Forum Suggestions
- Thread starter Zachary
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This is the reason we need a crying face emoji. I WAS enjoying my dinner!
So, I'm pretty new here and I'm not sure if it's appropriate for me to be making suggestions or not, but something occurred to me:
It doesn't really seem like the post volume justifies how fragmented the forums are. Like, I get having separate forums for each park, that makes sense, but to Kings Dominion and Busch Gardens Williamsburg really need all of those independent sub-forums, some of which have sub-forums of their own? Often when browsing for new posts, a user has to click through multiple times just to get to the list of posts. With new posts being incredibly rare, and typically only a few posts within a certain park being active, I think it would make it a lot easier on users to just combine all of the sub-forums for those two parks into the main forum for each park. I understand that its easier to find the thread about a specific ride/restaurant/show/etc. the way it is now, but are most users really using the forums that way?
I dunno, just something I thought of.
It doesn't really seem like the post volume justifies how fragmented the forums are. Like, I get having separate forums for each park, that makes sense, but to Kings Dominion and Busch Gardens Williamsburg really need all of those independent sub-forums, some of which have sub-forums of their own? Often when browsing for new posts, a user has to click through multiple times just to get to the list of posts. With new posts being incredibly rare, and typically only a few posts within a certain park being active, I think it would make it a lot easier on users to just combine all of the sub-forums for those two parks into the main forum for each park. I understand that its easier to find the thread about a specific ride/restaurant/show/etc. the way it is now, but are most users really using the forums that way?
I dunno, just something I thought of.
I totally get how a newer user could get confused. Having been here for a while, I can tell you that this originally was THE site for BGW and KD related topics, hence the partner site being bgwfans.net. It kinda snowballed into a more general theme park discussion, but I believe most users on this site have or had one of the VA parks as their home park, @Zachary correct me if I'm wrong. I personally dont just click through the forums. I typically use the unread posts and the search function if I am looking for something specific that hasn't been posted on recently.
Yeah, @ControlsEE nailed it. When the board was entirely BGW-focused and tons of different BGW-focused conversations were happening simultaneously, the BGW board was structured to optimize for those discussions. Since the mid-2010s as BGW focused more and more on new rides and less and less on entertainment, culinary, special events, environmentals, theming, etc, the variety of BGW discussion has really narrowed to be a lot more inline with most other parks—focusing primarily on new rides and marque seasonal events.
Back in the day it wasn't uncommon to see multiple small construction projects taking place at once, to have numerous all-new shows debut every year, to see constant updates to dining menus, and to have tons of people really excited and engaged on special event changes and updates. Nowadays, construction is rarer and is typically just one major project, shows last for many, many years with minimal changes, dining menus are pretty stagnant, and there has been a precipitous drop in interest in the discussion of the park's special events (I'd argue as we've seen them become far more stagnant year-to-year, far less varied in scope, and frankly, less good overall).
KD has the same structure as BGW because when we added KD discussion, we wanted to ensure that it felt like it was on an even playing field with BGW—that said, the depth of KD discussions probably never really justified the full build-out that it got. I struggle to imagine any other regional park managing to make that very robust structure worthwhile either. By the time we brought SFGAdv onboard, we had already long-since decided that a flatter structure was the way of the future so we didn't want to spin up a significant expansion on a structure we had already decided would be eventually deprecated—hence the flat, more modern, more reasonable SFGAdv board setup which mirrors that of every other park featured.
Long-term, as we (very slowly) achieve improvements to presentation, navigation, sorting, and filtering, the goal is to collapse down both BGW's and KD's nodes into a single level to bring them inline with the other parks. As part of that long-term goal, you will also almost certainly see the index change to focus attention towards a more thread-centric navigation style much more like the current "What's New" listing (which I firmly believe to be the massively superior way to consume content across the forum). There's definitely work to do to make it better, but once that vision is accomplished, we will almost certainly be more forceful from a forum design standpoint in ushering people to that experience first.
Lastly, in June we did make major progress on this "great flattening" effort with the complete restructuring of how we handle non-North American parks. You can read about that here if you're curious about a deeper dive into some of the throught process behind the structure of things 'round here.
Back in the day it wasn't uncommon to see multiple small construction projects taking place at once, to have numerous all-new shows debut every year, to see constant updates to dining menus, and to have tons of people really excited and engaged on special event changes and updates. Nowadays, construction is rarer and is typically just one major project, shows last for many, many years with minimal changes, dining menus are pretty stagnant, and there has been a precipitous drop in interest in the discussion of the park's special events (I'd argue as we've seen them become far more stagnant year-to-year, far less varied in scope, and frankly, less good overall).
