Hey everyone I've been thinking there's something off with the way recent replies works on the main page of the forums
Whenever there's drama, it feels like it changes the character of the whole forum, I think some of that is unavoidable with how small of a userbase there is, but when you think about it, the drama is only really happening in at most a couple threads at a time. So if those threads weren't clogging up the recent replies, then it'd be like "oh that board/topic has drama" not "the forum has drama"
Well having said that I guess it's not insignificant maybe people have their guards up since there was recently controversy regarding the whole Homestuck Official sphere. But I still feel like it's worthwhile to talk about how this part of the site might be contributing to the issue.
Also, I feel like it's not always obvious to people when they're clicking into the reply as displayed on the main page what board it was posted on. I think that should be way more prominent, we already saw people get confused when a FRAF work updated that it was a HSBC update. I feel like if that continues to be a problem FRAF, MSPFA, etc creators may feel discouraged from using the form to inform people of updates.
Also, recently I posted something that only makes sense to Autopraxis fans, and was intended to start discussion mostly amongst Autopraxis fans, but since it was put on the main page without that context being at the forefront, even though it was in the Autopraxis board the discussion went in a different direction, which is frustrating. In my mind, the only people that should be engaging with less generalized posts on e.g. MSPFA boards should be familiar with the comic being discussed. (So the exception would be e.g. the "Should I read Autopraxis?" topic (title not verbatim), that I think is obviously one where people who don't have any familiarity with the board's focus are useful to the discussion.)
Since I am bringing up something specific I don't mean to say I think the mix-up is especially frustrating on the part of the other posters, but that it really illustrated to me something that might be a problem for how the website facilitates engagement that this is a repeat issue.
I don't have much in the ways of ideas for how to fix this, but I hope this was a good discussion opener for the problem. Would appreciate other people giving their thoughts.
