In the recent site re-organization, one of the primary goals has been to simplify the process for obvious tasks.

Right now, authors need to register a special forum account to get answers here, which disrupts the authoring flow.

I'm proposing moving this "Quiz Authoring Q&A" to the chat boards, where it would serve the same purpose as it has here, except in a place where authors can interact with their existing FunTrivia account. I would create a new Chat Board forum there.

Make sense?

You'd have to make sure that all the editors know to check that chat board. I'm not sure that all of us frequent the chat boards as much as we do the forums.

I’d be glad to keep it under my purview over there if that’s the decision.

Makes sense to me.

I'd think that makes sense. A number of queries raised in the Authors Lounge over the years have already been dealt with here, but new members didn't realise there was such a forum.

I think, too, that a lot of new authors coming to the Lounge can be a bit scared off, as the majority of the posts these days are long time experienced authors who know each other well, talking about fairly difficult challenges, or just chatting and having fun. That's a bit intimidating when all you want to ask is "I'm trying to resubmit my quiz after making the changes the editor asked for but can't figure out how".

Having a there board that is clearly for asking the editors questions would be very useful.

May I add a suggestion as a non-editor?

Terry's intention is apparently to help out the less experienced authors (or future authors). So maybe it would be appropriate to divide the board into one for the simpler questions and one for the experienced authors.

The fundamental drawback of dividing the board is of course that what seems a simple question for one of us, may be a very hard one for others.

I think it would make sense to either move everything over to the chat boards or leave them separate. Otherwise people will forget one or the other.

I do like the idea of one login for the entire site.

I would prefer to keep the authoring forum here. This is a much more powerful forum with all the customization and formatting and flexibility of a UBB-type forum. The "chat board" area has many more limitations.

So, if you must merge them (and I wish you wouldn't), but if you must merge them, I would prefer to have the authoring board here rather the chat board.

If there is a merger made on the chat board side, the board would need some additional functionality we do not have yet - I am particularly thinking of subforums. A unification only makes sense if we have a single link to click, otherwise authors may be just as blissfully unaware of a second chat boards as they are right now of the forum.

Also, some posts such as EDQ fit both skill levels. So the resulting structure would have to be made of a main authoring board (only editors can create threads there - EDQ, announcements, the challenge master list - although normal members can reply) with several subforums (where everyone can create threads).

I would rather like to look at the opposite move - have registrations transfer automatically via an embedded call to the UBB script so that the forum account is created immediately along with a new user account - and then get rid of the old chat boards entirely. Of course this leaves the issue of embedding into the new design, but we'll need that anyway. The dual design isn't really 2017.

I guess that really depends on what Terry is able to add or integrate into the chatboards. Considering the changes being made to a number of other parts of the site, I don't think some adjustments are out of the question.



I'm of the opposite ilk. We have a number of authors who don't use the forums and I frequently have to tell new people that they need to create another account just to post the question they're looking to ask. We shouldn't have to make them do something like that just to give feedback or find a solution to their problems.

From my end, there's also an ease of use with the CBs.

I agree with Wes that the dual design is not ideal. But I'm of the 'less complicated is better' side. Things should be accessible for everyone. I think the forums are dated in and of themselves; most sites don't use this type of thing anymore.