The Forums section of the website has received some minor renovations. Mostly it's a case of musical chairs with regards to the sections. Given the layout of the new sections for Buying, Selling, and Business Listings, a few things were noticed/brought up that needed to be addressed. The basics of the changes are outlined below. Red represents something removed/renamed. Green represents additions. White represents things that didn't change. Auctions were moved to their own section because when implementing an Auction ban on someone that abused said auctions, we don't see it necessary to remove their access to the other types of economic exchange. Please be patient as the staff work to update/move threads between sections. The Empire Official Empire News Empire Events Empire Updates Player Guides, Tips, and Tricks (moved) Empire Help & Support The Suggestion Box (moved) Empire Community Introduce Yourself Share your EMC Creations Public Member Events Community Discussion Supporter Discussion Marketplace Discussion Wilderness Frontier Frontier and Player Outposts General Minecraft Discussion (moved) The Suggestion Box Player Guides, Tips, and Tricks Empire Classifieds Products, Businesses, and Services Price Checking Buying Selling Business Listings Jobs Wanted Jobs Hiring Empire Auction House Community Auctions Supporter Community Auctions Reverse Auctions Empire Creativity Share your Let’s Plays and Other Videos! Artists’ Gallery Shutter Talk Writers’ Corner The Jukebox Empire Extras Forum Games Gaming General Minecraft Discussion Controversial Topics Misc.
Love it. definitely a more logical layout for the selling, buying, and auctions, Thanks for the hard work EMC Staff.
Ah, nice! And thanks for the clear overview instead of leaving it to me to figure out what changed exactly!
Nice! Just had an idea. Frontier thread broken down into categories. - Frontier news ( Anything exciting that's unrelated to farms or outposts.) - Frontier Public Farms - Private Outposts - Public Outposts ( Outposts that except applications to join or outright join-able. )
All these new forum sections, yet no forum section dedicated to hamster pictures. I guess we'll have to just use Stream Team forum for that...
It's great to see all those new forum sections! To me, Jobs Wanted/Jobs Hiring sound hard to distinguish. Maybe it's clear to everyone else. I assume there will be a description below, but still, there shouldn't have to be. If people end up posting in the other section by mistake, that will create extra work for staff moving threads around and possible confusion to people reading the threads. For example, Jobs Wanted could be "Jobs Wanted To Be Filled" or "Jobs I Wanted To Find" and Jobs Hiring, well someone might go there if they have jobs they are hiring for or if they are posting to see if someone will be hiring them to do any jobs. To be honest, when I started writing this, I thought I had an idea which was which, but now I'm completely not sure anymore.
Awesome! I like these changes, making the forum layout more clear and logical. I personally have the exact same thing. This could perhaps also be because I'm not a native English speaker, but since this is an international forum, it should also be clear for those who don't have English as their first language. What I should note, however, is that if you hover your mouse (which you can't do on phones!) over the name, it explains it in a way, which, to me, makes it clear immediately.
I think Kryssy did an amazing job re-organizing the forums overall. I do agree that something more concise for the jobs section could prove less confusing no matter what language is primary. I personally feel that something like Job Offers, and Job Seekers or something along these lines would help differentiate between jobs being made available by those who want assistance (Employers) and those who are willing to work for someone else to help them accomplish a given task for some sort of payment in return. Ultimately, I think it would be cool to see a system similar to what irl job services offer where you can post your resume, which would allow you to offer specific data for would be employers to utilize in the requisition of assistance. Forgive the flashback, but I am old-school a bit, and grew up with G.I.Joe toys, and each one had a file card that accompanied the figure which offered insight into what their job specialties were, and their areas of expertise. Something similar that would be easily referenced in a spreadsheet style format or even if there were certain parameters that were mandatory by which one could easily search would make for a great reference system. Data points that come to mind would be Times Available / Online, which SMP, Redstone yes/no, Builder yes/no, B.Y.O.T. (Bring Your Own Tools), Harvester, Hunter, Grinder, and I am sure many other possibilities. Maybe there could be some sort of checklist of options added to the character profile in which we could select our preferences that could then be imported to a database for querying. To have some sort of recommendation statistic would prove handy too. If you do a good job, Employer can rate you good, if not then Employer may give you poor marks which could make the next Employer reconsider upon hiring you. Whether that idea takes flight or not, I still think the idea of making it easier to research active players would be nice. I know I can go dig through that behemoth of a directory of all the players and read profiles, but a dictionary approach is not always the most effective. Maybe a page similar to the TEXP which would offer statistics for being active based on how long you were online. You can't tell me that data is not available when it knows how many seconds passed since you last logged in. Then break it down for an overall, monthly, and then do the same for individual SMP's / Utopia. This would give us an idea of those who are active in the game. Could even do one for