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        Arimaa >> Site Discussion >> Some MORE Forum Categories
        
(Message started by: rajmahendra on Jul 16^th, 2009, 8:59am)

Title: Some MORE Forum Categories
Post by rajmahendra on Jul 16^th, 2009, 8:59am

i like to have some more categories... Some Suggestions

Arimaa / Game
1 Beginners
2 Advance
3 Expert
4 Annotated Games [Any members like to annotate any games can give game link and post annotations]
5 Books and Sets [Talk about Books and Sets]

Title: Re: Some MORE Forum Categories
Post by mistre on Jul 16^th, 2009, 11:32am

We have discussed this in the past - I think a few more categories would be useful instead of lumping everything into general discussion. But nothing ever came of the discussion.

Title: Re: Some MORE Forum Categories
Post by omar on Jul 20^th, 2009, 10:00am

This was suggested by mistre a while back.

Well deciding on the categories is the hard part. The categories should be pretty broad so we don't end up with too many. I would hate to have to look through 10 or 20 categories. Also posting a message means you have to decide which is the most appropriate category.

If we can come to a consensus on what the categories should be I'll go ahead and create them.

Title: Re: Some MORE Forum Categories
Post by Fritzlein on Jul 20^th, 2009, 1:24pm

link to previous discussion: http://arimaa.com/arimaa/forum/cgi/YaBB.cgi?board=talk;action=display;num=1226332867

on 07/16/09 at 11:32:33, mistre wrote:

We have discussed this in the past - I think a few more categories would be useful instead of lumping everything into general discussion. But nothing ever came of the discussion.

Mistre, I was under the impression that nothing happened last time we discussed this because you got distracted by real life right when Omar offered to give you the admin keys to make the re-organization happen.

on 07/20/09 at 10:00:50, omar wrote:

Well deciding on the categories is the hard part.

Is deciding on the categories the hard part, or is the stumbling block going back and re-categorizing all the old posts? The purpose of mistre's original suggestion was to make it easier to find old posts on a given topic. Therefore, it seems like the large necessary time commitment is what keeps the proposal from flying.

Of course, we could create new categories for future use only, and just get the benefit from now on rather than retroactively.

Quote:

The categories should be pretty broad so we don't end up with too many. I would hate to have to look through 10 or 20 categories. Also posting a message means you have to decide which is the most appropriate category.

To repeat what I said when the proposal surfaced before, I think the main benefit of categories is to allow someone to completely ignore some categories. For someone like me who wants to read all the posts, having multiple categories just makes it take longer to catch up on reading. But recently the 2009 Mob game has given me a counter-example. Now there is a category I must avoid, and it is very convenient to have it separated out for that reason.

Generally speaking, why should we make posting and reading more complex? The Forum isn't filled with posts I wish I didn't have to wade through. Harking back to my usenet days I remember that discussion groups generally split when people didn't want to hear from each other. For example, when some people in rec.games.chess got tired of hearing about computer chess, they split off rec.games.chess.computer, if I remember correctly. Also I seem to remember cases where groups were split but everyone kept on posting in the unified category because they didn't find the split useful and/or didn't know what sub-category to use.

Anyway, for the purpose of deciding what categories to split off, what is it that people don't want to read in the Forum?

When it comes to looking up past information, it is true that I don't want to read most of the posts. There is a lot of garbage to wade through in search of a particular historical thread. But when I am looking up old information, I rely entirely on the Forum's built-in Search menu option rather than paging back through all time.

That's just my $0.02. If someone wants to organize historical information for easier reference, I have no objections. If someone wants to split off parts of the discussion so as not to have to read it all, it's only a small inconvenience to me to have to flip between many categories in order to read all the news.

Title: Re: Some MORE Forum Categories
Post by 99of9 on Jul 20^th, 2009, 3:42pm

on 07/20/09 at 13:24:18, Fritzlein wrote:

When it comes to looking up past information, it is true that I don't want to read most of the posts. There is a lot of garbage to wade through in search of a particular historical thread. But when I am looking up old information, I rely entirely on the Forum's built-in Search menu option rather than paging back through all time.

I usually do too, but maybe that's because there is no easy way to do it by categories at the moment! (PS, why isn't the forum open to Google search?)

One large category that comes to mind that one would usually later like to ignore is "Events". I think a "Newcomers" category may give them confidence that there is a space for them and they are not going to be judged by posting.

