Two words: Reverse democracy

Originally Posted by KRSplat

Why archive it? It's not implausible that someone may wish to share something any time in the future.

I worded it wrong. I meant, if all else fails and we do truly start considering getting rid of it.

Take a look at http://www.jazz2online.com/jcf/forumdisplay.php?f=9

You'll see that:
- 12 of the 13 topics posted within the past 6 months were about a JJ game, and 3 of those were created within one week by the same user.
- The one topic not about JJ was not answered helpfully.
- The other 12 topics could've been in General JJ Talk as well, considering that similar topics have been posted there for a while without anyone complaining.

So I'm still convinced that there's considerable overlap between General Jazz Talk and Technical Help, to the point where posts made in the latter could also be made in the former without problems (though not the other way around). Given that, it makes sense to me to merge the forums, so the activity isn't spread too thin. I might've been too hasty though, and could return things to the previous situation now I've put the backup online. What do you think, given the data above and the possibility to judge the current situation of the forum by yourself?

I don't think doing anything with the War Tavern is a good idea for historical reasons, but I don't really have a particularly strong opinion about that. I think Coppertop's point of view should have considerable weight in this though, given her longtime dedication to the forum.

Originally Posted by Hunter

If Tech. Help is merged, you should do the same with Online Play, Furter Game Development and the War Tavern (which can become a sub-forum to General). Art can then be merged with Misc and Comedy Café closed due to lack of comedy.

A few of those merges would probably have been next on the list had this one worked out.

Originally Posted by Hunter

Mind saying what sort of a filter caused "Jazz Jackforum for philosophical discourses" to be displayed instead of "Jazz Jackrabbit Forums"?

"rabbit forum" is offensive, apparently.

Perhaps bring back Tech Help as a subforum of General?

EDIT: A very pedantic request, but "Online play" should be "Online Play" instead.

Originally Posted by Hunter

Well, you are right about it. Maybe I'm too attached to the forums they way they look and that's why I am against such a change. But a lower amount of forums doesn't mean more activity. And the tech. forum, if nothing else, invites people to post, telling them they could ask for any problem, not only issues that have something to do with Jazz. On the other side, if I recall correctly, since I joined the JCF, I have started two threads (one had something to do with the game) in Technical Help and got replies to neither... Yes, I myself am uncertain what is better. I still reckon merging the forums without asking for opinions first to be wrong. I don't see why we can't have a poll to help with the decision.

The goal isn't so much to increase activity as well as to concentrate it. One forum with 10 posts per day is better than 10 forums with one post per day, I think. Given its recent track record I don't think the forum did much of its job of inviting people to post about technical problems either.

Originally Posted by Hunter

Mind saying what sort of a filter caused "Jazz Jackforum for philosophical discourses" to be displayed instead of "Jazz Jackrabbit Forums"?

Well, obviously "rabbit forum" got filtered to "forum for philosophical discourse".

I think the best solution would be some sort of construct where Technical Help is a subforum of General Jazz Talk and its posts show up within the main forum, but not the other way around. vBulletin doesn't really support anything like that though. You could tag every thread with "technical help" but that's not a very elegant solution either.

I agree the forums are a little over-organized now. I would incorporate Online play into General, and have just one Miscellaneous forum instead of 4.

Don't touch the War Tavern, that would be sacrilege!

I also happen to agree that there are too many forums right now. I understand trying to separate the spam from the substance, but it may be overkill right now.

How about we just keep Technical Help?

Thread tags are nearly completely transparent to the users. I figure it could be handled by thread icons, like the Something Awful forums (or the explosm forums, which blatantly copies SA), but that requires extra code and you'd have to tag every thread again.

Bringing back Tech Help and turning it into a subforum would be the simplest and cleanest solution. We could give Online Play a similar treatment as a matter of fact.

I noticed that you put Technical Help in a subforum. I think this works quite well, thank you.

the merge sucks Thanks Stijn.

Perhaps you could add a small description saying (Technical Help here) or not.

I'm not that fond of tradition, so I'd have the following proposal, echoing an earlier one by someone else, and based in part on the old forum changes thread:

- Archive the war tavern, to keep it pure. The most recent posts appear to have been spam. For the rest it gets a few posts every few months.
- BUT: Archive it as a subforum to General Jazz Talk, since it deserves a good place inside and not outside of the regular forum structure
- Then change the art forum to include stories & move the Guilty Gene topic to there

I value Coppertop's opinion on these proposals!

Then, further (thanks Cooba):
- Change the archives category into a forum so it takes up less space
- Move Comedy Cafe and all other defunct forums to the archives
OR
- Merge Comedy Cafe and forum games and name it "The Café"

One alternative to the current Technical Help construction would be to add something about technical help to the description of the current jazz talk forum.

One solution for Lark's problems would be finishing and giving out that secret admin tool for easy forum viewing...

/me goes back into hiding for another year. Bye!

Merging the Café with a somewhat more serious forum sounds like a bad idea to me.

Forum games is serious? Seriously?

I didn't say that, I said it's somewhat more serious than the Café. Merging them will probably either eliminate the Café's abysmal jokes, or drag Forum Games down the manhole.

Indeed, I second IconGuy on this. There's nothing wrong with the JCF as it is so I don't see why y'all feel the need to fix it. If it isn't broke, don't fix it.

Discuss.

Forum games disappearing wouldn't be that bad...

Originally Posted by Grytolle

Forum games disappearing wouldn't be that bad...

Originally Posted by Dermo

If it isn't broke, don't fix it.

Discussion closed.

I'll check whether I still have that posts-per-day script around somewhere.

Activity doesn't really mean much, in fact, I have no idea what it really represents. Could as well mean lots of spambots are flocking to the JCF lately.

Average posts per day per week since the birth of the JCF.

Originally Posted by Stijn

I'll check whether I still have that posts-per-day script around somewhere.

Activity doesn't really mean much, in fact, I have no idea what it really represents. Could as well mean lots of spambots are flocking to the JCF lately.

I think it mostly is spam bots sadly. Normally when I look at the current members on-line list there's at list 2 or more spam bots with the name jbjioo. Some of the spam bots even post now, aka the brilliant davidkaz and his family.

The graph upsets me, I'm not sure if that small bit of recent activity is to do with the spam bots.

Oh wait, I should be clear. When I talked about not know what "activity" represents, I meant the "Active users" count displayed on the forum front page. The graph displays average posts per week, which should not be influenced by spambots, since we delete those posts and they're not counted.

(Except for Davidkaz, but I doubt he has much of an impact)

A random question related to activity: it says most users ever online were online on January 29th,2005 and there was 549 of them. Does anyone have a picture of it and can you tell me the users that were online at the time? (If you don't have anything smarter to do.)