Forum suggestions

[Ghettotech]

Hello community, hello warlord Games,
I just want to thank you for Bolt Action.
It´s a lot of fun.
But this forum sxxks. It´s awfully slow and needs more love.

There is a, 20 pages, “Rules discussion” topic in Bolt Action.
Why not a “Rules discussion” section with specific “rule discussion”topics?

When discussing about rules it might be handy to get official answers for some questions.(Aufklärungsgruppe???)
After all this is the official forum and all i have seen by the “officials” is a “brilliant” on page 20.

Don´t get me wrong.Just some ideas.
Greetings

[Battle Brush Sigur]

Yeah, sadly the resurrected forum is kinda the red-headed step child of WG’s attention it seems. Or the two-headed step child.

When the new forum was launched there’s been a thread about people asking for improvements, but there’s been no chance since the new fourm’s been launched.

I like forums, and it would be great for having Warlord Games have forums. But it should be proper forums. With edit buttons and such. I think this really, really needs a software upgrade or something.

[Sepp]

I really miss the old one.

[invisible officer]

The old one was much more “alive”. But that’s the members fault.

See for example the lovely thread on a planned Lützen game. The author got hardly a “well done” on stuff shown.

The ancients…… dead.

The nice Japanese vehicles by Johnnytodd are a highlight. Hope he gets the deserved well done posts.

A Forum lives from the members. Many see the models but are too lazy to post a “Nice” “Lovely” or similar.

—

That we see few posts by the “gods” is normal for me. They have new projects and often a lot to do with other stuff. Many BA authors are no Warlord staff. They have full time jobs and families.
With the rules we do not buy their time post writing.

[Gareth]

Bit harsh invisible officer.

Just timed the wait between clicking on links in this forum and its anywhere from 30-60 secs which is an instant put off to most people. Now don’t get me wrong a slow forum is better than no forum and the stuff on here is really top quality so I`m a fan.
The problem for me and I’m sure its same for others is that I am largely only interested in one part of the forum(Bolt Action for me) and wont spend endless time waiting for every thread in every category to open if I am just browsing.

What would be helpful to me and encourage me to wait 30-60 secs to read other threads in non Bolt Action areas would perhaps be a hint(a picture) in the recent topics area. Thus the excellent Japanese vehicles and Lutzen work would draw me in.

Anyway hope this keeps the forum alive and hope my posts are encouraging and helpful.

[Corso]

That the forum needs to be ‘faster’ is true, I agree that a software upgrade is necessary, but Invisible Officer did hit the nail. Members make or break a forum. And a forum is different from other social media. In other popular social media (which I also use), you just put a picture and type a caption and watch the likes, hearts…. coming in and maybe reply to a comment given. Here it’s meant to be different. You have enough space to write a long paragraph or two explaining how you did the job and also the history of a particular unit or vehicle. It should be more informative. For example I did learn a lot from Invisible Officer just be reading his posts, and Charge the Guns has started an exceptional project which by linking his blog you get to know the details. You could even have differing opinions, constructive criticism is good. Such threads do deserve more attention. Maybe that’s also what’s putting off other people joining the forum.

[Anthony Miles]

Is there a reason you can’t edit your own posts after submission, so you can correct links etc?

[Greg S]

I used to spend no end of time on the old forum, reading posts, looking at pictures of minis and so on. And it was always a short hop from the forum to the webstore.

And being on Tapatalk meant I could easily read them on my phone.

These new forums are slow, clunky, poorly organised and ugly. It feels like hard work being on them. And consequently I hardly ever visit the webstore any more.

[Richard Coates]

As the person primarily responsible for the new forum, I thought it was about time I posted here and addressed your concerns. Mostly I want you to know that we are listening, we are aware of the issues you’re having and we are going to resolve them. However we are a small team – we’ve recently increased from one person to two – and we have responsibility not just to maintain Warlord’s whole web presence and infrastructure but also to increase it with new projects and sites.

Regarding the format of the forums. We agree this isn’t helpful – a single Rules Discussion thread, for example, is completely unhelpful in the long run – and wasn’t our original intention. We were looking for forum moderators, members and social media staff to shape the forums appropriately, and in hindsight we should just have laid out a more rigid structure that planned for the long term.

When Warlord decided to bring back the forums, I argued strongly for one that was integrated with the rest of the website. The old forum had floundered because it was set apart from everything else. I wanted this one to be at the centre of what Warlord did in the future, which meant making it part of the current ‘articles’ website. One of the side effects of this so far has been poor speed for logged in users – forum users. It’s not the forums themselves that are slow, but the website as a whole is in need of optimisation and probably moving to a better server. This is not a small job, but we have begun looking at what’s required.

I disagree that you don’t get official answers from Warlord staff here, but it does vary from game to game and perhaps that’s something we can look at; there are difficulties when writers are not staff members, as has been noted. But even John Stallard himself pops on here occasionally and makes official pronouncements, and the (other) RichC is never far away.

As I said at the beginning, we’ve recently got a second technical web person, which is allowing us to get much more done, and the main website and forums will get some time allocated very soon. I need to ask you to stick with us a while longer and support the forums because, as has been said, ultimately you all make the forums worth coming to, not what we do. We’ll continue to listen to your feedback and will aim to respond and resolve issues in a more timely manner going forwards. Thanks for listening if you’ve read this far, and thanks for taking the time to post your thoughts.

[Koin-Koin]

Thanks a lot for clarifying the forum technical conditions Richard.
Being a sysadmin myself I know how complicated a migration could be (as easy it could appears form outside) and how maintaining systems could be a burden.

Bon courage.

[Charge The Guns]

Thanks for taking the time to lay things out, Richard. Much appreciated. When you think how long it takes us as wargamers from buying stuff, to getting it on to the table to play with, we should be the most patient group of people in the world! 😀

Easier in-line picture sharing would be high on my wish list, but I appreciate that this is tricky on Forums.

Would it be possible to link to forum threads or topics from your FB pages and/or newsletters? That might help drive traffic, perhaps both ways? I’m not a big FB user, and so when I do go on I am often pleasantly surprised by some of the interesting stuff on your FB pages.

[Nicky P Gardiner]

I think you need to make the Forum move visible on the main Warlord Games Website. Was even looking for it and it took me awhile to find where it is. It should be one of the main tabs at the top in my option or near the login button. Not hidden way at the bottom. 🙂

[tuco74]

Totally agree with the previous post, I even have to sign in separately to my Warlord account which definitely seems a bit clunky. In addition my ‘username’ doesn’t appear against my posts but my ‘real name’ does which is a bit of a glitch.

[Scorpio Rocks]

The forums need:

Moderators,
Report Button,
Speeding up

[Koin-Koin]

No more gravatar compatibility?

[Author]

Posts