CodeWalrus

Hello everyone.
As of lately, there's been a lot of talk about whether or not CodeWalrus and the TI community are going to die. I too notice that the general focus of the people on the site is shifting, or rather, broadening from calculators to a wide range of science and tech related subjects. A concern that I heard was 'How do we keep members around when they lose interest in calcs?', and the answer is most likely 'Give them more place to discuss the things they like and get replies!'. Now CodeWalrus does actually have place for most discussions. However, quite a few of them are buried and hard to find. I think this should change so that these boards get more posts, and therefore I want to present you what I call the Forum Structure Overhaul v1.0000000069! :walrii:

Ladies and gentlemen, fasten your seatbelts.

CodeWalr.us
|
|Site News & Announcements
|Site Discussion & Bug Reports
|Contests
|File Downloads Archives

Featured Projects
|
|[projects]
|

General Discussion
|
|Safe-Haven
|General Help & Troubleshooting
|Tech, Science, IT discussion & news
|Other

Development
|
|-Software
| |Phones
| |PC/Mac
| |Consoles
| |Calculators
|
|-Hardware
| |a \  not exactly sure
| |b  > what child boards
| |c /  this needs


Multimedia
|
|-Gaming
| |Discussion
| |Walkthroughs & questions
|
|-Music
| |Production & Showcase
| |Discussion
|
|-Movies & TV
| |Anime & Manga
| |Cartoons & Comics
| |Films & Series
|
|-Drawing & Animation

Miscellaneous
|
|Forum Games & Randomness
|Spammy
|Topic Graveyard

I want to make clear that this is not a finished product. I want you to think about a couple things. First, a huge forum restructure like this will have to go with a certain change of focus. Are we okay with that? Are we not? I can't decide for what everyone wants. Next, if we move, there are bound to be topics that get lost, or at least it might take some time to find them again in a new forum structure. This is not a flaw in the proposal I want to make, but is rather inherent to moving from one forum structure to another. Is it fine if some topics do not fit 100% in a new forum structure?. Last but not least, do you have any suggestions or things that you want to see different? If you have suggestions, please mention me by including @aeTIos in your post, so I get the message in my PMs.

Together, we can make this community outlast the TI community. Let the walrus prevail! :walrii:

~

I like the idea :) The general discussion is a good way to get some weight off the off topic topics :P

I second Cumred ;)

I really like the idea, I don't see any improvement that could be made to this myself. It is indeed true that we need to emphasize non-calculator topics if we want to keep the community rolling, and we haven't done that enough since we created the site. My opinion is that we should also modify the banner to emphasize calculators a bit less. I don't mean to reduce the calc activity but instead of specifying multiple models, it should say something like "Programming, hardware, retro-gaming, digital arts".

I do agree with this, it's a good first draft.

Fun fact, CalcWalrus was a suggestion for the name of the site, but I didn't wanted it to emphatize on calcs so we went with CodeWalrus instead.

Yeah indeed, also CodeWalrus sounded cooler. :P

My only gripe is that safe-haven should actually be with off-topic stuff since it's also off-topic but private, and I don't think we need a second spam section (since forum games/randomness serves that purpose)

Also perhaps there should be more emphasis on development and the general discussion area merged with miscellaneous at the bottom? I don't see the point in duplicates.


EDIT: What about this?


CodeWalr.us
|
|Site News & Announcements
|Site Discussion & Bug Reports
|Contests
|File Downloads Archives
|Staff (Hidden)

Featured Projects
|
|[projects]
|

Development & Technology
|
|-Software
| |Phones
| |PC/Mac
| |Consoles
| |-Calculators
| | | Calc Projects
| | | Calc Help & Discussion
| | | Calc Tutorials
|
|-Hardware
| |General Help & Troubleshooting
| |Tech, Science, IT discussion & news

Multimedia
|
|-Gaming
| |Discussion
| |Walkthroughs & questions
|
|-Music
| |Production & Showcase
| |Discussion
|
|-Movies & TV
| |Anime & Manga
| |Cartoons & Comics
| |Films & Series
|
|-Drawing & Animation

Miscellaneous
|
|Miscellany
|Safe-Haven (hidden)
|Forum Games & Randomness (members-only)
|Topic Graveyard (hidden)

I don't like that at all, general discussion != miscellaneous, and what you moved to hardware doesn't belong there. The hardware section is a dev section, not a support forum.

