I am a fan of having subforums, Facepunch was in dire need of them. But currently the subforums are too specific to get any real use and are just taking up screen space as a result. Subforums by design need to be broad enough to be active, especially with a userbase as small as Facepunch's.
From what has been said by Hezzy/Garry, Garry is trying to make them operate how Reddit's subreddits work. Reddit can have specific subs for a couple of reasons (in order of relevance).
The user-base is absolutely gigantic. More niche topics can survive as a sub because even though it is niche the userbase is still fairly large for that sub.
The subs are user-created. They are subs that the community wants, not what the admins-on-high think the community wants. This means they get used because people actually want them.
Reddit is designed with them in mind. Its design compliments having specific subs, from up/downvoting, to the way threads/comments are listed. Facepunch is not designed in that way. Facepunch is designed as a more traditional forum. The two designs do not mesh well at all.
Because of these factors, subforums as they are implemented on FP are doomed to fail. Hell, plenty of subreddits fail (usually through a lack of userbase). Topics for subforums need to be broadened to allow for actual discussion to occur.
In addition to that, you do not have to see subs you do not want by default on Reddit. Here you have to actively filter out the child from the parent. It's great we can filter them out, but the system would work much better as an opt-in system.
Lets take a look at the current subforums for everything that is not a FP project. Lets see how many threads in each subforum have been active in the last week.
Meta is actually active, good subforum to have.
Cars: 6/80 (7%).
drugs: 4/17 (23%)
guns: 2/11 (18%). Majority of threads are locked.
Social: 4/11(36%). 45% of the threads in social are locked.
science: 0/7 have been active in the last week. Activity was all a month or more ago.
Fitness: 4/7 (57%) have been active in the last week. But then again there are only seven threads for a whole subforum.
Cooking: 2/7 (28%)
Fashion: 1/5 (20%) that one threads is currently locked with no replacement.
therapy: 2/3 (66%) 1 thread is locked, another is a remake of the locked thread.
So the "General Discussion subforums" are on the whole dead and too narrow. A whole subforum for 4 or so little threads is a waste.
How about games?
14 threads in TF2 have had activity in the last week out of a lot. TF2 deserves its own subforum. There is a decent amount of activity for it.
Games in Progress has had 8 threads in the last week that are active. It is also from oldpunch, seems decently active with a lot of threads.
VR: 6/23 (26%) . VR is a decent category however, broad enough to encapsulate a lot of discussion. I'd say it comes down to both the userbase of FP and how many FP users actually have VR gear.
R6:Siege: 2/21 (9%) threads had activity in the last week. Many of the threads are from the initial creation doing "What hezzy said" or whatever that debacle was about.
Fortnite: 3/19 (15%) have been active.
Fallout: 10/20 (50%). Partially down to the newness of the sub, however a few of the threads are low reply.
Counterstrike: 1/20 (5). Majority of threads are feedbot threads.
Jaykin' Bacon: 0/17.
Far Cry: 1/15 (6%). Majority of the threads are five years old.
Half Life: 5/13 (38%)
Overwatch: 2/12 (16%)
DOTA: 1/12 (8%) Many threads are 3 years old.
Mario: 2/9 (22%)
PUBG: 1/9 (11%)
GTA: 2/5 (40%). 1 active thread is a remake of a locked thread.
Overall the games subforums are too narrow to elicit much discussion, threads are not created because the topics of the subforums are too narrow. They need to be merged into Publisher/Developer subforums (ie Ubisfot/Bethesda) and Genre subforums (such as Battle Royale).
Lets look at the Hardware & Software subforums
Windows: 1/13 (7%)
Linux: 1/10 (10%)
MacOS: 0/3
Building: 1/2 (50%).
Looking at these numbers, there was no reason to split them from the "main" hardware and software. it is a fairly lower traffic subforum as it is. there was no need to split it up.
Creationism Corner
2D Art: 2/41 (4%). Many threads are almost a year old or older.
Musicians: 1/34 (2%). Same as above.
Contests: 2/29 (6%)
3D Art: 3/22 (13%)
Writing: 1/20 (5%)
Photography: 2/13 (15%)
Filmmakers: 1/5 (20%)
These also did not truly need a split off, there is not a large enough community on FP to support such a change.
