Suggestion - Game Highlights section

In recent months there seems to have been a dramatic increase in the amount of post-game analysis that goes on in the various meeting threads. I rather like reading and participating in them, but I'm not convinced that the meeting threads are the right place for them - I've occasionally had to go back into the thread to pull some session info out and wading through 2-5 pages of such stuff can be a bit of a chore (especially if you're in a hurry) so I thought maybe it would be a good idea to create a section specifically for post-game analysis/chatter/trashtalk in the hope of keeping the meeting threads lean. Would also then give a place to discuss the more ad-hoc games people arrange too then... What do you think?

For me, I don't have a problem with what we have right now Paul. It seems like each meeting thread naturally goes through 2 phases.

1. Before the meeting; people pre-arrange what to play, who's turing up, any other arrangements, can someone bring game X etc.
2. After the meeting; game session analysis (which I enjoy a lot too), game X was sucky, game X was cool, etc.

For me personally, I can't see any pressing need to split that up in to 2 separate threads; and it kinda makes sense (to me) having everything relating to one meeting, all in the same place. Also saves the overhead of having to maintain multiple threads, and wondering if something will be in the one thread or the other.

Paul?

DaveB wrote:Paul?

Oooh! Ah!

Sorry Dave...

I'm fairly ambivalent on this. I'm a bit obsessive so like to read all the posts about everything :-) I can see the argument either way, I suppose it depends on how you use the forum. If we do split them then I'd suggest someone posts a final reply to the "organising" thread with a link to the "analysis" thread so it's easy to follow through in the future.

Whilst we're on the topic of where to post things... are people cool with people (quite often me) posting 'non-official' events in the Club Meetings forum or should I be putting them in General Ramblings?

Oh, the other thing I meant to write was that I enjoy reading the post-game analysis and the first impressions that people have of games. If creating a new area for them would encourage more people to do it then that would be a good thing in my book! On the other hand, if asking people not to do it in the meeting thread stopped them then that would be a bad thing.

Another very helpful post from me then...

We do have the game review section... things like this could go in there. I'm like Paul - I like reading the match reports...

Worth considering as part of a general review of the website and forum I think.

I'm planning to put some time in to it over the summer.

Aneurin wrote:We do have the game review section... things like this could go in there. I'm like Paul - I like reading the match reports...

Yeah, this, but I would rename the review section maybe to just "Games", have a thread for each game and people post all thoughts about that game in the appropriate thread.

Whilst we're on the topic of where to post things... are people cool with people (quite often me) posting 'non-official' events in the Club Meetings forum or should I be putting them in General Ramblings?

No reason to have meetings threads spread out into two subforums. We're not running out of space in the first one! I think even thread like "Anyone played (or would like to play) Diplomacy?" belong in that forum.

Probably all we need is

"Forum for organizing meetings"
"Forum for talking about board games"
"Forum for talking about anything else"
"Forum for organizing sales and trades"
"Members only lounge (club kitty, affiliated shops etc.)"

Super-organized.

It would be nice if we could put people's games library list into their profile. Is there a widget for that?

Yeah, this, but I would rename the review section maybe to just "Games", have a thread for each game and people post all thoughts about that game in the appropriate thread.

That's fine (a good idea) I think.

However, isn't general discussion about a particular game, different to discussion about a particular session with a particular game? Like we have lots of sessions of Avalon (hurrah) and I always love to do some post game analysis, trying to understand what I didn't do so well, how I might improve my game, and also to better understand different perspectives of the other players. Ramming all that in to one thread, I don't think is a good idea; however, having a distinct, per game, thread; to discuss general mechanics of a game, etc etc; sounds good.

I don't think it's necessary to differentiate that finely. I don't think it's even possible. In a thread about a session you will of course analyse and review and judge particular mechanics (as you do when talking about Avalon and which cards benefit which team), and in a discussion about a particular game you will inevitably refer to particular sessions.

