Feedback Requested: Article Submission

2) No more sub sections in the menus. Yes, this means no more 'Rrakkma', 'Kyto's Hooks', or 'Creature Codex' - though the content will still be in our system and accessible via other means. You'll be finding content via search, related tags, or other menu structures to get you to what you want

I have to say I DISLIKE this idea greatly.  I use the Rrakkma section alot.  I've also, in my home game said to myself "I want an NPC of power here, let me look in 'The Golden Lords' section on planewalker."  I've revolved whole adventures around NPCs or Kytos' Hooks. 

Well, that's my 2 cents anyway.

I do think a solid reorganization of the whole site will be useful. Plus, I see more "creativity" style articles in then blogs these days than I do in the articles. I think there could be a mistaken impression is that an article submission is some kind of formal affair, as if you're submitting to an actual academic journal or somesuch. On the other hand, I, at least, have submitted a few articles in my time that were just written on-the-spot. But I agree with Bob that proper use of tags and search engines could really help make the site look more active again.

How will articles become "front page worthy?" Will there be a sort of voting system? Will it be by committee/by webmaster's choice? Some other method? A combination of the two?

I think the best way to revitalize this site is place more emphasis on the forums as Planewalker's community. Forums are extremely convenient, easy to have discussions on, and are usually the first place people go to look for interaction. A lot of people probably bypass the front page completely most of the time and go straight to the forums, so it's probably best to emphasize the forums more. People that come to this site are most likely coming to meet and interact with other Planescape fans, not simply read articles.

I think the blogs have good intentions but I ultimately believe they segregate Planewalker's active community. I have seen a few good blog entries that would make even better forum topics because they'd have more visibility and would then spur more discussion. As it is, though, blogs are not clearly visible or accessible, and they spread the community too thin. Some people don't use the blogs at all, others use them almost exclusively. I think if the blogs and the forums were combined, this place would suddenly look a lot more active.

Furthermore, I think if people want to ramble on about the movie they saw last week or how their date was with this new girl, there are plenty of blogging services for that. If they want to write their thoughts on something Planescape- or planar-related, then I think it's much, MUCH better off as a forum topic.  Just looking at the "New Blogs" list at the time I made this post, I have to wonder why fourof the five are only blog entries and not forum topics. Specifically, I'm looking at all of them except "He could have made her beautiful." This is an information site, but my impression is that it's also meant to be a community where Planescape fans can get together and discuss Planescape. As I said, the blogs spread that community way too thin.

If, as you suggest above, there's a way to "promote" good forum posts, then I suggest you abolish the blog system completely. Put all articles and planar-related blog entries under the domain of the forums. Someone found a link to an article that seems useful for Planescape fans? Post it in the forums. Someone has a youtube video that reminds them of Planescape? Post it in the forums. Someone wants to talk about the weather? Heartily recommend they head over to Wordpress or Blogspot or Livejournal and get a personal blog.

I also believe that the article system, while a good part of Planewalker in the older days, would also be better served if it were just part of the forums. Plus, now that many forum technologies offer the ability to tag posts, it can make the forums serve as the article repository and still keep things easily searchable.

Revamp the forums. Most of these section forums haven't been touched months. A few have been collecting dust for over a year and it looks kind of bad to see so many inactive forums. Move all of the inactive forums to an archive -- even better, does the forum software support child forums? Stuff them in a parent board so the content still exists, but you don't have five or six long-dormant forums all in a row.

Make the purpose of each board clearer. Is it possible to put a bit of text after each board to explain the board's function, ala phpBB3 and others? I know the site used to have something like this, but it seems to have disappeared. Anyway, after my years-long hiatus, I've been back for almost a year now and I'm still not certain what the difference between RPG Discussion, Planar Ventures, and Hall of Records are supposed to be, and as best I can guess, we wouldn't lose much (and we might look more active!) if we merged all three into one board.  This will be a BIG help if the site focuses more on the forums.

