Suggestions and criticisms for this message board

I swear I had another topic about this, but I can't find it. Whatever.
Anyways, the one of the main flaws with this forum is that it has a lot of things that are completely unnecessary:

• Setting up netgames just doesn't work on a forum, because its slow-paced nature. IRC makes it completely obsolete, as it's quicker, and both of the people can reply to each other nearly-instantly. There's a good reason why netplay isn't supported on the SRB2MB.
  
• Mods and Levels should be the same subforum. It's pointless to have another section because it causes unnecessary confusion, and there's just no good reason to distinguish a single level from a group of levels in the first place.
  
• Characters should be replaced with a "Graphics" subforum, to cover the whole graphical part of "Mods".
  Considering the scarcity of SOC releases, it should just be merged with the "Misc" section.
  There's too many emoticons. I can't imagine a use for any of the non-default ones other than people just wanting to be "cool" and add "flair and style" to their posts, which usually results in unnecessary spams. The "No", "Suspect", "I Love You", "Tongue", and "Confused" ones don't fit the style. And "Silent" just looks wrong.
  
• The Guest Outreach isn't very meaningful, because hardly any guests come here in the first place, and people can easily use any name they like and pretend to be someone else. And, I should mention that it hasn't even been used before.

And, that's it for now. I'll write more things up as they become apparent to me.

I'll respond to each suggestion in turn:

Kyasarin wrote:I swear I had another topic about this, but I can't find it. Whatever.

It wasn't a full topic; it was a single post in a topic that asked for improvement suggestions. But no matter.

Kyasarin wrote:Setting up netgames just doesn't work on a forum, because its slow-paced nature. IRC makes it completely obsolete, as it's quicker, and both of the people can reply to each other nearly-instantly. There's a good reason why netplay isn't supported on the SRB2MB.

You may have a point. Still, as more people visit, this feature, as useless as it may be in reality, may seem appealing at first, which will make people join.

Kyasarin wrote:Mods and Levels should be the same subforum. It's pointless to have another section because it causes unnecessary confusion, and there's just no good reason to distinguish a single level from a group of levels in the first place.

Are you referring to the fact that SRB2 Sanctaphrax was labeled a Mod, despite the fact that it's just one level? That was done for a variety of small reasons, and I could see the reasons why it might be better placed in Levels. However, there is a significant difference between levels/level packs and full blown game mods. We haven't got any full mods yet, but when we do, it should make more sense to keep them separated.

Kyasarin wrote:Characters should be replaced with a "Graphics" subforum, to cover the whole graphical part of "Mods".

I'm not quite sure I get this one. It doesn't make much sense to me; every SRB2 forum has a section for "Characters". It's just sensible to separate them, because they are very distinctive.

Kyasarin wrote:Considering the scarcity of SOC releases, it should just be merged with the "Misc" section.

Possibly. But I'll have to think about it.

Kyasarin wrote:There's too many emoticons. I can't imagine a use for any of the non-default ones other than people just wanting to be "cool" and add "flair and style" to their posts, which usually results in unnecessary spams. The "No", "Suspect", "I Love You", "Tongue", and "Confused" ones don't fit the style. And "Silent" just looks wrong.

If you'll recall a few months ago, this problem used to be even worse. There were TONS of emoticons, and there was simply no excuse for most of them. I've tried to trim out any smilies that could serve no purpose, but there's probably a few more we could do without. I'll consider getting rid of more.

Kyasarin wrote:The Guest Outreach isn't very meaningful, because hardly any guests come here in the first place, and people can easily use any name they like and pretend to be someone else. And, I should mention that it hasn't even been used before.

On the contrary, we get a fair number of guests proportionate to our number of user visits. I thought that by adding a forum guests can post in, I'd encourage them to become more involved and possibly sign up. So far, it hasn't really worked that way, but I'm giving it a little more time before I decide to eliminate it.

So...those are my responses. I hope that you feel your concerns have been addressed.