General Front page = list of boards?

[Arantor]

I'm curious. How many of you have your forum front page as the list of boards? How many have something else instead to showcase the different content you have?

What do you use to achieve that effect? Does it get the effect you want?

 

[Al]

My Star Wars forum has board list as it’s a pure community. https://starwars.cafe

My Sanctuary Shattered Sun forum has a portal for news. https://shatteredsunrts.com

 

[Arantor]

And how do those choices work out for you and your users?

 

[Cedric]

According to analytics, What's New is the second most popular page next to the forum list. So I think if one would use their What's New page as the front page, it would most likely work if not better than list of forums.

 

[Ravenfreak]

I just have the latest posts set to my front page on Thee Zone. It helps me keep track of the newest posts, and I think it helps other members see what everyone has been talking about on the forums. It also lists the latest articles I've written too.

 

[joelr]

Some thoughts to the OP:
1. You're asking this question to an audience that is very self-reinforcing of a certain way of thinking. Just wanted to make sure you contextualized the responses and audience on here.
2. IPS recently announced Feed View for v5, which incorporates a short list of recent topics for each board. I actually think this is one of the strongest answers you will get to your question, since IPS is making a calculated bet on behalf of all of its communities of what a modern forum index should look like:

Introducing a fresh new vision for Invision Community 5

Welcome to Invision Community 5! Over the coming weeks, we'll be exploring a bunch of new features and improvements coming to our user interface including our brand new theme editor, a new mobile UI, dark mode and performance improvements thanks to a reduction in both JavaScript and CSS. To kick ...

invisioncommunity.com

3. My personal take aligns with IPS' view. Modern users don't want to navigate boards and sub-boards and categories just to get to content. They want immediate access to feeds of content.

 

[Arantor]

According to analytics, What's New is the second most popular page next to the forum list. So I think if one would use their What's New page as the front page, it would most likely work if not better than list of forums.

For forums that aren't rooted in 2000s era thinking, that's exactly what the default is. Flarum, Discourse, NodeBB, they all do the list of most recent topics as a front page.

1. You're asking this question to an audience that is very self-reinforcing of a certain way of thinking. Just wanted to make sure you contextualized the responses and audience on here.

I hadn't forgotten I have asked the same question of other audiences with very different biases (though, even more hardcore insular than this audience is, if you can imagine it)

This is also why I was hoping to get not only 'what we're doing' answers but far more relevantly 'why' and 'did it do what you hoped'. I already know that the forum world is pretty entrenched as a whole in the list of boards mindset, such that the front page is inevitably referred to as a portal because that's just the terminology that's stuck, and it boxes in the thinking of what such a page could contain.

The niche I'm tentatively looking at has a different use case in general where diving into topics broadly is not the aim of the game in as much as they're largely 1-on-1 topics (and that's both the norm and expectation, where even 3 participants in a topic is unusual, 4+ is mostly chaos), so showcasing the topics is possibly not as useful as providing up-front context about the site as a whole.

But they're super-stubbornly clinging to the front page as a list of boards and I'm sure there are better options than that, so I'm canvassing various places to get some cross-genre insights.

2. IPS recently announced Feed View for v5, which incorporates a short list of recent topics for each board. I actually think this is one of the strongest answers you will get to your question

I'm largely inclined to agree with this view but in the other places I asked this question, I got some very strange looks. One person's reaction was to imply that such things were almost blasphemous, but that particular audience as a whole has different outlooks on what a forum should be, with very, very different thoughts on what reaching an audience looks like, and with incredibly different views on what success looks like.

I like the idea of what v5 is doing - I have already locked in my licence for the new terms with some curiosity. Whether I'll end up using that licence is another story entirely but I believe in supporting people doing good work.

Modern users don't want to navigate boards and sub-boards and categories just to get to content. They want immediate access to feeds of content.

Broadly I agree. It just so happens that the sandboxes I play in these days don't work like regular forums (intentionally) and 'access to content' is a different concept fundamentally.

I could give you several topics of the site I've been working on, but none of them would make any sense without a ton more context, and likely a period of time reading our wiki to make any sense of it. But that's the nature of using a forum for collaborative storytelling; each topic is a story between (usually) two characters from (usually) two writers, and collectively they form the fabric of the story universe, with each forum site being its own private universe.

That said, providing access to topics and overviews thereof *is* a theme that comes up in the conversations I've been having, but the usual focuses aren't quite aligned. Much more is made of whether people are online, for example, to the point that 'stalking the online list' is a habitual feature, waiting to see if certain people are online.

 

[Al]

And how do those choices work out for you and your users?

It’s probably because I’m locked in 2003-2010. It’s the way I’ve always done it. I know there’s other ways to present content but I’m a creature of habit. Aren’t we all?

 

[Senkusha]

...
2. IPS recently announced Feed View for v5, which incorporates a short list of recent topics for each board. I actually think this is one of the strongest answers you will get to your question, since IPS is making a calculated bet on behalf of all of its communities of what a modern forum index should look like:

Introducing a fresh new vision for Invision Community 5

Welcome to Invision Community 5! Over the coming weeks, we'll be exploring a bunch of new features and improvements coming to our user interface including our brand new theme editor, a new mobile UI, dark mode and performance improvements thanks to a reduction in both JavaScript and CSS. To kick ...

invisioncommunity.com

3. My personal take aligns with IPS' view. Modern users don't want to navigate boards and sub-boards and categories just to get to content. They want immediate access to feeds of content.

So, is this why perhaps I don't have traction with traffic? Because I have, I guess a hybrid approach. I have the default board listing, but along the right hand side, I have the top five most recent posts for my three main categories of my site: Anime, role playing system discussions, and actual role play posts. Maybe I need to think about how I can redesign my front page to be more... instant access?

 

[Dismal_Bliss]

I am still using the traditional view.

On my large and successful forum, there are a lot of forums and subforums, so Grid View doesn't look so great and it's too busy for Fluid View, imo. The traditional view makes the most sense but I am definitely looking forward to Feed View in IPS 5.

My newer community also used traditional table view but I have the most recent 5 threads pinned to the top so the current activity is highlighted. This one doesn't have subforums so Grid View could probably work in this one.

 

[DigNap15]

I have New Topics set as my front page.
I have it set to the latest 40 new topics, as that tends to cover the last day or so.

I did that so as to my my forum look new and exciting to new visitors
Rather than a static list of forum categories

That said, I have not seen any increase or decrease in traffic since I started doing it.

 

[Dismal_Bliss]

Modern users don't want to navigate boards and sub-boards and categories just to get to content. They want immediate access to feeds of content.

I will say that on my successful board, A LOT of users head straight to the "Unread Content" section.

According to analytics, What's New is the second most popular page next to the forum list.

Probably because the index page is bookmarked, and What's New is the first click for many of them. That's what I do, lol.

 

[Spartan]

I use boards, news is good option if you have a lot of new news post

 

[joelr]

The niche I'm tentatively looking at has a different use case in general where diving into topics broadly is not the aim of the game in as much as they're largely 1-on-1 topics (and that's both the norm and expectation, where even 3 participants in a topic is unusual, 4+ is mostly chaos), so showcasing the topics is possibly not as useful as providing up-front context about the site as a whole.

What I hear from you for your specific niche:
1. For returning users, they care about the stories / topics that they're involved in.
2. For new users, they want information about the site as a whole.
3. For returning users, they care about the online status of users (likely their writing partners?)

The good news is that I don't think any of this is necessarily new. If this were IPS (and I only make this reference because I'm most familiar with the IPS ecosystem), you would show the following widgets: topics I posted in, the guest login widget, and online users / recently online.

Going off on a little bit of a tangent: I think there's real value in showing who is online, when a post was recently updated, most recently updated, etc. On support communities, there are two velocity concept called "speed to contact" and "speed to solution." Users don't want to wait 24 hours for a solution, they want their answer in a few minutes. In your case, it sounds like users are eagerly awaiting for their partner to post and continue the story.

Going back to your OP, my fundamental problem with the default forum index is that forum creators built it 15 - 20 years ago not because they had some relevatory insight about human behavior, but because ... they were mimicking the organization and categorization of a MySQL database. The forum index is literally nothing more than a top down hierarchy of organization. It was never, ever built for everyday humans. It was built for developers who think in a very structured manner.

There are strengths to this organized index, but my insight is that it only makes sense to returning power users who have mastered the organization. To new users or returning casual users, the default forum index presents very high barriers of access to content and interaction.

 

[Al]

Valuable insight and certainly food for thought.

 

[Arantor]

The good news is that I don't think any of this is necessarily new. If this were IPS (and I only make this reference because I'm most familiar with the IPS ecosystem), you would show the following widgets: topics I posted in, the guest login widget, and online users / recently online.

It's actually more complex than that in my world - as I discussed recently with some folk.

There's *definitely* a 'topics I posted in' but there's a factor of 'topics I'm meant to be posting in' which is a combination of 'topics I have replied to previously that are waiting for my reply' and 'topics I have been invited to post in' which (crucially) I haven't posted *yet*. Topic invites are an explicit feature I already have, and I already have a 'topic tracker' for this purpose which is a bit longer than widget-size because it's a function of 'for each persona I write as, show me which topic(s) I should post in where I am not the last person in the topic'. (It gets trickier if you have a topic where there are 3 participants of which 2 people are actually writing, but we make do currently)

As for online status, this is super fascinating in my world. It's actually really much of a deal in the RP world who is online and who has been online recently than you'd think. Partially in terms of 'are people other than the admin online' and for some particular cases (especially writing in cases of fandom-related storytelling), 'is there a character I am interesting in pairing with that is online/was recent online' as motivators for new joiners.

RP systems thrive on subaccounts, or some implementation of it. Jcink added someone's mod for IP Free back in the day whereby it just glues real accounts together, but this has its own sets of consequences later to deal with...

Going off on a little bit of a tangent: I think there's real value in showing who is online, when a post was recently updated, most recently updated, etc. On support communities, there are two velocity concept called "speed to contact" and "speed to solution." Users don't want to wait 24 hours for a solution, they want their answer in a few minutes. In your case, it sounds like users are eagerly awaiting for their partner to post and continue the story.

Who is online is definitely more important than normal; lots of places do have a function of cult of personality, particularly if you're in that space where you're waiting for a reply. It is no surprise that there is a subculture of 'stalking the online list' more than usual because they're not waiting for 'x y or z from the support team to reply' but specific individuals.

The timeframe is interesting; and this probably leads to one of the most fascinating aspects of RP subculture out there: 1-on1 communication, the ways this occurs and more importantly doesn't occur when it should. I don't always get to all my posts in as timely fashion as I would like, and neither do the people I write with - such is the nature of real life intrusions when you're expecting 300-500 (or more) words written basically just for you, and you write in return. It is considered good form to contact your writing partner if you're not going to get to it swiftly for whatever reason and most people will be OK with that. (Ghosting is, however, terribly common when you're 'not feeling the connection')

The usual metrics like time to reply and time to resolve don't really fit here, though there is some internal awareness of them from everyone's perspective - but since most things are 1-on-1, and it's very much everyone's spare-time hobby, lots of leeway gets filtered in.

What gets really interesting is if you have a side channel for discussion - typically but not always Discord - where you have bystanders discussing the storylines and characters. E.g. you get all of the discussions about the 'will they, won't they' for characters in what is presumed/hoped to be a planned as a romance plot, especially if the writers have planned it privately to be that way but the characters are compelling enough for others to read along and enjoy.

One feature that I ended up adding - again, not really widget sized - is the notion of timelines, where you can collate any two characters' shared topics into a timeline (and organise it chronologically if for whatever reason the topics were not posted in strict chronological order), plus add in related topics if relevant, e.g. A & B have (list of topics together) but a story between A & C is relevant to A & B's arc and comes mid-way through. What's also fun to watch is when either the writers or the wider community gives that pairing a name and refers to it as the pairing (or, sometimes, shipping; it's a long story).

Going back to your OP, my fundamental problem with the default forum index is that forum creators built it 15 - 20 years ago not because they had some relevatory insight about human behavior, but because ... they were mimicking the organization and categorization of a MySQL database.

I'm going to have to disagree with that statement somewhat.

Aside from the proliferation of systems that didn't use a database at all 20 years ago (e.g. YABB had no database, it was all text files on disk), one only has to look at the structure of newsgroups and what was going on with BBS systems before that to see that the structure of hierarchy - category -> board -> topic -> posts - was already there, long before databases were explicitly the tool for the job.

Mind you, SQL has been around since the 1950s so it's not impossible for that influence to have been around when people were constructing it, but I'm still far more inclined to push that particular line of thinking on the rails of 'form follows function' rather than 'driven by implementation'. No argument that the original implementers were technically minded, though.

There are strengths to this organized index, but my insight is that it only makes sense to returning power users who have mastered the organization. To new users or returning casual users, the default forum index presents very high barriers of access to content and interaction.

I find I agree with this a lot - and it's certainly common for RPers to have a lot of boards. How they lay them out, on the other hand, is a completely different story. There is a lot of form-follows-function thinking in there, though.

Specifically, if you've spent any time in the RP scene, the layouts will actually be more familiar than not because many of them have structurally the same requirements - areas for 'how the site functions', areas for 'character and plot development', areas for posting often segregated by format and then locality (because geography plays a part in who will be where for the purposes of storytelling if a given thread is a synchronous event that characters are performing in what passes for real time for them), and it's not uncommon to have boards for 'works in progress' and then 'approved' in lieu of better tools/workflows for some things.

But I think it might be interesting to give you some real examples of what phenomena are out there. I was going to go through and summarise my thoughts but I actually think it might be more interesting to present them pretty cold with about as much context as you'd actually get before visiting - so here's a slice through some of the recent ads from Inner Child (it's a Discord RP resource hub with several advertising Discord forums).

I have intentionally not curated; just picked the 3 most recently bumped in each channel. Ad text from the ads' own. Bold text is a link. Make of all this what you will. I'm merely trying to provide a 'this is what people are doing' and I'm happy to take questions once people have had a look (in case some of the shorthand in the ads is confusing/unexpected; there's a lot of expectation of familiarity of the scene conventions if not necessarily anything else). It is not really a coincidence that all of the examples given are Jcink sites.

"Real life" sites:

Lost Angels is a real life, jcink premium site. Set in the bustling city of Los Angeles, CA. From the hills to the beach to the hipster coffee shops; doctors, criminals, rockstars, rich kids and everything in between leave Los Angeles far from dull.

change of tides - a cozy little two year old jcink premium site set in a fictional mid-sized city located in the outer banks of north carolina.

Welcome to Oakley, Texas, a cute little town about forty minutes from Dallas. There are small town vibes, large sprawling ranches, and a close knit community. Come find everything that Oakley has to offer and play with us on Emergency Contact.

"Fandom sites"

Revival ("18+ / PROFILE APP / SEMI-PRIVATE JCINK MARVEL AU RP" - It's been four years since the Decimation and society is finally starting to move forward. However, things haven't been easy for everyone. Crime in New York has become increasingly severe. Reports of never-before-seen powers and sightings of mutants and other extraordinary individuals have made their way onto the scene, making this an exciting and challenging time. With new heroes and villains emerging, the citizens caught in the middle just want things to go back to the way they were.

chaos theory - a 21+ highly AU Marauders era roleplay set in 1986, focusing on political intrigue and Tom M. Riddle's rise in the Wizengamot Parliament. There is no prophecy, no horcruxes, and no Chosen One to save us from the rapture.

Across the Stars - It's up to you to decide the fate of the Galaxy. Across the Stars is an intermediate level AU Star Wars role play set in 3 BBY • sixteen years since Order 66 and a few years before the film A New Hope. The shroud of the Dark Side has fallen.In the sixteen years since the fall of the Jedi Order and the end of the Clone Wars.

"Animanga"

horizon line ("survival panfandom") (18+ / mobile optimized everything / active and friendly / est. 2022) Rewrite your destiny in the maze. But don't stare too long at the horizon line...

axis mundi (sci-fi × fantasy original animanga roleplay, semi-private) - a semi-private jcink-based site nearing the 3-month mark and heading into our second major plot point. we invite potential members via interest form.

"Sci-fi / Fantasy sites"

Seeing Double (cw: abduction, stalking, human experimentation) despite what the news and scientific community might say, human cloning and genetic engineering are very much real. the proof, although they themselves don't know it, is walking the streets of seoul and living seemingly ordinary lives. but that is soon to change - a shadowy organization that created and then lost them wants these clones back and will go to great lengths to do so...

Golden Era (18+ | no wc | profile application | relaxed activity | lgbtq+ inclusive) a premium jcink original fantasy roleplay inspired by our favorites of the historical and fantasy genres. join us for court intrigue, magic, monsters, and adventure!

crack the sky (21 + • 333 • GRIMDARK FANTASY) aerion has been caught in a years-long war between the countries of prospemeria and stryla, while both sides are vying for power, all the while utilizing dragon riding in deadly sky combat, however the tides of war shifted when scouts discovered a large crystal brimming with devastating power.

"Supernatural sites"

NEW PARADIGM (MATURE 18+ | 3-3-3 RATING | JCINK PREMIUM | ACTIVE COMMUNITY | LARGE ABILITY STORE | ITEM & SPELL CRAFTING) is a mature, no-wordcount Supernatural RP forum set in an alternate Earth timeline with a spin on mythology and fantasy. We boast detailed lore, quests, site story lines and a cast of official NPCs that each come with their own interactable secrets.

Narrowsgate ("A dark academia supernatural roleplay") We are an open lore supernatural site based in modern day Dorset County, England. Members have tons of flexibility to explore their own plots, but we also feature a rich central mystery for anyone to explore!

GODLY BEHAVIOUR is a supernatural creatures RP set on the idyllic east coast of Canada. The existence of supernaturals first came to light in the 1980s and reactions have been, well, mixed. The world has spent the years since trying to adjust, but there are still extremists - those who would hunt supernaturals, as well as those who believe in supernatural supremacy. Where will you fall? We are a community-centric, character-driven site that values member contribution above all else! How will you help shape the future of our world?

 

[NeoMetallix]

.

Going back to your OP, my fundamental problem with the default forum index is that forum creators built it 15 - 20 years ago not because they had some relevatory insight about human behavior, but because ... they were mimicking the organization and categorization of a MySQL database. The forum index is literally nothing more than a top down hierarchy of organization. It was never, ever built for everyday humans. It was built for developers who think in a very structured manner.

There are strengths to this organized index, but my insight is that it only makes sense to returning power users who have mastered the organization. To new users or returning casual users, the default forum index presents very high barriers of access to content and interaction.

I wholeheartedly disagree with this. This is assuming people are not smart and/or lazy. I've never gone to any forum and couldn't figure out where I needed to go with no to at most minimal effort. If a user can't put the effort in to learn where to go by reading(assuming everything is clearly written) or a couple clicks is too much hassle, I question how much quality content they will actually contribute.

I'd actually question how they put in the effort to register an account if they feel a simple organizational setup is an off putting barrier.

As far as the debate between list of boards or a front page with list of new content goes, I think having both is beneficial, I'm all for options, however I still wouldn't consider it a must have. Most forum software I've been on has a link to "All New Posts" and "All Unread Posts", it's not like you have to go searching for new content, it's just one click away.

I personally don't like the feed style as a default because it shows everything when there are certain things I want to discuss and drowns it out in other stuff I may not be interested in.

 

[joelr]

The timeframe is interesting; and this probably leads to one of the most fascinating aspects of RP subculture out there: 1-on1 communication, the ways this occurs and more importantly doesn't occur when it should. I don't always get to all my posts in as timely fashion as I would like, and neither do the people I write with - such is the nature of real life intrusions when you're expecting 300-500 (or more) words written basically just for you, and you write in return. It is considered good form to contact your writing partner if you're not going to get to it swiftly for whatever reason and most people will be OK with that. (Ghosting is, however, terribly common when you're 'not feeling the connection')

I didn't want to make this suggestion in my prior post, because it would have been yet another tangent, but I thought of some feature suggestions that might help address synchronicity:
- You 'reserve' a time together with another person (say, a 2 hour period on Tues Dec 26 from 7:00 - 9:00 PM PST). My only suggestion is that you make this a little more fun and casual, rather than Slack / Microsoft Teams business meeting
- You show the posting history per user on a weekly cycle. If a user consistently posts on Saturday afternoon and Tues - Thurs evenings, then that could be a strong indication of a user's schedule.
- Bumps or nudges. "Hey Arantor, you haven't posted in the following story in 7 days. Can you add to the story in the next 24 hours, or are you busy?" "Hey Arantor, your partner normally posts on Saturday afternoons, which is within 24 hours. Did you want to add to your story?"

What gets really interesting is if you have a side channel for discussion - typically but not always Discord - where you have bystanders discussing the storylines and characters. E.g. you get all of the discussions about the 'will they, won't they' for characters in what is presumed/hoped to be a planned as a romance plot, especially if the writers have planned it privately to be that way but the characters are compelling enough for others to read along and enjoy.

I find this point to be the most fascinating. Why wouldn't this be part of the forums? You lose all of this in Discord.

There could be 3 separate but related topics:
- Main story topic, with permissions for only the primary authors to contribute
- Side story topics, with permissions for anyone to contribute and make multiple sides stories
- Worldbuilder topics, with permissions for anyone to contribute. You could probably add features such as timelines, location landmarks, character shipping, etc.

There are some really unique, idiosyncratic features of your RP communities. I can see a dedicated story builder doing well for this community.

 

[Arantor]

This is assuming people are not smart and/or lazy. I've never gone to any forum and couldn't figure out where I needed to go with no to at most minimal effort. If a user can't put the effort in to learn where to go by reading(assuming everything is clearly written) or a couple clicks is too much hassle, I question how much quality content they will actually contribute.

I've definitely seen forums with confusing layouts where the 'correct' board is not actually that obvious, especially if the topic could sit between one or more boards.

But there's *always* going to be the people too impatient to read, no matter how tidy your board layout is. Doubly so if you're a support resource where in spite of the layout being designed to focus your problem towards the people who can help, inevitably the first nearest board is picked instead, unless they're actually paying attention (experience does not validate this as above 60% of the time)

As far as the debate between list of boards or a front page with list of new content goes, I think having both is beneficial, I'm all for options, however I still wouldn't consider it a must have. Most forum software I've been on has a link to "All New Posts" and "All Unread Posts", it's not like you have to go searching for new content, it's just one click away.

I personally don't like the feed style as a default because it shows everything when there are certain things I want to discuss and drowns it out in other stuff I may not be interested in.

I think the 'all the categories' or 'all the most recent' are both one-size-fits-no-one approaches, and I think a far more useful homepage is one that actually curates what is shown.

I asked a bunch of grumpy old technical people about this a few months back, the results were interesting. It was a 65/35 split between 'latest posts' and 'board listing' as front page, but inevitably this was framed in a 'I'm a regular, I either want to see what's new, or I want to curate what I bother to look at'. That group of people absolutely self-select into 'I know what I want/what I'm looking for, leave me alone' types. But it was interesting to note that once you took the 'I'm a regular' out of it, the views on what the front page should contain were far more distributed than tribal.

I think this really points to the fact that the landing page has to do different duty for different people and that regulars may not even see it at all (as per @CedricV noting that the what's new page is high up on analytics). For newcomers it's definitely a billboard of things you want them to look at, and they'll have their own take about what they're looking for on that billboard.

 

[Arantor]

I didn't want to make this suggestion in my prior post, because it would have been yet another tangent, but I thought of some feature suggestions that might help address synchronicity:
- You 'reserve' a time together with another person (say, a 2 hour period on Tues Dec 26 from 7:00 - 9:00 PM PST). My only suggestion is that you make this a little more fun and casual, rather than Slack / Microsoft Teams business meeting
- You show the posting history per user on a weekly cycle. If a user consistently posts on Saturday afternoon and Tues - Thurs evenings, then that could be a strong indication of a user's schedule.
- Bumps or nudges. "Hey Arantor, you haven't posted in the following story in 7 days. Can you add to the story in the next 24 hours, or are you busy?" "Hey Arantor, your partner normally posts on Saturday afternoons, which is within 24 hours. Did you want to add to your story?"

That's actually a really really interesting idea, though I think it dies a lot on the reality of the audience; this is a group of people who on some level aspire to being Writers and Authors. I'm absolutely in that group (though I will note that unlike many of my peers in the cohort I'm in, I've actually completed the 50,000 words for NaNoWriMo in multiple years) - I think trying to structure it is an inherent problem because I strongly believe, based on little, that many would flake out under the guise of 'you're expecting me to be creative on demand' because that's how it would come across to them.

This is a group who, largely, don't have the discipline to write on a schedule - if they ever did, they might actually make it as Writers and Authors.

More than that, the whole scene has one overarching problem: so many of them could use some serious therapy on actually *talking to each other*. I mentioned previously that ghosting was frequent; it's practically a meme that this cohort will do everything it can to avoid conflict, up to and including pretending the conflict isn't happening by a complete shutdown of communication. Telling people 'no' is scary as heck for these people, and a lot of people end up going along with stories and the like that actually really bother them, only to fizzle half way through because they're not feeling it, but $deity forbid they communicate like adults about it.

I find this point to be the most fascinating. Why wouldn't this be part of the forums? You lose all of this in Discord.

Mostly because Discord has the rapidity and synchronous presence. But shoutboxes and chatboxes are disfavoured on the forum itself despite notionally solving this problem.

There could be 3 separate but related topics:
- Main story topic, with permissions for only the primary authors to contribute
- Side story topics, with permissions for anyone to contribute and make multiple sides stories
- Worldbuilder topics, with permissions for anyone to contribute. You could probably add features such as timelines, location landmarks, character shipping, etc.

There are some really unique, idiosyncratic features of your RP communities. I can see a dedicated story builder doing well for this community.

One crowd I know actually tried this, at least the first and second topic part of this. There were several threads, some were D&D flavoured, where it was 'the main story with participants and the DM' and a second thread for everyone to comment.

Other threads they did were games of Mafia and Werewolf, and things were really fleshed out. What they did was set up parallel topics for each game, known variously as the 'popcorn thread' and 'Club Dead', where active players in a game couldn't see it, but knocked-out players and any opt-in spectators could. And they even replaced the 'reply' button in the main thread (that everyone could see) to the word 'popcorn' for those who could participate in the popcorn thread version (or hide the button otherwise).

It was actually pretty effective. A key point was that the spectators didn't have any more information publicly than the players did, so they all got to speculate on everything. Sadly this went the way of the dodo a few years ago as the guy who implemented it for the forum was defenestrated a few years back for having what he considered to be a hero moment of banning all the hard right-wing folks, and, uh, it ended poorly.

Part of the problem with worldbuilding topics, interestingly, is that you don't really want everyone doing it. Case in point, my current little project. It's got a bunch of Irish folk lore inspired stuff, including the capacity for 'druids', folks who habitually inhabit some animal form but that can shapeshift to resemble humans. There is a set list of the animal races that this encompasses, creatures common to the British isles in general, such as deer, otters, beavers, etc. Wolves are not on this list, and werewolves are never mentioned because they come with dynamics we do not want.

Now we have two writers, C and M. C has been around a while, knows the score, M is a new writer to our group. C and M have been talking, and M comes from places where werewolves are common and have *all* of the dynamics we don't want. (Think how 'wonderfully romantic' it would be to be turned into a werewolf against your will only to eventually come to love the person who did it. Yeah, no.) M asked, C kind of half implied that because human/animal shifting is sort of a thing, werewolves are a thing - all without consulting the folks who actually wrote the lore. This was no end of awkward to sort out.

Letting people free-write lore is only good if you can trust them not to put something in that's fundamentally world-breaking. My experience is that there are three groups of people in this arena: the folks who can be world-consistent but creative (good), the folks who can't be world-consistent and/or want to jam whatever pet fan-favourite in (bad), and the people who aren't really imaginative either way who will just poddle along at their own pace (not a problem). I am being very reductive here, but to try to do this scene justice takes more words than I have time for.

The thing about the RP scene is that as creative and wonderful as it is, at the same time it's really really hostile to certain types of new ideas. I talk about Discord for communications but actually this isn't new to have off-board comms; before Discord it was Skype, before Skype it was mostly MSN. There's always been a vogue for side-channel communications for bouncing ideas back and forth between two writers, in a rapid-fire format that neither email nor PMs ever accommodated well, and Discord wins in the modern era by supporting both 1-on-1 comms and varying levels of group comms, whether that's a core group of writers together in a group chat, or a 'site wide group chat'. And of course, Discord wins for handling media like photos and memes *infinitely* better than your average forum shoutbox, more specifically than just the forum as a whole.

I have a bunch of thoughts on things I'd like to try, and more than a few of them revolve around pulling people off Discord and back onto the site, but I also know that however difficult launching a regular forum platform might be, launching an RP one is an order of magnitude harder - unless it comes as a hosted service, SaaS style, it might as well be dead in the water as Vesta proved a couple of years ago (though Vesta had other issues that, IMO, stunted its growth potential). Large swathes of the audience don't understand (or care) about the separation between hosting and platform; they're one and the same, which is in no small part why Jcink rules parts of this ecosystem. (There *are* self hosted folks out there, even folks using the likes of IPS for their RP forum, but they're *really* the minority. And for other reasons I tend not to interact with that particular subset of the cohort, because they're much more about the stats and dice rolling and less about the storytelling side of it, which isn't my jam.)

But for example I have distinct thoughts on creating a new type of board whose topics functionally might as well be group chats on WhatsApp (public, private, whatever) and instead of 'posts' it's a stream of chat messages, but actually have it be more realtime than the usual forum experience. I think it needs to be a board with 'topics' (which implies chat conversations between two or more parties) rather than strictly a shoutbox type experience, to make it feel like it's an intentional part of the experience, something the average shoutbox does not.

There's a lot more I can talk about but I'm trying to focus on individual facets at a time because otherwise I'd never get anything done!