Forum Changes

[TeaLeaf]

CAs have recently been reviewing the current admin forum structure in light of several issues.

-With the Trial Game system up and running we had a lot of feedback from people concerning a new Trial Game Leader having access to the SA section due to potentially negative posts or comments in the existing section.
-some comments from GAs themselves wanting to post about another games admin, but concerned that the 'guilty party' might have access to their 'complaint'.
-the current SA section is actually rarely used (Penfold counted 11 topics this year and some pretty unimportant stuff).
-the Public Admin section is really not used at all

We've been thinking of ways to simplify this structure and deal with the above concerns in one fell swoop.  The result of the discussion was that perhaps we should wipe the slate clean and simplify things by:

-Archiving the current SA topic altogether.
-Archive the current public admin topic altogether (perhaps SAs would consider promoting the limited numbers who are PAs at the moment?).
-Using the current GA section to:
-Give the SA & GAs for a specific game access to their own game sub-forum only.
-Introduce a new sub-forum in the GA section for 'Game Leaders Only' to which GAs would have no access.
-this revised structure would mean for example that a COD4 GA would only see the COD4 admin section and a BC2 admin would only see the BC2 admin section etc.

This way the head of each game still gets cross-game chat, but in all other situations they do not get to nose into other game sections and therefore any TGL concerns should be satisfied.  Clearly if SAs had particular posts that they wanted to retain from the current section then they could be transferred into the new structure and not archived.

Access Security
After a recent permissions cockup we also intend to password all of the various admin forums.  That way if we err and give access to other groups they will still not have the password and could not gain access accidentally. I think this is a sensible move to give us a backup against inaccurate permissions.

We think this should make the forum simpler and get rid of currently largely unused forum sections.  This in turn also makes the forum admin easier as the list of forums in the Admin CP is pretty damn huge at the moment.

If anyone can think of a flaw in this then let us know, otherwise we'll try to implement within the next couple of weeks.  If you feel you have any specific posts you want to retain int he new section then let us know and we'll make arrangements with you to keep them.

Hope this makes sense, but if you have any questions just ask Penfold or me in the first instance.

[Penfold]

As part of this we're also re-branding Section Admin as Game Leader to make it clearer. The gold badges and rank remain the same, just being renamed. The only person that this doesn't work for is Sheepy as LAN Section Admin but perhaps we can call it LAN leader to make it fall in line.

Also, just a heads-up that following discussions with Blunt, we've decided to phase out CS and our servers. This is a bit of a major one for us as a Community as it was our cradle to life and the sentimentality runs deep.

Perhaps we'll make this LAN the last time we play it or something? What do you think Sheepy?

Anyway the truth is that the servers are empty and there's a swathe of new FPS games out there which have grabbed members' attentions.

Please keep this to yourselves for the time being but we'll post it up and out to the Community once it's been written and agreed.

[Penfold]

Any comments guys?
All happy ?

[JonnyAppleSeed]

happy from the wow camp ... whatever makes it simple for you guys

[Penfold]

OK, Smilodon is going to archive this next week so please speak up if there's any posts that you'd like to keep.

Thanks