Completed Keep BLW.tf forums alive.

[Kimmel]

The staff of BLW.tf have decided that the forums are outdated and should be closed. They plan on moving functions of forums over to the discord so they can shut down the forums. It is my belief this move is a big mistake, the forums are a great and specific resource for Rules, Reports, a place to talk about game topics as well off topic discourse. Discord is bloated, and a platform that hosts many evil and perverse communities. Forcing users on discord, especially the many children who are active in the BLW community, invites them to potentially engage in harmful predators and communities. There are a minority of people that are very active on the forums and servers that don't have a discord and will be cut off from all of these resources. This is a serious change that I think is unnecessary and harmful to this community that I've come to love over the last year.
If you think the forums should remain active, please sign your name below.

Kimmel (Terriquantaline)

 

[Cammy]

Keep the forums as a repository of information and history keeping. Maybe make a couple bots that post appeals / replies in various thread sections on the forums to keep it artificially flowing so the history can be maintained and kept updated?

Either way, forums are a thing of the past but some like to see the history of these places. I'm neither for or against the decision, but I'd prefer the forums stay up as a historical piece that tracks current affairs until the community's eventual demise.

 

[Chris TCC]

We're not going to delete the forums, they will be archived in some way. The exact details are yet to be worked out, so I can't say much more than that.

 

[Kimmel]

The decline of the forums can be seen. The downsizing of the forums is to be expected. All I ask is that select boards remain open.

These are great points:

Keep the forums as a repository of information and history keeping.

The forums are much better suited for long term discussions whereas the discord is like eating a bag of potato chips in text form.
I think suggestions that have a serious chance of being added, whether it be a rule change or a new server or whatever, should have a forum thread. Taking in the pros and cons from 50 discord users is not an easy task when everybody is speaking at once and the messages are slowly scrolling away before your eyes.

I agree with Kimmel. It isn’t fair on us to force people to make a discord account just to report someone ingame or to report a problem with our servers. It will just be easier to not play blackwonder again. Sure, implementing more functionality into our discord is all well and good, but we should not shut down the forums and leave the people who either don’t have a discord account, or don’t wish to make one in the dark. Taking away this functionality will be a detriment to the community as a whole.

I look forward to the further development of this community, I just hope I am not left behind

 

[Chris TCC]

These are great points:

Noted. Will need to have further discussions with the team regarding the details, as mentioned before.
As of now, the concern is not about the cost of hosting the forums, but who is willing to upkeep and monitor it. We need someone working on the backend of the forums, as well as moderation to prevent spam and the like.

 

[Chris TCC]

After doing some further discussions, the potential future of the forums is moving it to a subdomain, and reducing its scope a bit by purging dead subforums.
The frontpage of blackwonder.tf will be repurposed for something else.
This change is going to take some time and preparation, so things will remain as-is for the foreseeable future.