<a href="http://www.fraternityofshadows.com/forum">The Fraternity of Shadows</a>, a popular and very active Ravenloft board that I frequent, has the following layout for forums, which seems to be a familiar structure for most gaming-related sites, both tabletop and video game.

- The Announcements Board for all important site manager announcements- The Bug Board for reporting issues (Actually at FoS, these first two are the same board but two separate boards work)- A general "On Topic" board for all discussion, articles, etc., related to the site's setting or theme (Any and all Planescape discussion, in this case)- An "on topic" "creative endeavors" board for fiction, art, etc. This board is strictly for literary, artistic, and similar pursuits. If you're posting about a site, a cutter, a faction, etc., you go to the general Planescape board. If you're writing a piece of fiction or drawing a picture, it goes in this creativity board- A "general gaming" board for all non-Planescape gaming. General 3.x/4e, Pathfinder, White Wolf, whatever other gaming topics would go here.- An "off topic" forum for discussion about almost anything. A lot of sites I've seen limit what you can actually talk about here (i.e., no politics or religion) and I think this is a good idea - especially in a place like this where we have some pretty peaceful philosophical discussions beyond the scope of our world. We don't need real-world politics here and if people want to discuss them, they can go to a political site- The requisite gaming boards for PbP gaming. As a side note, I think the Sensorium board could probably fit in the "on topic fiction" board.- Some sites (like FoS) have a forum dedicated to site projects and community projects. A site project would be the 4e Planescape Setting, while a community project would be if someone decided to create, say, Arborea: The Campaign Setting or Professor Thomas Carter's Notes on the Lower Planes or Angels, Aasimon, and Aasimar, a Book on Celestials or whatnot. I think these kinds of boards would be useful to Planewalker.

The short version is that I think the best way to make this site really go is to put the forums at the center of attention and derive the front page articles from the forums and from major site announcements and features. I think the blogs should go completely, and I think the article system, while useful in the past, is better served by being part of the forums. I think the forums should be revamped, clearly labelled and made more user-friendly, and I think this will really make a big difference in the site's apparent and real activity.

Well, even if you don't make the site forum-centric, I think some forum cleanup and streamlining would still go a long way toward helping the site out

I have been on other sites where featured articles were selections from the standard postings that the site editors liked, with occasional additions or nominations from the general readership.  That's where all or most of mine started, anyway: I posted something, it was recommended as an article, and I submitted it.

I agree that the blog sections should be merged to the forums, which would have small descriptions of the board purposes added; I'm always in favor of one less sidebar menu.

All the subcategories were always kind of hard for novices to navigate, so I wouldn't mind seeing it all replaced by tags.  And often I've been posting articles to the forums instead of bothering to make them formal articles. I've had articles languishing in my queue for years because I've never gotten around to revising them to be published (and I haven't thought of them in a long time). Perhaps a less formal system is needed.

The more I think about it, the more the forums seem the way to go if there is a way to tag one's posts or the forum topics are arranged in a way that was similar to the article sections.I like the blogs only in that I thought they were a good place for the random things that might be of interest to PS fans, or as inspiration. There are little things I like to post that inspire me, but would simply clutter the forums. I suppose if we had a forum specifically for inspirations that would be better.I do think if all creative content is easily searchable via tags/topics then putting it all in one place would increase visibility/comments.

I don't see any reason why this kind of thing can't go in a "PS General" forum. It keeps the forums active and while it may not be much, it's very relevant to the site and will probably be less of a clutter than it sounds. I think a separate board would just make more confusion on where a particular post belongs. Like I mentioned in my original post on the topic, I don't see any reason why the blog entries you had up at the time can't be in a general PS forum.

I'm very curious to know more about this, mainly because I've never heard of anything like this before. I can understand people being shy or reluctant to sign up and jump headfirst into the community, but I don't understand the "block" you're talking about. It seems to me that forums are the lifeblood of any active online community, especially interest-specific communities, and if someone has a "block" against using -- or even strictly searching and reading -- forums, it makes me wonder why they seek out interest communities to begin with.

