Please STOP pushing threads into "Players helping Players" section

DragonRacer

I'm just gonna leave this here as another example: https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/637200/accepting-a-new-quest-does-not-make-it-your-active-quest-automatically-any-longer#latest

VaranisArano

VaranisArano wrote: »

SilverBride wrote: »

This fun thread was just moved from General to Community Creations. I don't consider showing screenshots of our Arcanists to be creations and now this thread will die. PLEASE move this back so we can continue to enjoy each other's new characters.

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/635254/share-your-acanist/p1

Just wanted to follow up on this one after roughly one week.

45 comments before moving -> Moved to Community Creations ->7 comments afterwards

From its creation on June 6th to the of the evening of June 9th after it was moved (and I noticed it), it had 2.2k views. A week later in Community Creations, it has 2.6k views.

Now, its entirely possible that most people who wanted to share their Arcanists did so in the first three days, and we'll have a large influx of Console players posting their pictures when Necrom launches. Threads that aren't kept active, die.

Or...perhaps moving the thread to Community Creations did exactly what you predicted.

Follow-up to the follow-up on "Share Your Arcanist" as a case study. (A bit delayed, sorry, was on vacation)

....................

Necrom launched on Console on June 20th. 54 comments, 2.8k views
As of June 30th, 57 comments, 3.1k views. The most recent comment was June 21, the day after launch.

How about in terms of Arcanists shared? Personally, I would expect to see a smaller resurgence in Console players posting their new Arcanists.
Start of Thread to move: 39 players sharing their Arcanist
After moving the thread -> Console launch: 8 players sharing their Arcanist
After Console Launch: 3 players sharing their Arcanist

So...sure, we had a small resurgence for 2 days after Console Launch, and then nothing. (I'll leave it to others to debate whether the cause of the small numbers is differences between PC and Console ease of posting screenshots or whether its that 3 posters out of only 300ish viewers ain't a bad ratio or something else entirely.)

..................

One of the reasons I started to follow up on some of the moved threads is to evaluate from a forum poster's perspective (with some limited data, as opposed to just my gut feeling) how well this was working out:

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

So the posts being moved is so that they are in the sub-section that matches the contents of the thread. This is based on the current structure of the forum. The intent is not to harm players or hinder conversation.

My Thoughts/Hot-Takes:

Q: Did moving the "Share your Arcanist" thread to Community Creations accomplish the goal of organizing the forum into its proper categories?

A: I'd say yes. That's the appropriate category based on prior moderation and similar threads like "Show Your Redguard."


Q: Did moving the "Share your Arcanist" thread to Community Creations accomplish the goal of players showing off their Arcanists, i.e. did it help or hinder conversation?

A: Depends, are we talking short-term post-Launch hype or long-term? After the thread is moved to less-used subforum, we can see a pretty immediate drop-off in both views and Arcanists shared with only a small resurgence during Console Launch. I'd say that in the short-term, it hindered conversation/sharing. Judging by views following the Console Launch, the thread was not seen by many of the players who are creating Arcanists and might wish to share their creations, nor were the newly posted Arcanists seen by many posters during the time period when people are going to be most hyped for Arcanists and looking for ideas for character creation. Long-term, it'll be an evergreen thread like the other "share your..." threads, so yes, sorting it in the same category is helpful to players who go looking to share their arcanists once the initial hype passes.

Note: ZOS' team may weigh these completely differently than I do. I certainly expect they have better tools to evaluate their own forum's traffic than I do (I can look at comments, imprecise view counts, etc.) So they may not agree that conversation was hindered in the short-term.

Aka_

Just as a side note, it's impressive how many times we see initial interest or appeasement from ZoS only to leave posts abandoned while players grow increasingly frustrated.

Jaraal

Aka_ wrote: »

Just as a side note, it's impressive how many times we see initial interest or appeasement from ZoS only to leave posts abandoned while players grow increasingly frustrated.

ZOS has never had a reputation for doing what players want. They have a vision for the forums, and it appears to be one that doesn't align with our expressed vision as players.

I guess the only question is, why? Why alienate and consternate the fan/user base? Is there a benefit to this course of action that we can't see?

The_Boggart

They close an article with two pages of input and refer to another article in another subject group that only has 3 inputs

If they are going to do this it would be helpful to merge the inputs

TaSheen

Unless things have changed (and they could have - it's been years since I moved from Vanilla to phpBB) there's no merge function in the admin options.

