So over at Shenmue Dojo we have a medium sized community, but a lively one. Similar to here in ways. Recently we simplified the forums and it has really helped boost thread creation and activity across the board. More or less everyone is loving it. I was thinking of doing something similar here, though want all of your input.

What it would entail:

Combining forums, allowing the entire community to be more or less in the same place. Instead of the vast amount of Biohazard forums, we could simply have 'classic horror' pertaining to the older titles, 'new generation horror' for the newer titles and 'spinoffs'. The same could be done with some other forums.

I truly feel this could work, but again, want everyone's input before pulling the trigger.

While it might work encourage activity, that activity may lead to quite a bit of clutter.

I personally believe that member activity will be booming at the same rate after the RE:6 release whether you combine forums or not. I like the forums the way they are and I think the site should pride itself on having specific "topic areas" because it's not like they are hard to navigate in the first place. I just like the idea of keeping this place diverse.

Pretty much what both News Bot and Agent Gundlach said. Combining all the different forums will just lead to a whole lot of clutter. Having them separate keeps things organized and clean. RE6 is almost here with a little over a month away. I'm sure by that time, there will be members and guests all over the place.

Room for maneuver on a compromise?

I think the games should keep their own sub-forums. The spin-offs should be combined into one, as should Biohazard Misc, also Other Categories - creating three new sub-forums, as opposed to the current (ludicrously large) 16.

Shift what would be the new collective for Other Categories to the top, underneath News & Updates, Biohazard Misc below that, then Biohaze next. Then have each game's sub-category below those.

This was a free consultation, you just remember that.

I think Agent Gundlach hit it right on the spot. I like how organized it is now, and this new idea would only add to the clutter. Personally I think a lot of people have been missing from the site recently because they don't want RE6 spoiled for them. Things should pick up in october.

I admit, I've been doing this on both here and THIA. The temptation to click on any links or spoilers anyone posts is to great for me, so I've been limiting my visits. I'm sure many others are as well. It'll spike back up once October comes around I'm sure.

I'm fine with either way honestly. But I'm sort of used to the layout we have. However, I'm open to change and Yama usually knows what he's doing so if it goes through will to try it out.

I too like our current layout and actual site activity is not an issue. It's just there are forums for older titles that very few people post about, so combining them could help boost activity for those specific forums as there would certainly be less of them. I'm fine either way as well. If there isn't a demanding general consensus then it can stay as is. Even at SD the game forums weren't combined, just general. Perhaps it was simply a different scenario.

If you combined the forums for the older titles, I don't think that would actually make people more interested in that title. There just wouldn't be a section for it anymore, while actual discussion on it (or lack thereof) would remain the same.

It's a bit of a problem for massive franchises, haha.