About This Forum

[St Constatine]

Seems pretty solid to me.

May get more people active too.

[Northern Rangeria]

So is there a deadline until we shift from Jolt to here? Or do we use both, side by side?

[Brutland and Norden]

So is there a deadline until we shift from Jolt to here? Or do we use both, side by side?

No deadline. To quote [violet] quoting Max*:

From the News page:

The Jolt forum isn't going anywhere. Even if our new forum survives this load test, the old one will remain, and you can move between the two as you wish.[/list]
Hosting our own forum will give us a lot of flexibility, but for now we're just trying to figure out whether it's viable! If we get through the load test, we'll look more at tweaking the cosmetics and features.

Though once we have our own forum, I think it'd be better to close some of the forums in jolt (ex. the NSWA) so as to prevent "forking" of discussions.

*Which I think is silly, because we all know that [violet]=Max Barry.

[[violet]]

Just one question: Why?

1. We didn't want to wake up one day to discover Jolt had shut down the NS forum. Jolt has served us pretty well over the years, but has lately become much more aggressive at monetizing their userbase.
2. Their forum doesn't integrate with the game properly. For many people, it works fine. But for others, it doesn't work at all, meaning they just can't post there. This is a long-running problem and we never seemed to get any closer to fixing it.
3. Jolt's moderation policy is changing; for example, they banned an NS user for criticizing a Jolt game. We feel that open debate is an essential part of NationStates, and want to preserve that.
4. We can earn revenue from ads displayed in this forum, to help support the running costs of the game. Jolt doesn't pay us anything for the traffic we send their way.
5. Jolt has been steadily building up the amount of advertising in the forum, with the latest addition being ads actually inside posts. We feel this significantly detracts from the forum's usability. We were also concerned about what might be next.

[[violet]]

Oh, one more! This lets us free old nation names for re-use. E.g. if "America" expires and isn't resurrected for a year or two, we can let you create a new nation with that name. Currently it's quite challenging to find an unused name, but we can't release them because they cause conflicts on the Jolt forum.

[Objectivist Thinkers]

Im not a fan of the 2.5D display, or the horizontal scrolling or the larger text windows that waste space, but if it was more like the Jolt forums I'd use this.

[Todd McCloud]

I like these forums a lot more than the jolt forums.

[Australiazia]

This might turn out good, just wonder if it could take all the load or if it would crash if it was used by all.

[Libdonia]

Jolt have been taken over by OMAC industries

Their priorities are different to the original Jolt ones

which is why they've shut down the clan server stuff for many popular games so they can use the servers for another purpose (and if it aint building a super computer grid thing to take over the world I am going to be deeply disappointed)

[Neesika]

So tweaking (like getting rid of automatic multiquoting) would be done once we see whether or not we break this forum?

Post counts, thread transfers...unlikely yes?

Are we viable and vivacious enough to fill two forums?

[Brutland and Norden]

Oh, one more! This lets us free old nation names for re-use. E.g. if "America" expires and isn't resurrected for a year or two, we can let you create a new nation with that name. Currently it's quite challenging to find an unused name, but we can't release them because they cause conflicts on the Jolt forum.

Can we do it now? Or that has yet to be implemented? (I'm excited about that, really. )

[Neesika]

I want Sinuhue back...Neesika is a bitch

[Soyut]

I have a crazy thought that more people will use jolt until it is too late and then they will all come here and then BWAM the forum will implode....

yes

[Fluffywuffy]

Well, at least this new forum allows me to post with my original nation, Fluffywuffy. Doesn't need any lame forum_FLuffywuffy to post, so I'm happy.

[North Mack]

I like these forums very much. they mesh well with the site, and cut out the disconnected feeling, really making the RPing link up with the game as a whole. kudos!

[Free Ruislip]

These forums seem to work much better than the old ones. Well done, NationStates Powers that Be!

[Economic Well-being]

I like the idea. Hopefully this goes well.

[Santa clauses8]

Hopefully it shall work.

[Mt Id]

I like these much better then the Jolt forums. I don't have to create a separate account and I'm automatically logged in here instead of having to keep logging in to the Jolt forums. Plus those freaking ads were getting obnoxious over there.

[Yanitaria]

Here is hoping this forum works better than jolt.

[Thrashia]

My main problem with this new set up is that the records of past threads has been removed. All of the threads that had been made on the Jolt forums can no longer be accessed, which will piss a lot of people off (myself included) because we had the option to search back and find them at will. While a change is not necessarily bad, why fix what's not broke? Far as I was aware the Jolt forums did just fine and the site admins had become comfortable in repairing any bugs. Switching over may add new aesthetic value to the forums, more pleasing to the eye, but overall it seems to me that this is an unnecessary step to take for NationStates. With the eventual move from NS1 to NS2, there is no need for such change.

[Vault 10]

All of the threads that had been made on the Jolt forums can no longer be accessed,

They can. Just goto jolt.

Switching over may add new aesthetic value to the forums, more pleasing to the eye, but overall it seems to me that this is an unnecessary step to take for NationStates. With the eventual move from NS1 to NS2, there is no need for such change.

Remember those pesky ads in posts?

The NS staff has asked and tried to get them removed from NS forums. It had no effect. We're not eating that up. After all, we can always vote with our feet.

And there's no eventual move to NS2. The new game is too different and not quite as conducive to forum roleplay.

[Crimmond]

I like these new forums for one reason and one reason alone. I can post with THIS account and not have to use The Crimm.

This one got glitched on Jolt's forums (along with dozens of others) and after well over a year, nothing was even ATTEMPTED to fix the problem.

Feels good to see 'Crimmond' by my posts again.

[Avalaun (Ancient)]

From the News page:

We are trialing a new forum! Check it:

http://forum.nationstates.net

Things to know:

[list][*]This is a test. It's possible the server will spectacularly implode under the load, in which case we'll probably have to abandon the idea and stick with Jolt.
<snip>
Hosting our own forum will give us a lot of flexibility, but for now we're just trying to figure out whether it's viable! If we get through the load test, we'll look more at tweaking the cosmetics and features.

Can I ask, what is the load/implosion problem? Is it a bandwidth issue? How big a pipe do you have/need? Is there a significant problem with up/down data amounts (exceeding the bandwidth available) or is it primarily a server capacity problem? Would the problem be solved or at least mitigated by hosting the game over multiple mirror sites? If we understood what the problem/limits/bottleneck was in more precise terms the community might have some answers or help.

[Wanderjar]

does this mean you want us to try and break it?

LOL! Stress test time!