[FEEDBACK NEEDED] Empire Outpost Communication Forums?

Question: would there be a feature to show the public a limited portion of the thread. Just thinking like showcasing builds to entice people to join. I’m not sure if outposts would want to maintain 2 separate threads. One for members and one for the public.

Your primary outpost's name? Minecraft Paradise Outpost
Is it established? Yes, 11 claims in a cluster
Number of members (estimate okay)? 46 official members (time of writing)
Are you a member of multiple outposts? No
If yes, how many? 0
Would you use an Empire Outpost Communication Forum? Most likely
Additional comments: This is a very good idea. MPO Thread link is in my signature.

Your primary outpost's name? Musical Retreat
Is it established? Yes
Number of members (estimate okay)? 2
Are you a member of multiple outposts? No
If yes, how many? N/A
Would you use an Empire Outpost Communication Forum? No, but I would if I was a part of a more populous outpost
Additional comments: Think its a great idea, large outposts wouldn't have to go elsewhere to have their communication needs fulfilled

Your primary outpost's name? Minecraft Paradise Outpost
Is it established? Yes
Number of members (estimate okay)? Not sure, 3 pm's full
Are you a member of multiple outposts? No
If yes, how many? -
Would you use an Empire Outpost Communication Forum? Oh yes!
Additional comments: This is a much needed thing. We have like, 3 different PM's going with max # of members.

Your primary outpost's name? UnderHelm

Is it established? Yes

Number of members (estimate okay)? around 13

Are you a member of multiple outposts? Yes

If yes, how many? around 5

Would you use an Empire Outpost Communication Forum? You bet I would!!!

Additional

comments:

I really want this to be a thing!!!

Your primary outpost's name? Clanging Bones
Is it established? Yes
Number of members (estimate okay)? Around 15... They aren't so much official members as "people who know about it and can use it if they want."
Are you a member of multiple outposts? Yes
If yes, how many? 2.
Would you use an Empire Outpost Communication Forum? Maybe... I might invite people I want to see out and leave open a general information tab. Plus just showing off progress as the place grew could be fun. That said, I would probably use it a lot for the second outpost I'm a part of, if the creators wished to. It is a very active outpost with quite a few members, and having easily accessible information that way would be cool.
Additional comments: This sounds like a really neat idea, though I don't think it needs as much stratification as what was discussed in the OP. That may require a lot of work for only a very small handful of individuals who will even take advantage of those possibilities, work that seems like it'll mainly go to a particular ancient dragon's plate.

Your primary outpost's name? Breezy Island.
Is it established? Yes.
Number of members (estimate okay)? 15
Are you a member of multiple outposts? Yes.
If yes, how many? 2.
Would you use an Empire Outpost Communication Forum? Yes.
Additional comments: This would be helpful.

- Andy

Your primary outpost's name? ThaKloned Outpost (temp lol)
Is it established? Yes
Number of members (estimate okay)? 5
Are you a member of multiple outposts? Yes
If yes, how many? 1-2 others
Would you use an Empire Outpost Communication Forum? For sure.

It would be cool to have some areas of the outpost forum public as well as private. Or maybe an option to make certain threads public/private.

This is absolutely something that would've been awesome a few years ago, but at this point in time I don't think there are really any outposts large enough or active enough to realistically warrant something like this. I know from my experience with the LLO thread, there was never a massive problem with keeping track of the conversation or previous conversations. For anything private or that only concerned a few people, a PM sufficed.

I'm not saying you shouldn't do this, but given the effort it'd take to set this up, I don't see what advantage you'd see.

Your primary outpost's name? Middle Earth Outpost
Is it established? Yes.
Number of members (estimate okay)? We have around seven active members, but our member list totals up to around 30-40.
Are you a member of multiple outposts? Yes.
If yes, how many? Four.
Would you use an Empire Outpost Communication Forum? Yes.
Additional comments: I think that this idea is a very good idea. Especially about a year ago, our outpost was super active and we had over 30 players in our outpost, all of which were active. We had to create two separate private messages, which often got really confusing. Even though now, we don't have quite the activity, new features for the outpost to use that can improve our gameplay can cause us to introduce new members to our very developed outpost. We feel that there is a lack of motivation to keep going on- after all, we have a multitude of slime, iron, ghast, pigman, blaze, wither skeleton, and even ocean monument farms. It would also increase the ease of communication and allow us to be a lot more organized. The only downfall I see to this is that it would have to be manually done by someone, and I don't think one community manager can do this all by themselves. Perhaps a team of staff can do it? Senior staff?

I haven't properly considered the logistics of using Discord channels (in a category of Outpost Channels) for each outpost, but that might be worth looking at too, since it might be possible (I don't know it if is) for the owner of the outpost to control access to their channel through roles. It would take away some of the more advanced features the forum would have though.

e.g. 'LLO Leader' role has permissions to assign sub-role of 'LLO Member'. Both roles have access to 'LLO Outpost' channel. LLO Leader has other set permissions for that channel, like setting the topic. Not sure if it's possible to have specific roles be hidden or only show up in the said channel

As for the threshold for the system to apply to outposts, 11 active-ish members (including leader) might be good, since I think 10 is the forum conversation limit.

Just some thoughts

It'd be cool for those larger outposts with 10+ members, however my outpost has 2 active members and 4 inactive. I will not be submitting my form

It just isn't practical for me. As well, I just do not see a use for outposts with a limited number of people.

We had been looking into different features for this a little while ago. I began writing the code for a bot where roles could be assigned- perhaps "Outpost Leader" has to be assigned manually, but then they can assign roles to their teams accordingly, via the bot?

Outposts.......Well.........
I personally have given up on the outpost idea because...
#1 The requirements are to restrictive for most casual or newer players. Because of distances and lack of having a group large enough and trustworthy enough to come together for mutual development.
Instead I have ventured to develop bases of operations spread out over a large area. This is because the entity count for my farms prohibits having a centralized location. With the anti-greifing solution in this game's servers it has made developing meaningful structures more pleasant and secure from those who like to destroy, steal and make the game miserable for others. I don't mind having neighbor but have found they often start to disrupt my setup and change the entity count limits that directly effect my farms.
I have even had some players kill of my stock so they could develop their own or create a mob farm close by.
I would like to join an Outpost group but without a dedicated leader that will stay and play for a long time and has a plan for positive production I would rather stick to my own development and seek out like minded individuals to form a Co-op instead.
I think that Discord could go a long way in getting players together for different goals.
#1 For me, I would like to go with others into the End to kill the Dragon which I have never done for various reasons. I remember that I have had the most fun in an other game when the Faction I was in would do group dungeon quests and we learned the new levels together. I made several friendships in that game that I still here from today.
So to sum this up, my idea about Outposts is that they now serve a limited group of players and the structure and purpose of them needs to be rethought to a broader scope.

Your primary outpost's name?
MooShroom Isle

Is it established?
Yes

Number of members (estimate okay)?
30ish?

Are you a member of multiple outposts?
If yes, how many?
I actively go to about 2 other outposts

Would you use an Empire Outpost Communication Forum?
Yus

Additional comments: I think having this implemented would make it a lot easier and accessible to outpost members to read recent news about their outposts and stay in the loop .