Homepage Layout

[pastelspectre]

i'm gonna hop in here and say i don't like this so far... i miss the treehouse and the lab by itself and the mall by itself. all of it cluttered into one forum thing bothers me. maybe bc i don't react good to change. i await to see the final result, though. i hope it will be..better than this, or at least better in my opinion. i do not mean any hostility towards the staff for this.

 

[Aquacorde]

No I mean that's all fine and dandy- I'm pretty pro-making it nice and compact. But the addition of one more slot on the main index isn't much, and it would break up the wall of subforums in Off-Topic, you know? I'm just really not a fan of that wall.

 

[lloebet]

Not sure if anyone cares about this but us in the mafia community of the forum have already been having a decrease is newcomers and a lot of us think that sticking us as a easy to pass up subforum will finally axe us.


That being said, why fix what wasn't broken.

 

[Desert Stream~]

Ok, the Category tags and thread names are really really small for me. Is that supposed to happen?

 

[Salzorrah]

Tbh, now that I had a good look at the forums, I don't think the idea was bad tbh. It was kinda cluttered, and I can see it's "somewhat" cleaner now.

The problem is subforums basically kill activity. There are only very few exceptions where a subforum actually performs really good, but if it's not visible, it will hurt activity.

Personally, I think the transition could have been done better by the staff. Atleast they could do is actually post a "Hey fam we changing the forum layout in a few days" or something like that, instead of bombing us with this big change in PC.

If it's okay, I'd like to suggest something.

I don't know if this is going to be in the UI Update, but I do like the horizontal forum placement going on in the generational forums, and I think that could be improved upon, maybe let it become tiles, like what is going on in the FF&W splash, where each forum has its own "icon", then the name at the bottom, and below it is the most recent post? For the parent forums, it could be placed above the tiles of the other forums, and take up a single row?

Honestly the only gripes with me about the transition is the lack of transparency between the staff and the members, most of the forums being granted subforum status, and Offtopic Forum in general.

 

[Tsutarja]

I've been on PC for almost seven years, and 3 of those I have spent as a moderator here. All I can say is that the PokéCommunity is always evolving and expanding, so I've pretty much grown accustomed to the fact that there are bound to be major changes at any given time. This is one of those changes, and while I may not agree with some aspects of it, I am optimistic and look forward to seeing how it will all work out. If something does not work out, it can always be reverted.

Additionally, it can't be said any more times that feedback is definitely valued and welcomed here. We're not trying to shoot down ideas or thoughts from the members, but just explain our rationale as staff on why changes are made and what we have in mind. Kudos to all the admins for their time in responding to this thread and offering further insight where needed.

If there is one thing about the change I do not like personally, it's the placement of the Off Topic sections. While I get where the higher staff is coming from in regards of trying to blend the sections together into one big "Off-Topic community," I can see how it could damage each of the sections' activity at the same time. For starters, I wouldn't always be able to see the last post in my section from the index page as I had always been able to, unless the current last post was made there. Plus, it'll be just as easy for people to click on The Treehouse and easily just not look up top to see what's hip and happening in the sub-sections.

All-in-all though, I look forward to becoming integrated with these changes no matter what challenges may come along in the process.

 

[donavannj]

No I mean that's all fine and dandy- I'm pretty pro-making it nice and compact. But the addition of one more slot on the main index isn't much, and it would break up the wall of subforums in Off-Topic, you know? I'm just really not a fan of that wall.

That may be worth breaking out. I'd personally like to see the non-generation subforums increased in size a bit to make them more visible, but that'd only make the "Off-Topic" subforums wall a bit more overwhelming. I don't want them increased to the size of the generation ones, but I'd still like to see them bigger.

 

[Nick]

I very much support this change. It's much more clean and organized.

The only suggestion I have is to possibly repeat the form display for the Pokémon forums with the Off Topic sub-forums to make them stand out a little more.

 

[Her]

For starters, I wouldn't always be able to see the last post in my section from the index page as I had always been able to, unless the current last post was made there. Plus, it'll be just as easy for people to click on The Treehouse and easily just not look up top to see what's hip and happening in the sub-sections.

All-in-all though, I look forward to becoming integrated with these changes no matter what challenges may come along in the process.

To be fair, one is forced to see every subforum in the section before scrolling - at the very least, they're going to be made aware of everything Hip and Happening elsewhere before they see anything in my section. They may choose to ignore your section (which can't be helped regardless of placement), but they are most certainly going to be aware of it.

 

[Sirfetch’d]

I am really busy so unfortunately I cannot read through every reply in this thread right now. However, I realize that a lot of people are unhappy and that is to be understood, not everyone is a fan of such a big change. That said, I do hope that you all give this a chance. The admins have worked very hard to try and perfect this as best as possible. I am sure that some things will be tweaked here and there before all things are said and done.

Anyways, I really love this! PC look so clean to me and I actually feel excited navigating through the forums again.