I know a lot of people come solely to look up certain bits of information and have no interest in participating in the community (and I find that forum searches often prove adequate for many people in finding what they want without participating). However, I find it extremely hard to believe that we'd lose all that much traffic simply because we've become a forum-centric site. I find the converse more palpable: We'd lose more traffic because we don't have a clear and centralized community system.

Yeah, this is what I meant wrt the forums.

@Loki: I knew what you meant with block insofar as spam block vs. voluntarily avoiding it, but you more or less explained what I was asking. I still have some doubts that the issues you raise are actually as pronounced as you suggest, but I suppose I'll leave it at that.

We mentioned something about the voting system earlier in the thread, and the biggest issue is that it might take too long for some articles to get voted up past the threshold.

Perhaps a "suggest" button that allows members to suggest to the mods that they promote a thread to the front page? I could see this getting abused easily, what with some people "suggesting" every thread posted, or every thread by a particular person, or so on. On the other hand, I think most mods will be able to filter out that kind of noise. It's pretty easy to tell who is spamming the button and also pretty easy to ignore them -- or perhaps revoke their suggestion privileges.

Hi, I mostly lurk at Planewalker, but I'm a big fan of your work and am really pleased that you got an ENNie for all the hard work you have put in over the years.

I've not written any articles for Planewalker (at least I have not written any...yet) and I think I have a very low post count on the forums, but maybe my less requent use can help me to give you a newbie point of view of how your homepage and website look to me.

When I look at your homepage I see a lot of sections that I just don't understand. I'm not saying you are any worse than any other D&D fansite, because clearly you are an award winning site. If I dig around I find great content, but I just don't "get" what all of these sections are supposed to be. I think they have a meaning for your regular users (so it would be a shame for you to dump these sections if the regular users love the names) but a bit of a restructure could help newbies. At the moment I find it a lot easier to find things with Google toolbar than your own website. That isn't going to be good news for a casual visitor.

The forum idea is a fairly good one, but the non-forum parts of Planewalker are the things that change this place from "some bloke with a Planescape forum" into "THE Planescape website". Birthright.net have done the forum-only thing and it really buries their netbooks. And there are so many "blokes with forums" in the world, that I'm not sure how a casual visitor to Birthnet.com is going to realise they are any better than "a bloke with a Birthright forum" (and dig down to the great stuff they have over there). I think that blogs are probably more idea for things like campaign journals than forums, but if they can also be used to help your trusted staff to post news directly onto your homepage that is going to make it more dynamic. I don't really use blogs myself, but if some people use them for specific things like that, maybe they have a place next to the forums.

One thing that I think would be very useful (for the non-forum stuff) would be a big friendly "how to find things on Planewalker.com" link. I would want to see that link on the homepage (and maybe a much smaller link in your footer) and would want it to take me to a page that explains the difference between "Kyto's Hooks" and "Snails Outfitters". If you put the newbie help off of the front page, you can go into a lot more detail about how to find stuff (without getting in the way of the stuff the regulars want to be reading). You could even describe how to find things by content type, so that I could look up something like "pregen characters" and then be told where I should surf off too. And please...if you have a newbie page...please don't fill it up with all that Planescape speak.  That might look good in a player handout, but it is confusing to newbies (and probably also to people that have English as a second language) and it is also a bit pointless when stuff is meant to be out of character content for a GM.

I'm not sure if you had your sights set on revamping the Planewalker Encyclopedia, but it is one of the main reasons why I visit your website. I've just checked it in Firefox and I see an uber long list of words (and the letters of the alphabet) at the top of every article (I think this may be invisible content in IE). If you could make this section work a little bit more like Forgotten Realms Wiki, The Great Library of Greyhawk or even Dragonlance Lexicon I would be happy beyond belief. Those things do the same thing as your encyclopedia, but look a lot prettier and have a lot more internal hyperlinks.

