Recruiting Skalds

[JoB]

I'd say once you've learned the necessary skills, taking just a half hour or more every few days to sort things and move threads would be a big help

[translates that to "2+h on the weekend, should work eat your time during the week"]
Sounds doable, so consider my hand raised as well.

[fully expects a Big Fi Scenario any second now]

[viola]

Lovely!

@JoB and @catbirds do either of you have experience with splitting and merging threads? We can do a quick training and overview on tuesday or wednesday evening (north america afternoon, europe evening). Right now we're thinking to move the boards around on wednesday (around europe afternoon time, north america morning). We can also do the training thursday or friday as well. If you're both comfortable with splitting and merging threads already then it's not mandatory, it's mostly just to make sure everyone is comfortable.

[JoB]

@JoB and @catbirds do either of you have experience with splitting and merging threads?

None whatsoever on my side ...

We can do a quick training and overview on tuesday or wednesday evening (north america afternoon, europe evening). [...] We can also do the training thursday or friday as well.

Not much of a preference there, "maybe better not Tuesday" at most, but how exactly is that training's going to be held? This upcoming week, I'll be at our offices (rather than in the home office), staying at a hotel (no reliable Internet) for the nights and having only the work equipment at hand (Linux laptop, strict Zoom interdiction, etc.) ...

(Is this a bad time to mention that I'm Linux-only medium-bandwidth DSL at home as well, though Teams works OK unless 5+ participants send video ... ?)

Right now we're thinking to move the boards around on wednesday (around europe afternoon time, north america morning).

(So the new topics hierarchy is already pinpointed? Must've missed that ...)

[JoB]

P.S.: Should I join the remaining group(s) in preparation for it all?

[catbirds]

Violas, any of the times you listed works except Friday, so whenever JoB is available. I have a pretty crummy laptop too but I can use discord or zoom or IRC or whatever else reliably.

...can't say I'm familiar with Teams, though, but if it's user-friendly then I can just sign up and all that.

I usually learn these sorts of things pretty quickly, so I'm not worried about it taking 2+ hours or anything!

[viola]

Ok, so potentially wednesday. I've been thinking though and talking to thegreyarea about the document they're creating. We might give you the document and see how that goes, and then if you have any questions we can maybe set up a meeting to clarify or if you're worried and want something demonstrated. Simply because of scheduling and tech. But we can still meet if there are issues or if the document isn't enough.

For those of you who might have discord, if you'd like to message me my user ID is feartheviolas#6094.

[catbirds]

Yeah, that makes sense. The general task seems simple and I'm hoping it'll be intuitive which sections everything goes into when the new boards are made :> (though that might end up being the most confusing part)

[viola]

Now that the boards have been created, let the skalding begin!

Here is an amazing document that @thegreyarea made to help explain skalding. The most important section is about moving topics. The other potentially relevant threads are around merging and splitting topics (although splitting shouldn't be too much of an issue, just merge anything that shows up more than once). If you have any questions, just ask here and someone will get to you asap.

KeepLooking and I have sorted a few posts so that you have some examples of things that would go in each of the boards. The main board that will need to be sorted is the general board. A lot of the content there will go into the new creative boards or the new story discussion boards.

The other big thing that needs to be sorted is the archive section. There are several different new subarchives to sort it into, every single thread in the main archive should be in a child board. The main archive (forum memories) section should only be for the explanation about the archive and requests to find or unarchive things. Otherwise it should all be in the child boards. The troubleshooting archive is underneath website discussion because it is visible to guests while the rest of the archives are not. For now, put archived SSSS related roleplay in the SSSS archive.

Aside from archive and general, the other boards don't need to be sorted at this point.

Important: do not unarchive threads without admin permission, some of these threads need to be invisible to guests for privacy reasons. The same goes for moving anything in the politics, personal, or mature content board. Nothing here should have to be moved, but if you do feel something there should be moved, ask an admin first because those boards are protected from being seen by guests.

Thank you so much for volunteering to help. Your skald status should be active. If you have any problems or any questions about where something should go just feel free to ask!

[Jitter]

I have a suggestion: don’t make the “thread has been moved” notifications on threads that were already archived, when moving them to the sub-archives. There are so many, it will clog everything. Just uncheck the box about the notification post.

[thegreyarea]

I fully agree. Archived topics don't need the warning post.

[catbirds]

Oh yeah that's definitely better. I was starting to wonder what we'd do with all the leftover threads because of that, thanks Jitter!

Thanks for the document too, Grey. It's very helpful

EDIT: I tried my hand at sorting some of them, most are in general/roleplay/SSSS & ARTD, but let me know if there are any major issues with the way I sorted them! The moving doesn't take too long, but the decision-making is a liiiittle tricky.

[Jitter]

Sorting the archive is a liiitle time consuming also because when I take a peek to see what a topic is actually all about, I get sucked in to read it



Catbirds, we’ll delete the “has been moved” notifications after a period, now they are useful to alert currently active users to paying attention to the new boards, but after a while returning users should expect that some changes may have taken place anyways so the alerts won’t be needed. Furthermore the new structure hopefully makes it easy to find what one is looking for.

[thegreyarea]

Sorting the archive is a liiitle time consuming also because when I take a peek to see what a topic is actually all about, I get sucked in to read it

I know, I know... I see exactly what you mean!

Anyway I'm quite happy with the way this is going! (I'm aware that I already said that, but I can't help it!)
Right now we're more on "reorganizing the archive" than "reorganizing the Forum", and the archive really needed some dusting, which, without surprise, makes one rediscover interesting things. We should consider if some topics should be unarchived, not now but after the reorganizing is complete, because at least a few that I've checked contain excellent ideas.

[JoB]

I have a suggestion: don’t make the “thread has been moved” notifications on threads that were already archived, when moving them to the sub-archives.

I was about to suggest that, if the objective is to get the top archiving board empty (except subboards and a couple meta threads), leaving "been moved" stubs in it is counterproductive.

Do I understand correctly, however, that we are planning to leave a noteworthy number of "doesn't fit into the subs" threads in the "General" board? If so, it would be nice to have some way of marking a thread as "already inspected and earmarked to stay here". Thread(starter) icon and the "pinned" or "locked" flags are IMHO unsuitable for that (because already in use), and putting threads into a temp subboard and shoving them back later would be a 2nd-rate choice, due to the extra work. Is there a technical possibility to do that? (And would leaving "moved" stubs there be desirable?)

Due warning: I'm currently at work(place) for the week and force majeure has come to my 'hood, so I might not be able to get my skald hat seriously on this upcoming weekend yet.

[viola]

For the archives, we can just delete the "moved" notices. I've been mass moving some things there without creating the "moved" notice.

There are some topics I've been unarchiving esp for the new more general boards to hopefully generate some convo. That is 100% a possibility. If there are any just make a list to let me or @Keep Looking double check to make sure that sensitive threads stay for members only.