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For those who are new, this is a weekly post where you can share your feedback on all things related to Board Game Atlas. You can also find more information in this article where I walk through the various features on BGA.

For those who are new, this is a weekly post where you can share your feedback on all things related to Board Game Atlas. You can also find more information in this article where I walk through the various features on BGA.

I still haven't had a chance to look over and respond to last week's feedback, so I'll just leave this one open-ended. Thanks and have a great weekend!

For those who are new, this is a weekly post where you can share your feedback on all things related to Board Game Atlas. You can also find more information in this article where I walk through the various features on BGA.

By the way, we've been working on fixing some bugs on the Trending games page. There have been several games that continue to come up even though we thought we fixed it!

Have a great weekend and I hope you enjoy some gaming time. I'll be trying to get in a solo session of #Tapestry!

For those who are new, this is a weekly post where you can share your praises/complaints/wish features for our forum, game pages, content, etc. You can also find more information in this article where I walk through the various features on BGA.

For those who are new, this is a weekly post where you can share your praises/complaints/wish features for our forum, game pages, content, etc. You can also find more information in this article where I walk through the various features on BGA.

For those who are new, this is a weekly post where you can share your praises/complaints/wish features for our forum, game pages, content, etc. You can also find more information in this article where I walk through the various features on BGA.

For those who are new, this is a weekly post where you can share your praises/complaints/wish features for our forum, game pages, content, etc. You can also find more information in this article where I walk through the various features on BGA.

• How's your overall experience using BGA? How do you feel about our forum system, game pages, etc? Does it especially lack in a certain area?
• Do you experience a lot of lag or any crashes?
• Are there certain procedures that give you a lot of trouble that need refinement?
• I personally use BGA at 80% zoomed view because the font size at 100% zoom is way too big for my tastes. Is this just me?

Basically, give all your complaints so that we can make it better! :D

Thanks everyone.

For those who are new, this is a weekly post where you can share your praises/complaints/wish features for our forum, game pages, content, etc. You can also find more information in this article where I walk through the various features on BGA.

Since I've already made several posts throughout this week asking for feedback, I really don't have a specific question in mind. So please feel free to let us know any of your thoughts below!

One of the features @trentellingsen and I recently have been talking about is the topic feature. Currently, this basically acts as a custom folder that any users can create to link all related forum posts to that page. For example, I created the BGA Giveaway Winners topic page long time ago to curate posts of all giveaway winners.

The idea is great, but it's in need of major work. Here are some problems:

• Need for organization/sorting/search function - With how it is currently, I've never felt like browsing/clicking on any of them.
• It's hard to know when a user has created a new topic page. Also, it's hard for me to care if someone created one because in the end, it's just a way to file your posts, and that's it.
• Part of this is that a topic page is too bland. It has a unique title and a description for the purpose of the page, but nothing beyond that.

I think we should consider revamping the topic feature. Here are some of my thoughts and ideas:

• First, my overall vision for the topic page is something closer to a combination of a facebook page or a wiki page. So when you visit a topic page like "Solo Board Game Corner," in addition to the linked posts, I'd like to see something like the creator's list (from his/her user profile) that shows top 10 solo games, the hottest solo games on BGA, recent user reviews of solo board games (whether it's reviews by the creator or by others), top most played solo games based on user play logs, etc.
• Allow the creator of the topic page to make the page public or private. If private, allow creator to be able to invite other users who can join as a co-creator to manage certain things. I could also see this allowing for something like a SU&SD fan page where it has all of the linked video reviews, section that highlights favorite moments/quotes from their reviews, an image gallery, etc.
• Allow users to follow topic pages, and display the # of followers on the topic page.
• Your profile should display all of the topic pages you've created. Oh and maybe gold coins you earn can be used to allow customizing the color of the page or any other simple changes.
• Home page or forum page should display new/hot topic pages.

