Sythe Redesign and Organization

Hey guys,

I've created a mockup of a version of Sythe that I think would:

• Make it much easier to navigate
• Encourage activity in sections that are growing/ or burried
• Give new users a reason to join the market
• Help us bring in traffic and new users

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Changes & Reasoning:

• Community made more compact: Rules and News are not viewed that much. Just have it under the user center. If anything, it'll make the amazing user center Matthew made more popular and useful. Community general is less popular than the donor lounge and almost as popular as the suggestions, and having everything under it would make it more popular. I personally think Suggestions and Feedback should be combined, but let's just preserve it and move everything under Community General. After all, it's all about the community.
• Runescape markets: Better keywording, easier to navigate. It's not a wall of text anymore. If I want an account, there's one section that it's all under. Of course the sub-categories can still be there. Combining the Item exchange into gold is smart. It'll still be it's own section but it's just under the exchange. After all, items and gold are all trades. And finally, the Misc market is almost dead compared to the other active sections. Putting it under User Services fits as "other services" can also be combined into this to make one more popular sub-section.
• The other MMOs/Other Games is weird, with a lot of bad sub-sectioning and active trades also going on in the upper section. Just move the other games under other MMOs. You can rename the section, I didn't bother to in my graphics. Steam and Console sales are after all, games. So it should be under the games market. Again, consolidating the markets is great, because I for one, as do many others, have a computer AND a console, so it's appropriate to have all video game related sales under one main category. CS:GO can go under this, or it can go under the Other MMOs/Games section.
• Other Markets: There's a lot of inactive categories here. It all boils down to either other digital, or other real life. Gift cards are NOT non-virtual for the most part, so they should just go under the currency and non-games. Guides, again, are non-game/virtual sales so it should go under that, as well as softwares. And why is the graphics market not in the market? Just move it up under this category.
• Anti-Scam: It shouldn't be all the way down, and why waste space linking to it when you can just move it up, and move the market tools all together under it? How to trade safely: just link users to a useful guide on trading safely on Sythe.
• Discussions: Runescape discussions are quite active, and bunching it with other discussions will make users gaze more at the discussions section. However, most the subsections on the RS sections are dead, so there's no need to display them proudly on the homepage. Just move all the RS discussions as subsections to RS discussions. Live streaming forum is basically dead, however, if you move League, Gaming General, and private servers, which aren't really Runescape, under a section together with other games, it'll work out great.
• General Discussions: This goes under the discussions category. Sports, Crypto, SFA, Media, Technology, Sandbox, all go under the general discussions. That way a user clicks on General, it's right there if they want to make a broad topic, or they can go further for more specific discussions. And of course, spam forum should remain by itself as it's still quite active and something unique.
• Help & Resource: Graphics forum is not that active, and the marketplace doesn't belong there. It should be in the MARKET. So the solution is to have it under general resources. Guides are also not that active, so they can go under here as well. After all, they're resources. Then what we have help is all the other help sections, under their own category.
• Where's SytheChat? Hopefully by the time this suggestion gets looked at, we'll already have a better solution for SytheChat. Either a download for it, or an in-line chat like Facebook. If anything, put it under the User Center or on the top bar.

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No support, i dislike changes especially because you have to get used to them all the time.

Allthough nice effort u put into there

 

I don't mind change, but this just seems obnoxiously noisy. If the "quick markets" were pull-down/drop down tabs, I wouldn't mind it as much.

 

Quick Markets is a drop-down just like the other categories, so it can be hidden. It takes on the same style as how craigslist lists things for their market, so new users would be able to know what's going on easily. And of course, old users could just hide it. Since this is a mockup I'm also sure it could be designed better.

If anything I think cutting out all the wall of text, etc, from other sections makes up for having a small bar at the top.

 

I think after some fine tuning (it looks just a little busy) that this would be a fine idea

 

Support,a little bit change is always good

 

I think Support has been squashed too much.

Also, how would mod perms then work? Discussions mod? :s

 

I don't believe support has been squashed, relative to its size and usage. It's fairly more accessible since users don't have to scroll immensely to access it, and it can always be moved up. Help & Requests is still there, as that's the mainly active section, and all that's been changed in that Personal Support and Sythe support have been moved under it. Keep in mind if someone is viewing the more active Help & Requests section and Personal Support or Sythe support is right above it on forum thread view, there's a higher chance they'll view those sections too.

I'm not quite sure how the moderator-assigning works on the outdated forum software, however, in the event that you cannot assign moderators to sub-sections, then a discussion moderator would not be a terrible idea. A sectional moderator overlooking a section that has 10~ views plus a few more that have maybe 8-10 more views at any one time, if anything, is more efficient. It also makes sure a moderator is watching those little sections that usually get neglected since they have no moderator. And if it's the other way around where an entire section is given to a moderator, then I suppose you can break off the gaming discussions and other discussions.

All that being said, if those are the only two "issues" you see I'm sure it can be fine-tuned.

 

I like the idea. The look of it however, may need to be different. It would need some finer tuning and obviously would need to be aesthetically pleasing. LoL should be after RS though xd.

 

I support this. With a little bit more tinkering and refinement. This idea could work.

@Roary - I assume mod permissions would stay the same. Since there are distinct areas within the "Discussions" section.

 

LOOOL ohgodwhy

Mod permissions are able to be set up for each individual forums (even subforums), not just categories. You can still have off topic mods with permissions in General Discussion and Spam forum, and runescape mods with permissions in Runescape Discussion and any other related forum suggested here.

:V

 

I know, I've done it.

But there's no sense in having a mod's section split up across the page like that.

 

I'm surprised you have!

Why not? If it offers better organization for the users, who populate the forum by a factor greater than 99 to 1 compared to staff, and mods still have the spam reports section, who cares if it's split up? The only real reason to discredit the idea-- based on how mod permissions would be set up-- is laziness.

 

It's just my preference. It makes more sense to have sections together.

I'm not discrediting any idea, I'm raising my own, personal concerns about it.. which is what people do in a suggestion thread.

 

Ok, well your concerns are moot

Moving on

 

Could you clarify where it would be split up?

 

The subsection links are really blurry on my mobile; I think that's what threw me - I'll have another look when I can get on the PC

 

I think the front page has been made way too small.

 

I don't like turning everything into subsections. It decreases usability because then you have to click through the various sections to get to some of the sub-subsections. Also I think splitting the graphics section up is a terrible idea, I've been trying to help with nonmarket activity and just tacking it on under a random section isn't going to help activity any.

 

The amount of time a user spends scrolling through the site attempting to find the section they're seeking being reduced makes up for any inconvenienced from going to sub-sections. And most the sub-sections are already there: at least the popular ones. Could you point out some that are missing? When I did this I made sure that most of them that had a lot of views would still be clickable directly from the front page.

As for the graphics section, it's not really split up. All that's done is the graphics market is moved to the market. If anything this will immensely increase the activity on it. I almost forgot a graphics market even existed as it's buried down with the graphics. And if there's negative activity due to it being under Resources, it can always be moved up, or it can be moved up from the beginning. It's just one section. I just don't see the point of having three sections under the "Graphics" category all the way down at the bottom of the forums. This way, even though it's at the bottom, it's still much more accessible. Just a scroll or two away instead of five or more.