have never purchased starfury and would probaly not have purchased SE5 when it comes out.

Those were never the posts refered to. There was never an effort to kill all OT posts. Ones about PCs, or other games, or star wars, or start trek, or a hundred other "grey" subjects. It was only suggested that maybe the religious, or about the war, or other obviously meant to spark heated discussions would be better in the forum described as being for that purpose rather than the SEIV one.

But the same point. The "we never see those because we come straight here" was not a good response to make.

[Suicide Junkie]

If they were meant to spark flamewars, they did a pretty bad job of it. Highly active, friendly debate as we see occasionally is a good thing.

But, it seems that you of all people, GP, have dragged this thread off topic!

-----

So, to bring it back, some of the points and suggestions made recently:
1) Using the top game-banner to show news, perhaps colour-coded by subject/category
2) Changing the backgrounds on the news items for improved contrast and topic matching.
3) Turning the "Order <game related to forum>" link at the top into a special button on the sidebar.
4) Options for location of sidebar, or hiding it.
5) Fixing the black border line and the lack of space between it and the actual forum text.
6) If the "not-an-ad" bars are too intrusive, they will simply be blocked, and there is no way to force them to be shown except on a very temporary basis.

[Will]

Suicide Junkie said:
1) Using the top game-banner to show news, perhaps colour-coded by subject/category
2) Changing the backgrounds on the news items for improved contrast and topic matching.
3) Turning the "Order <game related to forum>" link at the top into a special button on the sidebar.
4) Options for location of sidebar, or hiding it.
5) Fixing the black border line and the lack of space between it and the actual forum text.
6) If the "not-an-ad" bars are too intrusive, they will simply be blocked, and there is no way to force them to be shown except on a very temporary basis.

1) Yes, I think a much more effective way to do the very top of the page is have the new oval Forums icon on the left, ad banner in the middle, and some sort of iframe to load a random news item from the past X days (perhaps summary/link of blog posting?) I just can't seem to get myself to like the eagle logo, though.

2) The changing-of-news-item backgrounds is a good idea as well. Adds a bit more variety as well, and helps people zoom in on items of special interest (read: SEV

3) A golden "Buy This Game" button right below the Support button would fit nicely.

4) This, I think, is very much needed. On my 1280x1024 screen, the beginning of text for the forum pages almost begins in the center of the screen (!) This is a Bad Thing (TM). Then I tried scaling down to 800x600 (people do still use that resolution), and the result was squished everything, and you need to scroll all the way over in some threads (mainly, this one) to even see all the text. Then you can't even see the poster or the sidebar when reading the forum, and that is a Very Bad Thing (TM).

Two ways to resolve the problem are:
A) keep press release sidebar on the forum and topic listings only, and remove from the thread pages (ie, where messages are).
B) move the bar to the right side, or allow the option for users to move the bar to the right. Perhaps keep it defaulted to the right, requiring users to register to change it.

5) Add padding/cellpadding to the table cell the main part of the forum is held in, to prevent the border-merging. Also, it looks like there's supposed to be a drop-shadow on the PR image backgrounds, but it's cut off...

6) As soon as I get some time, I'll be looking for this Proximitron program. I always thought it was a firewall, not a way to edit out "undesirable" HTML.

[Richard]

Let me be frank based on some recent commentary. OT posts are always welcome in the SE:IV community. That has always been and always will be the policy of Shrapnel Games on the matter and I thought we had that issue settled.

The sidebars were added for the reasons I specifically stated and no other. They were no form of punishment.

Feel free to block that portion of the site with any 3rd party tool if you would like. Also feel free to post directions on how to do that. Again no big deal.

If you have questions about the official Shrapnel policy on these things feel free to PM any of the current staff members of Shrapnel Games.

[Suicide Junkie]

Yikes...
They're even there in the PM section of the forum!

The sidebars really should be limited to the top few levels of the forum... when you're doing something specific, like PMing or replying to a message, they are totally unnessesary and just get in the way.

[Combat Wombat]

Richard said:
Let me be frank based on some recent commentary. OT posts are always welcome in the SE:IV community. That has always been and always will be the policy of Shrapnel Games on the matter and I thought we had that issue settled.

The sidebars were added for the reasons I specifically stated and no other. They were no form of punishment.

Feel free to block that portion of the site with any 3rd party tool if you would like. Also feel free to post directions on how to do that. Again no big deal.

If you have questions about the official Shrapnel policy on these things feel free to PM any of the current staff members of Shrapnel Games.

Thank You, This should clear up any confusion.

[Jack Simth]

Meh. Any change takes some getting used to. It works. It didn't break the forum view I usually use. I can run with it.