Those are some of the thought I have at the moment. What do you think--Useful? Not really? Is it worth pursuing? Let me know in the comments! :D

Ok, I have a list of items that I'd like to hear your thoughts on:

1. Play log features - Anything special you'd like to see? Trent will be focusing on revamping this feature for the next 2-3 days, where it would cover many of the helpful features/stats that BGStats has (EDIT: looks like @trentellingsen made quite a bit of progress today! Check it out here)

So far people have thrown out suggestions like the ability to create custom challenges like a 10x10 and having the log synced with it. There's also syncing/importing BGG play log data with BGA's. This is a separate item but I want a 3x3 grid for presenting your top 9 games on your profile page.

2. Giveaways - Any changes you'd like to see? For example, do you like sticking with selecting game(s) at $60 value, or would you prefer getting a gift card that can go towards a more expensive game? I could even look into getting sponsors from specific stores for this.

3. Content - With the shelter in place looking to be removed soon (at least where I am), it's quite likely that I'll be going back to my full-time work and returning to half-time work for BGA. This means that I won't be able to work on as many time-consuming content that takes multiple days to produce. I'm thinking of using the next couple of weeks to prep for the transition by connecting with artists and designers out there to start interviews again. Let me know if you have suggestions on who I should reach out to!

4. Give us any feedback!

Thanks everyone :D

For those who are new, this is a weekly post where you can share your praises/complaints/wish features for our forum, game pages, content, etc. You can also find more information in this article where I walk through the various features on BGA.

For this week, let's talk about some feature updates. @trentellingsen has completely revamped the look and functionality of the game pages and will be moving on from this once the price-related bugs have been sorted out. Besides little items here and there, is there a major feature you'd love to see added to the game page?

Also, Trent will be moving onto the play logging feature very soon. What would you want to see in your ideal play logging process? What are some features you'd love to see that seem out of the box but may be cool to have? Would you want to be able to easily share this data with other users on BGA or with others in social media? Let us know in the comments!

Thanks everyone and have a great weekend!

For those who are new, this is a weekly post where you can share your praises/complaints/wish features for our forum, game pages, content, etc. You can also find more information in this article where I walk through the various features on BGA.

Since Trent's already receiving lots of feedback through the feature update posts, I have questions for you on content.

• I recently pushed out an article that looks into trends in game page views. I'll be releasing another one this week that will reflect lots of changes in trends due to COVID-19. Would you like this to be a monthly article? If there isn't much interest from you all, I'd rather put time into something that you want to see more of. And if you like the idea but have suggestions to make it better, please feel free to give feedback!
• Alternatively, what do you think about the idea of having a separate page on BGA where we keep track of these changes in trends? Something similar to the boardgames subreddit's page here?
• If you have an idea for a different type of content, please share! You can also let me know if you've especially enjoyed some of my past content more (e.g. interviews).

Lastly, sorry about the late post!

For those who are new, this is a weekly post where you can share your praises/complaints/wish features for our forum, game pages, content, etc. You can also find more information in this article where I walk through the various features on BGA.

Throughout the upcoming weeks, we'll be continuing to make progress on revamping our game pages, which will cover adding complexity ratings (rules vs. gameplay), possibly an "interaction level" rating, as well as making the mobile layout more intuitive. So have at it and let us know your thoughts on the current state of the game pages and what you'd hope to see the most!

And as always, thanks for making this a great community and continuing to provide valuable feedback.

For those who are new, this is a weekly post where you can share your praises/complaints/wish features for our forum, game pages, content, etc. So, have at it and let us know your thoughts!

How do you feel about the recent changes made by @trentellingsen? Specifically, there have been changes to simplify the home page, the presentation of the "all games" pages has been revamped, searching for a game will bring up related forum posts, and game ratings/scores have been changed to be easily distinguishable. There are a number of improvements to come next week such as adding complexity ratings!

For those who are new, this is a weekly post where you can share your praises/complaints/wish features for our forum, game pages, content, etc. So, have at it and let us know your thoughts!

And as promised, I will share some of my thoughts on our giveaways since there have been lots of feedback over them in the past months.

First, I'll start off by listing the most common questions raised, address each one of them, and then present my suggestions/ideas afterwards:

Questions & Answers

Q: What type of contributions are counted toward entries?

