Implemented A compilation of the issues I see

Okay, I've been checking this forum out for a couple days now... and I think I have compiled a raw list of all issues I see. Not only that, but I can even tell you exactly how to fix them too. If you fix these issues, the site will be a lot better for it and will have an actual chance to flourish.

Too many boards, not enough activity to sustain them, and too much redundancy.
I can't overstate this enough. I'm not saying you guys don't know what you're doing when it comes to running a forum, but this is a really amateur mistake I see all the time. Many people think "More boards = more activity = good", but sadly that is not how it works. As I type this, there are only 9 registered members online, and 11 guests, while there are 15 boards to post on. When you have more boards than you do average active users, that's a bad sign. Now let's look deeper at these boards, and I'll tell you how a new member such as myself sees them.

4 boards have not been posted in since february or earlier. 5 boards have 10 posts or less, when averaged out. There are two "General" boards, which is rather redundant, and to top it off you have an "Offtopic" and a "General" which serve exactly the same purpose, except I'm assuming the Offtopic doesn't count posts which is a totally pointless addition. I'll elaborate on that in a bit. You also have two "Suggestion" boards, and then I won't bother pointing out how many other redundant boards you have that all serve the same purpose. The point is, they're unneeded.

Announcements and Forum Feedback
This entire category is depressing to look at. Combined with Forum Feedback at the bottom, it's something guaranteed to push away new users. Not only can I not, at a simple glance, tell how many people are on the forums (Implying none!) I CAN tell at a glance how many boards are inactive, or have been inactive for a month or longer, both of which would tell me as a new user this forum is not worth my time. Cumulate that over a hundred potential new users or more, and it makes a vicious circle cascading effect, driving away new members.

I recommend condesning many of these boards into one or two boards instead. In fact, I think just one board, and a subforum would be best, you'll see what I mean in a bit.

The rest of the forum
Realm of the Diggle gods is doing okay. Not amazing, but okay. However, what really bugs me is the fact it has three subforums, completely redundant and unneeded.
General is also doing pretty good, it's the biggest board by far.
Gameplay, doing okay.
Bugs, doing good and it makes sense/isn't redundant.
Stories and Fan Fiction, it's unneeded, or should be a subforum of General. Having a forum with that few discussions in it only makes the forum look less active, again driving away new members.
Mods, doing great.
Suggestions, wait what? So... you have a suggestions subforum for Diggle gods, a suggestions board again for "general" DoD, and a forum suggestions board too?? There is no need for this man suggestion boards, because not only are they redundant, they make the forum spread too thin and they confuse people. ("Where should I post this suggestion, there are three different boards UGHHHH better go to a different forum then.")
Funny Stories, uh yeah there's no need for this. It hasn't been posted in since the 7th and should be merged with the other Stories board.



So let's TL;DR this.

-Too many boards
-Too much redundancy
-Too confusing
-Spread too thin considering the activity
-Makes the forum look dead or extremely inactive at best, driving away new members.

Now for my proposed layout.

--Dungeons of Dredmor Announcements--
Announcements
Site Feedback

--General Forum--
Dungeons of Dredmor Discussion
-Suggestions
-Gameplay
-Bugs
Diggle Gods Discussion
-Suggestions
-Gameplay
-Bugs
General Discussion
Modding
Writing and Creative
Other Games

Original number of boards: 19 (Including subforums)
New number of boards: 13

First, we eliminated all redundant boards, and this separates the suggestions for Diggle gods from normal DoD discussion. All boards pertaining to the forum are condensed and moved to forum feedback, it's not like you have enough to make one full page anyway. All forum and game related announcements go in the announcements board. All of your most active boards are presented first, with the less active boards at least adding to the most active boards total, making them appear more active ad hopefully attract new members.

Antoher thing is that if Offtopic is one of those boards that doesn't count posts, just remove it and condense it with General Discussion. All a board like this does is encourage spam and contributes nothing towards actual decent activity. Forum games too, those are rather pointless but feel free to keep it if the memberbase wants it.