Film, TV, Music
TV: 6/34 (17%). Decent amount are locked threads. Some are remakes of the locked threads.
Music: 9/33 (27%)
Animation: 8/19 (42%)
Film: 5/8 (62%). 3 of the 5 are remade versions of the other 3 locked threads.
TV and Film should be merged together, animation seems to be OK but it's still a very small amount of threads for a whole subforum.
So, on the whole the majority of the threads in these subforum have not been active in over a week. Many of these subforums are too narrow on too small a forum to attract any real audience. Most of these should either be consolidated with other subforums or deleted entirely and merged back into the parent forum.
inb4 you get banned and garry and/or hezzy calls us all children
All Windows related threads basically died with implementation of categories. I'm not sure why that happened since logically just as many people should be passively exposed to Windows threads as before as they appear in the main category also. Though it could be there's other more active categories now that take up the estate Windows used to have.
What's for sure is that getting help with Windows problems is night impossible because people simply don't visit the threads. The "issues too small to make a thread about" was great because there were regular visitors there, but I guess that's out because it was too much like a chat thread / megathread.
People have been asking for this since it was implemented yet nothing was done about it. I doubt this will be changed even if someone wrote a 3000 words essay on how it's annoying and useless.
I also want to reiterate, giving us a proper filter and tag system would alleviate most of these issues, as you could tailor things to each individual user.
If we're going to do separate subforums for video games, can we go by publisher instead? Like Nintendo and Blizzard, not Mario and Overwatch.
This is a great idea that's been floating around for months now. I kind of doubt it'll be implemented
Already made this exact suggestion 2 weeks ago, here's Garry's response:
garry posted:
I can see why people think like this, but I don't want broad categories like this where the threads inside are megathreads. I want forums that are on specific subjects, where the threads inside are threads.
Sadly Garry has said no to this before.
And I have outlined why that will not work with FP and why Garry is frankly wrong on this matter. We do not have the userbase of reddit to make it work.
Specific subforums are great for stuff like Garry's own games. Even more specific forums are great for things like Garry's Mod. But some subjects don't entice the entire forum enough to warrant that level of specificity, and I think subforums should be added as the forum continues and warrants it. I think a lot of subforums were kind of added without a lot of initial thought outside of "well hey this game is popular". It's a little more involved than that.
Yet. S&box is in the pipeline. I anticipate we'll get a fair amount of people from that.
Anticpate and reality are not usally the same thing.
rust frankly did not bring a lot of people to the rest of the forum. Why would it suddenly be different with this new game?
The Rust community comes from a different culture of gamers where competition and calling people racial slurs are favoured.
Garry's Mod was based more on cooperation and fun, I anticipate that S&box will be the same.
Different strokes for different folks. Compare posts in the r/playrust subreddit and posts in the r/gmod subreddit.
this feels far more generational tbh, I’m not really sure that a different game will bring anything different as long as its the same generation of gamers.
ontop of that, what’s the contigency plan? What happens if those users don’t start using the rest of the forums? What if it only brings a moderate amount of users?
I think S&Box will bring a lot of people simply through modding alone. I came here for Garry's Mod and stayed for everything altogether in one package. How much, though? I don't think we're going to rival reddit or anything like that. We'll just be Facepunch but a little faster, that's all. I don't think we have to really prepare for that day.
Are we on the same page about making tons of specific subforums in our current format will be a disaster?
Instead Thread forking or "Main Thread -> Child Threads" are way better ideas with same goal in mind.
Rust (category) -> Rust General (sub category) -> "Rust Suggestion - A Great Idea I'd Like to See" (Thread) -> "VERY SPECIFIC..." Question, topic, suggestion (Forked thread / Child Thread).
https://i.imgur.com/cFizv6e.png
This way it'll be used as a tool, not a subforum to fill. Doing this would really tighten and smarten up on what can have as actual subforums, while expanding huge threads. Specific items can be talked about just a space away from the main thread.
hoping we get a follow up and clear all this up on where garry is thinking on it.
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