Well, the merging the boards has been brought up in one of the general topics, so I figured we should discuss it here for real.

I'm up for it. Any activity is good activity imo. Even bad. Plus, Ross has expressed he can't/won't be able to manage the board right now. So if we merged, at least we'd have an active admin...maybe. Or just somehow boost Busta to admin. We need someone to take control of the site if its going to move anywhere. No offense to you Ross of course, it just needs to happen to get anything done.

I also recommend we should clean up this forum or whatever forum we merge with. We dont need a board for every Final Fantasy if no one is going to post in them. Make one Final Fantasy board till we get more activity in that area. Same goes with the Creativity/Other board. No ones in there, so we dont need to seperate them. Make it one. I think these are the boards we should have:

Announcement/Suggestions/Help
Intros + Leaving
Final Fantasy
Creativity
General

Yea, we'd have to come up with better names for these boards too. General sounds pretty boring.

Well, lets hear some other ideas and opinions from others

If the forums are merged, I don't think there should be one big one for Final Fantasy. The old way we did it, which worked fine, was to have the FFDen, FF-FFVI, FFVII-FFIX, and FFX+. Grouping them by generation allows for at least a little organization for the threads.

Yeah I'm def up for making those nasty Red X's go "bye bye". I'm also wondering, even though tempers flared back last Winter, if we could get Vespy back, TMC, unban SpinningFree, Aztec... Who know's. Just throwing ideas into a pot.

lol.. I'm up for bringing back TMC (we need posters that make good, quality posts and he's one of the best), Vespy and Aztec.

Ross, it appear that there is an attempt being made to make a similar revival to the one from 3 years ago. Since yo uwon't be active, I suggest Admin-ing Busta and Modding MR.

Yea, you're actually right about that. Maybe make them a sub-board of a Overall FF board though. I'm just trying to not have black chocobos everywhere. It just looks bad. But maybe it'd be fine if they each were there own. Guess we'll have to wait and see.

And Im not really sure if a mod is necessary right now. Really, one active admin would be fine. Then again, Busta is admining at least one other forum that I know of. So IF he becomes an admin, then IF he feels he needs help, he can mod someone. But as of now, we need less staff and more members.

The hard part about bringing back people is....we've all got older and gotten more responsibilities. It'd be cool to get some old members back, but I'm going to be realistic about it.

And yea, for the love of god, we need to fix those red x's. Yeah, it hurts that we lost a lot of stuff, but its been a good few months. Time to get things back in working order.

What made FFF great in the past is its community and personality. We've lost both. So let's try our hardest to fix it. Let's be creative and get some ideas floating

While I do agree with you to an extent... to me personally, Staff is important. I never join forums that don't have all their modding bases covered. When staff members are active, thats when the board is really alive, otherwise there is no point leaving them open.

Whenever joining forums, I look at the last topic time and date, Check out the smilies (oh i am a shallow bitch) and check to see if the admin's mods are active, If all of them pass, then i happily post. TMC, im sure would post here again, we were actually having a conversation tonight, he would post again, though he's pretty Busy at the moment. As for me i have time to spare currently so i can spend it doing whatever ;)

I dont think a board clean up, apart from the Anime section (which i commented on before) is needed. and I dont think At the moment a board merge would work. We have what we need here, The only thing were lacking is members making topics. The thing is though FFF is still pretty high in the IF database, If we get registrations open, and make this place look active, it wont take long for a slew of new members to come here and post.

I think all negative feelings and bans should be lifted as from now (apart from the IP changing spammers of course) but the members banned Due to little Tiffs should be Welcomed back.

I do agree with what Reliant A said...If people see that the staff are active and taking up a place like normal members and not like their only job is to warn people, they'll join. That's the community feeling.

damn, you guys are right and proven me wrong again... ;__;

anyways, yea, I guess it is important to cover all bases and put up a good staff.

I second lifting the bans which SG brought up.

And good job SG taking the initiative in the FF board and creating some threads. I'll get to them in a little bit.

Well as someone mentioned before, what do you think of making viewable onlt topics posted in, in the last few months to startout? THat way, we can start a clean slate of topics, any subject dealing with that certain FF game, and that way we can boost our activity a bit more, and make it look a lot more appealing to newer members.

What I'm trying to say is, almost make it so that you only see topics made in the last month to start, but as we start to fill the forum back up, we can make the old topics viewable again. We don't wanna lose all that history anyway, so we'd definitely keep the old topics.

