Roll Call

[SinisterDeath]

2 hours ago, SableSage said:

SD has a point. Forums are not as popular as before nowadays. The fact that this forum is still around is amazing. 

 

I didn't know that the ranks within the Club is so inconvenient. So it means that once you are a Leader of one club you can do things in other clubs as well, right? 

Leader of a club is similar to an Admin on the forums.

They can made mods of members, and create new club forums.

 

But yes, you can join other clubs if you are the leader of one. Generally they won't have any "powers" outside their own club.

[Lavandula]

3 hours ago, SableSage said:

SD has a point. Forums are not as popular as before nowadays. The fact that this forum is still around is amazing. 

 

I didn't know that the ranks within the Club is so inconvenient. So it means that once you are a Leader of one club you can do things in other clubs as well, right? 

Oh I know he has a point! That one seldom opens his mouth without something worth listening to, coming out.

 I'm just saying sooh has a point too.. If this site is getting one last hoorah, let's make it a good one and not half tushied..give it a fair chance.?

Cause yeah people may come in with the series, but they wont stay if it doesn't seem like it is more than wasteland here with the first glance. 

I didn't know the ranks was that inconvenient.. Still with a little imagination, and a bit of work, one can make it work? 

Yeah I can't touch anything in BT even though I'm a club leader, don't know if it's different when you're a club owner..they clearly have some more access than the leaders being I didn't have access to do anything in that forum place? 

[Guest Wolfbrother31]

I'm here occasionally. Be around a lot more if the show does come out. Been busy, but mostly I've been gone because I've lost steam/hope that the show will come out this year. Has anybody heard anything?!

[Lavandula]

Nope...but I'm taking this thread as a sign someone higher up did??

[SinisterDeath]

7 hours ago, Lavandula said:

Yeah I can't touch anything in BT even though I'm a club leader, don't know if it's different when you're a club owner..they clearly have some more access than the leaders being I didn't have access to do anything in that forum place? 

 

Club Leader is also a Usergroup that gets made for club leaders. Generally that goes to the Owner as it offers access to the Forums Staff board.

E.g. the owner of a club has to be approved by Admins to make that club. But we can't exactly just have every person the Club Owner promotes to leader also be part of Forum staff.

 

7 hours ago, Lavandula said:

I'm just saying sooh has a point too.. If this site is getting one last hoorah, let's make it a good one and not half tushied..give it a fair chance.?

Clubs have better scalability and are all around faster and have less bureaucracy to deal with, when it comes to approving new members then the forums. It's less work for the Admins, It's less work for the Org Leaders, and most importantly, there's less delay.

 

Imagine for instance I go on Vacation for 2 months without internet access. 

What would the forums do if it gets inundated with 10,000 new members whom within a month start joining Orgs, become Org members, and then that Org leader has to try and get ahold of an Admin to start adding people to usergroups so they can see the forums they're supposed to? 
We'd be robbing those 10,000 new people of the DM experience, all because we want to keep doing things how we've always done them.

 

7 hours ago, Lavandula said:

Cause yeah people may come in with the series, but they wont stay if it doesn't seem like it is more than wasteland here with the first glance. 

The forums have been a wasteland far before the forum updates that led to Clubs.

The Orgs not being seen on the Forum page isn't as big a deal as many make it out to be, it's more of an excuse for why the Orgs died. 

Truth is, they were already dying/dead before the forum update.

 

7 hours ago, Lavandula said:

I didn't know the ranks was that inconvenient.. Still with a little imagination, and a bit of work, one can make it work? 

Not really.

Usergroup management on the Forums doesn't work very well as user attendance scales up.

 

As an example; The other day I had to tweak a members usergroup.
Simply not pressing the ctrl key on my keyboard to add one usergroup to said member, wiped all their existing usergroups, including their Patreon status. Given error rates of 1-5%, that's not really acceptable if I have to manually add 150 members to various usergroups on a daily basis just to keep up.

 

Inversely, in the club system. That member wants to join? They click Join.

If that club wants to approve people first? Then we could turn on approval, and the clubs owner/leader/mods can approve new members. (I believe that's a function!).

That club leader wants a new mod after gaining 5,000 new members? They can add one. They don't have to try and contact Me, Jason, Verbal, Etc to get that done in a time frame that works.

[Lavandula]

My head hurts lol.. Yeah I think you misunderstood me.. Though totally my fault for being unclear my head is kinda stuffed with cotton. I was merely saying I agreed with what I intrepreted to be a concern that the clubs are not visible enough. I do however struggle to see all the complaints about the clubs as fair, maybe because I don't know anything else, but I think the rank system in the clubs works ok.

Maybe not as well as the forums, but when you look at all the benefits, it's easier to find solution to that one little problem than like you say all the problems of the um...forums.. 

