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It seems as if lately new topics that catch the interest of the majority are hard to come by in many of CoN's forums. This is due to a combination CoN's strict & eternal one thread per topic policy and the aging unchanging games that the site covers. What happens when everything has been discussed? We can't post anymore?

Perhaps not enough people are digging through and bumping up the old threads. But there's a problem with old threads: They're stale. Time breaks up the flow of a conversation. Old threads contain many posts from members who arn't even around anymore, so responding to those posts is pointless. Views and opinions change over time, so perhaps what someone said a year or two ago no longer applies. When an old thread gets bumped people don't want to read through all the posts made before the new one. Instead they would rather follow a thread from the beginning and become actively engaged in the conversation from the start. People don't have time or patience to sort through old posts. It's tedious and boring.

The FFVI forum is locking itself up since everything has been discussed. We're only getting a trickle of new threads from new players with basic questions. Each time someone asks a question there are immediately about 5 people there to answer the question. It seems like many members hover around that forum but can't make posts there. The original game never changes and everything has been discussed. Here we are 10 years after the release of the game still wanting to talk about it. This is a reality that CoN should be interested in dealing with in their efforts to provide services to fans of older FF games. More avenues of discussion need to be opened. I suggest loosening up on the rules a little bit to allow more new threads to emerge. Also FFVI has a future in ROM hacking, so perhaps the FFVI forum should allow more hacking discussion. Sure the hacks are made by fans, but they're directly related to what's happening with FFVI. Until Square decides to remake FFVI this will always be the case.

The same problem exists with the general topics and general gaming forums. Things we can all relate to have already been discussed. Now we just get a trickle of special interest topics. I've never seen this problem before because in other forums members and moderators are more open about starting new threads about topics that have been discussed before. But perhaps small community forums have to be the way CoN is. Any thoughts?

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FFXI (Siren server)
Tauu the Windurstian Tarutaru!
White Mage & Paladin

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Also FFVI has a future in ROM hacking, so perhaps the FFVI forum should allow more hacking discussion. Sure the hacks are made by fans, but they're directly related to what's happening with FFVI. Until Square decides to remake FFVI this will always be the case.

What exactly do you mean by these words? CoN hosts several utilities that allow people to change several games (I know of VI and Tactics), so if anything, CoN seems okay with it as opposed to not wanting to have anything to do with it. Yes, there are less hackers around these parts then on a forum like GameFAQs. That's how it grew, apparantly.

I haven't detected any kind of policy that would stop me or any other hacker from posting findings or asking questions on this site. I can honestly say that I was pleasantly surprised by the amount of feedback in my bugfix topic I started recently.

This post has been edited by Djibriel on 28th August 2004 22:12

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The Collapse of Heaven and Earth

This thread gave me an idea of a new forum... a forum about upcoming squenix releases maybe, or even just new rpgs coming out. Although, topics under that category could go under General Squenix and General Gaming.

Quote (i90east)

It seems as if lately new topics that catch the interest of the majority are hard to come by in many of CoN's forums. This is due to a combination CoN's strict & eternal one thread per topic policy and the aging unchanging games that the site covers. What happens when everything has been discussed? We can't post anymore?

There's no problem with making new topics that were already discussed a long time ago; we don't even whine about it, let alone warn. We merge them if we know of an older topic on the same subject.

Quote (i90east)

Perhaps not enough people are digging through and bumping up the old threads. But there's a problem with old threads: They're stale. Time breaks up the flow of a conversation. Old threads contain many posts from members who arn't even around anymore, so responding to those posts is pointless.

So respond to the newer ones that just got merged. Or if noone else wants to discuss it, bump the topic and ask what people think of that issue now. Personally, I'm interested to see how opinions differ over time, and a single topic is a good way to do it.

Quote (i90east)

Views and opinions change over time, so perhaps what someone said a year or two ago no longer applies.

They're free to post with a change of heart. You're free to ignore the older posts.

Quote (i90east)

When an old thread gets bumped people don't want to read through all the posts made before the new one. Instead they would rather follow a thread from the beginning and become actively engaged in the conversation from the start. People don't have time or patience to sort through old posts. It's tedious and boring.

So just read the last page, or posts that are recent in the thread. And like I said, you don't have to look for old topics before you post something; just post a new one about it and it'll get merged if we know of an older one.

Quote (i90east)

The FFVI forum is locking itself up since everything has been discussed. We're only getting a trickle of new threads from new players with basic questions. Each time someone asks a question there are immediately about 5 people there to answer the question. It seems like many members hover around that forum but can't make posts there. The original game never changes and everything has been discussed. Here we are 10 years after the release of the game still wanting to talk about it. This is a reality that CoN should be interested in dealing with in their efforts to provide services to fans of older FF games. More avenues of discussion need to be opened. I suggest loosening up on the rules a little bit to allow more new threads to emerge.

How does loosening the rules help here? Your suggestion seems to be based on how information is organised (merged with old posts). We don't penalise someone for going over old ground (unless it's the mountain of mostly silly answers to the Gogo topic, or something like that).

