Agree or disagree I'd like to give the OP props for being open to suggestion, criticism, and discussion. Big +1. I wish everyone was this approachable. :D

AND you used granulated prefectly. I just thought it sounded funny there, like we talking about baking, :P

I am satisfied with current forum structure, and I'm here long enough...

The OP's idea is a great one.

This would probably be better decided with a poll. Does this forum even have poll support?

That would most likely be the best way to see what the majority of users want and the percentage of users wanting this categorization and those that don't need it / don't want it.

you missed the ninja bake off!

As I see it, it's a pain/pleasure either way...

Right now it's all in an easy jumble with every topic in one top-forum – this negates the need to fumble through several forums (or sub forums) in search of interesting topics. It is also left up to the randomness of it all:

- Seeing news from GOG (as opposed to look for it manually/specifically)
- Finding an unknown give-away (Suplies!)
- and I do think it has been a lot easier on GOG administrating the whole forum (needs fewer people f.ex), especially in the first years.

But, when looking at the sheer mess – If I haven't logged on to GOG for some days – topics that where on the first page then, are now on (random guess) around page 10-15.

And like today, I'm fishing through the pages after topics that I want to read more on since last time, I middle-button-licking those I want to read from the first page. Read them. Goes to next page, and sees that most have been bumped to page 2-3. Unless, I'm opening them all up before reading them and ending up way back on the page number, so that watefox is getting really greasy and fat. :D

Maybe I'm over complicate it all, but even with “more organized” forums people tends to loose focus (read; and then lazyness comes).

I do, however, see the OP's thought on this – could be a good thing as long as they stick it to 2-4 main top-forums, and don't deal with subforums.

//--
Sites you are seeking
From your path they are fleeing
Their winter has come.
--//

Hm, the surprising giveaways could still be done … just pretend writing about a topic, and then it’s a giveaway instead. ;) The other points: the news is still were it belongs to, in the GOG forum, And about administration: it goes the other way. If the forums are better structured, the administration gets easier. Also there won’t be less topics in any case, so why should administration be easier in one single forum? (Also GOG does not administrate much, because we behave.)

Yeah, I’m doing it quote the same way. Looking about the first page, opening every interesting topic in a background tab, and when I’m done, half of the topics are sunken to page2 because on the first page there are often only those “hot” topics of the last 2–3 hours (50 topics per page!). And this will become even more crowded in the future. :(

A reduction to 40% for the main gaming-related forum would be a relief, at least for a year or two.

I’m fine with baking a new forum. ;)

Or 4 or 5 dead subforums (i.e. all of them or all but one).

At first, no one talked about a “crapton of subforums”. (Why is it always that people have to exaggerate and turn sensefull arguments into polemic discussions?) You are worried about forums that won’t have much traffic and be half-death? That won’t happen. I made the split on a basis of active threads from 24 hours, and in each forum were at least 15 to 30 topics. Those were the active ones! So with this partition there will still be much life in all forums.

Turn the argument around: if there will be a forum that you don’t want to visit, e.g. the off-topic one (I can’t think of the other three, they are highly interesting), why would this be a disadvantage for you? If anything you will look faster to the other forums because those topics that don’t interest you are all in another forum you don’t even have to visit, because you knew it in advance.

Try making that split on a Wednesday and tell me if you get the same results. I'm pretty sure you did it on a particularly active weekend. Weekends have double the posting at the very least.

I definitely want this, specifically separating the gaming discussions from giveaways and off-topic. I know some people enjoy the giveaways surprise threads but frankly, they're not worth it compared to a structured forum IMO.

Ok I’ll try, but I don’t know in which timezone the most (or less) activity is. But for a 24 hour period, it should make no difference. You are right, one or two counts on a weekends are not representative.

lol, you're right - surprising qive-aways could happened everywhere. :D

Like I see it it's easier to dump all the topics/posts after each other (like document-maps), just adding another one after the other. As opposed to organize them alphabetically/groups.

(Now finding it again is a little different; physical vs digital)

What I meant with the last entry was more about policing the forum to see if topic where in the right forum (or sub). I've seen forums (and admin a tiny one myself) where webadmin constantly was moving topics that didn't belong in that sub/main forum to another... that usually takes man power / time...

One issue I see is that, if you split up the forums and make a separate giveaway section, people will just obsessively monitor that forum hoping to get ninja giveaways and such. Even currently there are people who must get tons of games in the ninja thread (I doubt they play many of these games they acquire, but they sure do like collecting). Fragmentation will only make certain places incredibly high traffic and others very low traffic. For now it's best to keep everything in one place. Who wants to click on 2 or 3 or 4 subforums when you can just click one?

I have a large collection as well that I never play (all purchased by me). Eventually, I plan to play most of them. Probably will never play over half of them. I do, however, see the need to break off the giveaways to a different forum.

I personally would like the ability to sort some of the threads into other subforums. Off-Topic threads, time to time I may chime in, but for the most part it's about games and gaming in general. Giveaways, are great, but to be honest they usually take up most of the first page of the threads. Break off the giveaways to their own subforum, and perhaps the other subforums wouldn't be needed.

I would be ecstatic if they would simply add an off-topic forum (everything else stayed under general, or rename it to "games"). Other subforums would be acceptable, but that one is a must.