forums too I suppose. I know my brainstorming took me way out in left field, but I was just trying to read the writing on the wall over there I truly do like the refined look of the forums, but do feel there could be a few more tweaks to help us learn more about each other, and become a stronger community. I feel bad that I don't know more about so many of you that I esteem to be pillars of the community, and beyond the more notable ones, to even know the goals of those who walk the same town streets as I do. Some of this was also a basis for another area of interest that I feel at some point in the, hopefully, near future could justify it's own specific section. The section I am talking about is the Fronter & Player Outposts. Soon Empires will be available and surely there will be a multitude of options made available for use to organize in the Frontier. The option to have Outpost / Empires Listings with their missions, and goals. Similar to the player resume directory suggestion, it would be cool to have a more concise outpost directory that could be searchable according to themes, smp, alliances, facilities, and most importantly last activity. Yea, these are imagined ideals from someone on the outside looking in, but I can bet Aikar has many other neat ideas in mind that would make such a section relevant in the future. I thought it was funny that at the time Kryssy did the forum re-organization update, I was composing a suggestion to the thread about such. The thread became closed before I could submit, but I sent it to her anyway just to add my 2 cents about the Economy section. I thought it was cool to watch as she began implementing what we now have and she started by moving Auctions and then paused for a bit, then proceeded to sort out the Economy area. During this time I actually took a few moments to look at the layout critically and thought there was room for some other improvements. Much to my surprise, Kryssy kept going, and not only tackled the other thoughts I had, but revealed some other cool additions that were not on my radar. I appreciate a forum in which I can ramble as I have above about a topic that embodies one aspect of the greatness I have found in a place called Empire Minecraft. I think it is cool to be part of a community that listens to one another, and helps each other, and has a staff that does all of the above and some to turn a simple minecraft block house into a home. Yea, the rambling is getting out of hand and I should be in bed, but I hope my appreciation for all the hard work done by staff and hard working Empireans comes through clear. Thanks KnightZer0ne Tempered Outpost Founder
While I appreciate the thought, what you are looking to accomplish would not be something for the forums to tackle. The jobs resume system would be best created as a player-managed directory, much like active shop directories are. The Empire will never have a system that officially allows players to publicly give bad marks to another player, as you suggest in your ratings system. How long you were online is actually NOT easily accessible data. When we pull the last time you were online, it's reading one piece of data and doing a simple time now - time then = time since log in. I've wanted something that indicated accurate 'time online' for a while, but at the moment, it's all manual. Even your personal timer in your settings is only per server. With regards to a searchable outpost database, I see what you mean, but once again it's not a forum organization focus. The balance of the forums is to present divisions between sections, but not to an excessive degree. Too many divisions and you end up in subforums, which are harder for players to remember to post in the proper section. That and you have some outposts that may meet multiple sections, then it's a question of where it may go. This would be something more like a 'registry' that could be made as a THREAD in the forum, but I wouldn't create sub-forums based on themes, smp, alliances, etc. Sounds like a good player project though.
Hmm, the word I did specifically use was poor, but yea still not what I was meaning to suggest. I was thinking more along the lines of Job dedicated Likes vs. number of jobs sorta like the statistic many talk about in relation to their Like to Post ratio. So not to give a bad mark, but earn good ones for a job well done kind of thing. May very well take those player projects on in the long run, not sure how fast I could produce such myself, hence the reason I just threw it out there, and maybe someone more skilled will see these ideas and do something impressive. I do understand your points, and do appreciate your dedication
It sounds like you are agreeing with me. And, yes, as I said in my post, I realize there will be descriptions. The issue is that someone may not know to hover over the name or may not read the description (assuming from the title that the section is obviously the exact opposite of what it really is), or as you said, be on their phone and the description doesn't show up. Perhaps calling them 'Services' and 'Job Postings', which, at least in my mind separates out where one would post services they offer, versus where someone would be looking to hire someone. It's also more intuitive from the standpoint that this is already called 'Services' as in 'Products, Business, and Services'. Anyone looking to be hired is essentially performing a service. EMC has no distinction between an employee versus a contractor so these are the same thing. Most hiring at present is temporary, for example to build something or do a task for someone. I don't see a point in anyone posting looking to be hired unless that post includes a list of skills they possess or things they can do for the employer (aka services). I don't have any particular attachment to the names. I'm okay with anything that makes it really obvious what you post in each section. The present proposal does not.