It's also worth bearing in mind that we don't actively look for old posts to merge with new, similar topics. It only tends to happen if someone remembers an older topic and gives us a link. The easy way to reduce the number of merges is for noone to tell us, but in reality, some of us quite like it that way. Perhaps you've never been to those forums where the opposite occurs, and the same, simple questions keep being asked over and over again, with the same unerring factual answer being reposted (or, worse, an angry "use the search button" message with no answer).

Quote (i90east)

Also FFVI has a future in ROM hacking, so perhaps the FFVI forum should allow more hacking discussion. Sure the hacks are made by fans, but they're directly related to what's happening with FFVI. Until Square decides to remake FFVI this will always be the case.

I don't see a rule that prevents hacking discussion. Some of the threads may be more appropriate in Your Creations, but does that matter? It's still CoN. We don't manage the forums as separate entities, but as a cohesive whole; I hope that's how members read them, too (the View New Posts link certainly encourages that).

Hacking discussion has traditionally been rare since we've had very few hackers on the forum. That's changed lately, and I'm seeing a gradual increase in technical answers and discussion in the FF6 forum (and FF5, mostly thanks to Djibriel in that case). That can only be a good thing, provided you're prepared to accept some responses from the non-hacking community which makes up most of the forum.

Quote (i90east)

The same problem exists with the general topics and general gaming forums. Things we can all relate to have already been discussed. Now we just get a trickle of special interest topics. I've never seen this problem before because in other forums members and moderators are more open about starting new threads about topics that have been discussed before. But perhaps small community forums have to be the way CoN is. Any thoughts?

Again: there's nothing to stop new topics covering old ground, even if they later get merged.

The majority of this suggestion seems to boil down to "It's not convenient to just read recent pages merged topics; it'd be more convenient for the topics not to be merged and the new one to operate on its own." I disagree because, as I've said:

• Old posts may be of interest to some;
  
• Those uninterested can just click on the last page from View New Posts or the forum index; and
  
• There's no penalty for making a new topic that has (not recently) been discussed before.
  

But I'm interested to hear others' opinions. Will changing a trivial topic merge policy make a difference to the breadth of discussion? I don't think so, but feel free to reason otherwise.

Also note that in general, CoN is getting more posts than ever. Less so in recent weeks, but it's very up and down (and the forums being down at peak hours because of our host's incompetence never helps). The rules have been loosened a fair bit since 2001/2002, and the increase in discussion partly results from that, but taking it much further would begin to erode the "spirit" of CoN. If we make the rules like GameFAQs, why not just go there instead? The point here, especially in the gaming forums, has always been focused, on-topic discussion. Relaxing the rules would add more posts, but I know I speak for more members than myself when I say that I probably wouldn't care to read them.

(If you want some indication of the increase in activity, I made a copy of the forum database about 13-14 months ago to test the upgrade to the current software. I recently made a new testing topic on that installation; the topic number was 1451. This topic is numbered 4702. Also see the "x0000 posts" threads and their increasing frequency.)

That's talking of change above and beyond the merge issue, though, and that's change CoN isn't going to make under any circumstances, I'm afraid. But again, input is welcome.

Quote (doughnut)

This thread gave me an idea of a new forum... a forum about upcoming squenix releases maybe, or even just new rpgs coming out. Although, topics under that category could go under General Squenix and General Gaming.

I think the last sentence is key here. If people are worried about too few topics in existing forums, I doubt that spreading topics over more forums will help too much. Thanks for the idea, though.

This post has been edited by Tiddles on 28th August 2004 22:43

I like the current way of doing things. Look at it this way: past posts and topics always add more information and different views to a discussion than just a handful of new posts, even if the people who made them don't come around anymore. We don't neglect the French Revolution and Genghis Khan in a serious history discussion, after all. =)

This post has been edited by Zephir on 29th August 2004 06:07

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~Status Report~

* Completed... Dragon's Head
* Completed... Soldiers of the Empire: Disciples (release pending)
* In Progress/Undecided... Of Love and Betrayal
* Planning/Assembly... Where it all Began

Thanks for the explanation Tiddles. You're the man. I was under the impression (and perhaps a lot of other people are too) that getting your topics merged is a bad thing. It's as if the mods are quietly saying "oops, you goofed and now we have to fix it". Before that even happens you'll have someone post just to point out that a thread on the topic already exists, making a scene out of the issue. If no one else is sensitive about this stuff then I won't worry about it and we can move on.

In chat the other night people were agreeing with me that there's nothing to talk about in the FFVI forum and all the good topics to discuss in the general forum have been discussed, which is why I was looking for a way to fix the perceived problem. But if in reality most people think everything is great and there are lots of posts being made then there's nothing to worry about.



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FFXI (Siren server)
Tauu the Windurstian Tarutaru!
White Mage & Paladin

Yeah, I'm sorry if it's been unclear: we really don't mind new topics that haven't been covered very recently, and we're not upset with anyone if we merge such topics: it's just a matter of convenience. We don't expect anyone to look back to prehistory before starting a topic, and recent rule changes advise members to send us links to mergable topics privately rather than making a post about it in the topic. Sorry if anyone felt we were getting at them for that.

If people say there's nothing to talk about in certain forums, I'm not sure what we can do. I can only suggest, in the spirit of this thread, not to be afraid of making topics if there's something you want to discuss.