Decimated Cosmere

[Treamayne]

The Cosmere section appears to have been decimated, with everything not Mistborn or Stormlight shoved into a bunch (despite many of them expecting sequels) and losing things like White Sand Prime (which may have been folded into Sanderson Curiosities, or White Sand, but it's hard to tell which).

Please tell me this is a "temporary test to judge reactions."

Spoiler section is gone (expected, but still sad).

I'm not sure why this was done, but I'm guessing it was traffic driven. Except, a well organized layout should trump traffic numbers every time (IMO). So, every Major Shardworld should have a section [e. g. Roshar(Stormlight Archive), Scadrial (Mistborn), Sel (Elantris, Emperor's Soul, etc.), etc.], then feel free to use Other Cosmere as a home for minor shardworlds and other stories. Otherwise, you are just telling new members "we really only care about these two worlds, go somewhere else for that other stuff. . ."

At least, that's the impression I get from the new layout.

 

 

[AonEne he/him in an enby way]

Hi! Sorry about the delay, I did write an announcement for this but was waiting on feedback before making it public. Here it is: 

Nothing is gone, all the book forums are still there and still have the same spoiler policies. The layout was actually exactly why we did this; the things that people had less interest in discussing were condensed, but are all still visible. We may move out the Elantris forum and other cases of the same when it gets new books, though there'll be spoiler forums anyway so it may not be needed. 

[Chaos he/him]

4 hours ago, Treamayne said:

Spoiler section is gone (expected, but still sad).

It isn't? 

4 hours ago, Treamayne said:

Except, a well organized layout should trump traffic numbers every time (IMO). So, every Major Shardworld should have a section [e. g. Roshar(Stormlight Archive), Scadrial (Mistborn), Sel (Elantris, Emperor's Soul, etc.), etc.], then feel free to use Other Cosmere as a home for minor shardworlds and other stories.

So... here's the thing. With Tress, Yumi, and Sunlit getting their own forums (and their "individual" non-cosmere discussion boards weren't that successful), the forum list is really long. This is only going to be worse over time. We can and will move forums out of there if needed, but this is a low-cost way to make scrolling down here usable. The subforums are easily clickable from the home. I do suspect Elantris will get moved out once we get sequels. You must admit everything we put in Other Cosmere is vastly less active than the ones we left out. It's emphasizing stuff that has naturally occurred. 

I think also as time goes on, defining "major Shardworld" will get more challenging. I have had sufficient Coppermind discussions that ultimately, I think the term is mostly useless. 

The White Sand prose board is merged in with White Sand. This has gotten very fuzzy and unenforceable anyway, and there will be yet another version soon. This stuff will all be horrendously intermingled.

Considering the other active part of the forums is the Community area, this condensing makes scrolling a lot more tolerable, with limited downsides.

[alder24]

I like those changes. It just looks better and it's more compact yet the access to those specific subforums is still good and they are clearly visible from the main page. Subforums with unread threads have bolded names so it's easy to see new content being posted there. Personally I wouldn't mind combining Tress, Yumi and Sunlit into one single subforum because people mostly talk about those books in the Cosmere Discussion board anyway.

[Treamayne]

8 hours ago, Chaos said:

this condensing makes scrolling a lot more tolerable, with limited downsides

This is likely the part I must have been missing - and I would guess "scrolling" issues are Mobile Device scrolling (which is why I wouldn't think of it or notice it))

Thank you.

8 hours ago, Chaos said:

I do suspect Elantris will get moved out once we get sequels.

Copy all, that makes sense.

9 hours ago, AonEne said:

I did write an announcement for this but was waiting on feedback before making it public.

Thanks for the write-up

If I write up a summary of the different versions of White Sand (well, it's written, I would just need to put it in a separate thread, since it was a answer to questions) could we sticky that in White Sand - just to enumerate Prose, GN, GA for new readers trying to make sense of them?

Edit: Posted

14 hours ago, AonEne said:

The SP Previews forum has been removed

I still think Cosmere Discussion needs a "Previews Spoilers" subforum that is all Preview Material (not just SP). The volume of SA5, SotD2 and other threads that are untagged  and "all about" the previews, or including preview material in to larger theories makes me afraid to check any new threads.

I report them when I find them, but I have to spoil things for myself to find and report them - and even then they don't always get a tag. I realize that there is no way to police all of the preview content - but even separating the most egregious offenders would go a long way to not feeling excluded just because I want to avoid spoilers.

Thank you all very much for your responsiveness and dedication. Have a great day.

Edited January 21 by Treamayne
Links/SPAG

[Chaos he/him]

3 hours ago, Treamayne said:

I still think Cosmere Discussion needs a "Previews Spoilers" subforum that is all Preview Material (not just SP). The volume of SA5, SotD2 and other threads that are untagged  and "all about" the previews, or including preview material in to larger theories makes me afraid to check any new threads

I know you've often been on this train, but considering the amount of people who don't even put things that should be in Cosmere Discussion, I think you'd have the exact same compliance issues. It doesn't solve any problems you list. I know you and I have discussed this, but I remain pretty convinced it would not be effective at doing what you want. (And in general, less boards are better.)

[Treamayne]

3 minutes ago, Chaos said:

I know you've often been on this train, but considering the amount of people who don't even put things that should be in Cosmere Discussion, I think you'd have the exact same compliance issues. It doesn't solve any problems you list. I know you and I have discussed this, but I remain pretty convinced it would not be effective at doing what you want. (And in general, less boards are better.)

Copy all, that's why you are the boss. As long as you are aware that this is a significant issue for a number of people.

Although, I will note that I also think you are under-estimating the effect of having a board with such a name.

Once the tagged spoiler threads are moved, social inertia will likely apply and many of the offending threads will just be made in the correct place (like Cosmere Discussion - there used to be far more threads needing to be moved there, but it is now routine for most people to just make their threads in the correct place). 

[Chaos he/him]

17 minutes ago, Treamayne said:

As long as you are aware that this is a significant issue for a number of people.

Regardless of whether or not there is a board, though I understand the concern, it is challenging to deal with user generated content if people are extremely averse to spoilers of preview content. Can happen all over the place. Even in a forum, that content can still appear in search results, profile pages, etc. I am sorry, but that is just the reality if you want to go totally blind.

19 minutes ago, Treamayne said:

Once the tagged spoiler threads are moved, social inertia will likely apply and many of the offending threads will just be made in the correct place (like Cosmere Discussion - there used to be far more threads needing to be moved there, but it is now routine for most people to just make their threads in the correct place). 

I'm not sure about that. I think people will be much more likely to put SA5 stuff into the Stormlight board than a subforum of a different board. With Cosmere crossovers, I think it's more intuitive. And it still will not help the bigger problem of that content appearing randomly in a post in a random Cosmere area one time. (See paragraph above.)

Also, there are not that many of these until preview chapters come out that I think it's worth having a new forum. I remember the disaster of the Dawnshard forum and Discord channel that was created far too early...