Clean Up the Forums

Erumollien

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Erumollien
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I do not know who reads this or who is responsible for acting upon the feedback section but I got some ideas.

I have not been with FFF for very long but I have been browsing through the forum and I found that a lot of the threads are very old and nobody really responds to them anymore. I think that the admin should clean up the old outdated threads. I think that if we keep the forums up to date and clean then it could pull in more active members.

If people read threads dated in 2016 or later then it draws them away because they view the forums and being inactive.

Keeping the forums fresh and inviting is away to growth. Old conversations got to go UNLESS they hold some merit like helping out with getting something accomplished within a game.

Polls should only go for about a month before they become old news. There should be a limit on how long a conversation should stand idle. I saw a thread that was started by a banned member, that thread should have been deleted when he was banned no matter how popular it may have been.

Again, if the thread has been sitting idle for more than 6 months it should be cleaned up. I am trying to get older interesting conversations alive again but that will not last long.

Do what you will with this, just my opinion.
 
Not staff, but I figured I'd chime in. I kind of agree, and kind of disagree. Firstly, all things considered, FFF is fairly active as it is, for a forum that isn't full of hostility like the GameFAQs message boards. Forums simply aren't that popular anymore unless you welcome in all the people who troll and hate on stuff. With so many other avenues for more immediate access to conversation, people usually go elsewhere. So there's likely only so much one can do to bring new people in to a forum dedicated to a single fandom.

On the one hand, cleaning things up would probably look nice. Old threads could just be thrown in an archive instead of deleted. But the reason I think I might disagree overall, is because if you lock up and archive things too quickly, isolating them from everything else, that can also lead to what I call Groundhog's Day Boards, where people can't find old threads related to what they have a question about or whatever, and so they make yet another thread on the subject. I personally don't want to deal with new people constantly asking whether I think FFVII is overrated, or how to get Squall's ultimate weapon on disc one, or whether they'll ever release FFIII on anything in the west other than the dang DS, lol. If those old threads aren't easily accessible, repetition ad nauseum is a likely outcome. Makes the boards more active, but also more repetitive. Maybe the search engine could have a toggle to search both regular and/or archived threads, but archived threads could have a brightly colored "Archived" notice preceding the title, so that you know what's active and what isn't at a glance. Those are just my thoughts though.

EDIT: Apparently an archive already exists and I just never noticed, lol.

EDIT EDIT: One thing I thing could be great though, is if you could instantly sort the more comprehensive/Liked answers in a thread to the top. That would make people looking for information a bit more happy, if they for some reason just HAVE to use FFF to find out how to best use the awful slot machine minigame in FFXIII-2 or whatever, lol. Instead of having to sift through the conversation, they could instantly reach the 'right' answer.
 
Thanks for the feedback @jmsdvs

One thing I must say about this site and community, we're big on holding onto history and memories. That's not to say that we're against spring cleaning; we do it from time to time and even archive/delete unnecessary sub-forums. Last year we worked on Kingdom Hearts section and re-organized/moved/archived things around.

The moderators have a say and control in their own section, so if they are up for archiving older threads that they think should be archived, the administrators have no problem with it. Every now and then we'll assign tasks for them and ourselves. I admit it has been quite awhile since we've archived older threads, so we'll definitely take this suggestion to heart.

But one thing I must point out when it comes to archiving is that I normally don't operate on dates. I look at content and the thread's popularity, first and foremost. 2016 threads are not necessarily considered that old, especially in a community that promotes discussion on any good topics, Final Fantasy or not. I don't necessarily think 2016 threads (or few years earlier than that) would draw people away, though I can see why you might believe that.

I'm up for promoting a cleaner look to the forums overall. But I will also take some threads into consideration and wouldn't just mass-archive threads without so much as reading the title and some of its content. For example, the Final Fantasy help threads leads a lot of traffic our way due to its helpful information from different members and their own experience. This is how I first discovered Final Fantasy Forums. I don't know how well these type of threads fare these days, of course, but just an example as to why I would put content above dates any given day. I see that you've acknowledged these type of threads though.

As for threads that has been started by a banned member, those are usually archived (unless we forgot to archive a few - it happens). I don't really agree with sweeping something under the carpet and permanently deleting things to cover up a mess and mistakes. I think it's good practice to be more transparent with our members and if someone screws up, we take something from that particular situation, learn, and move on. Discussion will be archived, but rarely ever deleted unless absolutely necessary.

I do agree that polls should have an end date. Usually we do put an end date, unless it's something like, "Who is your favorite FFX character?" I can perfectly understand why that wouldn't have an end date. But overall I think we set up things accordingly and adjust as we go.

If there's any more suggestions, we'd love to hear them. :) Thank you again for taking this time to send us a feedback. We could definitely use more of that, especially from newer members.
 
Thank you for the suggestion. As Mitsuki mentioned, there is quite a bit of history here at the forums. I do know what you mean about metrics and such for newer posts. It is very similar to website(s) in general. If a website has the same dated style for years, and the functionality and user experience is a tad bit deprecating then obviously people will no longer show.

Though we also know that this is a forum, and we have to keep the community alive through the years. So the suggestion is something we've definitely heard once or twice, but we are not trying to ignore it either. As most people like to do is read into older archived records. Which sometimes due to thousands of posts, even with the best filters, it's harder to find those glowing threads/posts. I myself often remember posting on when FFXII or FFXIII was released. I think about how I posted 12 years ago as opposed to now, so I do a filtered search and those indices are a bit harder to sort.

I would say forums in general are dated when it comes to keeping metrics unless the material is relevant and you have the community backing it as well. I think about the relevance what gamers play now as to what I did in my adolescence and early 20s, its vastly differently. Everyone is trying to push things to the VR-sphere. The years of JRPGs are almost non existent. Most of them come out on handhelds, which no offense I find to be a little distracting in my own life, but that's only because I have to keep up so many things at once. Though I'm trying to apply this, that mostly I respond to older threads on games that were relevant to me. I played FFXIII Versus - or FFXV, but it was a bit more automated than I like. So I always reminisce on the old classics like FFI - FFVI. It's hard to spark that conversation these days due to most people want to stay focused on what's relevant, and they have already heard it a thousand times over about the older games.
 
Thank you for reading my post and taking my suggestion into consideration. I enjoy hanging out here and would love to see FFF grow.
 
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