Besides, it's not that many posts. If Byron Quackfield's epic review with bolded paragraph headings and a percentile rating standard has to contend with Jimmie McHaggis's shorter and less grammatically correct review — reviewing, in particular, who got slammed by his unbeatable Cockroach Poker strat last night, and how — so be it.

Jamie wrote:
For me personally, I can't see any pressing need to split that up in to 2 separate threads; and it kinda makes sense (to me) having everything relating to one meeting, all in the same place.

But it also makes sense to have everything relating to one game in the same place. More sense, in fact. If you want to find out what people at the club thought about a game, how are you going to find that out from the meetings thread? How would you know what games were even played at what meeting?

On the other hand, nobody is ever going to think "I wonder what games were played on 16/09/2007, and what people thought of them". People who were at the meeting or want to know what they were missing can see what was going down by viewing the recent posts, or see which threads have the new post symbol. After a week, though, nobody will want to search posts by session, only by game or user.

I do like the idea of making a link to the game thread from the meeting thread for the date that the game was played on, but it's for slight convenience and organization, probably not significant.

Thread for each game gets a thumbs up from me

I like it as it is now. A thread per session, with discussion on individual games that happened on that night, all within that same thread.

I'd have a problem, if say, all the debate on every Avalon game, was all in the same thread; can you imagine how many pages that would be? I suspect you'd be wading through more than the 2-5 pages that Dave suggested in the OP, to find the content your after!

Though, having a specific, non session related, thread per game; I think is a good idea. Don't we have something like that already? I'm sure I've seen it. Maybe I'm thinking of game review threads?

I just want us all to get along...

Paul wrote:I just want us all to get along...

Obviously the traitor...

PaulG wrote:

Paul wrote:I just want us all to get along...

Obviously the traitor...

Yeah, Spy!!

Sorry Dave, I think I have to disagree with you on this one.
In my opinion, I think it works well as it is. As has been noted already, the weekly posts combine into a great chapter each week, with build up, trash talk then analysis forming similarly trending format.
With the popularity of post game stuff at this time, a new thread would still provide a couple of pages to trawl through. For now, pre is clearly pg 1 and post is usually pg 5.
I would prefer to keep the review page as overview and opinion of theme, mechanics and gameplay rather than dissection of a particular session.

Done

Also, PaulG, I think club meetings is the perfect place to arrange an extra meet of club members

All the club meeting information is disposable, useless posts once we have actually got to the meeting that the thread was for. But I don't consider the analysis or opinions disposable (maybe a dry play-by-play recounting of one session is disposable, but nobody posts like that). Essentially by posting our end of night thoughts in the same thread as the one we use to organize the meeting, we're throwing good food out with the trash.

Organizing discussion by session date is madness. Imagine you walked into the non-fiction section of a library and rather than sorted by Dewey Decimal they were sorted by date published!

Consider the below:

Alex wrote:In my opinion, I think it works well as it is. As has been noted already, the weekly posts combine into a great chapter each week, with build up, trash talk then analysis forming similarly trending format.

"Chapters", as if anyone would read them from start to finish after the night.

Moreover when you get to the reviews there are two or three discussion happening about different games that have no connection with each other except that they were played on the same night. Doesn't make for a good narrative!

What makes for a more interesting "chapter":

1. Three pages of people suggesting games, signing up for games, introducing themselves — that is, stuff nobody cares about after the night — following by disconnected and unorganized posts of thoughts on various games that might refer to previous sessions, except you don't know which ones or how to find those posts. Oh, and after two weeks it is near impossible to find any of the posts in this thread also because you won't remember which date you played which games.

Or 2. A thread on one game where you can clearly see the opinions of all members who want to share them in one place, how opinions on the game develops and changes, the evolution of strategies over time, examples of particular sessions and how particular sessions have created the preconceptions that you'll see in future posts in the thread ("You can never trust Dave", "We didn't want to play the Hunter module" etc.).

I would prefer to keep the review page as overview and opinion of theme, mechanics and gameplay rather than dissection of a particular session.