 

[Alex]

No rush on changing permissions, I'm down to mod everything

 

[tokyodrift]

can we revert the thread prefix font size please

 

[Esper]

Maybe it's just how I am, but I think a shuffle of where different forums are located could make me take more of an interest, or at least a glance. I think everyone is rightfully worried about activity because that's probably the #1 issue for a forum like this in an age of social media and everything else someone could do instead of being active here. I don't know if the changes will necessarily do anything to worsen activity. A bunch of off topic forums are now subforums, but they're all more or less on equal footing to one another and above the Treehouse (which I didn't notice at first and was looking around for where it had gone to). The bulk of my activity has been in off-topic forums so my impression of their overall post weight might be skewed, but having them all have only a single link on the front page (with much smaller links that I think will get glossed over) might be the only worry I'd have. And even then it's not something I'd be too worried about. Not yet anyway.

It might not end up being the ideal way to organize things, but it seems like there's no consensus on what the optimal arrangement is, especially as activity waxes and wanes in different areas over time.

I'm willing to give the changes a chance. They don't seem too drastic to me.

 

[Drayton]

Love the new layout

I do simply love the new layout because the old one seems rather cluttered and utterly messy, but the new layout packs everything into one simple catalog such as S&M along with past generation into one lovely category, Fan-games are no longer just rom hacks or Pokemon-essential based fan games they're now consider into whole fan-game base, the play-together packs into a compact bundle featuring battle and trade centers, community square is also neat and tidy packing all the updates and off-topic also tech & science, anime, music, movies, video games, food and lifestyle are now pack into one central based category along the with debating forum.

Thank you admins for making pokecommunity easy to navigate and extremely organize fashion.

 

[gimmepie]

No rush on changing permissions, I'm down to mod everything

Please get off of my table.



In seriousness though, I generally do support the changes although I would like to see some tweaking. I like the set up but I think this setup would be neater if the sections that were moved all maintained their forum status along with the layout change. The Treehouse (or whatever we call it now) does not look very appealing with a hundred subforum links at the top of the page. We've basically just moved the problem elsewhere and created a (temporarily) misleading situation where it appears that people are moderating forums they don't.

Naturally, I think that the layout used for the Pokemon section should also be applied to off-topic along with this. In all honesty, I thought this was the plan to begin with. We might also need to lose all of our "cute" names now that we no longer have forum descriptions.

I think the spacing could use some work too. Could we make the gaps between the board groupings a bit larger and increase the font size of the headings above each one? In general I think that would be more aesthetically pleasing.

 

[starseed galaxy auticorn]

I usually keep my mouth shut and deal with it but... I really don't like this. I prefer what it's always been. This... is just a big mess of... I don't even know. I get that it's a way for people to take more notice of certain forums that don't get much attention... but really? :|

 

[gimmepie]

I usually keep my mouth shut and deal with it but... I really don't like this. I prefer what it's always been. This... is just a big mess of... I don't even know. I get that it's a way for people to take more notice of certain forums that don't get much attention... but really? :|

Is there anything specific about this that you don't like? Or does the change itself just make you uncomfortable? Because if it's the latter I totally get that, but it's not really an argument for going back to how it was when this is objectively more efficient.

 

[Megan]

Well, one thing is for certain: the layout now has some differences to other forums on the internet. For example, usually when you find yourself in a new forum, the section for new users and the feedback and announcement sections are on top of the page (like in the older design). Having it down here could throw people off, or it could not.

Other than that, I kinda wonder if the amount of sections could be reduced even more. Like is it really necessary to have the "Play Together" section which only has two subforums? It would make sense if we had more forums we could add to it. Otherwise uniting it with the General Discussions section and just renaming the whole thing might also be an option.

 

[Nah]

ok so I guess it's good I didn't get on right when this was implemented since apparently Klippy broke everything at first lol

But anyway, I agree that something needs to be done with the off-topic area, as right now it looks kind of ugly and the other sections are not terribly visible when they should be. And:

Just going to say again that not having Main Street and City Hall at the top of the index is completely backwards given the primary goal of this change

I suppose we'll see how things go from here on....

also it wasn't until like a page and a half in that I noticed the new userbars lol

edit: prefixes are tiny and hard to read on the index (but fine within the actual section), can this be changed please?

 

[El Héroe Oscuro]

Is there anything specific about this that you don't like? Or does the change itself just make you uncomfortable? Because if it's the latter I totally get that, but it's not really an argument for going back to how it was when this is objectively more efficient.

For some areas, yes; others no. Pokémon sections rearranged like that and put on the top makes sense. Off topic subject matters thrown together in one messy group does not, when it could be better organized/arranged.

The new changes, in essence, are to make the site seem more like a Pokémon site than a site that is much more than that. I can see arguments for and against that and you'll get valid points from both sides. Call me biased because my section is now a subforum - you wouldn't be wrong, I am upset about that - but seeing Off Topic like that makes me really frustrated.