A: You currently receive 1 entry every time you comment or make a post (this is specified in the giveaway rules).

Q: Shouldn't contributions to the game pages give you entries?

A: It should, definitely. I'll go more into this below. And for clarification, this used to count in the way way older giveaways. 

Q: How about giving different weight to each type of contribution? (e.g. articles get more entries over others).

A: It's certainly something I've thought about in the beginning. But, there are issues to consider. (1) I won't go into the specifics but giveaway laws are a big headache and difficult to interpret. Uneven distribution of entries is one of them. (2) There's a bit of a... "social contract" element to this, where there should be an agreement among the community on what a proper article is. Here's a list of some issues to consider:

• Weight - How much more value does an article have over a regular post? Is it assumed that articles are inherently better?
• Length - How long should it be? Should there be a cutoff in terms of minimum number of words required?
• Content/Quality Control - Besides length, is the content quality material?

I'm sure there are more but I hope it gives you a picture of the potential problems that need to be considered. Free games are undeniably attractive and while the giveaway has been great for stirring up great discussion, the appeal of going after the big entry methods may lead to questionable content. But, it's definitely not out of the question and it should be up for discussion on how we should treat this.

Lastly, here are my thoughts:

• First, make game page contributions count toward entries. No questions there.
• We should entertain the idea of doing themed giveaways, where every month or two, the entry methods will get changed to something along the lines of: "Bounty Hunters" (entries only from adding game info), "Everyone's a critic" (entries from review posts/articles & writing reviews on the game pages), logging your plays, participating in polls for top games of 2020, etc.
• I'd also like to address the issue of opportunity for newcomers. I'd like to maintain a system where the most active users who build up BGA are rewarded for doing so. But, I also want to encourage new users to participate by giving them better chances. Because of this, I will hold additional giveaways with smaller prizes (in value) where each user will only get a single entry by participating (equal chances for everyone). I will be deciding which prizes I should consider, but for now, we currently have a decent supply of MtG playmats and board games designed by Trent from his previous business ventures. Any other suggestions?
• Prizes - I will be looking into the option of working with other online stores to buy e-gift cards in bulk at a discount. If it's promising, I may consider using these as rewards so that the users themselves will be able to make the order, except they would need to cover shipping expenses. This may be a good option to save shipping costs on our end for international users (especially once the community grows) while also allowing us to potentially run more giveaways than even now.

For those who are new, this is a weekly post where you can share your praises/complaints/wish features for our forum, game pages, content, etc. So, have at it and let us know your thoughts!

I feel like @trentellingsen already has a mountain of work to do so for this week, I'd like to get your feedback on what I could work on to make this community a better place.

Some of the things I do are:

• Forum community management & giveaways
• Content creation (written)
• A little bit of social media management

With that in mind, what are some things that you think I could do more of? And when it comes to content, would you like me to focus on picking up interviews again? or try my hand at doing analytical work in presenting our traffic data in written form? (write about top games viewed, changes in trends, etc).

For those who are new, this is a weekly post where you can share your praises/complaints/wish features for our forum, game pages, content, etc. So, have at it and let us know your thoughts!

Also, I apologize for the late post! I've been MIA since Friday because my wife and I were celebrating our 5-year anniversary (we got to play #Atlantis Rising (second edition) and will be giving a report on that today).

For this week, I also want to  throw out some questions on the play log feature--what sort of features, data inputs, statistics, etc. would you want to see? What would make you want to log your plays more or to share them with others?

This is a question for @trentellingsen and @philryuh, I guess. Do upvotes play a role in sorting of hot posts or comments, like they do on reddit?

Just curious.

I want to hear your guesses. I think it was @Sliddell11. 

I've been seeing posts about what we "need" to play if/when there is ever a BGA con. It got me started wondering, the community is small enough right now that there is a pretty good meta that can develop. And, it seems like certain games keep on coming to the foreground..... 

For a while it was #Star Wars Imperial Assault. But that seemed to be superceded by #Viticulture: Essential Edition. There has been a lot of buzz around #Root, #Clans of Caledonia, and, to a lesser extent, #Scythe.

