Forum:Changes to Forum

Hey everyone! Hope you all are having a blast! Holidays here and there! Exclamation marks!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This is simply a huge proposal to the administration team to allow me (and several individuals) to update the forum by making it more user-friendly, more accessible and more organised. The reason behind this is because of the absence of the Blog feature the wiki once had in the past. Since that feature is no longer available to the wiki/community, I am of the opinion that the forum should be restored and updated to something akin to Waypoint's.

With that said, the following are the proposed forum categories:
 * Support Requests (for technical requests such as template fixing and what-not. A helpful place to learn wiki-coding)
 * General Discussion (self-explanatory)
 * Community Proposal (to allow the community to propose policies and what-not).

As always, the Administrators would be the moderators (duh!). We all know that Administrators aren't always around/do not have the time to update the policies, hence why Community Proposal category exist; this allows the community to decide on the general policies (i.e. Manual of Style) that should be changed/added/altered/removed. Of course, administrative policies (i.e. Blocking policy) are not to be discussed unless the policies are disproportionate/necessary to be updated/removed/added.

One major issue that might arise from this forum update is the status of the old forum threads; to put it simply, there's too many old and unneeded forum threads in Halopedia since its creation. Do not worry as I found a way to preserve them without having to delete all of them. All of the old threads will be moved to Category:Index while the new threads will be under a new category. :)

So, what do you all think? Yay or nay? — subtank  09:09, 14 December 2011 (EST)
 * No need for a support/oppose section. We'll just refer to the comments and take them into consideration to improve the forum.

Comments
Yay, it sounds like a great way to organize the site more, and make it the best it can possibly be (Especially with the Community Proposal section!) Ιι   Ηη   Ππ  16:19, 14 December 2011 (EST)

Yay.--The All-knowing Sith&#39;ari 17:29, 14 December 2011 (EST)

Sounds like a good idea. Though it should be limited so that forums don't get as out of control as the blogs back on wikia did.-- Commander   Spartacus  ( Tenth Roman   Battalion ) 23:15, 14 December 2011 (EST)
 * Hasn't it always been limited?— subtank  07:29, 15 December 2011 (EST)
 * He may be referring to how they are now. Which is pretty dang messy... pestilence   Phil,  pestilence!  08:30, 15 December 2011 (EST)
 * Exactly, I am coming across unneeded forums being created...e.g. who want longsword flying mission? as the whole text of the forum.-- Commander   Spartacus  ( Tenth Roman   Battalion ) 11:44, 17 December 2011 (EST)

Proof-to-point, he's right!Maginot Sphere 09:07, 19 December 2011 (EST)

Yay. And may I suggest a fourth category, something like a news forum, like the disbanded Oracle Newsletter? Also, I agree with Spartacus on the forum with low (or no) traffic, for example, Forum: Potential Firefight Maps, made by yours truly. — S331 (COM • Mission Log • Profile) 10:13, 19 December 2011 (EST)
 * I tagged two unneeded forums for deletion, so if someone could delete it that would be great.-- Commander   Spartacus  ( Tenth Roman   Battalion ) 00:46, 21 December 2011 (EST)
 * Disregard that comment, they were deleted.-- Commander   Spartacus  ( Tenth Roman   Battalion ) 00:55, 21 December 2011 (EST)


 * A fourth category for news forum? I think we have such service in the past headed by CommanderTony, which utilised the Comment feature (now defunct). If we were to create this fourth category, then there is the question of who is eligible to post in it. I think it's better to post all news in the General Discussion category. If the news is of high-importance, we can always sticky it to make it appear the main forum list.— subtank  07:05, 21 December 2011 (EST)
 * I think the fourth category should be limited to administrators (obviously) and anyone whose account is a certain age. Or similar to the Oracle Newsletter we had in the past, users could request to have the ability to post in this fourth category. We obviously do not want people coming in and making forums with terrible English and poor grammar. That would make it look unprofessional.-- Commander   Spartacus  ( Tenth Roman   Battalion ) 11:31, 21 December 2011 (EST)
 * Kinda defeats the point of a forum, which is to invite everyone to join in a discussion and not restrict them to a group of users. We could set up guidelines similar to HBO, whereby one can designate a forum as being OT (off-topic, normal spelling/grammar regulation), srs (serious topic, grammar/spelling regulation intensified) or not-srs (Not serious topic, hence grammar/spelling regulation relaxed). Of course, we shouldn't shut those that simply have bad spelling/grammar out of the forum. Some of our readers are not native English speakers. :/
 * Users can still post news to the wiki and request them to be circulated via Talk:Main Page/News. The only problem is that this talk page is not often visited by administrators, and as such news goes unnoticed.— subtank  13:50, 21 December 2011 (EST)
 * Yeah that is a good point. Though forums with the content eg: lawl i made a forum should not be allowed.-- Commander   Spartacus  ( Tenth Roman   Battalion ) 13:58, 21 December 2011 (EST)
 * What about a forum policy? It could be used to let users know what the guidelines for making a forum in each category are. It would be written so that everyone could see it. This would be similar to the blog policy we had on Wikia, just with different requirements.-- Commander   Spartacus  ( Tenth Roman   Battalion ) 14:06, 21 December 2011 (EST)
 * Write one up and we'll amend it as we restructure the forum. :) — subtank  14:12, 21 December 2011 (EST)