So, lately, we've been getting a lot of new members. That's obviously not a bad thing, but it made me think a bit about the "recent topics" window. It's always been quite useful to check what's new, but with the influx, a bunch of welcome threads end up taking a lot of the space there. Don't get me wrong, that's not a bad thing. The introductions of new members are as important as any other thread. In fact, I'd say that they're a crucial part of what makes fuwanovel so user-friendly, which is great.
However, I thought it may be a tad bit too much. Not only with introductions, let's say the same thing happened with general disussions- you'd enter fuwanovel and see 3 threads about random discussions, one of a technical problem and one introduction- For a newcomer suddenly entering here to talk about VNs, I'd say that won't be much useful, will it?
At the same time, that "recent topics" window still serves it's purpose to people who enter more. I want to check every new topic, regardless of what it is, and that thing is quite useful for this purpose- So I wouldn't say removing it is a good thing.
At first, I considered organizing the "recent topics" so that it had the latest post from VN talk, Fan Tl discussion, Introduction, Anime/manga talk and General discussions- subforums not included.
However, I thought of something which may be better. I'm sure you all know of the blank space we have at the main page of the forums, right? This space right here:
So I though, why not make a window of the "hottest topics"? I don't know if that's possible to begin with, but in the idea that I had, it would check daily the 5 topics with the highest influx that day (maybe posts or views per topic, I don't know exactly what we would use). I think that would encourage more discussion on the forums while solving the"problem"- and besides, we don't use that space for anything anyway.