I'm a fan of the GOL forum and have zero interest in ever touching Discord and its ilk, so I'm glad you asked.

My favourite things about the forum tend to be having "event" threads to look forward to. For example, there's the Weekend Players' Club, created by itscalledreality and currently temporarily being run by StoneColdSpider, which is a highlight of my week because it's fun to hop in, pick out something to play for that weekend's new thread, share what I played during the week, and just chat about those games. And of course there are the venerable classics like the desktop-screenshot thread, the free-game-alerts thread, and so on.

So, with that in mind, I'd like to see some "official" threads in that vein - for example, an annual official "Your Games of the Year" thread on New Year's Eve, and other stuff like that.

One other thing that's less related to content and more just a post-creation nicety is perhaps using standard BBCode for things like posting images. If it's done the way it currently is with the exclamation-marks and brackets for a specific reason and won't be changed, that's not a problem at all - I just figured that I'd mention it since not being able to just paste in the pre-made image-host BBCode increases my post-creation time a little bit.

That's all I can think of off the top of my head!

Last edited by Pengling on 9 June 2023 at 2:13 pm UTC

I think there should be more threads visible per page. Scrolling is more natural than switching pages. That way, threads won't get buried quickly.

Quoting: Penglingthere's the Weekend Players' Club, created by itscalledreality and currently temporarily being run by StoneColdSpider, which is a highlight of my week because it's fun to hop in, pick out something to play for that weekend's new thread, share what I played during the week, and just chat about those games.

Thanks for the compliment...... I really like the Weekend Players Club posts and I enjoy posting them every week.......

[/quote]

Quoting: PenglingAnd of course there are the venerable classics like the desktop-screenshot thread, the free-game-alerts thread, and so on.

Yeap I like them too

Quoting: Sputnik_tr_02I think there should be more threads visible per page. Scrolling is more natural than switching pages. That way, threads won't get buried quickly.

I agree.....

As for me.....
I really enjoy the forums and I wish they were used more....... I just hope that you never remove them..... As I will never use discord....... Ever.......

Judging from my one year on Linux thread........ Maybe people might enjoy them more if you found a way to remove dots......

I really like forum structures for discussions, and I think the only reason I don't use it more here is the relative lack of activity - in other words, get more of the people that aren't as into forums to use it.

More seriously, I think the association with a "news site" indirectly sidelines the forum. As the community is driven by followers of the articles on GOL, it is a "subset" of the relevant subjects (gaming and linux). And much of the discussion on such forums might be posting news and such and discussing them, but that already happens in the comments. I think that is kind of inevitable.

Maybe you could start more threads periodically, to "kickstart" some activity in the forum. Not just things like "post what you are playing" or "weekly this", but say about games you are enjoying, something a lot shorter than an article, but that invites people to discuss that game (and related games or subjects). Even things like forum games can help the forum being active, which makes people visit more frequently (there is something to see) and then interact more because of that.

One thing I have seen is encouraging people to start threads by creating some categories with types of posts that people might make. For example I have seen subforums for things like After Action Reports (AARs, people narrating a previous game, often somewhat "novelized") - and that is a hint to people that hey this is one thing you can post here. Now the forum is kind of moving away from categories, and without a strong forum culture people might not pick the bait (back to the example, with livestreaming and all I suspect AARs are even more niche).

Also, while "linux gamers that enjoy GOL" might already be a restricted niche, as a subject for discussion "gaming" for example is already too broad - can't very well discuss gaming as a whole, is someone just going to post all their thoughts about all of gaming? Discussions need to be more specific - about a specific group of games, or a certain event, or a particular thing. Again, categories are a bit outdated for this, but perhaps choosing different subjects periodically (for a weekly topic or something) or trying to foster a few subcommunities focused on a few popular games.

Assuming people use the GOL landing page (instead of following the RSS and checking latest comments for interesting stuff like I do), how about highlighting some active/fun/popular forum threads on it? Or how about a short news article every now and then showcasing some forum discussions that you feel people might be interested in?

Spoiler, click me

Despite my ~2500 article comments and more than 700 forum posts here, I'm an incurable introvert and I prefer forums like this to any sort of real time communication platforms. Much less drain on my social battery or something. As an aside, this is one of the reasons I got a lot less active on GOL a few years back, after switching to an office job with actual coworkers and thus a lot more daily social interaction.

My point is, thanks for this thread Liam. For me GOL is all about the community, and a forum is the ideal way for me to interact with it.

Last edited by tuubi on 10 June 2023 at 8:02 am UTC

Quoting: Sputnik_tr_02I think there should be more threads visible per page. Scrolling is more natural than switching pages. That way, threads won't get buried quickly.

Yes. The main forum page with the ten threads is not enough. For me it feels like a too narrow FOV. There are two issues: not enough recent threads visible at once and each of them takes too much vertical space. I think if there were only two lines instead of three lines (when the number of replies is displayed) and if the avatar was a bit smaller it would be easier to get an overview.

As it is, I mostly look at the contents of the “Latest Forum Posts” box for interesting topics because it feels more concise.

Quoting: Klaas

Quoting: Sputnik_tr_02I think there should be more threads visible per page. Scrolling is more natural than switching pages. That way, threads won't get buried quickly.

Yes. The main forum page with the ten threads is not enough. For me it feels like a too narrow FOV. There are two issues: not enough recent threads visible at once and each of them takes too much vertical space. I think if there were only two lines instead of three lines (when the number of replies is displayed) and if the avatar was a bit smaller it would be easier to get an overview.

As it is, I mostly look at the contents of the “Latest Forum Posts” box for interesting topics because it feels more concise.

I was wondering what you meant since I see fifty threads on the forum landing page. But then I remembered that there's a setting at the bottom of your GOL user control panel (User CP) that lets you configure the amount of forum posts and article comments visible per page, and I've got mine set to 50. Seems to affect this as well.

Quoting: tuubiSeems to affect this as well.

It does.

I like forums too and it's a shame that they have declined in popularity. For me, they were the successor to listservs and usenet. Now it's all Faecesbook and other stuff I can't wrap my head around. I had a bad experience with Facebook... what bollocks. It almost frightened me, the tentacles it had. There were some specific unwanted interactions (long story) but what really irked me was that all those people contacting me, some of whom I hadn't seen since grade school etc. weren't really doing it. It was Facebook trying to match make people into Farmville and Mafia Wars. Here I was thinking how nice it was that they wanted to contact me and I was sending them messages after accepting them on my friends list. I soon requested account deletion and (as advised) never went back to check to see that it was. Apparently if you sign in again to see if your account is really gone (too soon), it reactivates it lol

Anyway, enough about that. I'll check these forums more often.

Quoting: tuubi

Quoting: Klaas

Quoting: Sputnik_tr_02I think there should be more threads visible per page. Scrolling is more natural than switching pages. That way, threads won't get buried quickly.

Yes. The main forum page with the ten threads is not enough. For me it feels like a too narrow FOV. There are two issues: not enough recent threads visible at once and each of them takes too much vertical space. I think if there were only two lines instead of three lines (when the number of replies is displayed) and if the avatar was a bit smaller it would be easier to get an overview.

As it is, I mostly look at the contents of the “Latest Forum Posts” box for interesting topics because it feels more concise.

I was wondering what you meant since I see fifty threads on the forum landing page. But then I remembered that there's a setting at the bottom of your GOL user control panel (User CP) that lets you configure the amount of forum posts and article comments visible per page, and I've got mine set to 50. Seems to affect this as well.

Thanks, I wasn't aware of that setting. May be, the default setting should be higher then.