MyGaming forum feedback discussion

[James]

Hi everyone,

I thought this would be a good place to post this as it one of the most popular hang outs.

I'm going to respond to the issues raised in the competition thread: Win Google Nexus 7 Tablet PC with MyGaming

I'll do so at a regular basis by updating the OP if/when new topics arise there.

Further comments and questions welcome in the thread.

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Part 1

Separate sections for each console/game

It's not a good idea to separate things into sub-sections unless there is a massive need to do so. If there was a lot of activity in the current forum Xbox 360, PS3, Wii, DS/3DS, PS Vita - so much so that you couldn't keep up with page 1 because it changes over too rapidly, then we will consider doing it. So, basically, that level of activity is up to you guys

Attract new members into the community

This is always on the top of our list. We do so through regular competitions, by trying to draw new users in through interesting content on the news page, and through social media networks.

The MyGaming community can help us by encouraging their friends/family/dentist/mechanic/complete strangers to join up on the forum

Reposting a story you enjoy of an interesting discussion via personal social media channels can help draw in new faces as well.

News section comments - Disqus

The news sections comments system uses the Disqus system; the functionality is entirely dependent on Disqus. As such, you cannot log in using your MyGaming forum account name - sorry

The latest Disqus update implements features such as tracking for comments, but we a re holding off on that for now due to concerns with how it is implemented.

Forum rewards

This is a cool idea which I have been mulling over for some time. However, we do not use third-party plugins for the forum, as they inevitably break stuff. We rely on vanilla vBulletin implementation for stuff like this, and they have no real forum rewards system in place.

The reputation system kind of addresses this. Some may recall the mini-riot caused during its implementation. It's still there to be used, but it seems people are so interested when they can't anonymously flame each other.

Site redesign / Forum search

Front page widgets are going to be tweaked and moved around. Forum search box is on the list to be implemented during our next redesign.

Minimum character requirement

This is implemented in the forum to prevent shit-posting and spam. " " isn't a substantive and valuable contribution to a discussion.

Social network interaction

We manually curate the Facebook feed with the top stories.

The twitter feed is treated as an RSS, so all of the articles are automatically tweeted out from the MyGaming account. We also manually tweet big articles sometimes.

The Google+ feed is also automated at this stage, as the level of participation on Google+ is still growing.

MyGaming classified / community marketplace

Following a call from users for a more robust system, we implemented the Classified section. It has gone largely unused.

The buy/sell/swap thread seems to be the preferred route.

Reviews

While we would love to expedite reviews, we are hamstrung by the fact that South Africa is a marginal market for the gaming industry. We rarely are given review copies ahead of launch, and when we are, they are always ready for launch day, as per typical embargo restrictions.

Otherwise, we are at the mercy of local public relations, who organise the promo copies for review, and who themselves are at the mercy of the publishers who decide whether they want to send out pre-release reviews to our territory.

As such, we strive to have the latest big releases reviewed within a week of launch, so that you guys have that unique MyGaming tone and quality you have come to expect

Competition partnerships

We are always looking out for partners for regular competitions. It seems that many of the large distributors and online retailers don't see the value in doing it.

We will always have a competition every Monday, forever and ever, so be sure to keep checking back

[MetalSoup]

Separate sections for each console/game

It's not a good idea to separate things into sub-sections unless there is a massive need to do so. If there was a lot of activity in the current forum Xbox 360, PS3, Wii, DS/3DS, PS Vita - so much so that you couldn't keep up with page 1 because it changes over too rapidly, then we will consider doing it. So, basically, that level of activity is up to you guys

I also thought this was a weird request. There is almost no activity in that section at all compared to the others, in fact I thought about suggesting it gets merged with general gaming.

[Gamy]

I tried searching for something a while ago, all I ended up searching for was the search button. I must have spent about 5 minutes searching for it, convinced I was being stupid and somehow missing it. Even after I used a search engine to search the forum I went back to trying to find the search button that was eluding me. Eventually I gave up feeling that much less web savvy since it had somehow managed to stay hidden.

So now I find out there isn't one! Victory, it didn't elude me.

Though in all seriousness this should have been a #1 priority for a long time.

As for "Social network interaction" personally I couldn't care less about that, maybe others do but I don't even use Facespace.

About the News section comments and Disqus, wouldn't it be easier to just have a forum thread for each news article and load the forum thread (minus avatars, signatures etc) as comments, if you're feeling especially lazy you could also just make the "Comment" button take someone to the forum thread from where they could add a reply, oops I mean comment.

[Ichigo]

I also thought this was a weird request. There is almost no activity in that section at all compared to the others, in fact I thought about suggesting it gets merged with general gaming.

The way its setup could be stopping people from posting in it as often, same with new gaming people who see no subsections probably thinking we don't really focus too much on DS/3ds and other gaming platforms.

I personally don't use it much since it isn't seperate