So, my question is this. What game do you think is most characteristic of the current BGA meta?

For those who are new, this is a weekly post where you can share your praises/complaints/wish features for our forum, game pages, content, etc. So, have at it and let us know your thoughts!

Also, I read through everyone's inputs on last week's post about the forum structure. @trentellingsen and I will talk and see how we can improve the experience in the future.

As for me... I'd love to see a revamp of two main things:

1. Revamp the play log feature for ease of use and add interesting statistics to look at/share.
2. Game page - first, adjust the design/layout to be more efficient use of space and to show better hierarchy of info. Especially from PC, I'd like to be able to see all of the crucial info in one screen without needing to scroll so much. When you search for a game, I'd like it to take you straight to the game's page when you click on the suggested game title. Also, a game page doesn't show all of the pictures that users have added and some of the buttons don't work for "scrolling" to see the rest of them. Add weight/complexity ratings for rules vs. gameplay, and make this info prominent. I'm sure there are more, but I'd just love to see a revamped game page that will make me go to BGG less for info.

For those who are new, this is a weekly post where you can share your praises/complaints/wish features for our forum, game pages, content, etc. So, have at it and let us know your thoughts! (Sorry about the late post by the way).

Also, here's something more specific we could focus on for this week:

Some of our users have raised concerns on the current format of our forum, with the main issue around our forum's nature of aggregating all user posts. Because the general discussion and game-specific posts are all displayed on the main forum page, it can make it difficult to have a focused discussion around a specific game without generating threads that can go off-topic. To clarify, the main issue isn't that there are off-topic discussions happening, but that the nature of the current format makes it unclear when it's appropriate/desired or not.

Another issue that's been on my mind is that our current format isn't suitable for rapid growth in our community. If you think about how fast some of the posts can get buried even after a day, imagine how difficult it'll be to keep up with the pace if we grew 100x in size (and that's still nowhere near the size we want to be at).

So, here are some of my thoughts before I share my ideas for a solution:

• I like the conversational/friendly nature of our discussions. Our community certainly has a different feel in comparison to reddit and BGG, and I enjoy that.
• Our community is too small to call for a complete separation between general and game-specific forum posts. Assuming the game-specific forum posts could only be accessed/viewed from the game page, these posts will likely get zero traction/comments from users.
• I do agree that there can be off-topic threads. I personally don't mind them, but I could see how if someone made a game-specific post to ask about different strategies, it wouldn't be desirable if we had loads of off-topic threads happening. Again, I don't mind as much because we have threaded discussions where you can hide the "trees" (and again, it's due to the nature of our small-knit community where a lot of us currently know each other and are on familiar terms). Also, as others have mentioned, the issue is usually when it's not 100% clear that a post is for general or game-specific discussion, either due to the description of the post not making that line clear or because of the structure of our forum not providing that clarity.
• Even when I can't contribute to a game-specific post due to lack of knowledge or experience, I prefer to be able to see the post so that I could read others' thoughts on the topic. 

With that said, here are some of my ideas (please feel free to comment on this/add your own suggestions). Some of these ideas have already been discussed in the past and were going to be implemented in the near future:

1. First, make it mandatory for all forum posts to be assigned to a "topic" page. This will help provide more organization. I will also need Trent to allow me to assign past forum posts to topic pages if they haven't been assigned to one already (or if they've been assigned to the wrong ones).
2. As a side note, our forum needs a "Community Guidelines" section to make sure everyone's on the same page and for everyone to have one standard to point to if and when an issue comes up.
3. Keep the main forum page as is but provide better visible cues on whether a post is for general discussion or game-specific discussion. OR, the alternative could be to add a checkbox to specify whether the post will be visible to the main forum or not. If we go with this idea, I could also imagine that if a content creator wanted to "catch-up" after finding out about BGA, they could have an option to post 100's of their links at once if they're okay with having them default to not showing up on the main forum page. I'm split between the two ideas because while I like seeing all posts in one spot, the current forum format isn't practical to house a flood of daily posts that will happen in the future. At the same time, a post that doesn't show up on the main forum page will likely get zero traction due to the current size of our community (how would you feel about this? I personally feel like it would be discouraging for a user to make posts if they never get a response).
4. I think the best way for now is to keep the forum as is, but do two things: First, add better visible cues to distinguish between general and game-specific posts. Second, create a subscription based forum page view. You are currently able to subscribe to specific games, users, and in the future, to topic pages. This page will create a custom feed of content you're most interested in. This should be especially valuable when the community has grown much larger in size. I'd also imagine having an option to make this page your default. We could even consider having three separate views for the forum: (1) general discussion, (2) game-specific discussion, and (3) personalized feed.