[Sooh]

21 hours ago, SinisterDeath said:

He does, but we're now in the age of Social Media.
Forums are dying/dead.

You can go almost anywhere online, and almost all web forums are about a specific product, (Book/Game/Software) with subforums about certain aspects of that product.  

Web forum communities that were fostered in the 2000s have almost all been eradicated.
People drifted away and replaced them with Social Media. (Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, Snapchat/TikTok, etc.)

"Clubs" are Invision Community's (this forums software) response to social media.

Invision is actively working on methods that give Web Forums systems that mirror the same "endorphin boosters" that social media gives you every time you read/interact with anything. (Forums will almost never be able to compete with that).

 

Clubs, when you stop and think about it, are really not that dissimilar to subreddits.

The Club system allows Members to create communities within this community. (E.g. Orgs)
This means that the Forum Admins don't have to actually know what the community as a whole wants, as the community can create its OWN clubs (orgs) when enough people get together and petition it. 

To top that off, the club system operates in a completely differently way then the forum system.

If you were to join an Org, that Org leader would have to get in contact with a Forum admin to manually add you to a specific usergroup when they get around to it.
That usergroup dictates what boards you can read/reply to, what "powers" you might have as a member of staff. 

Club system? There's no need to contact an Admin.
Want to join? Click join. You're in. Private ones, you can be invited. Others can let you click join, but Club leader/staff have to approve you. 

That leader wants to promote someone? They can just click a button and do it. No need to try and get ahold of the Allusive Jason. No need to add them to a usergroup. 

 

Now what happens if DM starts getting 1000-5,000+ member sign ups a month once the TV show is out?
If we used the old system, we'd effectively be asking an Admin to manually add 150 new members to their Orgs usergroup every single day... and that process is literally not as simple as clicking "accept" on a member join request. Every time someone is added to a usergroup, there's a risk of human error, messing up that members permissions. That Admin might intend to add them to the BT usergroup, but accidently removed them from the WT/SG/Aiel. You can't screw up like that, in the Club System.

 

The downside to Clubs right now are innumerable. The biggest one is that the club system was only half-assed launched, and that's Invision's fault.
Things we took for granted like Nested forum structure, user-ranks, don't exist within the club system.
There is currently no way to implement multiple ranks within club structure, that have different "view permissions".
You're either a Member, Moderator, or Leader/Owner. So any Club that relies on multiple factions within factions, with nested view permissions, with their own "leaders", and "hidden boards", can't work with how the club system. currently works.

HOPEFULLY one day the Club system will improve, because a lot of the under-the-hood systems you don't see, are really great. Clubs allow for a more streamlined process with less bureaucracy, each group since doing something as simple as adding a member, or a new board, fixing board descriptions, don't require contacting the right Admin, on the right day of the week to get something really simple and benign done.

We also have this spot in the Forums
https://dragonmount.com/forums/forum/511-club-announcements/

For clubs to post their "what we are" thread, as well as a place to make monthly announcements/updates, that in the future may go out in the DM newsletter email, and the DM YouTube channel.

So you can't say Jason doesn't want to promote "social activities" on DM. It's no longer the year 2002, we have to adapt with the times; and lets be frank.

DM may have been one of the largest WoT fansites out there, DM Web forums, even during it's best years, only gets half of the traffic as DMs Twitter/Facebook accounts. If the web forums don't uptick with a show release, I wouldn't fault Jason for just shutting these down.

Thank you for the thorough explanation. I hadn't heard this part of the reasoning before, so I had to chew on it for a day ?

 

I definitely understand the inconvenience of the usergroup stuff. Previous forums I have moderated haven't had usergroups with different permissions to view different subforums to quite the extent that DM has done in the past, so I didn't consider that part of it. 

 

Sidenote and probably way too late in the game to change, but I would rather have simplified the usergroup structure and just plainly said every member has access to everything at all times. No secret  forums. Anyway...

 

Also fair enough that forums are dying, I just find it sad that if it works here, why change it? I find other types of social media too fleeting and I miss probably 95% of the content there.

 

It's not the visibility of the clubs that concerns me the most. It's mainly the navigation and the inability to see at a glance if a subforum has new content or a user control panel where I can view threads I have posted in/subscribed to (if this exists I haven't been able to find it). To me, that's what I miss the most about the old forums.

[SinisterDeath]

11 minutes ago, Sooh said:

Sidenote and probably way too late in the game to change, but I would rather have simplified the usergroup structure and just plainly said every member has access to everything at all times. No secret  forums. Anyway...

Unfortunately any org that has a staff forum (All of them), that requires a usergroup. ?

12 minutes ago, Sooh said:

I just find it sad that if it works here, why change it?