Foxhunt

Bro what happened to this game and site lol

Jaraal

Snamyap wrote: »

[snip]

No reason to check the subforums, as you can just look for the little lock icons in General Discussion. See a topic that interests you, click it and it takes you straight to the post, without having to navigate a slew of worthless categories.

[edited to remove quote]

Snamyap

Jaraal wrote: »

Snamyap wrote: »

[snip]

No reason to check the subforums, as you can just look for the little lock icons in General Discussion. See a topic that interests you, click it and it takes you straight to the post, without having to navigate a slew of worthless categories.

Yes, but with lack of responses it's going to drop of of the first page quick.

[edited to remove quote]

vsrs_au

Snamyap wrote: »

Jaraal wrote: »

Snamyap wrote: »

[snip]

No reason to check the subforums, as you can just look for the little lock icons in General Discussion. See a topic that interests you, click it and it takes you straight to the post, without having to navigate a slew of worthless categories.

Yes, but with lack of responses it's going to drop of of the first page quick.

No offence intended, but I think your logic there about lack of responses is flawed. If threads created in the General subforum were all left there, then they'd be competing for first page space with a lot more threads, and would therefore drop off the first page more quickly. So moving them doesn't necessarily make them vanish. They're still just as accessible as before.

Every single internet forum I've ever used has had multiple categories in it, and when you use the forum for a while, then you get used to navigating those categories. It's no different to navigating the index of a reference manual, or the index of a news site, or any other information medium that has an index.

[edited to remove quote]

SimonThesis

wilykcat wrote: »

Soraka wrote: »

I feel like there's a lot more redundant threads now over the same topics.

I agree. These kinds of threads complaining about almost non-existing issues are ridiculous.

If your posts gets moved so what. The forums are meant to be organized so people can easily find stuff

The problem is the forum is overly organized there are too many sections and most people only see and read whats in General.

Zodiarkslayer

vsrs_au wrote: »

... Every single internet forum I've ever used has had multiple categories in it ...
[edited to remove quote]

Agreed. But the categories are not chosen by player's interests, but devs/mods. Devs/Mods have a different perspective. That dissonance creates a lot of confusion.

LalMirchi

Somehow I feel that a lot of the problems with this forum could be alleviated by actually merging threads instead of moving them.

Vrienda

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

So the posts being moved is so that they are in the sub-section that matches the contents of the thread. This is based on the current structure of the forum. The intent is not to harm players or hinder conversation.

However with that being said, we've noticed frustration with some of the moving of conversations and have started looking at how we can better address this problem. That way, those posting get the help they need and we have conversations happening in the right places. We do intend on asking a wider audience here on the forum how they use the forum currently and how that experience can be made better from user navigation standpoint.

But since the conversation was started here, we'll ask some starting questions.

• How do you use the forums currently? Are you going to one specific category or do you visit multiple?
• What are your most viewed sections of the forum?
• Do you think the forums have too many categories?
• Do you use the navigation tabs at the top? (Categories, Dev Tracker, Recent, Unanswered, Participated)

I mostly just stick to general because I want a general consensus on how the community feels about things. I like to see a variety of topics so I can guage how each aspect of the game is doing and general requires the least clicks.

General is my most used.

I think the forum absolutely has too many categories personally.

There are navigation tabs? I check the pinned stuff but I don't recall any navigation tab... Dev tracker seems kinda useless because it's mostly just devs telling everyone they've removed some posts and please be nice to each other copy/pasted in like 12 different places. Would be better if you could edit the main post so it doesn't put a dev icon next to a thread. When I see the dev oroborus I want to see dev insights. Not a moderator telling everyone to be nice, that should be put in green text on the first post without a dev icon.

VaranisArano

vsrs_au wrote: »

Snamyap wrote: »

Jaraal wrote: »

Snamyap wrote: »

No reason to check the subforums, as you can just look for the little lock icons in General Discussion. See a topic that interests you, click it and it takes you straight to the post, without having to navigate a slew of worthless categories.

Yes, but with lack of responses it's going to drop of of the first page quick.

