The Need for Separate Forums - A Constructive Criticism
I like the new site. A lot.
I wasn't sure about the hashtags at first, but they're steadily growing on me and they're actually really great. I like being able to search for specific topics. Let's say I want to see posts about Mass Effect. Well, all I have to do is limit my search to #masseffect and voila!
However, I do not like the "unified forum" concept. Despite the freedom that hashtags give us, I think we need a basic sense of structure and guidance to make the forum more intuitive and easily navigable.
Right now there is one forum. Hashtags allow us to search for posts pertaining to various topics but the forum itself is a formless blob of posts about all sorts of things. That is disorganized and hard to navigate. I think it would be nice to have [b]two or three broadly-defined sub-forums[/b] to give this place a basic sense of structure. The hashtags can stay. As I said, I do like the freedom that they give us to focus on specific topics.
However, without sub-forums, the community shoulders the responsibility of structuring the forums. Unfortunately, hashtags are not a suitable replacement for properly divided forums. They create confusion. People cannot agree on which #hashtags to use to represent basic categories. Some categories are represented by multiple #hashtags, which fractures the community and makes it difficult to browse posts within that category. As an example, there is already confusion about the difference between #offtopic and #Flood.
I suggest that three sub-forums be created to give a [b]basic and loosely-defined[/b] sense of structure to the community.
[b][i]1) Destiny / Current Bungie Games
2) Past Bungie Games
3) Off-Topic Discussion[/b][/i]
The hashtag system should be left intact but each sub-forum should have its own closed pool of hashtags not shared with the other sub-forums. This will alleviate many of the navigation issues with the new forum while preserving the freedoms that the hashtag system provides.