Upcoming Forum Changes (September 21st, 2018)

[[DE]Drew]

Tenno, 

In preparation for Warframe’s launch on the Nintendo Switch, we’re updating the forums to accommodate the new platform as well as consolidate (and, in some cases, expand) the forums based on traffic, popularity, and overall usefulness. 

The forums will be offline on September 21st, from 10am until 2pm ET while we makes changes. 

In addition to adding dedicated Nintendo Switch subforums, our goal is to eliminate the redundant subcategories. Each subforum will either be a parent category or be nested within a parent category (ie, how Off Topic is nested within General Discussion). Our logic for what deserves to be a parent category versus nested depends on how much traffic the subforum receives, its overall usefulness to the community (including the development team), and its general content.  

You may notice that several subforums are merged into other existing subforums. One such consolidation is the reduction of the recruitment forums into a single parent category. After years of forum activity, the recruitment forums are not active enough for us to keep them as a separate set of subforums. However, the Trading Post forums are quite active, and will subsequently be split by platform. Feedback categories will be turned into parent categories, giving us the option to add subforums to any of them in the future. And last but not least, the very popular Extras subforums will be nested under the Fan Zone parent category, where you can post all your art, concepts, and more. 

Also, we have finally changed the dark theme to have more updated background art and color codes (coming this Friday). You can choose which theme you’d like to use by selecting the ‘themes’ link at the bottom of the forums. 

As always, we will continue to monitor forum activity and make changes as necessary. 
 

[ShinTechG]

Sounds like good changes. Getting more organized. 👍

[(XBOX)YoungGunn82]

[DeMonkey]

3 minutes ago, [DE]Drew said:

Feedback categories will be turned into parent categories, giving us the option to add subforums to any of them in the future

I like the sounds of this, potentially allowing for the addition of frame specific subforums?

Drastic due to the number of frames and the potential mess it would create so not a great example on my part, but if that's the sort of thing planned then it sounds pretty good.

[Zenko001]

do the drew , mountain drew

[JinnyKim]

Please, update the avatars as well. The latest designer glyphs are missing, I'm using the Lotus one. Thanksie! 😺

[[DE]Drew]

9 minutes ago, DeMonkey said:

I like the sounds of this, potentially allowing for the addition of frame specific subforums?

Drastic due to the number of frames and the potential mess it would create so not a great example on my part, but if that's the sort of thing planned then it sounds pretty good.

We've discussed this in the past, and it'd be a bit too crazy to have subforums for each. However, we could do something like a temporary subforum for a new 'frame instead of trying to contain everything in megathreads (just as an example). 

[Myscho]

How about adding Game join date into profile

[NightmareT12]

2 minutes ago, [DE]Drew said:

We've discussed this in the past, and it'd be a bit too crazy to have subforums for each. However, we could do something like a temporary subforum for a new 'frame instead of trying to contain everything in megathreads (just as an example). 

That'd be great! Also the simple thought of having the bugs subforums be a tad more specific could do wonders.

I'm so excited now, the anticipation...

[DeMonkey]

Just now, [DE]Drew said:

We've discussed this in the past, and it'd be a bit too crazy to have subforums for each.

Oh absolutely, definitely a bad example on my part 

Just now, [DE]Drew said:

However, we could do something like a temporary subforum for a new 'frame instead of trying to contain everything in megathreads (just as an example). 

This however is certainly something I hope you do. A big issue I find with megathreads is that you get a ''crossed wires effect'' when other threads get merged in. People responding to an OP will generally not quote (no need to at the time) but when that thread is moved it's a problem trying to work out to which specific post they're responding to, and others' conversations will be all over the place.

So yeah, this gets a vote from me to replace certain megathreads if it can be feasibly done. 

[OniDax]

22 minutes ago, [DE]Drew said:

Tenno, 

In preparation for Warframe’s launch on the Nintendo Switch, we’re updating the forums to accommodate the new platform as well as consolidate (and, in some cases, expand) the forums based on traffic, popularity, and overall usefulness. 

The forums will be offline on September 21st, from 10am until 2pm ET while we makes changes. 

In addition to adding dedicated Nintendo Switch subforums, our goal is to eliminate the redundant subcategories. Each subforum will either be a parent category or be nested within a parent category (ie, how Off Topic is nested within General Discussion). Our logic for what deserves to be a parent category versus nested depends on how much traffic the subforum receives, its overall usefulness to the community (including the development team), and its general content.  

