During the last several months, we have made great and successful efforts at streamlining our forums. As important as it is to reduce or eliminate small and inactive forums, it's just as important that we create new forums and raise subforums to highlight successful and growing portions of our forum. In the beginning, all of our regional culture was located in one forum...the Howling Wind Tavern. However, with the recent surge in cultural activity, I feel that one forum simply can't effectively hold it all anymore, and in response I have reorganized the
Frozen Village of Fourneshore like so:
The Merriment QuarterOne of the things I have noticed is that regional events and competitions were quickly getting lost in the Howling Wind Tavern. How many people know that there's an ongoing poetry contest, or that there's been discussion of having a programming contest? This forum holds all those things, everything from the events and competitions themselves to discussions about new regional gaming groups or guilds. It also holds our Minecraft subforum, and if there were to be another external activity, clan, guild, or project, those forums would be here as well.
The Roleplayers' GatheringThanks to gamemasters such as Sapphiron, Amalya, and Drexyl Somerset, our regional roleplays have become an exceptionally bright area of our culture. A thorough reorganization of the RP subforum last month helped make our roleplays more accessible, but I don't believe that was enough. The Roleplay area has been promoted from a subforum to a main forum, and given some subforums of its own. The Wintreath Chronicles have been moved to this area, and a new subforum for roleplay discussion and proposals have been created. It's surprising how many posts have been made just to discuss or propose roleplays, and now it has its own area to make it easier for interested people to find.
The Howling Wind TavernThe Howling Wind Tavern has been reimagined as the general discussion area, and still contains the Ask Me Anything subforum. A few topics related to Steam/Xbox usernames have been moved to this area, since they technically don't have anything to do with regional activities.
The Hall of Great DiscussionsThis subforum was created only last month, but has been so successful that I felt it deserved further prominence as its own forum. We have had a lot of great discussions and thoughts here, and I hope its prominent placement on the front page of the forums will encourage even more activity in this area!
The Dumping GroundsStill the same old spam forums, just a different name to fit in the "village" theme. I considered making it a subforum of the Howling Wind Tavern, but ultimately thought better of it.
Additionally, the Newsstand has been moved to The Windswept Podium, since it's not really a cultural area. It will serve the same purpose as always, just be a little higher up in the forum listing.
As always, I appreciate any input. I hope that these changes allow our regional culture to grow even more!
