pink floyds "THE THREADED WALL"  

would be great to be able to talk smack on the civil war board before i got eliminated each time

I'm not convinced there would be enough demand... the forums don't get a huge amount of traffic, does it really make sense having another board specific forum hidden away somewhere completely separate?

tom wrote:

I'm not convinced there would be enough demand... the forums don't get a huge amount of traffic, does it really make sense having another board specific forum hidden away somewhere completely separate?

Think of the forums as Walls for boards..

If no one uses them, they're empty

If I wanted to read up on Ten-Propagate strategy, currently I'd have to search the message boards, and depending on my search skills, come up with little.

On the other hand, if these forums were around when Ten-Propagate came out, I'm sure those threads would be on the T-P wall and I would know exactly where to go to find them.

Isn't the "strategy and tactics" forum already meant for this kind of purpose?

Jigler wrote:

Isn't the "strategy and tactics" forum already meant for this kind of purpose?

+4

Go read that forum, and look at the lack of responses to the requests for strategies.
Players here are understandably stingy with that information.
And especially so when the strategy is regarding a particular board.

Don't get me wrong: I'm not someone who is ever going to be in the top 100 of players, so I'd GLADLY discuss any strategies (however lackluster they may be) that I have on any board.
So having a place to discuss would be awesome...but I agree with Jigler's real point: we have one, and it isn't used.

I guess a board maker could always just go start a thread(s) when they release a board, and then put a link to it at the bottom of their board description.

Jigler wrote:

Isn't the "strategy and tactics" forum already meant for this kind of purpose?

It is. Contrary to Boris's post, I would happily give away my _basic_ views of the game Octagons. I think it's a great game and with a few simple ideas I think more people could be playing it in a fun way instead of getting quickly dominated.

My reluctance to posting in that forum is that the forums are like a stream, and a "Basic Strategy Guide for Board X" would appear on the forums and then disappear. Without permanence, it's hard to justify the effort.

Within the current framework, though, we could just agree to be less shy, post our silly strategy guides and theories, allow them to appear and disappear. Then we notify the board maker to put a link in the board description, as Oz suggests.

tom is right that board specialists who like to debate and discuss strategy are a minority, and we aren't even doing it much right now, so I fully understand the effort versus reward calculation being unfavorable here.

Might I suggest a little experiment to see what kind of response a board-specific thread might get?

Let's revamp the Strategy and Tactics Forum a bit and make self-named board-specific threads a Sticky that will stay at the top of the Thread list.  I am thinking two well-established threads, such as "Spy v Spy" started by Kjeld and "Gauntlet" started by Riskyback, and one new thread such as "Gunslinger." Take a baseline of the number of replies and views for reference.

After some period of time (day, week, month, etc.) we could then gauge both 1) New content / views added to old threads and 2) New content / views added to new threads.

If a strategy thread is not board-specific it would not become Sticky. 

Just playing devil's advocate: 

Hugh wrote:

..."Basic Strategy Guide for Board X" would appear on the forums and then disappear. Without permanence, it's hard to justify the effort.

Those who contribute to the forums regularly spend an inordinate amount of time over-analyzing a topic knowing full well that it will disappear down the forum thread 3 days later.  Why would this topic be any different?  And it is not uncommon for someone like Ozyman (this is a compliment to him) to resurrect said post months later when the conversation comes around again, so the relevance is not lost even if it slips beyond page 1 of the forum.

AttilaTheHun wrote:  

If a strategy thread is not board-specific it would not become Sticky.

Since the "Strategies and Tactics" forum is already focused only on strategies and tactics, stickying all board specific thread seems counter productive, because (assuming it becomes a popular discussion for boards) it'll mean we have 4 pages of sticky threads, and then a dozen independent threads at the end.  Just proposing that people use the search tool (which used to be junk, but since Tom made it Google engine based, works wonders) with the board name to find the thread on the board they're looking to educate themselves on.

Ozyman wrote:

I guess a board maker could always just go start a thread(s) when they release a board, and then put a link to it at the bottom of their board description.

Yeah! I think this would work just fine.

You could make 1 sticky thread at the top in which the links for all other board threads are posted.

How about allowing a thread to be linked to a board name?

That way it appears as normal in the forums, but you can also view the linked threads from the board front page.

Best of both worlds? 

tom wrote:

How about allowing a thread to be linked to a board name?

That way it appears as normal in the forums, but you can also view the linked threads from the board front page.

Best of both worlds? 

I like the idea, but my concern is that one thread could get unwieldy.  Time will tell, but it might be nice to have the capability to link to more than one thread.  Strategy and Tactics is limiting.

• For instance, I could see a dedicated thread being used to rally and organize a formal, or informal, tournament
• Or a thread where players can make suggestions and/or debate the merits of new scenarios.

How about if the originator of a message in the forums can "tack" it to any board.  That way a complete list of messages related to any board can be found by going to that board's page.

M57 wrote:

How about if the originator of a message in the forums can "tack" it to any board.  That way a complete list of messages related to any board can be found by going to that board's page.

One of us is confused. (It might be me.) Isn't this identical to what tom is suggesting?

tom wrote:

How about allowing a thread to be linked to a board name?

That way it appears as normal in the forums, but you can also view the linked threads from the board front page.

Best of both worlds? 

Actually, yes! That would be awesome! Nice simple solution.

Hugh wrote:

M57 wrote:

How about if the originator of a message in the forums can "tack" it to any board.  That way a complete list of messages related to any board can be found by going to that board's page.

One of us is confused. (It might be me.) Isn't this identical to what tom is suggesting?

Uhm.. probably.   For some reason, I assumed he was thinking about limiting it to a single thread per board.

Hugh wrote:

tom wrote:

How about allowing a thread to be linked to a board name?

That way it appears as normal in the forums, but you can also view the linked threads from the board front page.

Best of both worlds? 

Actually, yes! That would be awesome! Nice simple solution.

+1