Title: Re: Some MORE Forum Categories
Post by mistre on Jul 20^th, 2009, 5:13pm

on 07/20/09 at 15:42:16, 99of9 wrote:

One large category that comes to mind that one would usually later like to ignore is "Events". I think a "Newcomers" category may give them confidence that there is a space for them and they are not going to be judged by posting.

Agreed. Furthermore, Fritzlein remembers correctly - I wanted more categories so that I could find the more useful posts in the past without weeding through them all. IMO, the search was not very useful ( I had a hard time locating posts).

As we approach the arrival of the boardgame, we should be prepared for an onslaught of new players to the site. Looking at the game from a newcomer's eyes - what might I want to see?

1) An easy to understand tutorial and FAQ (I think this already exists).
2) An Arimaa blog or blog-zine as mentioned in another post would be interesting to me.
3) Setting up of local groups that play Arimaa in your area.
4) An official rating system (I think the WHR ratings are it - but it hasn't been specified).
5) An Arimaa timeline - important events that have occurred in Arimaa History (some of this is in the Wiki but maybe could be expanded upon).

Also, I noticed that someone created an Arimaa Twitter page. Was that you Omar? Also, Arimaa has a page on Facebook. I would advise all of us who use these social networking tools and also play Arimaa to sign up as another way to pull in new players.

Title: Re: Some MORE Forum Categories
Post by rajmahendra on Jul 20^th, 2009, 6:48pm

Gents!
Let me explain my ideas little more broader. Let me take some lines from 99of9 also.

Forum Category.
As a newbie to Arimaa, when i land on the forum i dont want anything on Bot Developers - because i am not a developer, Players - I don't want this also, because i don't know much about players.Team Games - again no sense to me on this. i need to know some doubts.....!

All i need to know is.... Beginner level questions, all about Arimaa doubts, Discussions on a person games, discuss on my game (we do have comment for each game but as a forum where people can discuss on my games)!. Which book or set is good in market.

If we have a category i mentioned above. it splits the post into chunks so i no need to search a question in 620/9440 post. all i get in a category is related to what i really want.

Blog and Forum
Let me explain in my way.
Blog and Forum are 2 different uses. Forum as you say is a community level. like minded people of one community who use to discuss joins here and post and share ideas. BUT, Its not a public ! Its not possible for search engine to search and expose to the out side of the community.

Blog! looks like forum. same 1 post and multiple comments. but this is designed for public to know whats happening in the community. We do post this in forum but forums is for a community, people need to register and discuss ideas come regularly and participate. Participating is the key in forum. but blog is a healthy display of the activity and fun talking. above all. it exposes the post rest of the world.

Due to this Google come up with a separate search for blogs!!!! http://blogsearch.google.com. one of my best blog in chess is a chess club called
boylston chess club
http://boylston-chess-club.blogspot.com/

you can see lot of lnks in the right. all these are exposes there activity's to the world.

I personally see that we do have very good resources but they are not properly exposed. as 99of9 mentioned

Content - we have already. when i first come i never searched for Arimaa , Omar or rabbits, cats, dogs! i got a small link in somebody website. but what i expect is...
Arimaa must be available.

Blog articles exposes the blog. each article post exposes itself to many search engines. i personally learnt thought my own website! 80% of my visitors come only from Search Engines. and... Forum wont contribute much in this!!

Exposing the site... we need tools like.
Forums - when user likes the community and like to contribute.
Groups/Social community like Orkut/Facebook/... - people from different community portal users joins there loving social websites.
Tweeter - one of powerful tool exists today equal to blog! ( I am a regular users of this. )
Blog - Exposing a community complete activities to the world.
RSS Feeds - Busy people best friend! ( most of the importan sites i have them in my Feed Reader in Google Reader. www.google.com/reader
Google Friend Connect - Google friends linking tool
Email updates - any new post will be send directly to there inbox!!! Same thing like RSS Feeds.

Flickr - i can see a flicker 'family.syed' on web... we can also use this like creating a Photo group in flickr and people who like to share Arimaa related pics can join that group and share there pics internationally!

Google Calendar - This have a feature of adding a shared calendar on the website. Arimaa.com can have one of this saying International Arimaa Events and all contribute on this.

So much tools so much work?
We can delegate this work also. finding active plyers from different countries and give them modify right to the tool and they collect info from there countries and post in this centralized tools :)

Title: Re: Some MORE Forum Categories
Post by Fritzlein on Jul 21^st, 2009, 9:19am

I like the direction the thread is morphing, from Forum categories to thinking about promoting Arimaa and handling a wave of newcomers.