Unfortunately the "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" idea falls short here. Pre/Post change, things weren't working, and not just because interest in WoT dwindled.

 

14 minutes ago, Sooh said:

It's not the visibility of the clubs that concerns me the most. It's mainly the navigation and the inability to see at a glance if a subforum has new content or a user control panel where I can view threads I have posted in/subscribed to (if this exists I haven't been able to find it). To me, that's what I miss the most about the old forums.

This is definitely an issue with the Club System. It's tied to the lack of forum hierarchy we're used to, and we can only really hope that new updates come out and fix that. 
 

However, you should note my thread here, and take a peak at your sidebars. You should see updated topics from Clubs you've joined in that side bar. It's not the "Best" solution, but it is a solution.

 

It's also handy to check the "overview" section for each club (if they use it!) as that will also show you recently updated threads throughout that club.

 

[Lavandula]

 

24 minutes ago, Sooh said:

It's not the visibility of the clubs that concerns me the most

Oh then I appologise for misintrepreting your words! 

 

It is truly interesting learning the why's and hows and goods and bads of everything, wichever choices are made in the end I would guess we all are happy as long as it brings people togheter? and also so great to see all old and new people. Signing in here. I hope to see you all more in the coming times?

[Sooh]

9 minutes ago, SinisterDeath said:

Unfortunately any org that has a staff forum (All of them), that requires a usergroup. ?

Unfortunately the "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" idea falls short here. Pre/Post change, things weren't working, and not just because interest in WoT dwindled.

 

This is definitely an issue with the Club System. It's tied to the lack of forum hierarchy we're used to, and we can only really hope that new updates come out and fix that. 
 

However, you should note my thread here, and take a peak at your sidebars. You should see updated topics from Clubs you've joined in that side bar. It's not the "Best" solution, but it is a solution.

 

It's also handy to check the "overview" section for each club (if they use it!) as that will also show you recently updated threads throughout that club.

 

Like I said I only have experience from two forums that I moderated earlier, but I don't see why each org needs a staff forum either. Granted neither of the forums I moderated had such elaborate group structure, so I guess I just don't understand why we would need that either. Picking sitewide moderators who can go in where needed and who may have special groups or orgs as their responsibility should be enough imo. 

 

Obviously I'm not privy to what wasn't working pre change. With the exception of needing an admin to give permissions and such I don't know what wasn't working before. 

 

I found a "Manage followed content" under the settings bar that actually tells me if there are new posts in threads I've followed, but the thing that's missing is a "go to first new post" button.

 

Don't think I've ever tried the "Overview" button before. *off to test*

[Lavandula]

Huh...I thought the overwiev was the front page..it's always what comes up when I go into DM... It's quite handy I think you can choose some settings where you choose to see only certain content too, unfortunately I didn't find a way to make it save those settings? but otherwice pretty neat..

[Sooh]

23 minutes ago, Lavandula said:

Huh...I thought the overwiev was the front page..it's always what comes up when I go into DM... It's quite handy I think you can choose some settings where you choose to see only certain content too, unfortunately I didn't find a way to make it save those settings? but otherwice pretty neat..

Yeah, you're right. I just find it a bit confusing and messy, and always tend to skip it so that's why I didn't remember ?

[SinisterDeath]

The Overview page in clubs is what I'm talking about.

 

Its not like being able to see a list of clubs, and what's going on in each of them, but you don't' have to click each club-page/forum to see updated posts.

 

56 minutes ago, Sooh said:

Like I said I only have experience from two forums that I moderated earlier, but I don't see why each org needs a staff forum either. Granted neither of the forums I moderated had such elaborate group structure, so I guess I just don't understand why we would need that either.

Generally speaking, each WoT Based Org/Club has/had a private staff board. The WT has a Staff board for Each Ajah/Disc.
Many had private boards for "official" members that your base user couldn't see until they "officially" joined the org. (all it a perk!)

Quote

Picking sitewide moderators who can go in where needed and who may have special groups or orgs as their responsibility should be enough imo. 

Sorta? That's one of the benefits of the Club system in that we don't have to create a bunch of Moderators and assign them areas. The club leaders can make their own mods to moderate their section, and the Forum Admins/Mods don't have to step in unless some serious shit hits the fan.

 

1 hour ago, Sooh said:

With the exception of needing an admin to give permissions and such I don't know what wasn't working before. 

What wasn't working before is, it could take weeks to months for staff position changes to become official because Org Staff had to wait for an Admin to get around to it. Then competing with social media and busy lives, the forums in general just died away.

[Lavandula]

 

[dicetosser1]

i showed.

 

what i dont like about "clubs" is that i have to rejoin things ive been a member of for almost 19 years and the loss of that history of things.

