Forum organization[]
Currently, the forum has three main boards: The Watercooler, which is billed as a board for all discussions about the wiki; the Help Desk, which is a place for users to ask help from other users; and Baccano! Discussion, which is meant to be a board for discussion about the series.
This is part of my continued backburner campaign to breathe some life into the forums, which have basically never been used throughout the wiki's long history. Of course, breathing life into the forums requires an active userbase, which...is not an entirely separate problem, but for now we'll put that to the side.
My concerns:
- Should the board titles be renamed?
- Are there other forum board topics you'd like to see?
- Similarly, is 'Watercooler' too broad of a board? Should it be divied up? What about Baccano! discussion?
Regarding no.2 and no.3 I notice that a lot of other wiki forums have a separate board for News and Announcements, in which the wiki admins [regularly] update their users on major and minor changes and fixes around the wiki. This seems like a fine idea, but while it is very useful for big wikis with many admins and active userbases, I am unsure how useful it is for a small wiki like mine with only one active admin and a non-active userbase. Change comes far less quickly for wikis like ours...but there's still merit in the idea.
Some specify even further: they have Wiki updates for wiki news and updates, and News and Announcements for news on the series (Baccano!) itself. I might implement the last one at the very least - Baccano! News, maybe?
I also notice that some forums have boards for 'off-topic' discussions, and separate boards for voting. That is, instead of having voting threads in the general wiki discussion, they keep it separate entirely. So in this case, voting would not happen in the Watercooler. Of course, we don't have a large, active userbase so that was mostly an example; however, I would like to emphasize that I do want to ensure that the community has a say in what goes on around here.
As for Baccano! Discussion, it occured to me that a lot of our visitors have likely only seen the anime and have yet to read the novels. Would it be a good idea to divy it up into separate boards e.g. Baccano! Anime discussion and Baccano! LN Discussion? and Baccano! general discussion? Could go so far as to include a separate one for the two manga and one for the game, but...
Community input is vital for the growth of the forums. Please do share any and all thoughts and ideas in this thread!