As far as Forum categories go, I agree with 99of9 that an Events category would be ignored by some, and more importantly would be easy to split off. The Newcomers category has been suggested by several people, and I agree that it would be nice if newcomers had a "safe" place to post, although the dividing line between what belongs in Newcomers and what is advanced enough to be considered general discussion could get pretty blurry. I could imagine many topics of general interest being sucked into the newcomers thread because people who happen to be newcomers can raise critical issues too.

Welcoming newcomers is tricky because we forget what questions we originally had ourselves. The existing tutorial is mostly for the rules of Arimaa, not for navigating the game room, the board interface, and the community. I believe a new FAQ beyond what has already been written would serve a purpose. We need to talk about disconnections, game etiquette, ratings abuse, duplicate accounts, etc. But who will write the new FAQ and maintain it?

Also many newcomers (especially chess players) want to know where they can find the Arimaa strategy articles and annotated games. We present Arimaa as deep game, not just a fun game, so people naturally want to get a handle on that depth. I believe, however, that creating a forum category called "Strategy Discussion" will do absolutely nothing to solve this problem. This would not be splitting off content to make it easier to find (or ignore), because the content does not exist. If you dug back through the entire six years of forum archives, you would find maybe five threads with strategy discussions. A "Strategy Discussion" category is wishful thinking, not a facilitating classification.

By the same token, annotated games do not exist, so it is futile to try to collect them in one place. What we need is not a forum category, but a tool that allows game positions, commentary, and variations to be displayed in a unified interface. I thought maybe the new wiki, with its capacity for board diagrams, would enable annotated games, but I was wrong. I tried to move my existing game annotation to the new wiki here (http://arimaa.com/arimaa/mwiki/index.php/Fritzlein_vs._Omar%2C_2005_Postal_Championship), but as you can see, I only got a third of the way through adding the diagrams before I gave up. Creating a diagram for each position is simply too tedious. Does anyone volunteer to complete my work with forty more board diagrams? I didn't think so.

To support beginners, we need the creation of new content. In the case of annotated games, however, I confidently predict that the content will never be created unless someone first creates a tool to facilitate annotation. BlackKnight started work on such a tool; perhaps his work could be a springboard for someone else to complete. Of course we have to simultaneously agree on a PGN-like standard for notation, but nobody writes raw PGN for chess; it is all entered through a GUI.

I'm glad to see the community seriously considering how to welcome the next wave of players. We had 60 unique human logins yesterday, a peak since 66 on the final day of the World Championship, and the sets haven't even been released!

Title: Re: Some MORE Forum Categories
Post by omar on Jul 28^th, 2009, 10:23am

Here's something to get the ball rolling.

Code:

Arimaa
General Discussion
Events
Off Topic Discussion

Players
Say Hello
Players Availability

Bot Developers
General Discussion

Team Games
2009 ...
2008 ...

Title: Re: Some MORE Forum Categories
Post by Fritzlein on Jul 30^th, 2009, 1:33pm

on 07/28/09 at 10:23:52, omar wrote:

Arimaa
General Discussion
Events
Off Topic Discussion

Players
Say Hello
Players Availability

Bot Developers
General Discussion

Team Games
2009 ...
2008 ...

OK, that would be adding two bottom-level categories, which is a modest start. Actually, I am not sure about the utility of adding a top-level category; if anything I think we should reduce from three top-level categories to two or one, not increase to four. For example

Quote:

Arimaa
Say Hello
General
Bot Development
Events
Player Availability
Off Topic

Team Games
2009 ...
2007 ...

We could see how it goes with a minor change. If people like it better or worse that would give us tips for the future.

Will someone volunteer to go back through past threads and move them into the two new bottom-level categories, namely Events and Say Hello?

Title: Re: Some MORE Forum Categories
Post by omar on Aug 1^st, 2009, 9:07pm

I like your proposal better; it look much cleaner. Hope we get more feedback before I move on this.

Title: Re: Some MORE Forum Categories
Post by 99of9 on Aug 2^nd, 2009, 12:40pm

Sounds ok to me. Do bot events go in events or bot development?

Title: Re: Some MORE Forum Categories
Post by camelback on Aug 2^nd, 2009, 8:30pm

on 07/30/09 at 13:33:08, Fritzlein wrote:

Will someone volunteer to go back through past threads and move them into the two new bottom-level categories, namely Events and Say Hello?