You may notice that several subforums are merged into other existing subforums. One such consolidation is the reduction of the recruitment forums into a single parent category. After years of forum activity, the recruitment forums are not active enough for us to keep them as a separate set of subforums. However, the Trading Post forums are quite active, and will subsequently be split by platform. Feedback categories will be turned into parent categories, giving us the option to add subforums to any of them in the future. And last but not least, the very popular Extras subforums will be nested under the Fan Zone parent category, where you can post all your art, concepts, and more. 

Also, we have finally changed the dark theme to have more updated background art and color codes (coming this Friday). You can choose which theme you’d like to use by selecting the ‘themes’ link at the bottom of the forums. 

As always, we will continue to monitor forum activity and make changes as necessary. 
 

Hey! While you're at all this, can you revise the description for the Tennogen subforum so that new players don't think it's the place for Fan Art and Fan Concepts?

[Voltage]

The last Community Hot Topic thread was about Draco, and the Warframe Forums Leaderboard is not visible for normal members. That was the last source of locating hot topics every month. Will we be able to see the leaderboards or see community hot topics in the future? It's been 2 years.

Also, will we see more forum moderators to take care of the new platform being added to the forums? The playerbase is only growing, but the moderation team needs to keep up. More moderators would result in faster reaction time. It is disheartening to see a thread up for hours that is derailed with binary spam 😞 .

[daExile]

I can has one fix for glyph not updating here in eternity, please, while you're at it, guys?

[Blade_Wolf_16]

Cool. More people. Hope they'll bring interresting feedback. They'll pretty much all be beginners, so I hope that section is ready. Well, pretty much everything should, since we might get a wave of "Hey first time playing! Need Help!" or "Hi I'm happy to be here" threads in the wrong sections. 

[DeMonkey]

3 minutes ago, Voltage said:

Will we be able to see the leaderboards

Got those removed for a reason, they'll cause more harm than good.

Yes to more moderators, of course. Already made a thread with my thoughts on that, but it's still good to repeat it.

[Voltage]

Just now, DeMonkey said:

Got those removed for a reason, they'll cause more harm than good.

I really don't understand how it is harmful. The only 2 things that it showed were useless upvotes, and hot topics. The former is meaningless because you cannot be downvoted, and the latter was awesome to see what is trending in the community. If we can't have them back, it would be nice to get anything that makes hot topics visible. The "hot topic" tag placed on posts does little as spam will trigger it.

I remember community hot topics in 2015-2016, and it is sad that the last one was before Specters of the Rail.

[Sean]

28 minutes ago, [DE]Drew said:

 

 

Any fixes going to be done to the clan section or to the various CSS issues that have been pretty easy to fix, but have been around for far too long?

[DeMonkey]

1 minute ago, Voltage said:

as spam will trigger it.

Spam will also cause people to get upvotes, as you know full well.

If there's a leaderboard there is competition, if there's competition then people want to win, if people want to win they will post whatever gets the most ''upvotes'' regardless of whether it's actually constructive or not, therefore upvotes are not a good way of determining whether an idea is good or not (just look at how many laughter emotes people get for bad ideas).

Having a better idea of what actually is a hot topic is certainly important, and I'd love for the CHT's to return, but believe me, big picture wise the leaderboards would solve nothing and potentially encourage poor behaviour.

DE's own quote on the matter is, ''we have limited overall leader-board visibility on the Forums as we feel it does not accurately represent the community and has limited use on our day-to-day.''

[seprent]

13 minutes ago, Voltage said:

I really don't understand how it is harmful. The only 2 things that it showed were useless upvotes, and hot topics. The former is meaningless because you cannot be downvoted, and the latter was awesome to see what is trending in the community. If we can't have them back, it would be nice to get anything that makes hot topics visible. The "hot topic" tag placed on posts does little as spam will trigger it.

I remember community hot topics in 2015-2016, and it is sad that the last one was before Specters of the Rail.

i can see how it could be harmful imagine you got 3 really big clans (idk big clan names so ill just use ABC) Clan C has been number 1 for a While while clan B an A have 2 and 3 clan A puts petal to the metal and gets past B an C and gets to number 1 on the last few days of the event knocking C to 2 and B 3.