Next, we go to other smaller things. The total black background on the forum doesn't sit quite right with me, you should make it something less harsh, like colored pink/red/orange mist or something, maybe even a large art from ingame.

Then, show the number of active members online on the board index, showing we aren't 100% dead and do in fact actually have members online.


If you take the time to implement these changes, I guarantee the forum will be 100% healthier for it. And, if you don't really want to do it, I'll offer to do it for you though you can feel free to decline if you like. I have years of experience running forums and I can't stand seeing my new favorite game's forums not get the attention it deserves when the errors are fixable.

Edit: Sorry for any mispellings, I have moderate dyslexia.

 

I'm not exactly sure about some of these changes, but I do have to admit that what you propose does make sense.

 

It has become a bit hard to find the mods you are looking for in the mods section, other than that I think the forums are just fine the way they are.

I wouldn't exactly call it an error or "doing it wrong" to have the forum separated into the sections we have here now, its usually easy to navigate to the topics you are interested in or wish to post on. I've seen far worse offenders in messy forum layouts than the gaslamp community boards.

Edit: Well, you do have a point on the number of different suggestion boards, bit redundant.

 

Forums are... not as simple as one might think. I've been using forums for close to 10 years now and they really are more of a battleground for activity.

There are three general tiers of business for a forum, aside from dead.

Small community.
This is what we have here on this forum. A small number of people are online and post on occasion. This is what my own site is, but that's intentional because it's a private dev forum for my game. Small communities are close knit, making most people pretty friendly to one another. However, as a result, after a certain period of time they always become slightly hostile to newcomers. "Oh he doesn't know what a proc is, he's a noob. Lol noob." It's hard, once a community has been a small community for a long time, to accept large changes, because you fear the breakup of said community.

Large community.
A good example of this would be Serenes Forest, a Fire Emblem fansite I enjoy going to. It gets a lot of activity and there are a lot of members online, but it lacks what the highest level of forums have, content. It's just the most popular place for a niched fandom to go to, we all know each other and know who the troublemakers are and etc, and we don't mind each other in particular at all.

Audience.
Audience is the hugest by far. IGN forums, Gamewinner forums, Terraria forums, these are audience communities. They hold as many as 1k or 2k posters online at any given time, easily more. Boasting thousands or even millions of posts, these forums have become huge monsters of which are powerful advertising tools and yet also demonstrate some of the really bad points in humanity. One bad post by someone can inflate into an internet meme if enough people see it, and the community can give huge ratio'd information to game devs (If it is somehow, and quite rarely, a game dev forum like Terraria.) via polls and the like. For example, asking a question like "Should hookshots be in terraria" by the Terraria devs may give a thousand votes in a poll or mor, letting the devs know whether it would be worth implementing or not.

Large community is by far the most optimal. Small communities are nice, and Audiences seem great, but Large is what I think helps devs and everyone else out the most. I don't think this forum is, exactly, "fine the way it is", because I believe there is always room for improvement. I think everyone here would like having more fascinating people to discuss this awesome game(s) with, and so would I.

Can't wait!

 

Haha "brave" xD. Now I feel like Samwise Gamgee. I just call it like I see it.

Also, I still think Suggestions should be at the top, it encourages users to provide said feedback. Maybe that's just me though x]

All the changes are excellent, good to see we have a good admin in this community.

Edit: Couple questions though.

-What is the purpose of the Discussions board? It seems to be the same thing as General.
-Why does RPG's have it's own board, when it's only one topic? O__o I mean if that's the lone Role Playing Game on this forum, why not move that one topic to fan fiction, or put the RPG board under fan fiction where it's more appropriate? (Fan Fiction also gets less posts so that would serve to give it a bit more activity too)

That's about it.

 

I love the consolidation! It was really unwieldy trying to look through two general forums and two bug forums, etc.