My main technical problem with the encyclopdia is that you have a weird way of doing your links. Instead of linking directly to other articles, you have this strange "freelinking" URL. Sometimes when I click on a link I get sent to a search page instead of another article (and when you have got used to the other encyclopedia's I've mentioned, as well as the Hypertext d20 SRD that sort of unexpected redirection feels a bit disjointed). You have some great artwork in Artist's Alley and I wonder if you could find some sort of way to put that art into appropriate Encyclopedia articles. Dragonlance Lexicon did this (and even ran an "art request thread" in the Dragonlance Forums) and they went from a text only encyclopedia to a beautifully illustrated one. The two wiki's I mentioned have always had the ability to have art in them. I think that if you could recycle your existing art it would really beautify a part of the website that is the newbie's encyclopedia of Planescape. And if you don't have art for specific articles, then a thread requesting artwork to order can help your amateur artists to help revamp your website.

Anyway, I've had years of interspaced pleasure from your website, so I hope you take this as constructive criticism rather than moaning. I'll carry on sneaking around the back way even if I have problems with the front page.

Good luck with your revamp and thanks to all of the people you have working to upload stuff here.

I hesitated for a while before making this post, but I guess I'll be the one to make the tactless reply.

When I visit PW.com, I just want the site features to work correctly.

Thanks for the welcome, but just to correct your statement to Clueless, I've not got a massive amount of content on BtM. I've got one article actually up and a few things tied up in the stalled SJ netmag (Into the Void). I have more content, but it is all partially developed stuff that has not been put online yet.

My relevance (from a Planewalker point of view) is probably down to two facts: I'm the founder of the Spellljammer Wiki (which is hoping to eventally do for Spelljammer, what Planewalker's Encyclopedia is doing for Planescape) and I'm one of the three moderators on the Spelljammer forum at The Piazza (which is the world's most active Spelljammer forum). I'm also part of the effort (also via The Piazza) to restart the 3e SJCS project and try to catch up a bit with what faster people have done over here.

From a Planewalker point of view the SJCS is the Material Plane, and any good fanon that gets developed by the SJ community is somthing that you could have a "how to use X in Planescape" article about over here. People like Loki (who have a foot in both camps) would be good for writing this sort of thing (if you can't get the original author to revisit their work from a PS point of view). The SJ Wiki is primarily going to be aimed at authors of SJ fanon, as it is a canon encyclopedia (this is why I'm trying to get accurate citations into every article - and why I would also find citations useful over here). But when it gets going the SJ Wiki might also be useful to Planescape authors working on crossover fanon (or even Planescape GMs who want to raid SJ for ideas).

I'm also hoping to see the Planejammer concept (which I believe that Loki might have started) moved forward and would be keen to see a joint BtM/Planewalker netbook that follows on the heels of the PW's PSCS and BtM's SJCS and creates a Planejammer Campaign Sourcebook (or dare I say it - a full blown Planejammer Campaign Setting) that shows GMs how to get D&D's two transitive settings to work in tandem. If I can do anything that is of any significant use to Planescape GMs - I would guess that work on Planejammer would be my niche.

I'm not sure where this sort of stuff could go onto the Planewalker website (as I said there are not any newbie friendly instructions...yet) but as a crossover fan, I would also enjoy seeing other material on Planewalker for connecting Planewalker to every published D&D campaing setting. I think that isn't going to be what most Planescape fans are into, so wouldn't suggest sticking this sort of thing on the front page, but there are a few "official" sites out there and it would be cool beyond belief if they could work together to support these sorts of concepts. Many of these settings are long out of print and it is only us fans that keep their vision alive. I would like to see all of the major fansites (not just Planewalker) refer visitors to each other. Other websites have pages that exchange links. That is OK, but I'd rather see something that exchanges more than just a link. It would be nice if at some point in the future there could be a page that describes setting X, how it can be made to work with Planescape, a bibliography of official products (or a link to a page elsewhere that already does this), a link to a netbook (or if that doesn't exist a link to a page that has a bunch of links to relievant articles). And with things like RSS feeds out there, I would like to see these sort of pages be dynamic pages that allow a PS fan to see if the other fansites have any articles of interest up. (For example, I could browse over to a Dragonlance page that explains how Planewalkers might visit Adlatum and has a link to download the Adlatum Campaign Setting from Dragonlance Nexus.)

