Isn't it about time DDRFreak made some changes...?

[8ftmetalhead]

As much as I love DDR freak, I too feel that the site is becoming stale and dated. Users have almost completely stopped posting, and that discourages new users who see the topic dates and think "hmm, a dead community".

There's even a topic on beatspace that suggests that DDR Freak IS dead.

I really feel that the site could use a bit of a tweak, if not in a graphical rework, certainly a organizational one.

For example, your topic in bemani controllers on "my home built metal pad" was started in 2003. People tend to not want to read through over 100 pages of post looking for the information they want, so why not compile the most important bits of information you can find, and then make a new sticky? Then, for any missing information, you can ask the users what they feel should be added.

I've just noticed your sticky saying you're going to merge the DDR related forums and (after deleting my own paragraph that would have suggested the same sort of thing) think it's a good idea. As long as you do it correctly.
When you move them, take the stickies that were the most popular, and give them a kick in the pants. Then pick them up, brush them off, and set them off again.
As above, people aren't going to read through the hundreds of pages that have accumulated since god knows when, (ie) of people achieving this or that.
They'll read maybe the first and last 2-5 pages before posting their own, and then only focusing on the last ones.
This is relevant to the achievements topics, of course, but why not just make 1 sticky for "DDR Achievements"


Anyway, i'm posting myself into a bluster, so i'm going to leave it at that for now.

TL;DR - Spring clean the forums, gather the "best of collection" from the existing stickies/forums, repost them in a cleaner and more streamlined format to encourage focused activity, as opposed to random posts every few days or whatever.

[JIZZWIZARD OF THE YEAST]

delete fucking everything. nice start with Imaging.

like when I told you retards that the media forum was a bad idea, more subforums actually equals less posts.

there should only be three subforums: DDR stuff, Random Chat, and the Penis Palace.

[HumanBeing]

Most of the posts/topics probably aren't very important to save. (For example, I made these scores on these songs).

Other stuff is important to save. (For example, this is how you make your own home pad. Or these are the codes for such and such arcade machine to unlock everything. Or this is how you manage to get your own Stepmania songs onto ITG PS2. And so forth)

If you simply lock and then delete entire subforums, you then also remove all the potentially useful information they contained as well and as a consequence make the site less useful.

If you want to trim up subforums, might it be better to make a new subforum called, say, 'Archive' and then have that one be locked yet ever present (don't delete it) and then move all the other to-be-deleted subforums under there? No more posting allowed, but this still allows people to search for the few useful things if they want them.

So someone would click on Archive from the main forums and then be presented with a new page with all the old (now locked/unpostable) forums in there, click on what they wanted, then browse through.

It removes clutter from the main page, while disallowing new posting in the old subforums, while still allowing people to search through them if they want.
_________________

I'm a human being! :-O

[J Dogg]

HB, while I agree with you in theory (and actually that's how I ran the place for the last 9 years), the search function is not good enough to actually bring up the important posts. In fact, part of the reason is because of the huge number of posts cluttering the database.

My plan is to move the somewhat important stickies into the surviving DDR forum, unsticky them, and delete everything else in the subforum to be deleted that hasn't been accessed for 6 months.
_________________

[HumanBeing]

Eh. The search function has always been broken.

I just use Google to search through this (or any site) rather than using site-specific search functionality anyway.

All you do is, say, you want to search for every occurrance of "AAA" in ddrfreak.com in google. So your google query would be.

site:www.ddrfreak.com AAA

and it'll find it even though the site's own search function is messed up.

In any case, I'd recommend saving all the important stuff though at least (All the howto's, do-it-yourself, homebrew, mods, codes, etc...) because much of that cannot be easily found elsewhere and someone may come across an old DDR arcade machine they bought and want some of that information.

Also, since the search is messed up, why not just disable it entirely and just put a sticky telling people to use google search instead with the site-specific modifier or something?
_________________

I'm a human being! :-O

[J Dogg]

Yes, I do plan on moving any important threads I find into DDR Chit-Chat to be saved.

Also, great idea about replacing the phpBB search with google search.
_________________

[HumanBeing]

Random Chat is broken. It looks like it is being invaded by the year 2003. :-P

Seriously though, it doesn't matter what page you click on, it's the same topics from 2003 which are there. Is this some kind of an inside joke? Or is it a legitimate bug? A result of merging other subforums into Random Chat?

---edit

So yeah. Somehow random chat magically got fixed. It is magic I tell you! Leprechauns, Voodoo, Unicorns. The precise formula has something to do with Leprechauns using Voodoo on the Unicorns while reciting passages from the Necronomicon and summoning Cthulhu.
_________________

I'm a human being! :-O

[Edible Bondage Tape]

this rash of deleating old stuff has once again put me at over 1% of all posts made

feels nice to be back if even for a bit
_________________

[­Laundry]

Just a quick suggestion for reorganization now that a bunch of forums are gone: Move "Other Bemani" and "Music Game Controllers" up to the top forum category as the top forum is getting bare and those forums don't really belong with the other forums in the category.