What's your solution, then? Shouldn't general be called General technology?

No, just general discussion.

I meant the Help & Troubleshooting section as a general everything section, ranging from 'Help, my leg hurts' to 'My phone is acting weird'. This way general support questions do not clutter development sections and questions.

Also I don't like the calc section being split into yet more subforums, it makes things even more confusing, unbalanced compared to the rest and we already have tags for that. We can sticky some things as well.
The whole point of this overhaul is to limit the focus on calcs and to boost other sections.

So calc projects would be mixed up with calc news and discoveries?

No, calc news and discoveries would go in Tech, Science, IT discussion & news
Programming tutorials would go in the section that belongs to the system they discuss, and be tagged with a [tutorial] tag. We can then eventually make a compilation thread with all tutorials.

Quote from: Streetwalrus on December 10, 2015, 05:23:00 PM
My opinion is that we should also modify the banner to emphasize calculators a bit less. I don't mean to reduce the calc activity but instead of specifying multiple models, it should say something like "Programming, hardware, retro-gaming, digital arts".

Thinking back on this, the MC-style slogans would be an even better replacement for that line.

Also, along with a possible overhaul we could actually get a working post filter in place. That would be cool.

@Cumred_Snektron @Ivoah @Juju where should safe haven section go?

For context: we were debating whether it should go down there with the randomness board or at the top in the general/off-topic section.

On a side note, are we looking to push this change for January 1st (if it happens, that is?)

There is one concern I have about it that I didn't mention: This change would result into an increase in amounts of divisions and thus, increase scrolling. On the other hand, some categories like dev will have less sub-forums on the board index.

Quote from: DJ Omnimaga on December 10, 2015, 10:34:31 PM
@Cumred_Snektron @Ivoah @Juju where should safe haven section go?

I think it would be best to put it in the General Discussion, but im not 100% sure.. :P

Won't this mess up all the posts currently categorized into boards? <_<

Well, we can move the topics and renam the boards so that won't be much of a problem i guess.

Yeah, we will have some work to do but it's worth it imo.

Quote from: c4ooo on December 11, 2015, 12:01:04 PM
Won't this mess up all the posts currently categorized into boards? <_<

I also mentioned this in my OP. I'm pretty sure that some topic will get into weird places because the boards aren't 100% transferable. Most boards can be moved though.

We also have the topic cloning feature, btw.

Quote from: DJ Omnimaga on December 10, 2015, 10:34:31 PM
@Cumred_Snektron @Ivoah @Juju where should safe haven section go?

I would say it should go in the general/off-topic section

In any case we will keep the current sections but repurpose them as needed, instead of redoing brand new sub-forums from scratch. At least this won't cause broken links in Google.

Since we try to avoid forcing drastic changes on our members, I had some idea:

-When the restructure would be rolled out, users would have an option above the board index allowing them to switch to the old layout or vice-versa (cookie-based, where the new layout is the default)
-The New layout would be the default view and as dynamic as the current board index
-The old layout would simply be HTML of the old layout. If the user have chosen to load the old layout, then instead of loading the board index it would just load a cached HTML snippet of the old index, which would lack total posts and the last posted in topic. Users would be encouraged to get used to the new layout asap.
-The old layout would only be available for a year or so (depending of how long it takes before SMF 2.1 comes out)
-Sub-forums created after the restructure would not be available in the old layout.

I wonder if it would be hard to implement?

I'm not sure if this will work. We could however, make a 'translation map', eg something for users to 'translate' the old forums into the new ones. I also agree we should keep making new or deleting old sections to a minimum.

It would just load a different code snippet if the user had the old layout selected, and that snippet would be static html code (copied from the old layout). The main question is how do cookies work in PHP, so it would need to be someone else who do that.

A translation map would be nice, though. Maybe a small map at the top somewhere for a while or via a link to help users. On CW we try as much as possible to not force drastic changes on users, but sometimes they are necessary, so we can do compromises to allievate the problems that changes can cause.