 

I also am not a fan of the separation of the books side and the show side that was put in place nor the restrictions that were placed on expressing your opinion of the show stuff you have seen.

[SinisterDeath]

1 hour ago, dicetosser1 said:

 

what i dont like about "clubs" is that i have to rejoin things ive been a member of for almost 19 years and the loss of that history of things.

 

"Rejoining" took less than a minute even with DMs slow loading time. This also was significantly faster then it took for Admins 19 years ago to add you to that Orgs Usergroup. 

 

Those old posts still exist, and can be brought back into this space if they're needed. You just need an active Leader that wants to do that.

 

1 hour ago, dicetosser1 said:

I also am not a fan of the separation of the books side and the show side that was put in place 

What?

I guess I don't understand how you can be upset over having a forum talking books, and a forum talking the TV show. That is Standard Operating Procedure everywhere.

 

When you disregard it, and have the show/book as only one forum, you're literally creating more upset people, getting book spoilers from thread titles...

 

1 hour ago, dicetosser1 said:

nor the restrictions that were placed on expressing your opinion of the show stuff you have seen.

The only restrictions are;

Don't be a racist troll, and don't talk about politics, which includes comments like "SJW Libs ruining the series for the gay trans agenda.".

 

You may have noticed Jason nuked D&D because the vitriol politics in that forum was causing people to leave DM.

[Lavandula]

Ok ok...I have it on good authority, the admins are working their tushies of...literally!

 

So let's get this lovely tainted party started, woop woop!

As I understood it there's a problem of BT atm not being unique and offer up something no other club offers, no?

What if everyone offer up either something they know from old times that is BT or something new that could fit yeah? And then in return you get a piece of yummy tainted brownies?

[Illian Tear]

I think I was one of the last One Power fights before we changed to the new DM.

[Arie]

1 hour ago, Illian Tear said:

I think I was one of the last One Power fights before we changed to the new DM.

Oooh, then @SinisterDeath and I may have to pick your brain some time in the future... for no... specific... reason.... >.>

[Lavandula]

*looking suspiciously at arie* 

Oooh interesting Illian!  have heard about them ofcourse when newbie, and I would love to understand more about them too, though only for my own amusement lol. I have just been pondering how big the consept is, is there set "spell comands" or rules or all just in good fun spamming and not really any good structure to it?

Also when I was joining you were doing this festival of light and shadow, is that an old bt tradition and what is that about?

*Pokes the other oldies*

[Illian Tear]

8 hours ago, Lavandula said:

*looking suspiciously at arie* 

Oooh interesting Illian!  have heard about them ofcourse when newbie, and I would love to understand more about them too, though only for my own amusement lol. I have just been pondering how big the consept is, is there set "spell comands" or rules or all just in good fun spamming and not really any good structure to it?

Also when I was joining you were doing this festival of light and shadow, is that an old bt tradition and what is that about?

*Pokes the other oldies*

For the OP fights everyone had the same base stats for their strength in each element/weave. You chose one that you specialized in, and you could add points to your strengths depending on your rank. There were also angreals that could boost your stats. And yes there were predetermined weaves you could use with various damage/success rates.

 

And the Festival of Light and Shadow was just a way during Halloween to try and involve more people in the club.

[Lavandula]

 

18 minutes ago, Illian Tear said:

For the OP fights everyone had the same base stats for their strength in each element/weave. You chose one that you specialized in, and you could add points to your strengths depending on your rank. There were also angreals that could boost your stats. And yes there were predetermined weaves you could use with various damage/success rates.

 

[Lavandula]

19 minutes ago, Illian Tear said:

And the Festival of Light and Shadow was just a way during Halloween to try and involve more people in the club.

Well it worked didn't it? 

Illian: !go fish

Bot: you caught a lava

Illian: uuuuuh... @*!#:

[Guest Wolfbrother31]

Besides what is on the front page of DM, does anybody have an insider info on when the show might come out? I was re-reading the books in anticipation of it being this year; but now... my hope dwindles. It is as if I have made it to the Crossroads of Twilight - cause now I'm thinking - how long do I have to wait for it to be good again?! 

[SinisterDeath]

1 hour ago, Wolfbrother31 said:

Besides what is on the front page of DM, does anybody have an insider info on when the show might come out? I was re-reading the books in anticipation of it being this year; but now... my hope dwindles. It is as if I have made it to the Crossroads of Twilight - cause now I'm thinking - how long do I have to wait for it to be good again?! 

What's on the front page is the only insider-info anyone on the forums really has.

You can check out Geeky Eri on Twitter  and WoT Up! on YouTube for some less confirmed information.

 

But @Wolfbrother31, this thread isn't about this topic at all.