Kingjon, Andrew says that although the links to the forums wont be 'there' on the page, they will still be available. So if you have URLs to the pages you want to view, or to the forum you will still be able to see pages that you want to answer, and bookmarked threads etc. I don't know if that helps at all?

Also, just as an update, Andrew says this is a very simple job, there won't be risks of unforeseen glitches like the unified forum poster bug, it's just removing links. The other forums will still be there at the same addresses and etc. This also means that if we did absolutely hate the change, changing it back would be easier than I thought initially. I don't think it would necessarily be wise to change it back and forward though, but it is an option. So after the 31st we will be going ahead with this, unless someone comes up with a really good reason not to. There's still time for you to speak up if you have concerns.

"As people get deeper into writing" they tend to have less and less time to spare for things like keeping up with forums , and the higher-traffic the forum the more time it requires to keep up.


Somewhat. It's not ideal, but for stuff in the archives that certainly suffices. And I suspect that most of my bookmarks are on the Fantasy side anyway.

However, there's still the problem of subscriptions. In the previous conversion, the URLs didn't change, so all I had to do was export a list of URLs for threads I and forums had subscribed to from each "side" beforehand, then visit those URLs and click "Subscribe thread" or "Subscribe forum" on each. With this ... it looks like I'll have to make a list of thread titles and manually search for them.

(This is not necessarily to say you shouldn't start the conversion.)

Okay. *thumbs up* I feel much less worried now.

Personally I don't think it actually will affect the essence of the forums. It will be very much the same, but just not spread out over 4 forums. Yes, you'll have a community of different genre writers together on one forum, instead of separated, but I don't personally think it will make a massive difference. We're the same people, the same community - we're just downsizing our space.

*Nods* In the end as well, if we're pulling writers away from writing, then we are not serving our purpose. It shouldn't be our aim to pull writers away to chat - we're supposed to be here to encourage yes, but also to equip - to help one another as writers if we have hit a road block in our writing, or if we need editing/ctirique help, or guidance of any kind . If our members are away from the forums more because they are writing, then surely that's actually a good thing?





You shouldn't have to actually make a list of threads you want to re-subscribe to, because you'll find that list actually on the separate forums. But you will have to go and find the thread over here then and subscribe to it, sorry! All the new threads we transfer over though will be active, new posts, so they should be easy to find especially at first. I know it may be a bit of inconvenience at first whilst we settle into it, but I think it will be easier long term, than having everything spread out over four forums as it is now.

That's good!

Not just the actual writing, but also things like "formatting," submitting to markets, and marketing. There's also the problem that many of the "beginning writers" we get are middle- and high-school-aged, and that's why they have time for writing, the forums, and all their other interests ... and then they start college and/or get a non-freelance job (because writing rarely pays well at first ...), and the time for writing and keeping up with Holy Worlds and anything else is suddenly drastically less.


That's about what I thought (except I didn't make the connection between the old pages still being visible and not having to download the list beforehand). But since someone(s) will be copying the threads over, couldn't he or she or they make a list so we can just search in a document for the old URL to find the new one?

Ohh, is this happening like in the next couple of days? I'm leaving for a month tomorrow... Sorry I won't be around to help get things moved!

...which will result in some kind of change of essence. I've no doubt the essence will change, the only questions are how much, in what way, will it be damaging, and if so by how much and in what way(s).

I'm not 100% sure. This whole issue is highly confusing. The one thing I know I'm worried about (that I can remember anyway) is that the change in essence will be damaging.

One consequence which I know I will not particularly enjoy (but can get over since it will be merely an annoyance) is not being able to ignore HF on a separate website.

*Nods* Yes, I think that is what happens here mostly, with people moving on because of busyness in life, and having to drop some things so one can focus on others. I know what you mean.





Can you copy and paste your subscriptions list on HF and SF to me, Kingjon, via PM? I think that we are moving too many threads across to actually make a list that would be helpful, but you said you didn't have many, so as we're moving across the threads, I could make a list of your subbed ones that we move across?

I still don't personally think we will see a massive essence change. But I suppose that time will tell with that. Long term I think this change will have positive affects - I do think it might take a while to get used to, though.



*Nods* I can understand people having concerns, and are worried about things. But although I don't think it's a good idea to keep changing and swapping things, if everyone did hate the change, then we have the other forums still there - we aren't deleting anything. Personally though, I think that if we don't do this, if we don't start off small again with the other forums, they'll just remain like 'ghost towns'. And we are way too big, in my opinion, for our current membership base. I understand there are always pros and cons in changes like this, I just personally think there are more positive sides to this change, than negative.

*Chuckles* I must confess, I don't write Science Fiction, and I have never really been able to get into it. But the forum room names will be clearly marked, and you don't ever have to visit the HF genre section. So you can still avoid it.

I'll do that. But I still think that a) the optimal solution would be to make a list in a machine-readable format and have the web server redirect the old URLs to the new ones, and b) having a list would be useful however long it is, but in fact the longer the more useful (one can search a list of old/new URL pairs by URL, but one can only search the forums by keywords).

The problem isn't how long it would be, it's the amount of work that would go into it, especially when we don't have loads of hands to help. I'll keep it in mind, and it could be a job I do slowly when we've finished rearranging the forums, I'm just not sure with the amount of threads we'll be moving across, if it's feasible because of the extra work that we'd have to put in. I could always put the HF/SF URL at the top of the threads we swap across, although as they will all have the same Thread Titles that might be a bit redundant? I just think with how many we are moving across, it's going to make the move even slower.

Just so everyone knows, we are working behind the scenes on this; we're just waiting to unveil it until everything's in order.

My mind is somewhat boggled by the idea that this would be significant extra work. You have a document (most likely in Google Docs, shared with "anyone who has the link"), and anytime someone copies a thread over they copy the URL of the original thread, paste it into the document, move the thread, copy the URL of the new thread, and paste it in. A few seconds' work at each end, and if you search for the URL of the old thread before adding it potentially several minutes' savings if someone else has already done that thread. (In fact, I was somewhat taken aback by the idea that you weren't already making such a list, on general first principles of projects being worked on by people around the world in parallel.)

I was going to do a different marking system on the actual threads on the other forums, to mark which had been done and which hadn't. I thought it would make things easier as we'll end up moving an awful lot of threads across. No one else had asked for the document, which was why I was just going to do your subscriptions and bookmarks for you. However, we're trying to make this shift as smooth as possible, so if this makes it easier on people finding old threads from the other forums, then we'll do it. It will be quite a long list though, and people will still have to view their bookmarks and subscriptions to find which threads they were subbed to and not.

We just weren't working off a Gdocs list, as Nemo and I are the only ones working on the move at the moment; it seemed simpler to me to work on marking the actual threads instead of having to search through a Gdoc to see what had, and had not been done, as we're moving quite a number of threads across.

We'll work on setting the list up though, so no worries there now.

Just another update!

We've been moving the Sci Fi and Historical Fiction forum content over, and we should be ready very soon to make the changes public. To get ready for this we've had to re-organize the forum a little. The Fantasy genre rooms can now be found in the Fantasy genre section.

The rooms are open now! All the genre sections have been moved across, and we will continue to move theology, general writing and Fireside topics across in the next couple of weeks.

*thumbs up*

Looks good!