OpenArena Message Boards

I think we should add a separate forum where admins can help each other out with OA server setup & administration ;)

Well, there are already the "multiplayer" and "technical snafus" sections...

There's also The Elitist Club, under Multiplayer. Somehow, it was never used, though I guess it was originally for that.

EDIT: Misread, sorry.

Yes, but both categories would seem to me to be more geared towards clients that need help, not server admins.

I dunno, technical snafus is fine if admins experience problems, but you're right to think it could be a theme apart.

Maybe, if it's unclear what the current boards can and/or should be used for, it's better to rename or reorganise them?
- I think General is a board which should be on nearly every forum.
- Technical snafus is a bit of player support, but multiplayer is a bit too. How about a "Help!" board with subboards for 'Player help', 'Server/admin help' and 'Developer help'? This could also replace the Help Wanted board. The old boards could be put in some archive category which is by default collapsed (the search will still include those boards).
- Bug reports might better fit in the "Openarena Contributions" category, maybe in the development board and maybe in a new board. Grouping them together in a new one might be good though.

I imagine this is quite some work though, but maybe after 0.8.8 is released it might be done. Or maybe it should actually be at the same time as the launch of 0.8.8 to handle anyone posting about problems with the new release. The forum is probably more active then, which fills the new boards a bit. A few old topics, the latest and currently active ones, could be moved into the right boards too, to show what the board is meant to be about and to give it some content.

Hmmm and there was a new front page test a few weeks ago I remember... If the frontpage also gets renewed on 0.8.8's release, together with the forum I mean, it looks like there is a lot of development and it's a big release. Or perhaps we should do that when the next version releases, which I imagine will be a stand-alone release. Patch on patch on patch gets a bit messy.

[/thought in progress-post]

I don't have a clear opinion about forum re-organization yet.

Only thing I can say now is that personally I don't like sub-forums. I find easier to follow forum sections that are directly listed in main page. I understand it is personal taste matter.... anyway this is mine. :)

I generally agree that subboards shouldn't be used much, but a Help board seems quite clear, and as long as there are no topics in it the subboards will be very obvious.

I agree that a sub forum for servers administration help and discussion should be created. There is currently no specific subforum dedicated to this topic, and to me it should not be amalgamed with other topics of the Help subforum or Multiplayer (which are generally client oriented).

This would allow to centralize a lot of informations about servers management and would be a great help for administrators as this is a still widely unmastered topic (there are still a lot of "superstitious" beliefs and deprecated habits inherited from Q3 that are no longer relevant to OA).