This rearrangement is something the admins have thought about for a long time.  The reason why we haven't done it before is that we wanted to create a kind of news archive with the names of those custom mansions, which have got their own discussion boards.  We never found a way to create such an archive and thus made the locked "Hall of fame" thread.

Whether or not a custom mansion - any custom mansion - should have a special board is of course open to discussion.  I personally find it easier to browse these special boards than to look up big and/or multiple threads in the "Talk" board.

As people can see I moved the threads of some of these boards back to the "Talk" board because there had not been any traffic (i.e. posts) for at least 3 months.  The new custom mansions, which got their own boards, have had a lot of traffic lately and the last post is no older than 3 months.  (Perhaps that is too much but we had to start somewhere).

As for DoD, that mansion deserves to hit the newly established (and progressing) "Hall of fame".  If we, the admins, had done this work sooner, as we intended, it surely would have.  We want to thank aquaMat for pointing out to us the many threads of DoD.

One final thing:  The only mansion as for now, which always will have a special board is Catacombs.  Yes, even MM&M may one day find itself in the common "Talk" board.

To have no misunderstandings, first something about the used terms.

1° What we often call "our boards" has an official name: . Plural.
2° MMF is divided in . E.g. "Free Chat".
3° Each category can have multiple or . Both words are synonyms. And a very popular example is "Talk". With this software one can NOT create subforums, what is a pity.
4° A forum or a board contains . Every forummember that is at least a Lost One, can start new topics.
5° When a member starts a topic or replies in a topic, he makes a or a . Also synonyms.

The current issue has to do with our most popular category: "Custom Mansions Area". And especially everything that has to do with the oncoming or existing mansions. There are now already over 75 custom mansions created by nearly 20 designers. No wonder that 168 topics have been started, with a current amount of 1.963 posts. I don't think that the large number of posts is a real problem. But, from the point of view from a member who is searching for something particular, we have to deal we two important things.
1° How can we organize MMF, so that a member may find his/her way within 168 topics?
2° How can be avoided that the name of a topic doesn't cover the contents of all posts?

Suppose that MMF only has one forum to discuss all our mansions: "Talk". Then we would have a board with ... 50 pages? And it is not because a topic or post is old, that it isn't important. So we are forced to have a system to make searching for an item reasonable.

The very first thing that comes into my mind is that there is a serious problem with the topics-subjects. Very often one can't know what a topic is about without opening it. And that is assumedly the major problem. (Not only here, but in almost all forums.) With what we did in the past by creating a few extra forums like "Talk/Midnight Mazes and Monsters", we do not only have the problem with why (not) and when (not), but this way of further dividing also has an other side of the coin. When starting a new topic in this kind of forum, for obvious reasons, no one starts with telling about which mansion the topic is about. That makes bringing this topics back to "Talk" rather difficult.

As administrators we can do "everything". That means: manually!! Even making archives. A few examples:
1° each time that someone starts a topic we can correct the subject;
2° each time that someone makes a post we can check if it is completely to the subject and, if not, start cutting and moving.
No forummember is expecting that from us, admins. I think.

But that doesn't take the problem away. Suppose I want to know something about House of Coin. Do I need to open "Stuck in room 15933" or "... and again!"? And that brings me to aquaMat's remark that too many individual boards for custom mansions would make the browsing harder. He is right of course. But when I bring this issue in balance with the much bigger problem that even experienced forummembers have, when they want to see if a Q&A is already on the forums, I believe that there isn't much choise. And opening category-folders is less work than opening tons of topics to find out what they are about.

Giving all custom mansions an own forum would, for the time being, be over the edge. But to keep it reasonable, my final suggestion is to work with 19 forums:
- "Talk" for general issues and the only mansion of which no one so far could recall who the designer was (Knu's Infinite);
- one "Talk/...." for each designer and on the homepage you may see the names of the made mansions.
In this way, I hope that a (new) forummember may find faster what he/she is searching for.

Concerning the other question about topics that have posts not-to-subject, I think that once in a while we, active forummembers, need to remind each other about staying to topic.

I await all your replies. Don't hesitate, because, as I said at the beginning of this post, this issue is about Midnight Mansion Forums, not the admins'!

aquaMat wrote on 19.09.2007 at 04:13:22:

If it is "look up", it is NOT that difficult. Since there is a list sorted by mansionnames.

While you're right, of course, Vern, I have to assure you that my initial remarks were not made because of jealousy, but for the need to get clarified why some mansions do get their own forums and others, with equal or more posts / threads sometimes don't; and to get a discussion started on how to improve that system.

I still don't see much clearer now, I have to confess and while Freddy made some great suggestions on how we could improve the system no attempts have been made to put them at work, as far as I know.

I just realised that the new inclusion of a forum for our new designer Nick (which I first didn't understand at all, as there weren't exactly many posts inside of it), might be meant as test-run to put the above-mentioned suggestions by Freddy into action. If so, well done.... and of course I have to take back the statement  I made above !!    (Edit made ca. 10 mins later)