I realise that sort of thing (especially the community/community support side) is going to take time to put into place, but someone has got to start the ball rolling and if you are doing a revamp anyway, it could be you. You say that one of your aims is to have more Planscape content, but I think that a bit of cross community work could enable you to "convert" every bit of top quality content that is on another leading D&D website. That might send a few random visitors over to another D&D website, but I think it could also potentially expand a PS GMs options by a tenfold. I'm sure there are already PS GMs doing this, but I wouldn't know where to look to see their notes or ask their advice.

Here is a snippit of something I sent to the web dabus, but perhaps here is the better place, add to the discussion and all that. This is from the perspective of a fledgling DM, who wanted to take his players back, most of which are ten years younger than me, to my setting, the setting I started out in as a player;  Sigil.  Been a player for a while, but seeking a 3.5 adaptation of Planescape is what brought me here, and I'll admit, I barely managed, at first.  Its not the most flattering thing, but its honest.  I may be quiet, and keep to myself, mostly, but I love what you all have here, and I want to see it continue to thrive.

Navigation is painful.  But I'm not actually sure if its the navigation thats painful, or just the fact that I'm not sure what to be looking for.  I still have very little idea what most of the sections on the site mean.  Beyond that, the site itself is functional, if not somewhat slow to respond. * 3.x official ...   * Sourcebooks   * Modules   * Monster Addendum   * Spells

Same structure for 4x, when that day comes.

 To my mind, its vitally important that Planescape Setting "core" remain intact, and easy to access. Which, somewhat exists now.  But you have to actually be here for a while to understand that.  I know when I first arrived, I didn't quite know the difference between the PSCS and PS3E sections, and still have no idea what Planar Portals really is. If Planewalker ends up going pure content submission/drupal type, I'd be worried that the official material would be lost -- and both are needed.  Searchable content is amazing.  I just.. have problems with the engine.  I'm not exactly sure why, I haven't looked at it too closely, I'll admit -- but the results I get, are never the results I expect.  It sounds like I'm not alone in that sentiment. I don't know if anyone familar with the d20srd site, but if so, take a look.. the entire system reference document, laid out in html and easily searchable. A DMs best friend, if I ever saw one.  Applying the same concept to Planewalker would make it infinitely more usable as a source.  Perhaps not practical, and surely not really an option for most of the player-generated content, but for the "core"...? More than anything, a guide for new players, or new DMs, explaining how to use the resources that exist, is needed.  A clueless without a guide, stays that way.At first glance, I thought that the site was abandoned, when the New Articles section shows precious little activity, and an article going back 4+ years.  Thought it was Mimir all over again.  Glad to see that wasn't the case

A couple of suggestions/ideas:

I would like for the Rrakkma subsections and other subsections to remain easily accessible.  If some of them are obscurely named (and maybe confusing to new site visitors), you could name them something like (Fancy Name) -- NPCs or (Fancy Name) -- Locations.  Basically, you could have the "fancy theme name" and the "easy to understand name" side by side.

I would be happy to offer my services checking article submissions for proper spelling and grammar, at least for now.

If I write something in the Rrakkma forum, some readers may think it should be promoted, but I might only think it's half done.  I might have it up there hoping that others will suggest how I can revise it, or they might add more content relating to that topic.  Basically I wouldn't want it to be promoted to article status until I think it's done.  (Yes, I know I need to turn more of the Rrakkma content into articles.  If the UI is working well for me that day, I could work on that some more...)

