How to reduce the number of posts wrongly placed in KSP Discussion

[Deddly]

If you're a regular on this forum, you have probably noticed there are quite a few posts that are made in "KSP Discussion" that don't belong there, which makes it cluttered and creates more work for the moderators. Today seems extra busy in that respect:

We have talked about this a little before, but I'd be interested in your opinion on some suggestions that may or may not help. We can't expect a complete solution, of course, but please take a look at the options in the poll and choose an option that matches your honest opinion.

Edited August 6, 2016 by Deddly
Accidentally made it look official - it isn't

[Snark]

We've tried other names in the past... didn't seem to help much.  My own (highly unscientific) take on it is not that it has the wrong name, or that it's too conveniently placed.  It's that a significant number of users can't or won't figure out "where is the right place for <specific thing>."

If I had to guess at the thought process for someone coming to the forums who's not very familiar with the subforum taxonomy, I'd guess it would go something like this.

1. I have <thing> that I want to say or ask.
2. I know, I'll go to the KSP forum and post it there!
3. ...um, what?  There's no "forum", there's like a zillion specialized things and they want me to put it in one of them?
4. Well, I could try to go through every one, and read a bunch of stuff in it, and try to figure out "is this the one where my post goes".  But that would take a lot of time and effort and maybe confusing.
5. Help!  I just want place to say what I want to say!  I don't want to have to figure out where someone else, who made up rules I don't know, would want me to put it!
6. Let me see if I can find any forum at all that looks like "anything goes" where I don't have to worry about whether my specific topic matches some specific subforum topic.
7. Oh, hey!  This one fits the bill.  "KSP Discussion."  There, done.

...To be clear, I don't intend any of the above to be in any way dismissive or critical of people who go through that-- I think it's a natural human tendency.  "I don't want to mess with all these complicated subforums, I just want to post, darn it."

So I'm dubious that renaming and/or moving the forum would help much.  Other than forcing all users to go through some sort of "wizard" UI before they can post (which would be a cure worse than the disease, I think), I honestly don't see that it's solvable.  I think that individual users do learn, given time... but there's always a supply of brand-new users.

[ZooNamedGames]

 moderator to moderator discussion! Interesting!

[r4pt0r]

If people think at all like I have before, it's "Let me post this in the main area, so it gets views and replies before the mods shunt it into some unpopular subforum where no one will see it"

 

I admit I have been guilty of this before. The general ksp discussion section is viewed as the "front page" for some. You want to be on the very front of the newspaper, or front of section E? 15 minutes on the front page can get you more views and feedback  then just outright posting in the right area sometimes.

[Deddly]

8 hours ago, ZooNamedGames said:

 moderator to moderator discussion! Interesting!

Not quite, I wasn't a moderator when I started this thread

[KSK]

Is it worth trying to implement a 'wizard' of sorts by reordering the sub-forums? There's a also a lot of relatively dead space at the top of the forum at the moment - reading from top to bottom, General Discussion is the first useful looking sub-forum you come to and I'm wondering if that's why it tends to be a dumping ground. In which case, re-purposing or removing the white space, to expose more of the sub-forum list without scrolling might help, as well as trying to filter out the more common misplaced post types from the General Discussion forum by making sure that the relevant sub-forums appear above it in the list.

Purely to kick off the discussion (so feel free to shoot any of these ideas down in flames), I would:

1. Remove Squad's advert or relegate it to a more appropriate sub-forum such as Add-on Releases or Add-on Development, where potential developers are likely to be hanging out.
2. Move the General section (Announcements and the Daily Kerbal) into the sidebar with the Devblogs. The General section definitely needs to stay since it's the Voice of Squad on this forum but purely from the number of posts it attracts, I would suggest that it's not the first port of call for most visitors.
3. Rejig the General KSP section to include - in order - the following sub-forums:  Welcome Aboard, Gameplay Questions and Tutorials, Suggestions and Development Discussion, General Discussion.
4. Insert a new Community Content section to hold the Spacecraft Exchange, Challenges and Mission ideas and Fan Works sub-forums.
5. Rename the Gameplay and Technical Support section as simply the Technical Support section.

Everything else can stay where it is since it's less immediately relevant to new players.

Edited August 16, 2016 by KSK

[ZooNamedGames]

6 hours ago, Deddly said:

Not quite, I wasn't a moderator when I started this thread

So you got modded in the last week or so?

Edited August 16, 2016 by ZooNamedGames

[Alshain]

I think it's been renamed enough.  Probably the most effective solution would be to reorder the list so it appears in the middle or at the bottom so people actually have to read through the forum names to find it.

[regex]

There's no way to fix that, mods just need to stay on top of this. Anecdotal experience from here and the EVE-O forums suggests that any sort of "General Discussion" will be the first place that a user will consider putting a post for the reasons already given: Visibility and general laziness.

[Alshain]

Well here is a thought provoking idea... do we need a general discussion forum at all?  I mean you are either discussing gameplay or development or mods or something that goes in one of the other forums.  Arguably all of the threads that haven't been locked or move there could easily fit somewhere else.

"What did you do in KSP today" is 1034 pages of Mission Reports.

Edited August 16, 2016 by Alshain

[Red Iron Crown]

13 hours ago, regex said:

There's no way to fix that, mods just need to stay on top of this. Anecdotal experience from here and the EVE-O forums suggests that any sort of "General Discussion" will be the first place that a user will consider putting a post for the reasons already given: Visibility and general laziness.

I'd have to agree with this, the number of threads that get misposted to KSP Discussion is not all that large and some of them are deliberately put there anyway (usually for the reason @r4pt0r mentions). 

12 hours ago, Alshain said:

Well here is a thought provoking idea... do we need a general discussion forum at all?  I mean you are either discussing gameplay or development or mods or something that goes in one of the other forums.  Arguably all of the threads that haven't been locked or move there could easily fit somewhere else.

Not everything is neatly categorizable, and there's nothing really wrong with a "catch-all" section.

Quote

"What did you do in KSP today" is 1034 pages of Mission Reports.

There's a lot more than mission reports in there. That's easily one of the best threads on the whole forum (IMO, of course), exactly because posters can share quick, one post descriptions of interesting things they've done or seen in KSP, without it being a full blown mission report. Plus some are just showing a craft they're proud of, or an interesting glitch, or any number of other things that aren't really mission reports.