No offence intended, but I think your logic there about lack of responses is flawed. If threads created in the General subforum were all left there, then they'd be competing for first page space with a lot more threads, and would therefore drop off the first page more quickly. So moving them doesn't necessarily make them vanish. They're still just as accessible as before.

Every single internet forum I've ever used has had multiple categories in it, and when you use the forum for a while, then you get used to navigating those categories. It's no different to navigating the index of a reference manual, or the index of a news site, or any other information medium that has an index.

[edited to remove quote]

So this is me speaking from past experience with my guide threads, most of which ZOS left in General until their recent shift to organizing the forums more proactively.

You're right that when threads are in General, they compete with other threads in general for visibility. However, General also gets more views. Without views, you're very unlikely to get comments, and comments are what keeps you at the front of both General and Recent Discussions. Meanwhile, timely and active threads can stay in the first couple pages of General as long as posters are interested in discussing the topic at hand, which helps keep it active in Recent.

When timely and active threads get moved to lesser viewed subforums, they quickly get less engagement. This correlates pretty well with less comments, which means they drop off in Recent Discussions very quickly. Once that happens, they have to rely on however many people actually check that subforum for engagement.

Which wouldn't be a big deal if people actually checked that subforum, but...

You talk about using the index, but the practical reality is that it only works well if players actually use that index. And we've got a whole thread of people talking about how they actually use the forums. Moreover, if you're interested in joining me in tracking the effect on some of the moved threads, you can see for yourself what the effect is on conversation (whatever that effect turns out to be.)


It'd be one thing if ZOS were moving threads out of General once they are no longer timely and active (or at least after they'd dropped off the first couple pages). But when the mods move timely and active threads to lesser viewed subforums, it doesn't drive traffic to those subforums. Instead, posters who don't use those subforums still don't use those subforums, with the result that it does hinder conversation.

TL;DR: Just because ZOS is organizing the forums to benefit players who use the index doesn't mean that most posters are changing their habit to use the index.

Soraka

Would be nice if the mobile experience was updated and changed as well.

Varana

vsrs_au wrote: »

Every single internet forum I've ever used has had multiple categories in it, and when you use the forum for a while, then you get used to navigating those categories.

But there are forums where that works, and those where it doesn't.

This forum has 36 categories, and that's only for the English version. There's no quick way to navigate between subforums - I have to use a fairly obscure link to get to the top page, then have to find the other forum, most probably by scrolling around, just to check if there's something I might be interested in in a swamp of irrelevant noise. Because there's no way to tell from the forums overview whether there are new topics in a subforum or not.

And then there's the unclear categorisation. No one knows which topics should go into General. Basically 99% of topics are players answering other players' questions or comments, so why isn't everything in "Players helping players"? What exactly is the purpose of that forum? ZOS stickies don't comply with their own forum structure. And so on and so on. The categories here, while maybe well-meant, are a total mess.

Subforums and categories serve a purpose. They don't organise just by being there. They have to make sense to your visitors, they have to be clear and distinctive, they have to be easily to browse and accessible, and they have to find a balance between general and specific content (and adjust if necessary).
These forums fail at every one of these points. Instead, they create a murky soup where the category that a thread belongs to is apparently decided on a whim by some moderator depending on the mood this day (and depending on whether they actually read the thread they're sorting, which they sometimes do not).

I'm old, I've used a lot of forums in my life. This is one of the worse ones. I'm here since 2014, I have written almost 2000 comments, and I have not gotten used to the categories here. And, as evidenced by this thread and the observation that the vast majority of subforums are very rarely used, I'm not alone in that.
At this point, I'm pretty sure that it's not my fault.

TaSheen

For all the many years I've posted in game and professional forums, and the many years I've had my own forums, it's still not easy to "do it right". When I was a mod on the WordPress forum, one of the things I was responsible for was moving posts to the correct category. This is not new, at all. Actually, moving posts to some "more correct or appropriate" category is endemic.

Even on my own current game friends forum, which was 5 years old in May, I and my co-admin have pruned, merged, and "masaged" the categories about once a year. We've retired categories that no one uses (some were added at the request of members no longer active, and some have just been merged into a better overarching category), and re-titled others to better fit the content in them, and added some for new games members are playing.

I'm unsure if this forum had (before Kevin) anything approximating a "forum manager". If not, that's likely the problem at bottom.

