If we're voting, I vote for (1) Webdip discussion (2) Webdip game advertising (3) general discussion (4) trolling discussion

These two claims: "People really, really want to discuss diplomacy in a lot of different threads all the time!!!" and "Diplomacy related threads die off quickly..."

...are exposing a simple truth.

I'll let you figure out what that truth is by yourself - consider it a mental exercise that will help you in your deductive reasoning skills come your next game of diplomacy...

Krellin,

Its simple organization. There are so many of BOTH Diplomacy and non-diplomacy threads that unless you log onto the forums on an hourly basis you will easily miss when someone adds something to a thread.

Its alot of work to flip through pages and pages of threads if you havent logged in for a day just to find the 4-5 threads your interested in.

I suspect the casual diplomacy player just doesnt feel like putting in the effort. While the fanatical trolling arguementative political people thrive in digging thru all the shit.

Hell,
Someone makes a commentary in the SOW thread and it needs to get bumped 4 times a day so people can see it.

dyager - I understand -- if you read this thread, you will note that I have said 1. I don't care how it's organized and 2. I offered a suggestion (each thread has two creators, 1 the creator, 1 for DIP or Non-Dip -- a simple button to mute one "user" (dip or non-dip) gives people selectability -- abge said it wouldn't work...but I offered a technical solution to give you what you want.

I'm just pointing out that the consistent claims that most people are only here for diplomacy discussion is demonstrably false.

I conducted a quick non-scientific experiment.

On Thursday 6th Feb at aprox 8pm GMT I started 2 threads. On to discuss if the lepanto opening was over rated and one to discuss who would win between a lion and a shark. I did not participate in either debate.

As of 8th Feb at around 11pm GMT the lion v shark thread had fallen off the front page after receiving 6 replies. The Lepanto thread is second on the front page and has 33 responses and hasn't been derailed.

Draw your own conclusions...

So what you are saying is:
The forum functions - people post to the things they are interested in
Sometimes that is ridiculous troll threads
Sometimes that is WebDip theads

Is that accurate? Why don't you provide your own conclusion instead of making us beg....or....or are you just trolling?

(Oh....and the "lion vs. shark" troll thread failed because it was stupid....just sayin'...so as a non-scientific experiment, it sucked...)

Damn krellin, why are you saying all sorts of stuff that I agree with here? That's no fun at all.

Politics and troll threads get many posts because many people like them, amongst which the most forum active ones. And yes, the lion/shark one failed cause it was stupid. See the knife fight thread which succeeded because it was much more fun for the trolls than lion/shark. Or the slavery and old mexico ones which were about an actual political/historical topic rather than a lame and silly one such as lion/shark.

Diplomacy threads seem to be doing fine as well though. I've been following the Lepanto one, the Austrian opening one and the WTA vs PPSC one, each of which got significant attention and were left alone by the trolls.

The actual problem then seems to be that people that don't check the forums every couple of hours often have a hard time finding the threads that they are following / interested in. To the dip-thread only crowd I would say that this problem is not unique to them as many seem to think. Everyone has some threads that they are interested in and some that they are not interested in and they can all get buried quickly.

The reason threads get buried quickly is of course that all threads go into a single forum without any further organization of the content. As has been argued by several people, for various reasons the possibility to mute is not addressing this problem in even nearly a satisfactory way. Hence the suggestion supported by a lot of people to have at least dip-related threads as a separate category.

There is another possible approach though, which might be both better and simpler. How about giving people not only the option to mute a thread but also to follow it? Followed threads would always display before not followed ones. Once the thread dies out or you lose interest in it you can click unfollow to revert it back.

(Oh....and the "lion vs. shark" troll thread failed because it was stupid....just sayin'...so as a non-scientific experiment, it sucked...)"

Bull, it failed because I answered it perfectly on the first reply.

There is some common agreement that forums are not good places for discussion.

A reason why sites like reddit, stackoverflow, and twitter are successful. Do we have a better solution than just complex layers of 'organisation' which will make it harder for new people to understand and use the forum?