seperate board for console questions?

[gnateye]

it might be a good idea, the other discussion about vendor posts brought up a good point about thinning the main board down so posts dont get lost, this would be one way to do that, just a thought, any opinions?

gnat

[SNAAAKE]

I second the idea !
Would be interesting...

[gnateye]

it would prolly be me and you most of the time

[AlanS17]

There really aren't that many console questions as it is. Most console questions are for emulators and end up in the software forums, anyways. Having a console forum would probably just encourage more questions that go beyond the scope of this website. I think there are other websites that address these issues more fully. I also think there are better candidates for possible forums.

Jukeboxes were such an exciting concept, but now they only have like 1 or 2 posts a day - hardly a dent in the grand scheme of things. I think consoles would be as unimportant of a topic, except they go even further beyond the scope of this site. This isn't a classic gaming website or a console website. It's an arcade website.

[gnateye]

e been a good amount of dreamcast and xbox related hacking posts as of late, it definatly not a lot, but if we are workign towards thinning out the main bord and making it a little more organized than this os oone way, very much like hte jukebox forum, it may not get the 100s of posts a day that the main forum gets but thye are now easy to find and all in one spot. again it just my 2 cents.

[tom61]

If enough people wanted it, it wouldn't be hard to add. The difficult part would be moving the older posts for that topic over to the new forum. It also raises the question of hacking the console's video topics going to Consoles or General.

As far as adding new forums in general, it's a difficult balancing act between good separation of topics, and over fragmenting the forums. Too many forums and people might not go to all that interests them, leaving questions unanswered, causing people to post about that in General.

Under seperation isn't too much of a problem right now, but as we get bigger it might, there are forums out where get a post can sink to page 2 in less than hour, worse if it's a busy time.

If a Consoles forum could be like the Monitors/Video forum, then it's be worthwhile. However if it quickly degrades into another Jukebox forum, there'd be no point.

[AlanS17]

Well if this board grows to the point where we need to start seperating more topics out of "Main" then chances are we're gonna have too much off-topic stuff (like jukeboxes, consoles, etc) that could probably afford to go away entirely.

The only way I can see this board getting too full is if it gets overloaded with off-topic crap. As it stands, this site has been able to handle everything so far.

As it stands, I already feel jukeboxes are off-topic. Consoles would be just as much off-topic. If you want to divide in a way that supports the structure of the site you'll divide along arcade-related lines. Anything non-arcade related probably doesn't belong here at all in the first place. Filtering out the non-arcade related items from the rest of the forums by creating special forums of their own for them only supports a structure that departs from the purpose of this site.

Possible (more sensible) topics:
PC Hardware
Tools & Materials
Controls (Installation and setup)

Lots of people would just say "this is what Main is for" but I think that picking any one of these could help reduce traffic in "Main" be seperating along more reasonable lines.

Here's an idea for you. How about changing the "Jukebox" forum to a "Special Interests" forum that could support jukeboxes, consoles, or anything else that may be tied to arcade building yet still be considered generally unrelated or off-topic.

[gnateye]

those methods dont make it easy to find stuff at all, if we had a console forum, (which by the way this site is for, as its arcade controls for consoles etc) you would know exactly where to post aqnd look regularly, just like if you are at all interested in jukeboxes you know wher eto look now, just because its not an ovrwhelming amount of posts doest make in unvalid or off topic. the whole original idea of starting this thread was a previous post about thinning out the main forum due to posts that are posted in the morning being lost 2 or 3 pages back by the end of the day. i dotn know about everyone else, but i walways check all the forums that interest me. i dont think adding a console forum would be over specialization.

i dont see how getting rid of topics all together is beter than adding a seperate forum to further ease confusion, and just make things easier to locate in general.

as far as moving all the old topics im would gladdly go thru all the older pages and figure out which posts should be moved and make a list for an admin, thats small potatoes.

plus seeing as this site has a page dedicated to console hacking now i think consoles ae a valid topic for this site.

i dont know this of corse is all just my opinion, but i dont thik it would be detrimental to do this, and i dont think console quesions are gonna go away either, and ther are a lot of posts in the general board, i have had my messages move to page 2 really quickly before so i have seen the effects of our popularity first hand, i think this is an easy way to ease surfing the forums.

i'll go back into my hole now

[Howard_Casto]

I'm wondering what forum many of you are going to because it's not the one I see.  Now all forums but main go along just fine, but the main forum in partuclar has been super ovrloaded for about a year now.  

Tom you an Alan seem to say that the main forum is handling things at the moment.  Considering the average answered post gets buried in under a day it obviously is not.

Also there are a ton of console posts per day, just not recently.  I know becuase I'm not into that stuff and they get in my way.

I do agree with Tom's statement about splitting things up correctly though.  I think that the only way to find out is  to make them and see how well they do.  

For the record though, the jukebox forum was a success.  There was a period that jukebox programs were really popular and they were overwhealmng the software board.  The jukebox forum got rid of them, it's just that now jukebox's aren't that hot.  It turned out to be a fad, but the forum still served it purpose.  

I'm for anything that splits up the main forum a bit.  It's way too crowded and it'd be nice to only see arcade control problems there again.  

[jakejake28]

i think we (by this i mean the powers that be) should split the main forum into 2 or 3 more, most defintly including a console forum. but there should stil be a main board for general stuff. also, a new type of board would be better. i dont think that yabbse is quite as capable at neatly handling multiple boards as something like phpbb. tho, yet again, its the decision of the guys upstairs...

[SNAAAKE]

Console forum is a must.  
no ?

[tom61]

Tom you an Alan seem to say that the main forum is handling things at the moment.  Considering the average answered post gets buried in under a day it obviously is not.

One major feature of the board that negates this 'problem' is the fact that this board doesn't mark threads as read based on time. It marks them read only when you have read them. On most other boards they mark posts read by time, which means you need to go through everything based on time, spend to long in a post, and poof, you have no idea what's new. On such forums, I typically open a new window for each thread I'm interested in, without reading them until I have gone through all unread pages of that forum.

With this forum software, you can go through topics as slow as you want to. So, posts being sunk to page 2 or 3 means you should read through 3 on that forum.

also, a new type of board would be better. i dont think that yabbse is quite as capable at neatly handling multiple boards as something like phpbb.

I think YaBB SE can handle the forum catagories just fine. We did try PHPBB, and other forum software, before settling on this board software.

Console forum is a must.  
no ?

I'd like to talk to Saint before commiting to it, but it sounds like a good idea. Could become an addition akin to the monitor/video forum, where posts on that topic are answered faster and more accurately than on the main board.

[jerryjanis]

Oooh, I like the new forum.

A link at the top of this web page is needed...

Here: