Panda-chan wrote:^ That has nothing to do with the layout and everything to do with the lack of members. I'm sure that when activity picks up again on the site, the new members are going to be super intimidated by the sheer amount of topics in every single forum.
Look at the Den for example. The sub-forums in the Den are the only thing that give it any semblance of organization. If you were to merge literally everything off-topic into one mega forum like you are suggesting, it'd be an insane amount of topics lumped together with no way to find anything. No new member would ever want to sift through all that to find something worth posting in, just to have it be drowned out by What are you thinking/eating/drinking/whining/breathing RN????? trashposts (because lets be honest, 99% of the time this is what gets bumped to the top).
Yeah but all the trash posts would be in the random or forum games section in the layout I suggested. And Member chat type threads and personal issues etc to be in the forum lounge. So its actually easier to find threads you might want to post in.
If you're acknowledging that there's a lot of spam in The Den, then why not have a dedicated area to move it to? I swear we used to have it and it was called The Arcade or something, worked fine.
I agree with the first point you made. Its lack of members caused by years of crappy drama, trashposting, lite trolling, spam etc and some quite frankly baffling decisions from the staff team that drove others away.
But I say try and make it as simpler and condensed as you can, because the layout we have now and even the one Az suggested really is still too much, its kinda still the same but without the really dead sections.
Try a drastically different layout and see how it goes. Because if you don't learn from your past, you're sure to repeat it.
Look at something like Reddit, the most popular forums online. You have one place to discuss everything related to the subject matter and that's the lot. I find it way better and easier but that could just be me.