KD has the same structure as BGW because when we added KD discussion, we wanted to ensure that it felt like it was on an even playing field with BGW—that said, the depth of KD discussions probably never really justified the full build-out that it got. I struggle to imagine any other regional park managing to make that very robust structure worthwhile either. By the time we brought SFGAdv onboard, we had already long-since decided that a flatter structure was the way of the future so we didn't want to spin up a significant expansion on a structure we had already decided would be eventually deprecated—hence the flat, more modern, more reasonable SFGAdv board setup which mirrors that of every other park featured.
Long-term, as we (very slowly) achieve improvements to presentation, navigation, sorting, and filtering, the goal is to collapse down both BGW's and KD's nodes into a single level to bring them inline with the other parks. As part of that long-term goal, you will also almost certainly see the index change to focus attention towards a more thread-centric navigation style much more like the current "What's New" listing (which I firmly believe to be the massively superior way to consume content across the forum). There's definitely work to do to make it better, but once that vision is accomplished, we will almost certainly be more forceful from a forum design standpoint in ushering people to that experience first.
Lastly, in June we did make major progress on this "great flattening" effort with the complete restructuring of how we handle non-North American parks. You can read about that here if you're curious about a deeper dive into some of the throught process behind the structure of things 'round here.
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Thanks for the feedback, both of you. I'm glad to hear that the grand plan is to eventually flatten out the BGW/KD forums. Take care,
Amy, as a relative newcomer myself, I had the same reaction to the structure. Not sure if you've found it yet (based on your description it doesn't sound like it), but I find the What's New tab at the top very helpful to see where new posts have been. It's honestly become my default way to navigate the forum:
Use the style selector in the bottom left of the page. It's also in your personal preferences.
On your phone you can change the colors at the bottom of the screen. The one just labeled ParkFans is the one you're looking for. I'm pretty sure its similar on a computer.
I tried it and now it's back to what I used to use it until October of 2024
@Gavin - Maybe you can answer this since you have done so much of the 'behind the curtains' work:
Ever since we went to the limiting of the window for an edit, I've found a few times I've needed to edit a post because I had an additional thought that would have created a double post because of how long it took to type the post (or just interruptions). Is there a way either we can have some sort of system where an edit can be approved if it took too long or maybe some kind of plug in that would automatically connect double posts into one? I just don't want to go to add to a post because no one else posted and be forced to double post due to the time limit.
Ever since we went to the limiting of the window for an edit, I've found a few times I've needed to edit a post because I had an additional thought that would have created a double post because of how long it took to type the post (or just interruptions). Is there a way either we can have some sort of system where an edit can be approved if it took too long or maybe some kind of plug in that would automatically connect double posts into one? I just don't want to go to add to a post because no one else posted and be forced to double post due to the time limit.
I don't remember us setting a time limit to edit a post/thread for anyone, and a cursory search through the site settings don't show any sort of time limit set. However there is a 4 minute time limit to editing a private conversation/direct message after sending. Could it possibly be a bug you're running into?
I've looked around and I don't think there's a way to do this—nor do I have any idea how viable it is.
I've really found the forums overwhelming lately, with discussions happening about any given number of theme parks across the globe. I'm glad that is there for folks who want to follow everything, but it would be great if there was a way to filter down to parks I care about. Something like a "What's New for You" section, which just had Kings Dominion and Busch Gardens updates (along with the site/meta stuff). It would certainly make me come to the site more often.
I've really found the forums overwhelming lately, with discussions happening about any given number of theme parks across the globe. I'm glad that is there for folks who want to follow everything, but it would be great if there was a way to filter down to parks I care about. Something like a "What's New for You" section, which just had Kings Dominion and Busch Gardens updates (along with the site/meta stuff). It would certainly make me come to the site more often.
For now it can be done by Watching nodes you care about here and then using the Watched Threads feed and/or by using the What's New feed here with the "Watched Content" filter applied (which can be set as default in the filter panel).
Medium-to-long-term though, expect a flow for this type of setup to be far clearer. It is something we've thought a lot about and it will be integrated more cleanly into the traditional Whats New setup in the future.
Medium-to-long-term though, expect a flow for this type of setup to be far clearer. It is something we've thought a lot about and it will be integrated more cleanly into the traditional Whats New setup in the future.
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This is amazing though! I had always assumed the "Watched" functionality was thread specific. Thanks Zachary!
Let us know if you experience any issues. I've never personally browsed the forum in that way so there could be gremlins we don't know about!
Also, I edited in a bit about integration into the What's New feed into my previous post with the ability to set the Watched filter as default—just wanted to make sure you saw that! That's probably a cleaner solution than going to the Watched Threads listing all the time.
Also, I edited in a bit about integration into the What's New feed into my previous post with the ability to set the Watched filter as default—just wanted to make sure you saw that! That's probably a cleaner solution than going to the Watched Threads listing all the time.