SimonThesis

TaSheen wrote: »

I'm unsure if this forum had (before Kevin) anything approximating a "forum manager". If not, that's likely the problem at bottom.

Kevin was the first forum manager, before him it was just the community managers and mods who were not successful running this place.

TaSheen

SimonThesis wrote: »

TaSheen wrote: »

I'm unsure if this forum had (before Kevin) anything approximating a "forum manager". If not, that's likely the problem at bottom.

Kevin was the first forum manager, before him it was just the community managers and mods who were not successful running this place.

I kind of thought that's how it was. I didn't remember ever seeing "Forum Manager" as a title, but I've been known to just space stuff. Thanks for the info!

Destai

Aka_ wrote: »

Just as a side note, it's impressive how many times we see initial interest or appeasement from ZoS only to leave posts abandoned while players grow increasingly frustrated.

It’s something that I have noticed often too.

@ZOS_Kevin will you be rejoining the conversation? Can we get an update?

VaranisArano

With our 2nd Whitestrake's Mayhem of the year coming to a close, I'd like to follow up on this topic.

First off, my Mayhem 101 Guide. Last event, it got substantially less views/comments than usual after being moved to the "Player Guides" category, but still had some on-topic comments mixed in with the off-topic commentary about it getting moved. I ended the event:
May 2023 - 1.6k views - 22 comments - Player Guides

This event, my guide was again moved out of General Discussions to Player Guides a couple hours after posting. I ended the event:
June/July 2023 - 292 views - 1 comment

Note that 198 of those views and the only on-topic comment came in the few hours before the guide was moved. The moderator's message that was moved is the last engagement that thread got beyond about 100 views over the rest of the event that it's about.

After two events, I genuinely question whether or not "Player Guides" is a helpful category for timely event guides. Undoubtedly there's more reasons why engagement may be down, but the simple forum logic of less views = less engagment is probably a major cause.

............

Does moving or posting timely threads to the appropriate category always kill them?

Thankfully, nope! Here's two examples from Mayhem:

"[SUGGESTION] How to make pvp events accessible to non pvp players" was posted in Alliance War & Imperial City, ending the event with 2k views and 69 comments

"Civilian mode in Alliance war? Perhaps PVE Campaigns?" was moved to Alliance War & Imperial City, and continued to have good engagement from interested PVPers and PVEers afterwards, ending the event with 3.7k views and 115 comments

In a bit of contrast, "[NOT LONGER REQUESTED] Option to NOT collect Tel'var stones" remained in General Discussions up until the last morning of the event and amassed 8.4k views and 275 comments.

So it's not like posting or being moved to a subcategory is necessarily a death sentence for a thread IF the thread is timely and/or controversial.

Just don't ask me to defend the logic behind leaving the Tel Var thread in General Discussions as long as they did after moving the Civilian Zone one unless the Mods wanted to have a study in comparison...

...........

Okay, but those three are drama-filled threads with PVPers and PVEers duking it out. How about a less contentious example?

Here's a PVE one about the Gorne public dungeon that got the majority of its views and on topic responses after being moved to Dungeons, Arenas, and Trials: https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/637794/gorne-is-the-worst-public-dungeon-ever#latest


..........

Conclusions?

Posting and moving threads to subcategories isn't always a death sentence.

I think Player Guides was a bust as far as actually guiding players through Mayhem 101. Next year, if the mids won't leave it in General Discussions like they used to prior to this year, I might ask the mods to move my guide to Alliance War and Imperial City instead where players who are struggling with that content might actually see it.

Sometimes there's just a practical difference between how the mods think players use the forums and how players actually use the forums.

Marcus684

VaranisArano wrote: »

With our 2nd Whitestrake's Mayhem of the year coming to a close, I'd like to follow up on this topic.

First off, my Mayhem 101 Guide. Last event, it got substantially less views/comments than usual after being moved to the "Player Guides" category, but still had some on-topic comments mixed in with the off-topic commentary about it getting moved. I ended the event:
May 2023 - 1.6k views - 22 comments - Player Guides

This event, my guide was again moved out of General Discussions to Player Guides a couple hours after posting. I ended the event:
June/July 2023 - 292 views - 1 comment

Note that 198 of those views and the only on-topic comment came in the few hours before the guide was moved. The moderator's message that was moved is the last engagement that thread got beyond about 100 views over the rest of the event that it's about.