Those settings are done in the member cp though, right? That's one of the things I set right after I register, is the ability to see every topic of all time.

Wonder who suggested that? xD

Anyway, the setting is in the Admin CP, and you have to set it for each forum.

And it is also on the forum page. I don't think the Admin CP overrides it, jsut changes the default.

I checked the user controls in the profile. That feature is only for subscribed topics.

Yeah, I looked too. I mean in the forum page. If you look below the topics, it is there.

I thought Cut off dates were doable by the members and the admins,

I like the idea quite alot, aslong as FFF history isnt lost.

We just need the members now really, and someone to sort out the smilies and other things like that!

no offence to anyone all these ideas are great but if nothing gets done about them talking is a mute point, like getting a forum makeover... n x's have been here a while, one admin hasnt been on in almost 2 weeks others been on since this topic was made, yet no response. my opinion take it for what tis worth, make the people who have constantly over and over again offered to help revive and revamp this place and who are willing to do something about it admin/mod seeing as how the ones ya got now are too busy.



as far as bringing back memebers if they come back i dont think anyone would wanna start stuff again, seeing as how the outcome is now and how in the desperate attempt to get the last word in no one really came out happy in the long run. still dont see why some were banned n others were not but not staff soo really not that concerened.

All we are waiting on is a word from Ross. Busta and I have been doin a lot of work behind the scenes, and there has been more progress made than what the members are able to see.

I'm looking forward to that! Ive got a few semi busy sites, and im linking FFF on them anyways.

And we have new members! :D

OMG I said this like 3 weeks ago. We should make busta admin, and get a new moderater. But ross just said he didn't want to do that.

but how can one board stay up with an admin that doesn't want to run this place?

It cant, the place will die unless we have an adminastrator that's got the time and energy to get this place up and running.

Staying on topic though we definatly need a board clean-up, I don't see all those topics coming back. A fresh start is what is needed.

We could allways start up a new FFF, so to speak. Same members but with an admina?? Just a random spur of the moment idea

SG presented the idea of merging boards to me in MSN a little while ago, I didn't really care either way. Merging boards to me means taking the two boards and turning them into one forum that is a mix of the two. I however do not think this is a good idea. For one I don't want to loose my forum and totally throw it away and I'm sure everyone here feels the same about FFF. If we merged FFF with the forum me and SG run it would essientially be the same, except with a section for The Legend of Zelda. More than anything I like the images I've created for my forum and I don't want to just throw those away and compromise them. They're kind of going to waste as it is since the forum is inactive, but it makes me feel better to know that they're at least being used somewhere.

I propose instead of "merging" boards that we just use a simple affiliation system. If you wanna post FF topics post them here, if you get an itch to post Zelda topics post them at our forum. Really the only reason I renamed and added a FF section to the forum me and SG run is because I left FFF and I still wanted a place to talk about FF with some friends. If I'm going to become a part of this forum again, then we may as well turn our forum back into a Zelda forum again. Like I said affiliation/links, but don't try to merge the two. The board me and SG run is a failed attempt to merge FFF with Zelda.

Edit: (in response to Palgo) I think our best bet would be to just leave FFF as it is and start creating new topics. Yeah its a bummer to see so many good topics gone, but there are some older one that still exist and I'd still like to keep those around for the hell of it. No point in throwing them away, plus by creating a new board, we'd start all over again, loose our members list and posts and basically discard our good repuation in the FF forum realm. If I had a choice between a new forum with a few members and this one, based on stats I choose this one because it's been around a little while and it seems active (assuming we make it active). I support leaving FFF as in a sense and just getting the members we have now to post more stuff. Maybe even change the skin again since BM and AzA are working on that.

you know, I hate to see you write that much @.@
but im damn glad your back. :)

yeah Now that I think about it (after reading that hugemungis thing ^ )
he has a point...why merge it would screw things up.

The server crash was the final stake in the coffin for FFF methinks, now it's as lifeless as the vampire in the previous metaphor. I think it's a case of us all feeling a bit hopeless because, after all that, we've lost a lot of the clever, funny and downright stupid threads that made the board what it was.

I'd be more than happy to get more active again, but I'm not much of a topic starter so..

I agree that SOMETHING needs to be done, I'm not so sure merging is the right approach though, we're all, well, I know I am, a bit melancholy that FFF has turned into a ghost town, tumble-weeds and all and I think adding another forum to it to try and make it more active would just feel strange.

I think the affiliates idea is a good one.