As you have perhaps noticed, there are a few changes in the way the Wonderland forums are organized. I want to briefly explain the reasoning behind these changes.
Chief among these reasons is, of course, the imminent release of Wonderland Adventures (yippy!). As a result, a new section has been introduced for Level Solutions specific to Wonderland Adventures. Please keep questions regarding level solutions in either the “Classic Trilogy” or “Wonderland Adventures” section.
The other major change is basically a big “spring cleaning” of the forum. This will be an ongoing effort over the next days (weeks?), but some changes have already taken place. Some of these changes will not be popular with some folks, so let me explain why I made them.
This forum is primarily intended as a resource for Wonderland players - to chat about the game(s), discuss possible (and alternative) level solutions, and of course, trade custom levels and content. Right from the start (waaayy back in 2003), it was clear that many people also became friends, and so a second line of discussion arose (just chatting, sharing news, talking about common interests, etc).
It’s been a while since a brand new Wonderland game has been released (not counting updates), and so over time the number of personal, off-topic, and plain silly posts have grown in proportion (since there wasn’t much new to talk about the actual games). With the release of a new game, I would like to move the forum back to its intended roots. There will be lots to talk about regarding the new game, and I would not want all that discussion to be drowned out and lost in a sea of unrelated posts.
The overlying principle for these changes has been to answer the question “Does this benefit the community as a whole in a discussion board about the Wonderland games”? There are billions of forums out there where you can post whatever you want, this one doesn’t need to fill that role.
To that effect:
1. I have deleted the “Silly Section” forum permanently. This forum existed primarily for a small group of younger players. The intent was to limit the many nonsensical or completely off-topic posts, however I think that has not been entirely successful.
The bottom line is that this section really doesn’t add much to the community as a whole and has become primarily a source of bandwidth and extra disk space.
My suggestion to those who enjoyed this section: several of the younger players have been trying to run and advertise their own forums. Perhaps you could decide on one of these forums as your meeting place to do forum games, random polls, etc.?
2. I have deleted the “Other Games” forum permanently. This forum really didn’t get much use, except for the occasional riddle, fan-made game, or game suggestion being posted. I have moved the “lateral thinking” post to the Off-Topic section, and have created new posts for “user made games” and “other game suggestions”. Rather than having an entire section, please use these threads to post (or re-post) suggestions or creations.
3. Finally, I’m also deleting the “World Highscores” section, as it was hardly ever used. Again, a single thread “Highscores” will be placed in the General Discussion forum in its place.
4. A clarification on what type of posts should go where:
a) The General Discussion section should be about the games themselves, only. Topics such as “technical help questions”, “my review of the game”, “suggestions for future games” belong here. Borderline related topics, such as the “silly screenshots” posts, are fine in themselves, but will be moved to the “Off Topic” sections.
b) Off-Topic is anything that does not fit in other sections, and stays pretty much as is. These can be general computing questions, other games and puzzles, etc.
5. I will also be going through each section in the coming days/weeks and moving threads into sections, as well as deleting selected threads, especially from the general discussion and off-topic section. Nothing personal is meant if I delete “your” thread, this is again an effort in cleaning up the forum a little and removing threads that don’t have much lasting value. (i.e. nobody would really come looking for them a year from now)
I will likely delete older congratulatory threads on reaching a certain post count. There’s no need to have multiples of these for each member. I also don’t want to make “reaching higher post levels” a worthwhile goal in itself. There are, frankly, members with many, many posts that have not contributed as much in a useful way to the community as members with only a handful of posts. I’m ambivalent about having these types of posts in general, but I assume you folks like them, yes?
I am seriously considering wiping the Off-Topic section entirely (give it a fresh new start), but that would lead to revolution, wouldn’t it?
I think that’s it for now.
I know that opinions will be divided about these decisions. I hope you’ll agree though that a cleaner and leaner Wonderland forum is in the interest of everyone, and that everyone will do their part in keeping it that way.
And one last bit of news. It looks like (without last minute mess-up) Wonderland Adventures will be available as of tomorrow evening (EST).