Almost nobody uses the review section so "keeping it" is moot.

I know if the grand scheme of things it isn't super important. We're here for the meetings, and if we didn't meet this forum wouldn't exist. But I can't think of a single advantage of the current system, except that it's what we're used to. If this forum have been for discussion of games first, and we only started arranging meets afterwards, we would have a section for games talk and later a club meetings thread would be created so the club meetings organization doesn't muck up the games discussion, which is basically what we have now: all the talk in one messy jumble, no organization, where all posts are forgotten after seven days. It's only slightly better than a chat room.

Thanks Sam - that was pretty much what I was going for but arranged into a better argument

I was against it until I read Sam's post. We just have to encourage people to post in reviews after the fact rather than in the meet thread. Maybe change reviews to 'game discussion'

I'm kind of against a massive game by game section... (BGG has that sown up)... do I have to search for 'game X' before I post as to not clutter the forum? Isn't adding more threads already adding clutter? There a literally thousands of different games at the club over a year. Trawling through to find if a particular game has already been commented on - ok you can use the search tool... but its not that great.

What if my comment is purely - 'great game last night - can't believe Karl duped me again'... that's as much trash as the session thread and no-one would refer back to it. So why not throw it out with the trash?

I agree with Kes that we should encourage people to post in the 'review/thoughts' section. Re-named etc. Yes there are some more substantial reviews in the session threads that are getting lost...

But then some of the comments here just sound like people want a more moderated forum? Where the moderators stop access to 'trash' threads and put stuff in a 'correct' review location? Then the problem is time for the moderators.

Isn't adding more threads already adding clutter?

That's like saying adding cupboards, drawers and bookshelves to your bedroom is adding clutter.

I don't expect mods to do any more work. In fact I expect people will naturally post about a game in that game's thread, even without the encouragement Kes suggested. I think the reason people don't use the review forum is because "review" implies a certain style and length that post people don't care to adhere to. But given a choice to post in thread 1 or thread 2 as outlined above, I think most people will post in thread 2. Yeah, even if it means typing two or three words into the search bar (you mention that the search bar isn't very good, and I used to agree, but to test it I typed the names of a few games that I knew had threads in the Reviews forum and I found them all without fail in less than a second).

What if my comment is purely - 'great game last night - can't believe Karl duped me again"... that's as much trash as the session thread and no-one would refer back to it. So why not throw it out with the trash?

Agreed, but I can handle a few trash comments in the games threads if it means better organization overall. Besides, I think most people would still post that comment in the club meetings forum, exactly because it is a disposable comment and the poster knows that. I think people can work out if a post belongs in "Forum for arranging meeting" or "Forum for talking about games", and if some posts get caught up in the wrong forum, it's not the end of the world. I just think the best option is to give members the choice.

On that point, why not test it? We can sit here imagining and guessing all day but the best to to find out how something will work in practice is to put it into practice. Let's open a games forum (keep the review forum separate for now, that's a different issue), and see how much discussion it gets compared to the meetings forum after, say, two months.

I'm not as fussed about this as my posts probably imply. I'm quite happy to post thoughts in the meetings threads as I have been doing for about two years now. I just know that if I was going to make a forum and I wanted it to be the best forum it could be, this is the way I would do it.

Sam wrote:I'm not as fussed about this as my posts probably imply.

It's good that you care though, enough to voice your opinion.

To be honest, I'm not sure I understand what the problem is. I don't have a problem at all, with how things are now; but that doesn't mean other people don't...

I just feel posting post game analysis on meet threads, is easy and convenient. I'm already engaged with that thread, so when I get home, I find it easy to locate that thread (always at, or near, the top of the meets section) and engage with it. If I had to go hunting down another thread, I don't think I'd bother half the time.

That's another concern I have, how would any significant changes to the forum, impact on ease of use, etc. Or even dissuade people from posting?

It's not a massive issue though, I just want to play games!