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Daniel wrote:

Orion wrote:

I don't think combining Unplugged and The Rant Room is such a good idea.  The rest seem okay.

I agree.

I was slightly wary about that until I considered most rants were already unofficially split between The Rant Room, Circuit Board, Unplugged, Ministry of Free Thought, & Student Lounge. This is more of a Rant Room closure and merger of old posts into Unplugged, in my view. Most of those in TRR fit Unplugged more than any other thing and a number were tossed out of Unplugged before on the context that while they were not Mac related they were complaints just not located in a complaint specific forum. You can't always compartmentalize the positive from the negative. Some topics shift from general conversation to raves to rants and back all the time and we moderators don't nor should we be expected to toss them between forums every time they shift in that context.

I must confess I never expressed that whole initial wariness aspect in closed conversation as it was over for me in my mind in all of 5 seconds (and it generally takes me far longer to compose a post.)

Alien wrote:

maxintosh wrote:

what about web design issues, would those still be posted in the Programming forum? it seems like WDD would really fit better in the Pro Shop, if it has to be rolled into another forum.

There will always be some ambiguity.

Indeed every available admin, mod, & wombat actually put in much discussion on WD&D's fate and those sort of points were brought up on at least a couple occasions.

RIP Rant Room








Hello, Unplugged 

Care to explain? I've been trying to get the officers in [MA] involved but up until now they've seemed to what nothing to do with this.

And if anyone is spreading disinformation about this in [MA], nothing is going to happen to the [MA] forums this time around.

Again, you guys decided on nothing so nothing is happening this time.

When you guys decide what you actually want feel free to actually post it (something beyond, kill the other group's forum but leave mine).

So why can't you guys still be close in one forum. I don't understand why the exclusion is necessary. And I'd hold off on speaking for everyone. It is a nice short term way of bolstering your opinion but it kind of cuts off dialogue to see what people actually want.

I think the biggest reason why the game specific forums should stay is that it allows people who are fans of specific games to be able to easily tell if there are new posts about them.  I can scroll down on the main page and see that the [MA] Halo forum doesn't have new posts, but the [MA] Warcraft  one does.  I don't play WoW, so I don't have to bother reading posts there.  If you combine all the forums, you end up with a mishmash of posts that can get confusing.  You would have to force people to come up with better titles because the threads would no longer be under a specific heading.  Right now, if I post a thread in the [MA] Halo fourm I don't have to put Halo anywhere in the title because it is assumed.  Mash them all together and things like that will get confusing.  I do think that the clan forums should be limited to discussions about clan activities and news pertaining to that clan.  Many of the [MA] forums have become general catch-alls for threads about that game, but not necessarily about the clan.  General questions could go in the Games or [MA] General, with specific clan stuff in the clan forums.

The thing is Balloon Help's replacement not just a tech support. It's general tech discussion. That includes tech support but also expands conversation to things like discussing configurations, mac software, & existing hardware and the advantages and disadvantages.

Circuit Board's replacement is strictly discussion of news, announcements, and rumors from here on out.

Admittedly those titles are a bit bland but if you think you can do better, don't bitch about it and actually suggest alternatives. We only ask that they somewhat suggest the purpose of the given forum. Also please hurry we're implementing tonight.

That and we should not have to move topics around because the point of the topic moved from rant to tech support or tech support to rant. They can be and often are both.

As Nag pointed out the merging of the forums and the restructuring of each forums' purposes of each are not always exact matches. In some cases we are splitting the purposes of an old forum while merging the forum contents into the most appropriate surviving forum.

First we roll together the original content to that end

CB rolls into In Tech News
TDH rolls into Everyday Tech
BH, Desktops, SS, & TDH roll into Everyday Tech
BH & Portables roll into On-the-Go
TRR & Unplugged roll into Unplugged
WebDev rolls into Programming
Windows for Lifers & CLI roll into Boot Camp

Once that is completed we focus on the purpose of each forum

CB is split between In Tech News & Everyday Tech
TDH is split between Everyday Tech & On-the-Go
CB, BH, Desktops, SS, TDH (TV, iLife, General) merge into Everyday Tech
CB, BH, Portables, SS, TDH (iPod & iPhone) merge into On-the-Go
WebDev, CLI (programming), & other programming topics merge into Programming
Windows for Lifers & CLI (OSes) merge into Boot Camp
An last but not least TRR is split between everything

The best thing about all this is that none of the staff members have shown up to comment on this in any of the threads about it.

Sigh. They could at least leave us with the keys if they're going to ditch us.

I think the "help" forum should be more clearly indicated. Lots of newbs get lost on the way there as it is.

Also part of the reason we are renaming and redescribing Forum Forum Forum and  Circuit Board is that they end up being the forums most new members choose to erroneously post help inquiries in. We're starting the description for Everyday Tech with the words Tech support to more adequately guide them there too. Finally we're moving it up so they won't have to scroll quite to find it. We figure the less the other stuff looks right and the more the proper stuff looks right the better.

matt wrote:

The reasoning behind it was that if you look in Balloon Help, about a third of the topics have no response at all, and most that do only have a few responses.

I think that's because there are fewer people posting these days. We don't have near the amount of people posting that we used to.