After two events, I genuinely question whether or not "Player Guides" is a helpful category for timely event guides. Undoubtedly there's more reasons why engagement may be down, but the simple forum logic of less views = less engagment is probably a major cause.

............

Does moving or posting timely threads to the appropriate category always kill them?

Thankfully, nope! Here's two examples from Mayhem:

"[SUGGESTION] How to make pvp events accessible to non pvp players" was posted in Alliance War & Imperial City, ending the event with 2k views and 69 comments

"Civilian mode in Alliance war? Perhaps PVE Campaigns?" was moved to Alliance War & Imperial City, and continued to have good engagement from interested PVPers and PVEers afterwards, ending the event with 3.7k views and 115 comments

In a bit of contrast, "[NOT LONGER REQUESTED] Option to NOT collect Tel'var stones" remained in General Discussions up until the last morning of the event and amassed 8.4k views and 275 comments.

So it's not like posting or being moved to a subcategory is necessarily a death sentence for a thread IF the thread is timely and/or controversial.

Just don't ask me to defend the logic behind leaving the Tel Var thread in General Discussions as long as they did after moving the Civilian Zone one unless the Mods wanted to have a study in comparison...

...........

Okay, but those three are drama-filled threads with PVPers and PVEers duking it out. How about a less contentious example?

Here's a PVE one about the Gorne public dungeon that got the majority of its views and on topic responses after being moved to Dungeons, Arenas, and Trials: https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/637794/gorne-is-the-worst-public-dungeon-ever#latest


..........

Conclusions?

Posting and moving threads to subcategories isn't always a death sentence.

I think Player Guides was a bust as far as actually guiding players through Mayhem 101. Next year, if the mids won't leave it in General Discussions like they used to prior to this year, I might ask the mods to move my guide to Alliance War and Imperial City instead where players who are struggling with that content might actually see it.

Sometimes there's just a practical difference between how the mods think players use the forums and how players actually use the forums.

I wonder if this strategy of theirs is actually designed to reduce mod intervention. Maybe "Player Helping Players" is a category that forum users that are, shall we say "unhelpful", avoid due to the name? Maybe the trolly-type users tend to post the most in General and the forums mods are trying to redue their workload by moving more threads out of it.

Four_Fingers

Why have a General section at all since everything can technically be moved to a sub forum.
Better to make the landing page a list of sub forums showing the first post of every sub forum and a new post indicator like you can in Xenforo, but I forget how primitive Vanilla Forums software is.

notyuu

Can we just let this thread die before @ZOS_Kevin shows up and closes it down?

Silaf

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

Also thanks for the tag @Tandor. Appreciate it.

Please Kevin can you move this discussion in a more appropriate section like for exemple "Players helping Players" ? ^^

Jaraal

notyuu wrote: »

Can we just let this thread die before @ZOS_Kevin shows up and closes it down?

[SNIP] And the banishing of useful threads to sections people have no desire to or don't have time to sort through has not abated in the least. It's reasonable to expect that players will still want to know why. And consolidation is helpful with topics like this.

Removing or moving this thread will only encourage the posting of more "Why was my thread moved...." type of threads, which will then get moved, locked, or redirected here. It's counterproductive to post streamlining.

Snamyap

Jaraal wrote: »

notyuu wrote: »

Can we just let this thread die before @ZOS_Kevin shows up and closes it down?

[SNIP]

Unfortunately that is not true.

MreeBiPolar

VaranisArano wrote: »

Does moving or posting timely threads to the appropriate category always kill them?

Thankfully, nope! Here's two examples from Mayhem:
[snip]
..........

Conclusions?

Posting and moving threads to subcategories isn't always a death sentence.

I think Player Guides was a bust as far as actually guiding players through Mayhem 101. Next year, if the mids won't leave it in General Discussions like they used to prior to this year, I might ask the mods to move my guide to Alliance War and Imperial City instead where players who are struggling with that content might actually see it.

Sometimes there's just a practical difference between how the mods think players use the forums and how players actually use the forums.

Frankly, the only real conclusion here is, Alliance War/PvP subforum isn't dead like Players Helping Players and most others.

reazea

Moving posts into obscure sub forums results in fewer views, which can be really frustrating if you're looking for an answer to a question or looking for opinions about something.