News corner

[brell]

hawaii wrote: Hi Rose,

Newbies cannot ask in the forum, if all Admins are on holidays and no one is available to allow them to post.

As far as I know it has not happened yet since this forum was opened that all admins are absent at the same time. If it should happen then the newbie just has to wait. I will not open this forum so that anyone can register and start to post right away. I do not have the time to delete a few dozens of porn ads every day (and ban those mebers that post such ads and onther stuff we don't want here).

hawaii wrote: How many people do you know read the instructions on anything they buy and have to assemble?  The same goes for games.  People just want to jump in and play. yes? no?
[smiley=engel017.gif]

I always read the instructions/manuals first. Save me a lot of time, trouble and frustration.

[brell]

Lara wrote: Whilst we are talking about organising things, what do we think about tidying up the message board a bit?

I often think that the message board looks quite big and confusing. Many message boards have a main page, and then some sub pages. What do the admins think about changing the board so we have the following main pages?

- Announcements
- Midnight Mansion Game
- Expansion Pack
- Custom Mansions Area
- Free Chat

But these already are our main pages !? We call them categories. Inside the categories there are the boards. What you are asking is that we hide the boards within the categories. I don't think that is possible and I am sure that it would take more time for people to search the boards if we did that.

Lara wrote:
Also, if we want to promote the totally awesome custom mansions, maybe we could move the Custom Mansions up the page?

What about this order?

- Midnight Mansion Game
- Custom Mansions Area
- Announcements
- Expansion Pack
- Free Chat


Just some ideas...  

It is easy to change the order of categories and/or the boards within but IMO the announcements category should be at the top.

[brell]

hawaii wrote: YES,

And in each category, maybe each mansion can have it's own Topic header so that one does not have to surf all over the forum for hints.  

When we started this forum Freddy and I wanted to do exactly what you are asking: One board for each mansion. Nobody liked that idea. If we did that today we would have over 100 (!) more boards than we have today.

[brell]

hawaii wrote: Hello,

Pls. note the page numbers at the bottom or the top of the page.  In other Topics they are even smaller.

Well, it's hard to see which page number is selected.  Also, it would be nice if their was a

next page

option.

Thank you

This is something that is restricted by the forum software and there is nothing we can do about it.

[Freddy]

brell wrote: ...
When we started this forum Freddy and I wanted to do exactly what you are asking: One board for each mansion. Nobody liked that idea. If we did that today we would have over 100 (!) more boards than we have today.

Indeed. But now we are many months and ... MANSIONS later, I think it is a good time to ask this important question again.

The current option is: only 5 boards for the most recent custom mansions (+ Catacombs) and all the others (80+ !!!) are in 'Talk'. An abbreviations-system should help to find the requested info. That needs a lot of manual work for us, admins, but I am not sure if it is all so obvious (for Newbies).

The alternative is an 'encyclopedia' with 1 board per custom mansion.

So my question is:

Is there something wrong with a good 'dictionary'?

One only needs to know the alphabet. Comparing with finding the wanted information about a custom mansion in a pretty quick and very LOGICAL way, strolling may be a rather small discomfort.

Once again: yell !

[rose]

It is good if you know the alphabet but many mansions starts with

The

!!!!

[Freddy]

You have a good point! And all the others start with

A

!

Let me think about it.

[brell]

Freddy wrote: You have a good point! And all the others start with

A

!

ALL the others ???
;D

[Freddy]

End of my thoughts.

In a Belgian telephone book you will see (in alphabetical order):

- Vanden Zorghe Pieter
- Van de Velde Jan
- Van Overschelde Karel

But in a Dutch telephone book you will see (in alphabetical order):
- Overschelde Karel, Van
- Velde Jan, Van de
- Zorghe Pieter, Vanden

Now, for the same reasons (to organize our boards), can we say:

- Lost Jungle, The
- Tale of One City, A
etc. ?

Please, talk.

@ brell: Sorry, forgot the

[Toybox]

I agree with the Dutch system (Lost Jungle, the, etc).

What about having a

conversation

on top of all others containing the alphabetical list of mansions, and the names are clickable with a link to the relevant Topic? (Is this possible at all?) Or to include a link to the relevant Topic in the Downloads list (like:
CRANES by Surcouf
First release on 05.08.08
Forum Topic at ......)