[Rant] The Chess960 forum has been on a Downward Spiral.
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@W_A_R_L_O_R_D
Take a look at Greasemonkey, which allows you, with relatively little skill, to change whatever you want about a site ... visually speaking.
http://greasemonkey.win-start.de/patterns/remove-element.html
This is a basic tutorial about removing a section of a site, for example, the "most recent" box.
I did not look.
This is not a "cosmetic" problem.
This is something very, very different.
A wee message...
?
Hot and cold threads and the Most Recent window are easy fixes, if chess.com management ever decides to take action.
If this forum was to see an increase in activity with the former two gone, the fight for exposure would be plain to see. You cut thirteen potential spots for exposure down to three (not counting the Hot Topics window). Which means that the three spots would be occupied by play-by-forum threads 95% of the time, that will exacerbate the problem; and at that point I think people who aren't fully aware of the situation would come to understand it.
It is like a drug man, they simply can not stop.
They crave attention above all else, such is their nature.
They will not stop even when they realise that the mods may be watching this.
SUCK all the CHESS PLAYERS over to their websites, that is what they are trying to do.
How long will it be until this gets locked?
How long will it be until you guys start playing your games in clubs?
How long will it be until the moderators start locking lots of topics on this forum?
Bump.
A wee message...
On this little backwater forum during the past 2 years:
Everybody reporting everybody.
Constant arguments and fighting.
Support has banned ONE IP address that I know of for abuse.
Forum Summary
The Most Recent window is Level 1, it is the most visible and the primary target.
The Forum Summary web page is Level 2, it is very visible and it is used as the entry point to get the ball rolling.
The Forum Summary web page is the Most Recent list but it is broken down by forum category and it shows the top 3 HOT Topics for each forum category.
The Forum Summary is just one click away from members.
On the left of your screen: Menu | Share (it is the default, only one click is required)
On the right of your screen: Forums (above Hot Topics, any part of it, including the little triangle)
You may also access it using 2 clicks from the menu on your left: Menu | Share | Forums
The Hot List itself is actually Level 3, it is not very visible and it has one other significant problem, there is a lot of stuff in it.
Your topic from your little backwater forum may be on the Hot List but what good is it doing there sitting on page 3, nobody is ever going to notice it.
So you start in your tiny forum and you target 3 specific topics and you keep bumping them.
Eventually you will get them into the Forum Summary for your Category, then you just let them sit there 24 / 7.
If anybody else on your tiny backwater forum DARES to bump one of your THREE topics off the Forum Summary then you bump it straight back, HOW DARE THEY.
You have now elevated your topic out of your backwater forum, it will eventually start to get noticed.
This is what I first noticed on the forum YEARS ago, the same topics getting bumped to the top of the forum.
This is what I next noticed on this website, those same bumped topics ALWAYS sitting on the Forum Summary NO MATTER WHAT.
But you still have a problem, it takes a lot more effort to get it into the Most Recent list, but patience, patience, patience.
TWO YEARS AGO THIS STARTED.
I suggest that the Forum Summary should be exactly that, a Forum Summary.
It should not show any actual topics, just a nice grid layout, or a nice fancy list, in other words a nice switchboard to jump to a particular forum.
If a member wants to go to Forum X then they go to Forum X.
If a member wants to go to Forum Y then they go to Forum Y.
I suggest that you isolate the forum topics and avoid any type of summary like the Most Recent or the Forum Summary, just allow the actual HOT TOPICS List, or think of some other solution, but that will probably mean a lot of work, like changing the code for the HOT list.
At first it was a trickle, then it turned into a stream and now it is a FLOOD.