Long term health of mafiascum

[Shadowmod]

I think some design changes would go a long way. There are many good options that distinguish this forum as one catering to playing games of mafia in it, like the iso function, private topics etc., but most of them are either (relatively) hard to find or badly placed. Why do I have to scroll to the top or bottom of a page to make an iso, check PMs or use most of the other interactive elements? Why do I need to check the OP or iso the mod if I want to view a complete player list or the newest vote count? Why can't I link private topics directly to a game they belong to, so, for example, players who have access to a private topic belonging to a game automatically get a list of links to those private topics if they enter the game thread? Sure, using multiple browser tabs can work a round some of these, but it is still not intuitive.

Seriously, GUIs of all kinds have been using stuff like static menu elements (like task, menu, quicklaunch, side bars etc.) for ever now. Why can't a forum adapt the basic principles to make navigation more convenient and purposeful?

I have no idea, how much coding work a forum redesign would actually be, but it is the one thing that would have a great impact on attractivity without the need to change any of the underlying strucutres, which is probably harder to do because the community would not support those changes.

And I agree that the standard blue theme looks kind of bland, old and unispired. Something more sleek and ellegant would be nice. But not the current black theme, please. It's really not that great in practice, I think, and I hate how it doesn't properly display half of the text colours.

[Shadowmod]

I think some design changes would go a long way. There are many good options that distinguish this forum as one catering to playing games of mafia in it, like the iso function, private topics etc., but most of them are either (relatively) hard to find or badly placed. Why do I have to scroll to the top or bottom of a page to make an iso, check PMs or use most of the other interactive elements? Why do I need to check the OP or iso the mod if I want to view a complete player list or the newest vote count? Why can't I link private topics directly to a game they belong to, so, for example, players who have access to a private topic belonging to a game automatically get a list of links to those private topics if they enter the game thread? Sure, using multiple browser tabs can work a round some of these, but it is still not intuitive.

Seriously, GUIs of all kinds have been using stuff like static menu elements (like task, menu, quicklaunch, side bars etc.) for ever now. Why can't a forum adapt the basic principles to make navigation more convenient and purposeful?

I have no idea, how much coding work a forum redesign would actually be, but it is the one thing that would have a great impact on attractivity without the need to change any of the underlying strucutres, which is probably harder to do because the community would not support those changes.

And I agree that the standard blue theme looks kind of bland, old and unispired. Something more sleek and ellegant would be nice. But not the current black theme, please. It's really not that great in practice, I think, and I hate how it doesn't properly display half of the text colours.

Yeah, okay, that doesn't really solve the problem. though. And I can only iso one player at a time with that. The real issue is that all the site elements that make this forum a dedicated mafia playground are scattered around various little links and post all around the screen (and often enough off-screen), which really is easily explained by the grafual nature of their introduction to the site etc, but isnb't really optiumal at all. The simple fact that I totally forgot about this option is only proof of that fact.
You don't have to scroll to iso. There is literally an iso button on every post a player makes.

[Shadowmod]

I think for new players our queue system can be quite confusing and misleading as to how active we are. You can see very old signup threads on the first page, and often there wont be any because no large themes are in signups. It makes the signup process and activity level more visible if we give each game its own signup thread.

Why not just make one big button that is among the first things that you can see or click when entering the site, which says sometzhng along the lines of "want to get started right away? - Here are the game" redirects you to a cummulative thread that always shows a complete list of games currently in signups, each with a link to the appropriate queue/signup thread.
Another thing, where some automation would go a long way, of course.