Suggestions to improve the org

[gollum]

The org has certain aspects that by virtue of being a bastion for RTW/M2TW fans and modders TWC does not have. This is basically the mp association and sections, as well as the STW/MTW sections, that of course get less and less traffic. There are people in the org that know TW very very well, especially in battle gameplay terms, far better than any SPer/modder in twc ever will. Neither its absolutely necessary for the org to have the same levels of participation of the twc or the .com.

It also has interesting OT parts (monastery, arena, frontroom, gameroom, backroom), speaking of which judging by the backroom's infamy it can really benefit as well as benefit the site by being made visible to all.

All is needed for the org is for the forum at large to be more open and hence eventually more lively relative to the strengths of its membership and then to all other areas it can do so too.

I disagree with Monk's suggestions of frequent frontpage entries and up to date FAQs. If it was up to me, i would simply make FAQs as short and simple and general (1000-1500 words max) as they could possibly be, and also make the frontpage similarly simple and easy to manipulate, so they would need as less up to dating as possible as well as needing as less reading as possible. The emphasis should be in putting time to where the action is at and that is the forum proper.
I am also uncertain if creating content per duty from the staff is the answer, although initiatives will certainly help. I think that Caravel has a point and that if the forum gets more participation content will be naturally created.

I would also make the presentation structure of the forum relative to the (each time) current traffic/membership/needs/forum strengths, and steps in that direction have been done, as for example compressing the guides section that is a very welcoming move. If i'm not mistaken compressing the MTW and STW section was also tried and rejected, correctly as the MTW section still has traffic and teh org is unmatched in it.

I can't comment on internal staff structures as i don't know first hand how that works. As a general rule though, a certain distribution of responsibilities would/should make a team act more effectively and more flexibly raising the amount of things that can be done at any one time while decreasing teh time it takes to do them.

Two things i can see as an external observer are;

a) New moderators/ass.mods for TW subfora take too long to be promoted/demoted. It is unrealistic to wait too long to promote/demote people with the fluid membership participation of people on net forums and also hurts very much the said fora as they remain for large periods leaderless.
A prime example is teh Citadel. There is still traffic for M2, but the Citadel has been for ages now leaderless. Having people at all tmes (that is probably not constantly the same people) that can answer questions about the game and spun/provoke by reply some discussion in teh respective TW subfora is crucial to creating core communities in the subfora, that can then grow.

b) Moderation is in many cases somewhat too proactive. I appreciate the intent but it often kills posting flow and even hurts traffic. A bit of a heated debate (not flame wars etc) or accepting the immaturity of certain members (especially when clearly too young) to a certain degree is ok and even desirable. Being less controlling of threads and members would result in a more fluid lively debate and freeer and better post flow in threads. It would also paradoxically result in the members behaving naturally better as they will have less things to react to against the staff, while now they can have apparently lots.

The alternative is having a very "clean" forum, but that runs the danger of being clean to teh point of having much less traffic than it otherwise would have.

There are certain things that have been done recently and are very positive, as for example scrapping the junior membership. This is already paying off and we have many new members and not just for S2.

Another thing that is new and i really like is the personalised profile pictures.
However, relative to that, as it has been said by others some time ago, there are now 2 different systems in place - the old TW avatars that are visible from the outside and the profile pictures that are visible from within (logged in) only. This is somewhat confusing, and also if you choose to see profile pictures, you see for the most part the "default" profile picture because not all people have set such. It would be imo best to have only one system, and people can choose still from teh TW avatars in that or their custom profile pictures. Also the option of setting neither does not really work if i'm not mistaken. I tried to set it thus and i would still see the default ETW avatar on my posts. I don;t know how much work these changes would entail, but i am pretty certain that they would make the forum look better both when logged in and for guests as well as make new and existing members more "attached" to their profile which is a good thing for participation.