We can move gradually, maybe. Eg. renaming some forums at first while keeping the old name in it.

Yeah, that's what I am thinking. One concern I have is about having to spend an entire day redoing the layout. I only am supposed to work three days next week but they are Sunday, Monday and Tuesday, which means I work 7 days in a row, and I have holidays as well. There will most likely be some topics moving around over time with renaming.


Also, do you think the dev section content could be made more visible, so we see the platforms, or should they remain the way they are in your post? I was thinking that perhaps that section might look too small compared to the rest and it might look like we are giving less attention to programming overall compared to stuff like movies/anime, for example.

Guys, the forum structure overhaul is now underway, slowly. Some boards have been renamed and moved, but topics have yet to be moved and it's only the start.

One last question: Where should board/card games be located? It doesn't seem to fit multimedia well, but gaming is there. Should it be in General, Multimedia or Miscellaneous? And should it be a sub-forum of gaming?


Also for the time being, I think the calculator sub-forum we will end up with will remain split in two categories for the time being, but only 1 big category will be visible in the sub-forum list and the tutorials sub-forum will merge with programming (project showcase)

Sub-forum of gaming I guess.

I think it should go in Miscellaneous as a sub-forum

I'm thinking that such games fit more into media-type stuff, though (as in all forms of medias not just videos/music).

Also I know it has only been a few weeks since the major restructure, but I noticed that the opening of non-calc development forums have given more incentives to members to share their console/phone projects or non-calc stuff in general, which is good. Same for other topics, while still staying into media/gaming/coding in general. Which is good if that's the case. It's a shame otherwise when someone moves on from calc programming and leaves entirely due to lack of non-calc stuff.

Quote from: DJ Omnimaga on February 06, 2016, 03:28:33 AM
I'm thinking that such games fit more into media-type stuff, though (as in all forms of medias not just videos/music).

Also I know it has only been a few weeks since the major restructure, but I noticed that the opening of non-calc development forums have given more incentives to members to share their console/phone projects or non-calc stuff in general, which is good. Same for other topics, while still staying into media/gaming/coding in general. Which is good if that's the case. It's a shame otherwise when someone moves on from calc programming and leaves entirely due to lack of non-calc stuff.

Yeah, and it seems that the restructure increased the amount of people joining.

It depends. It could have done so but January is usually when many people joins anyway, so that could be why, but a lot of people who joined participates in non-calc discussions as well which is good. We also still get a decent amount of calc discussion, which is good as well.

Now the thing would be to convince people to ask help on the forums instead of IRC, because it would benefit more people. Same for posting project updates. Stuff gets lost easily in the IRC logs >.<

But I made a CEmu setup help thread, and no one replied... I use IRC when I can because there's a slight chance of instant input.

That isn't really the topic for this, but yeah it might have been because nobody else is able to reproduce your problem, including the author. It could also be because you didn't provide enough information for CEmu authors about your problem (Windows version and service pack numbers, 32 or 64 bits machine/OS, screenshots of the error, etc). Just bump the topic again and @mention MateoConLechuga.

You can just delete it; I got some answers at Cemetech, because I posted a screenshot there. It has something to do with my graphics card/drivers being outdated, and this dependency is being removed.

Nah it's fine and I see. It's best that GUI application won't require high graphic cards requirements for a larger audience.

Interesting. I am alright with changes as long as my beloved Hardware section persists :P

It will :) (same for the other sections)

So, how far are we with implementing this? Are there any big changes that still need to be implemented?

We still lack a board for comic books and mangas and board games, but should we wait for mangas until we have a few hundreds of posts about them?

So I was wondering: Should we split the site downloads section so that we have a game section, plus an utility section? That would allow non-game files to be listed there (including some past topics with the topic cloning command).

It could be like this:

-Downloads
--Games
--Utilities
--Music (redirect to music showcase board or my Bandcamp page)

Eventually, Utilities could be split further into Educational and Development tools if it gets too big.

What do you think @Juju , @aeTIos , @Ivoah , @Streetwalrus , @Cumred_Snektron and others?

I think that's a good idea.

Yep, that's a good idea.

Seems fine.

Ok I'll see what I can do later. :)

Yea seems like a nice idea :)