I'm hoping that we get another active DM or two.

I must throw my support to the idea of keeping and refining the sections. 

I also agree with the need to rename them to something that is easier for new people, probably with the original header names as a subtitle to preserve continuity.

I also intend to start working on a "First Time Visitor: Read Me" page, other than a  breakdown of what is where on the site I'd love input on text you;d like to see there.

I think that site managers should be the ones to make the final choice once something is voted up. Not because I am a manager, but because I think that human eyes aimed at the last hurdle with sort out any drafts comig through or other "not yet ready for prime time" content. Of course I also hope to see the Mgmnt team expand again down the line.

Offers of assistance with editing for grammar and puctuation are appreciated. We may well take you up on it once we have the gameplan finished and implemented.

As to Rrakkma and other sections. I think the section issue is best served by the following approach:

The forum for each section should remain live if it is still garnering traffic. The section should be composed of the "ready to play" stuf that has been finished and deemed of suitable quality. Anything that has been used in the PSCS (3.5 and future editions) should be flagged with a small logo to denote it. That way we have not hindered the creativity of the contributors but we have improved accessibility for novice internet users (more of them every day) and for new vistors. 

I also think that an RPG news section for interviews, etc might be worthwhile. I'm hoping to have some more interviews with old guard PS writers soon. Of course if there is not enought density of material for this then it should not be a section after all. I bow to Clueless on this as she has a better idea of hits garnered on any given article.

@Clueless BTW, hit a bug when trying to update my long out of date sig. Help?

Thanks again for helping us out, it cannot be a community site without community input.

I'd like to see the management team expand, too. I expect that if the interactive part of the site community gets streamlined, the forums will see more activity and may require more moderation and management. Furthermore, a larger pool of promoters would see a larger variety of articles that get onto the front page. I'm not trying to say you two current leaders are doing a bad job by any means, but different people have different tastes and different interests. I think it would make our front page more eclectic. 

This is similar to what I suggest, though I really think if Rrakkma, etc., have special front page sections, there should be an explanation. While many old Planewalkers will know generally what a Rrakkma is, and that the section will probably have to do with gith, the term has fallen into disuse in D&D at large.

I think major interviews and the like with PS celebrities, as it were, don't really need to go through the forums and can just go straight to the front page.

Ultimately, though, I am a big proponent of moving away from "sections" as we have them now and going to a tag system. Tags are more flexible, more all-encompassing, and allow for a much broader search range. Have a "Rrakkma" tag, but don't limit Rrakkma-related content to a Rrakkma section. This way it gets more exposure if someone just searches for "gith" or "npcs" or so on. And really, if someone just wants Rrakkma content, how hard is it to search for "rrakkma?"

As has been mentioned, though, Rrakkma gets a comparatively tiny amount of site traffic, most of which is probably used strictly by regulars and people that know what's there. Its forums are active and I certainly think that should be kept, but I don't think it should get extra special attention.

Here's another (possibly related) question: How does one go about starting up a Project? That might be another thing we want to make easier. A Project could be defined as something containing a related group of articles. It would also get its own Forum category.

Just another 2cp into the fountain...

I believe that things with polished content and lots of activty basically get ther own forums. That's Clueless so she may drop in and say "nope," but that is the way I think its handled. I remember watching Rrakkma expand and get plit off on its own in the Gith crazy days after Incursion came out.

Got a project make a post and announce it. Email Clueless or I if you want us to keep an eye out on it. I often am absent from the forums for periods of up to a week so a private message or an email to cutters at planewalker dot com will get my attention n those cases.

@Clueless Let me know if I can be of assistance at any point. I'll be checking email on my iphone just in case until we are back up.

If anybody requires my assistance please contact me at cutters at planewalker dot com