Pardon Our Dust: Forums Reorganization

Late reaction, but then again I wasn't paying much attention last week (work, almost too much of it ).

In general I think most changes are good, but in some cases I can't help feel that you guys are overcompensating and making things much more difficult than they should have been. And sometimes it goes into the details.

First of all I believe a forum name should cover its contents and make it perfectly clear what its intent is. "Business listings" does not fall into that category I think. My first impression when reading that name is that this is about me trying to promote a shop or something. So when I was trying to sell my service I went for 'Selling'. Only to find out that it should have gone into business listing, yet it's only described by the rule: "for players to list their mall, shop or other business". Yet isn't "buying" and "selling" about running a business in itself as well?

I can't help think that this section should have been called "Business and services" or something alike. Make it more obvious that this isn't solely about malls ("businesses") and such, but that it also provides for services and other threads. Right now only the rules cover this, which makes things more confusing than they could be.

Another point which puzzled me: why divide buying and selling, as well as jobs wanted & looked for?

It might make things look more clean, but also makes it harder on the users. Having this combined (buying/selling, offering/providing) is much easier. We can all agree that the search feature on this Xenforo version isn't really that great. So having this buy/sell service combined makes it a lot easier for players to look for whatever they want.

With a buy/sell forum (or jobs hiring/wanted) you only need to search 1 forum. When the product you're after isn't listed then you can directly post and try to get your business going (buy or sell). A spread out forum complicates this.

I'm not saying that spreading this out is bad, but I do think it makes things more difficult and possibly more confusing.

Also from a business point of view... I mean... you're looking to sell something, you go over the buy threads and suddenly see something which you might be looking into buying yourself. Katching!

With this new system you're looking to sell something, you go over the other sell threads (no correlation) and when something isn't there you post. Back into the game you suddenly recall that you also wanted to look for something to buy but.. meh, maybe tomorrow.

Keeping it combined makes it more appealing to go over those threads. Also because you somewhat have to.

Most of all, I can't help think that some people forget that we're playing a game here. Sure, it should have it's challenges, and it shouldn't be too easy. But it also shouldn't become a burden to get things done either.

Meaning: the forums should be an extension of the in-game economics. In-game we buy and sell in E chat. So why wouldn't we be able to do that on the forums as well?

Overcomplicating things only makes their usage less appealing and/or confusing. Esp. in a game.

PS (edit):

'Classifieds'? Since when is the economy classified? Wouldn't "Empire Economics" or something alike make more sense here? I never understood the 'classifieds' description at first glance to be honest.

I disagree with putting them all in one section. It is a common (though maybe not the best) practice to have an ambiguous title. Here are some examples:

Quartz Ore (selling or buying?)
Mining (resume or job listing?)
Wood Cutter (resume or job listing?)
Shop Advertiser (resume or job listing or some other kind of service?)
Diamonds (buying or selling?)

All of those threads would be unclear from the title if the section was not split up, and thus waste ~half the visitors time.

Your search example is not the greatest, because the search feature lets you search both forums if that's what you like.