Please give feedback: The "VN Talk" and "Recommendations" forums organization

[Tay]

Hello, everybody! This topic is looking for feedback on two separate items (see below).

 

 

Recommendations Forum in General

Some informal polling has indicated to me that the "recommendations" forum has been extremely well-received and people seem to think it was a great addition to the boards. If that's accurate, fantastic! I wanted to check in and make sure that everybody's happy with this addition.

 

Secondly:

Should the "Recommendations" Forum be a Sub-Forum within the VN Talk Board?

I know it's been difficult for some to adjust to the increased number of boards on our index page. Many people have written me asking if I can move the Recommendations board into the VN Talk board (so it would appear similar to how the "Games and Chatter" currently appears within "General Discussion").

 

I'm interested to hear feedback about this issue. I, personally, don't like the idea for two reasons: first, I think that as a visual novel site we ought to devote screen real estate to the central hobby of the community. Second, I think it gets more traffic and attention (especially from new members) standing out on its own.

 

 

 

 

Please feel free to offer feedback as you are so moved. (And if you have not looked at it, please read my call for volunteers in the new system of board moderators)

 

[krill]

i like the recommendations forum makes it easy to find all the threads with the games impressions and suggestions and stops them from cluttering the normal discussion area. a sub forum is probably a good idea if for no other reason then to condense the amount of forums on the forum front page .

[Kaguya]

Originally, I was against the recommendations forum.

Seeing how it went, I'm pretty happy with it. I agree with you, we're a VN site, so we should have more VN-related forums. It was a wonderful addition~

[Darklord Rooke]

The recommendations forum is both ‘hip’ and ‘rad’. Big thumbs up.

 

However, would moving the Recommendations forum into the VN forum hide it from newcomers? And therefore would it result in more recommendation topics being made in VN by people who weren’t aware a recommendations forum exists?

[Fiddle]

I don't see much reason to make the Recommendations forum into a subforum. As mentioned above, there's the minor problem that newcomers won't immediately see it, while I'm sure recommendations would be a popular interest for people who've just joined. Besides, the board already says "Visual Novels Discussion", so there's no flaw in terms of organization. I don't find it problematic that there would be too many forums, either; I've seen community forums with proportionately lower activity and more forums, and they're equally prosperous.

[Heizei_koukousei]

Speaking of newcomers, many of us give recommendations to newbies on the Introduce Yourself board. And I have seen many of the more seasoned players even asking for recommendations so the board doesn't go unused. Its an important part of this obscure subculture. We are trying to make visual novels more popular therefore I think that recommending titles to others is one of our main duties!

The Recommendations board definitely deserves to have its own place on the Fuwanovel forums front page rather than being a sub forum for VN talk

[madvanced]

I think the recommendations is fine as it is. The way it is now enables it to get more visibility and not let new posts be obscured like it can happen to a sub-forum if you don't check it enough directly. I personally feel it's a great way of both helping people pick VNs to read, both general and specific requests, and avoiding flooding one section of the forum with too many posts, not counting G&C for this point though.

[Zalor]

I like the recommendation forum as its own form. If it were less active then I could kind of see why you would want to demote it to a sub-forum. However, that isn't the case. The recommendation forum is incredibly active which I feel warrants it the importance to be its own forum. 

[nohman]

I think from an organizational perspective it makes sense to include the recommendation forum as a subforum of VN talk. Having said that, I think the recommendation forum's visibility is a more important thing to consider. It looks like a lot of the topics are made by new users and people who only visit the forums a handful of times, so having it where it currently is at the (near) top of the page is a good place for it to be. Also like you said, we are a visual novel community. It is good to see the Visual Novels Discussion section look more robust.

 

As an aside I always thought the Community and Support Section would make make sense to precede the Other Discussion section, but that's not really an earnest suggestion given how used to the current layout I am.

 

P.S. It's good to see you back,Tay. I hope you're doing well.

[Insania]

Being a new forum member myself I think the recommendation board should remain where it is. 

 

While I did scour the forums looking at all the different kinds of sections, the recommendation forum sticking out is a key factor in my opinion. Simply due to the fact that recommending VNs is probably one of the more important, and beneficial, sections to newer VN players like myself.  

 

So that's my two cents.