FWIW I hate this layout. Way too many things to click on to get any sense of 'what's happening' compared to the old way.
EDIT: realized this was not a constructive comment -- I'm with Tekkub, use the wiki to categorize things and point to the right forum threads in there.
I can only agree, the new structure is terrible. This is an move caused by a vote where most of the people have no idea on how to properly structure community sites (and no, I'm not god either, but my job over 5 years was community site development of the national tv and radio broadcaster in my home country, with 2 million site users). See my post somewhere else. Wait, I'll quote it for you, with more child forums than active posters you won't find it otherwise.
I HATE the new child forums. I can't find my own addons, and I have no clue where others might be. Also, as there is no WAP2 page for unread posts, I very often browse the forums via WAP2 and I definetly not plan to click through 20 child forums without knowing if there's anything new in there, you're gonna see me way less in the future.
This move has destroyed the community over the long term for structure reasons. Why? Because a community only feels like a community if you see that it is active. With all the child forums you'll have three lonely posters in each of the subforums that contain 3-5 addons each. We now have more forums in total than active posters.
If you want something from me, you'll have to send me a PM or hope I'm in IRC. Goodbye, forums.
Maybe since the forum is still fresh and its not a big job it would be a good idea to subcategorize the addons that are already here and any future released ace2 addons.
Eww.. can we get rid of the subcategories? It might of sounded like a cool idea at first but it just makes the site hard to navigate and doesn't add any value. The same problem happened with the wowinterface.com site when all the ace addons got divided up over there too.. i simply stopped looking because it took too long to see what was new and what was happening. If you want categories, I agree with what has already been said.. use the wiki. :) I think we should merge all of the posts from ace1 and ace2 addons into a single forum and then focus on the wiki to provide a better way for people to get introduced to the addons. The biggest knock I hear against Ace addons is that people find it hard to find information about the addons. By making the ace wiki a worldclass wiki site we can make it very smooth for people who are looking for Ace addons to find what they need and from there provide links back in to the relavent threads on the forums if they want more discussion.
I have to concur with the above few posters....
When I came to the boards and saw all the cats... I was a very sad panda.
Tekub has the right idea. Forums to be as flat as possible.
You have been Critted for 1000000!!!!! wall of catagories. You are now stunned.
I think the biggest problem with the new structure is that almost all threads is not in a category and there are too many of them. Some catagories like raid and a few more would be enough, if the category of mods is huge. There is no point to have 10 categories that is empty.
If the structure stay like this all threads have to be moves into the right category by somone...
please get rid of all those stupid sub forums or at least reduce their number dramatically. like: raid, class specific, fubar, other.
there is no way i will check all those 17 forums for new posts or even new addons!
even if you are searching for a specific addon it would take forever to find it, as most fit in more than one category
I think some of the categories - action bars, raid addons & unit frames most notably - are warranted and well-placed. However, I feel most of them are either too narrow (data export, mail) or too generic (miscellaneous, interface enhancements) to be of use. It's good that we're trying out solutions to make the clutter a bit more navigateable, but I think this is just too much and has ended up being counter-productive.
I don't think there are THAT many Ace AddOns to warrant all these categories. The Wiki should be for finding information, not the forums. Please revert them back to the previous style, it was SO much easier and less time consuming to navigate.
I typically come to the forums to see what new addons are available - many times there will be new things in categories I didn't even know I needed. With the new layout, I'd have to browse umpteen different subforums to get any concept of what's really new. And as others have said, some mods cross category boundaries and will get lost by being miscategorized. If you keep up with the forums every few days or so, there aren't that many pages to review for updates. +1 for the old layout.
EDIT: realized this was not a constructive comment -- I'm with Tekkub, use the wiki to categorize things and point to the right forum threads in there.
Eww.. can we get rid of the subcategories? It might of sounded like a cool idea at first but it just makes the site hard to navigate and doesn't add any value. The same problem happened with the wowinterface.com site when all the ace addons got divided up over there too.. i simply stopped looking because it took too long to see what was new and what was happening. If you want categories, I agree with what has already been said.. use the wiki. :) I think we should merge all of the posts from ace1 and ace2 addons into a single forum and then focus on the wiki to provide a better way for people to get introduced to the addons. The biggest knock I hear against Ace addons is that people find it hard to find information about the addons. By making the ace wiki a worldclass wiki site we can make it very smooth for people who are looking for Ace addons to find what they need and from there provide links back in to the relavent threads on the forums if they want more discussion.
When I came to the boards and saw all the cats... I was a very sad panda.
Tekub has the right idea. Forums to be as flat as possible.
You have been Critted for 1000000!!!!! wall of catagories. You are now stunned.
If the structure stay like this all threads have to be moves into the right category by somone...
there is no way i will check all those 17 forums for new posts or even new addons!
even if you are searching for a specific addon it would take forever to find it, as most fit in more than one category
Out of curiosity, why do FuBar plugins get a catagory of their own?
"Duh, Theo, because you need FuBar to use them."
Right... but so what? FuBar is a required dependancy, not a pointer towards what an addon is good for.
http://www.wowace.com/forums/index.php/topic,2174.0.html
23 child boards of which one has 3 more of its own child boards
:boggle:
Agreed. Why do I have to scroll down almost two pages worth of child boards before getting to the topics?
http://www.wowace.com/forums/index.php/topic,2174.0.html
http://www.wowace.com/forums/index.php/topic,2178.0.html