Looks good, I can move past threads into the Events and say hello categories.

IMO bot events should go to event page rather than bot development page to get non-programmer's attention.

Title: Re: Some MORE Forum Categories
Post by omar on Aug 6^th, 2009, 11:18am

The new categories have been created.

on 08/02/09 at 12:40:26, 99of9 wrote:

Sounds ok to me. Do bot events go in events or bot development?

Bot events such as the computer championship should go under the Events category.

Title: Re: Some MORE Forum Categories
Post by Fritzlein on Aug 6^th, 2009, 12:36pm

I see the new categories have appeared. I agree that threads about the computer championship should go in the Events category. Now we just need the old posts moved around and a FAQ to leave as a sticky post in the "Say Hello" category. Any volunteers on writing the FAQ?

Title: Re: Some MORE Forum Categories
Post by Fritzlein on Aug 6^th, 2009, 4:23pm

Apparently moving threads causes those threads (or others?) to bump to the top of the list. It's surreal getting these "time machine" threads from 2007 or 2005.

Title: Re: Some MORE Forum Categories
Post by Arimabuff on Aug 6^th, 2009, 4:32pm

My advice would be to move them chronologically.

Title: Re: Some MORE Forum Categories
Post by camelback on Aug 6^th, 2009, 5:21pm

How to move the discussion threads?

Title: Re: Some MORE Forum Categories
Post by Fritzlein on Aug 10^th, 2009, 5:09pm

Omar, thanks for moving all the old threads to the new forum categories. For the future we will have to remember that moving threads puts them out of order, marks them unread, and causes various other disruptions that have to be considered part of the price of making a change.

Title: Re: Some MORE Forum Categories
Post by aaaa on Aug 11^th, 2009, 5:48pm

I propose a separate forum board dealing with issues concerning the website itself.

Title: Re: Some MORE Forum Categories
Post by omar on Aug 12^th, 2009, 4:13am

on 08/11/09 at 17:48:36, aaaa wrote:

I propose a separate forum board dealing with issues concerning the website itself.

Good idea. There's probably enough threads on this that it deserves it's own board :-) I'll add it.

Title: Re: Some MORE Forum Categories
Post by camelback on Aug 12^th, 2009, 6:33am

Thank you for the nice suggestion aaaa and thank you for creating the category omar.

Is this category for issues and enhancement requests or issues only?

Title: Re: Some MORE Forum Categories
Post by Arimabuff on Aug 12^th, 2009, 7:59am

on 08/12/09 at 06:33:31, camelback wrote:

Thank you for the nice suggestion aaaa and thank you for creating the category omar.

Is this category for issues and enhancement requests or issues only?

Given that an "enhancement request" can easily become an issue, I'd say it should include them unless you are making it an issue. ;D

Title: Re: Some MORE Forum Categories
Post by aaaa on Aug 12^th, 2009, 3:10pm

I guess this is the part where I'm supposed to say "me and my big mouth", given that I'll likely be the one moving a whole bunch of threads again. :P ;)

Title: Re: Some MORE Forum Categories
Post by omar on Aug 12^th, 2009, 6:53pm

on 08/12/09 at 06:33:31, camelback wrote:

Thank you for the nice suggestion aaaa and thank you for creating the category omar.

Is this category for issues and enhancement requests or issues only?

I think it makes sense for enhancement discussions to go there also. I'll update the description to mention that.

Title: Re: Some MORE Forum Categories
Post by omar on Aug 12^th, 2009, 7:02pm

on 08/12/09 at 15:10:00, aaaa wrote:

I guess this is the part where I'm supposed to say "me and my big mouth", given that I'll likely be the one moving a whole bunch of threads again. :P ;)

Thanks for your help aaaa. It is much appreciated. If you get tired, let me know and I'll pick it up.

Title: Re: Some MORE Forum Categories
Post by Fritzlein on Aug 13^th, 2009, 5:47am

on 08/12/09 at 15:10:00, aaaa wrote:

I guess this is the part where I'm supposed to say "me and my big mouth", given that I'll likely be the one moving a whole bunch of threads again. :P ;)

I'm sorry, aaaa, I didn't realize that you were the one who had done all the moving for the previous category addition. Thank you!

Title: Re: Some MORE Forum Categories
Post by aaaa on Aug 14^th, 2009, 11:47am

I took the liberty of removing all move notices, since leaving them would have cluttered the forum boards. The price to pay for this is that any existing link (on- or off-site) to a thread before it was moved no longer works.