C who got comfy being on top sees this and can do 1 of 2 things 1: be a sport about it and accept it and try to make to spot 1 again, or 2: come here or go in game and start harassing people from clan A calling them cheaters and such nonsense or making thread after thread of how the event is broken Due to x thing

granted this is constructed on a large scale of if they are a sore loser or not but like minded people tend to gather around themselves so at-least to me it holds some water a moon clan is 1000 people got a lot of personalities there maybe like 100 of them are sore losers and barrage the forums with complains and insults leader-boards i wont deny are a good thing and promote competitive natures but sometimes it can be bad depending on who the person is. Hope this makes some sense  

[Voltage]

31 minutes ago, DeMonkey said:

Spam will also cause people to get upvotes, as you know full well.

If there's a leaderboard there is competition, if there's competition then people want to win, if people want to win they will post whatever gets the most ''upvotes'' regardless of whether it's actually constructive or not, therefore upvotes are not a good way of determining whether an idea is good or not (just look at how many laughter emotes people get for bad ideas).

Having a better idea of what actually is a hot topic is certainly important, and I'd love for the CHT's to return, but believe me, big picture wise the leaderboards would solve nothing and potentially encourage poor behaviour.

DE's own quote on the matter is, ''we have limited overall leader-board visibility on the Forums as we feel it does not accurately represent the community and has limited use on our day-to-day.''

Interesting. I think the best medium would be a subforums for hot topics in which moderators / staff move massive megathreads and other news to this place where players can see what is new and trending. I suggested the leaderboards thing because it is already a forums infrastructure and takes the least amount of effort to implement. Your quote from Danielle explained that better and I haven't seen that before. Hopefully CHT return as it's been way too long 😞 .

[DeMonkey]

1 minute ago, Voltage said:

Interesting. I think the best medium would be a subforums for hot topics in which moderators / staff move massive megathreads and other news to this place where players can see what is new and trending.

Hmmm, hear me out here. Instead of just moving megathreads and such if they're considered ''hot topics'' (since megathreads themselves create a whole host of problems), what if a new thread were created in Hot Topics specifically about that subject, where the OP can be crafted in such a way to get the best information out of the community possible without inflammatory or controversial OP's?

Said thread could be easily monitored, guidelines could be laid out, polls could be included etc.

I don't like the sound of just dumping megathreads into it and calling it a day, you know?

[Voltage]

Just now, DeMonkey said:

Hmmm, hear me out here. Instead of just moving megathreads and such if they're considered ''hot topics'' (since megathreads themselves create a whole host of problems), what if a new thread were created in Hot Topics specifically about that subject, where the OP can be crafted in such a way to get the best information out of the community possible without inflammatory or controversial OP's?

Said thread could be easily monitored, guidelines could be laid out, polls could be included etc.

I don't like the sound of just dumping megathreads into it and calling it a day, you know?

This is ideal. Hopefully @[DE]Drew and other staff members have thought about ways to bring back community hot topics.

I can't wait to see how the Forums look after all these changes, but I feel after the changes are added, the only way to truly improve the forums is creating a proper ratio of Moderator to Member. I notice more and more that threads take longer to be locked if it is posted during a certain time of day. It would be nice if this question is addressed in the near future as I have asked a few times since May and I know others have as well. I remember @DeMonkey has a great thread about it as well:

Improvement is always welcome in my books, even if it's a small change, but moderation staff has a big impact on the atmosphere of the forums. 🙂 

[Eldnacpeek]

1 hour ago, [DE]Drew said:

Also, we have finally changed the dark theme to have more updated background art and color codes (coming this Friday). You can choose which theme you’d like to use by selecting the ‘themes’ link at the bottom of the forums. 

 

Damn. Would have liked to keep it as a legacy theme, but it is what it is. I just hope it retains its ease on the eyes.

[Naesqr]

Hey, it would be great if these forum changes could also come with a re-evaluation of forum moderation and moderator etiquette.

[DrBorris]

2 hours ago, [DE]Drew said:

We've discussed this in the past, and it'd be a bit too crazy to have subforums for each. However, we could do something like a temporary subforum for a new 'frame instead of trying to contain everything in megathreads (just as an example). 

Yes, please, that would be awesome. I get the need for megathreads, but sometimes they just kill back and forth conversations.

 

Edit: Also, with increased Subforums it might be an idea to push Activity Streams a bit harder. Maybe even have them show up on the front page, throwing in some default ones (that can be removed if you wish) to make the Forums a bit more digestible for new users.

Edit 2: And when I say default, I mean more like a "Feedback" Activity Stream that consolidates some of the Feedback categories. Or have a default "Fan" Activity Stream that consolidates a few of the Fan Zone subforums.

Edit 3: One more thing, having an option to have Activity Streams appear more like a normal Forum page would be real nice.