New Years Forum Cleaning!

[Pixilated Envy]

With the turn of the new year we will be having a lot of major changes going on in the guild as we strive to get closer to going live. One of those changes is cleaning up the forum with the intent to make information easier to access.

I'm going through and moving some threads and reformatting others. If you have any suggestions on removing some of the extra fluff and making the front page easier for new members feel free to let me know. You might be submitting suggestions that I had not considered!  

[Pixilated Envy]

I'd like to see us have a sticky on Current Events Going On.

A morphing of things like Jobs, January Event, and Bake Sale.

This will require someone who is willing to keep it up to date-- clean and tidy. A hot spot of sorts to make it easier to go right to things that are going on, ya know?  

[Lectern]

I might be able to do that if you need someone. I'm on a lot, and I frequent majority of the events. Would it just be a page for collecting the links and providing a description?  

[Pixilated Envy]

I'm looking for something slimmer than that, actually.

Just one post similar to what Lady A did for jobs during our spotlight.  

[Lectern]

I'm not sure which post you mean... Still, I'd be glad to help if you need it.  

[Pixilated Envy]

I just meant it wouldn't require a page long of posts-- but something short and sweet the length of a post.

However, if you would like to help me, I would love if you could compile a list of links of the following:

Any active threads we have ongoing in the community. i.e. The January Thread event, The Bake Sale, etc.

And then a subcategory of what we have in development within the guild. i.e. The February Event, the march mystery, (btw, I have an interesting funding idea to run by that event as soon as I get a chance.)

It will act as a quick index with the prime focus being what is going on in the community.  

[Lectern]

I can work on it soon. Where should I put it in? And I can't wait to hear the plan. biggrin  

[Pixilated Envy]

Here is fine. And then I will try to code it up with your compiled info.  

[Lectern]

Do you have any idea about what I should name it? I'm not good with witty titles XD.  

[Pixilated Envy]

no worries, I will clean it up.  

[Pixilated Envy]

Thank you for compiling that for me Lectern. I Condensed it into one post and turned it into a locked announcement.  

[Jinarrow]

*raises hand* I'm good at organizing. And I'm very willing to help tidy up the thread (I have a few ideas already XD). ^^ It's actually a really great idea. Makes things a lot more clearer. @.@

Edited: Ai Enma of Hell came up with a great idea that might just help new members or people who have nothing to do to help around the Guild (which is in the Community Hub). She posted a sweet idea factory that compiles different ideas from different members all around the Guild in case we need any ideas about anything. It's a bit disorganized but I think we can keep it going if it's tidied up a bit. She's also interested in starting an employment office to provide new or free members to get involved with events that needs help. What do you think?  

[Pixilated Envy]

Believe it or not-- the sticky that I just recently made is more for oldbies than just newbies of the guild. I think it should stand alone because it is going to get even larger once we start having the room hosts and their committees. I don't know about anyone else-- but I really don't want to scroll through walls of text to get to what I need to know-- as in, who's in charge of this or that, etc. Same to be said with the meebo tutorial & role play tutorials. If someone's confused enough on how to access the meebo.. and they need to get in there right away for a meeting-- its better to simply give them one link to go to what they need. We don't want to bombard a new person with giant walls of text-- its already been proven time and time again that the average reading span on Gaia is short.

With that said.. I would be all for the first post of your beta to be condensed and made a bit more streamlined.-- taking out some of the quote brackets and turn it into a more informative page and perhaps linking them to the various tutorials and such that they might need/want to read.


As for the banners and the affiliates. I took one look into affiliates and all I saw was broken links. I didn't know where to begin with the affiliates section- but something seriously needs to be done. All a bunch of broken links scream is that we're an inactive guild. Same to be said for the fact our front page still screams November in the midst of January.

I'm old school when it comes to affiliates and diplomacy. I don't think we should affiliate with everyone and anyone who is willing to-- i think our affiliates should actually be guilds/art shops/etc who are stepping up to help the ball. i.e. Like the groups Team Envy and Blueforest are doing. I want our affiliates section to be cleaned up and some diplomacy put in place so that I can start pulling in real affiliates and getting with some larger guilds on sponsorship. I seriously think at this point sponsorships might be the only way we're really going to achieve a lot this year.

So with that said-- if you're feeling motivated.. I'd recommend a beta cleaning thread of 'Getting Started' and revamp it. And a revamp of the Affiliates-- everything else is likely better off untouched unless someone has a cleaner way to organize the info.