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Spring Cleaning

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9/8/2012 0:40:27   
siris99
Weapons Master


 It's been awhile since I've been back on these boards, and one thing is very apparent. Someone got a case of the sub-folder happies, or Compartmentalization Fever.

Take for instance the former art gallery section. It used to be one main gallery, one for avvy and siggy arts, and one for support. Now there are three separate sub-forums for galleries, an entirely separate subforum for critiquing galleries (which used to occur in the threads, much more helpful in my opinion), and so on. It seems to me like the compartmentalizing made things almost too neat. It used to bring a lot of people into one forum and encourage interaction. Now, everything is so splintered that some subforums (and I mean ones that should be busy, not ones that used to get only a couple of posts a week) are almost stagnant.

Ask anyone back in the day if they would believe the notion that only a small handful (read: 2-3) of threads in the OOC forum would have new posts today, and you'd have been called bonkers (okay probably worse, but you get the point).

Long story short, I think some of the compartmentalization needs to be undone. It makes sense to break down some forums into smaller categories, but it feels as abused as a Madden menu (to exit the game choose Quit>Exit>Yes-I-Really-Want-To-Leave, when a simple Quit>Yes-Exit-PLease would do.)I think the mingling would bring fresh blood to some dying boards, and help the community grow a bit.

Just my suggestion on the matter.
AQ DF MQ  Post #: 1
9/8/2012 2:46:44   
Cataclysm
The fanciest of moustaches


 Actually, activity in the Gallery was sputtering out even before the semi-recent revamping of the board. L&L was likewise undergoing some issues involving frequency of posting. OOC is much, much more regulated than it was "back in the day" (I'm not sure how far back you're thinking, but I'm thinking ~5 years back), which is honestly a good thing. The main OOC forum's activity varies - sometimes it has several active threads, right now we're down to only a few. It really depends on what threads are there and how active the community is feeling.
AQ DF MQ  Post #: 2
9/8/2012 4:00:02   
Corvus Corax
♥ Senpai ♥


 A lot of people returned to school very recently, which would explain a lull in OOC activity around this time. I generally try to remind people that we go through fairly predictable levels of activity depending on what time of year it is. You are correct that "back in the day" the OOC had far more activity, but quantity does not trump quality. I think everyone associated with the OOC, staff and members alike would love to see an increase in overall activity, but not at the expense of the standards we've all worked so hard to set.

The Gallery I believe is much more user friendly now. If you look at this view, everything is right there, easily accessed and waiting to be explored. The art doesn't have to compete with the commentary, the tutorials don't get pushed down into oblivion, requests are less likely to be overlooked, etc. Mashing it all back together might give the appearance of more activity, but a lot of great content would be buried in the process. With the new setup, everyone's art has a chance to be seen.

I do understand where you're coming from though. The forums have change a lot over the years, and it's easy to get nostalgic for what used to be. It's also easy to forget that around half the posts in the OOC consisted of one word posts like "lol" or "same" or "this" or "fail." I'll take one well written post over a thousand of those any day of the week.
AQ AQW  Post #: 3
9/9/2012 11:09:57   
siris99
Weapons Master


 Maybe the OOC was a bad example of the posting times thing; I'll definitely concede quality over quantity.

My concerns with the Gallery still stand. I mean, three separate sub-forums for galleries? One AE related, one Series-related, and then an other? Why the separation in that case? And as for art competing with commentary, I personally loved the commentary and used it to fuel making things in my gallery. I wouldn't have made it beyond one piece of art without the commentary being right there in my thread. But, that's a preference thing I guess.

I know part of my reaction is simply knee-jerk to seeing things so drastically different, and I've tried reeling that in, but I'm a stickler for simplicity, and sub-forum overload bugs me a bit.

TCO:dead-on with the time-frames
AQ DF MQ  Post #: 4
9/9/2012 12:01:39   
PyroPuppy
Adorable!


 Hello Siris99!
I'm PyroPuppy, the newest Gallery ArchKnight, and I want to response to your comments about the current structure of The Gallery.
First,
quote:

My concerns with the Gallery still stand. I mean, three separate sub-forums for galleries? One AE related, one Series-related, and then an other?

The separation between the different types of galleries exists in order to easily find the different types of arts. If one would like to look on AE related art, all of the galleries regarding AE are in one place. You can easily differentiate between different types of art, and if you would like to check out art of a specific type, you can do so easily.
Secondly,
quote:

And as for art competing with commentary, I personally loved the commentary and used it to fuel making things in my gallery.

Commentary still exists and serve as an inspiration to all of the artists, the only difference is that the comments are now in a separate thread from the gallery itself. This move was done in order to change the general structure of galleries that used to exist in The Gallery. Before the different overhauls The Gallery went through, it was mostly common that artists posted links to their artworks. Yet, this means you couldn't actually see the art of the artist in their gallery, you just saw a bunch of notes, which directed you to somewhere else on the web. Instead, the new structure, including this separation, allows the artist to easily post their art in the gallery, actually encouraging a better gallery structure, which actually shows the art of the artist.

With all of this said, it is still important to get feedback, in order for us to act better on the future. I hope my post clarifies some of the changes the gallery went through, while showing their purpose.
AQ DF MQ AQW  Post #: 5
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