Forum Restructuring

As you should have noticed if you are a member of our community (if not, why not sign up and introduce yourself?), the forums have been restructured a bit after discussions with and suggestions from the moderator staff. Over the years with the additions of new forums and with the removal of old forums that were phased out, the category structure got a little strange.

We hope you will find this new order more logical in both category seperation and in the ordering of importance.

The only forum which has been removed is the RuneScape Fake Pictures forum because of declining interest. All the topics that were in that forum have been moved to Runescape Related Media, and new fake images may still be posted in that forum as long as they are labeled as being a fake.

The RuneScape Questions forum has had it's topic broadened a bit to include topics of any small advice you may have on RuneScape to the community. If activity in this forum does not increase, it too may be phased out.

I'd also like to point out that our auto-locking procedure has changed a bit. The first page of topics in most forums will remain unlocked unless the discussion has come to a conclusion or the topic author requests it's lock, in which case it will be locked by a moderator. A few forums such as news forums have been changed to order topics by topic creation date instead to accomodate this. An example is the RSBANDBUpdate! Forum where a few of the older episodes can still be discussed instead of just the newest one.

Finally, we'd like to ask you guys for suggestions on how to encourage community users to host more of their own events. We always get complaints about the times of our official hosted events, but the Community Events Forum is largely unused. We've tried lots of event times for official events in the past and have decided to just settle for times that bring in the most people, but that doesn't stop you from hosting your own events. The glory days for events in that forum was before the end of 2007 when the GE and new restrictions on trade were introduced, but there is still lots of fun to be had in RuneScape with others. What is stopping people from hosting their own events?

Arg new forum layout will take some getting used to i got all confused when i first jumped on earlier.

As for community events. My only solution after 20 seconds of considering it is when you guys post the monthly round up of events to come give community events a plug as well as no one goes in the community events area anyway.

Gotta make people awere of it.

edit; And a plug on RSBANDB Update would be good. And in the newspaper. And more closer to the event time runewire and clanchat. Make use of all your resources.

I like how the Welcoming Area is at the top. After so many years of seeing it near the bottom of the page, it just seems more logical that it should be the first forum that people see.

As for Events, I'm not sure what you guys currently do to promote events (beyond advertising it on the front page) but use every outlet available to you. RSBANDBUpdate gets a lot of fans that aren't necessarily part of the forums.

I personally find that the few events we do have are good enough for me. I only pay close attention to the PC Gaming Event and one is better than none at all. Sure, it would be nice for more events to come along, but it all depends on the interest of everyone else in the event. It's kind of like WoW. You can start a raid on your own and invite people to come, but who knows how many actual people would end up coming. I believe it would be the same on here as well. 1) People might be in a state of mind that no one or very few will want to join or 2) no one or very few are actually interested in having more events. I don't think it's a bad thing we don't have a lot of member-made events. I think an event here and there is just as good as none at all. If you want to start something, why not shoot it past everyone else and see who is interested. Otherwise, I'd say you might as well leave the forum there just in case anyone wants to do that kind of thing. Like with SOTW, I think interest in events has died down, but unlike SOTW, I'm sure there are some ideas for events floating around out there that just haven't been said yet. For those ideas, the events forum should continue to exist. Otherwise, the rest of the Forum news seems to be straight forward.

P.S. I agree with Jay when he says attendance is a problem. Often times, people will vote or say they will come and then don't show up at all. If you want to have more successful events, make sure people are being earnest and that when they say they are going to come, that they actually do. Otherwise, it is pretty disheartening to host an event where only a few people show up.

The ideas about Events Crew promotion are great. It would be nice to be able to make people commit to an event but unfortunately we aren't mind control experts... yet.

Another question to everyone who's posted (and the community), would you be more inclined to host events if they were Events Crew promoted? Along with this is there any other support that would be welcomed aside from promotion?

To me the issue is that the events aren't being hosted. This could be caused by attendance but there may be other reasons. Are there other reasons aside from attendance? Yes? No? Maybe?

Edit: Would you be more likely to host an event if there was a more official system in place?

I would agree with you, however the events crew of both past and present haven't always shown up to their own events, some events have had little success, yet they still remain promoted.



I would be much more likely to host events if this system were to be introduced.

I just don't think there is enough interest in unoffical events. If they were supported by the Event's Crew, you might get a little more following, but bottom line either people need to show up or don't say they will. I personally am not looking for a bunch of events like I said. The events we have seem to be good as they are. The thing with events is finding something that people share in common and enjoy doing and form an event around it. If there is no interest to do events outside of what the Event's Crew runs, then I wouldn't try to push it. If the interest is there, the events will be started and ran, but if not, you just aren't going to see it at all.

It does seem like incentives work decently on this site. When Pfk was giving out the humble indie bundles, quite a few people showed up. If there was an award or some type of recognition for coming to the event, that might provide a reason for people to come. You could use the Competition Winners Rank or something new like Event Winner's Rank. That would be for all the events put on. Or maybe something like a sig like SKOTM for people who won events. Just some ideas.

WHAT?!?!!

I really like the layout, it'll take a while to get used to it though...

I don't like it much, but over time im sure i will get used to it.