Well, that's all I have for now so let me know what you think! 

Next week, let's focus on how we can revamp the game pages :D

First time checking out the site. Looks great! After a quick glance around, I was really interested in the historical lows feature. I see that you have Amazon on there, and I'm assuming it's US Amazon. Would you be able to implement the feature for Canadian Amazon? Thanks! Excited to start using this site more.

For those who are new, this is a weekly post where you can share your praises/complaints/wish features for our forum, game pages, content, etc. So, have at it and let us know your thoughts!

I'll keep this open-ended because I can't think of a particular question to throw out for this week.

Thanks as always and remember that the current round of giveaway ends on Sunday!

Ok, found an interesting one.

I created a response to this thread:

https://www.boardgameatlas.com/forum/TpUtEexVj3/do-you-ever-go-back-to-your-old-reviews-what-does-it-take-for-a-game-to-get-55-stars

I then went in and replied to my own comment.  Decided I should edit it on to my original comment.  

Hit delete on my reply...it deleted my original comment as well.  

Oops!

The main things that I go to BGG for are the following: 

1. Reviews - This is very User Driven so I will be doing my best to provide reviews for the games that I've played on BGA. 
2. Used Pricing - When I'm interested in a game, I try to see if I can get that at a decent price used either through the Geek Market, Auctions, or Ebay. Not sure if BGA gives alerts when items are back in stock for retail, but that is useful. Also, notifications for new listings in the used field would be fantastic! I'm not sure if BGG has a way for you to subscribe to 'new listings' in the geekmarket, but if they do it's probably kinda clunky like most things on there. Happy to hear that BGA will be implementing a market for users to sell games. In addition, a "sort by state, city" section would be AWESOME!!!!! One of the issues with buying used games come from shipping, which takes a great deal and makes it equal, sometimes more, than a new game. Having the 'sort by local' feature will help see what games are being sold locally at any given time. 
3. Auctions - Love this feature on BGG. Granted, took me a while to figure it out, but you know, clunky. Auctions on here would be great :) 
4. Forums - the forums on here already look better. I think links to folders for the forums for each game would be great. BGG has this divided pretty well (ish).

I'm sure there might be some other things, but I know a lot of this is user driven so keep it up, Trent and team. you guys are doing great. Remember that BGG has been around for 20 years, so it may take a minute or two to get some things going. The important thing is that you're listening and that matters!

For those who are new, this is a weekly post where you can share your praises/complaints/wish features for our forum, game pages, content, etc. So, have at it and let us know your thoughts!

Also, here are some questions I'd like to throw out for this week:

• What are some interesting/cool/useful info you'd like to see included in the game pages? (think complexity ratings, setup time, etc)
• I like the current "Your Plays" page (e.g. here's mine) but I'd like to see it getting revamped. I'd like an option to rank all of the games you own/played for a list display that you can sort through + BGA to compile a "Top 9" 3x3 grid out of it. Any other ideas you'd like to see implemented for this?

As always, thanks for continuing to make community a great one.

For those who are new, this is a weekly post where you can share your praises/complaints/wish features for our forum, game pages, content, etc. So, have at it and let us know your thoughts!

Also, here's a question I'd like to throw out for this week:

What's your biggest complaint about BGA/what's most lacking? What makes you come back to it? (besides the giveaways of course lol)

Lastly, reminder that the giveaway is ending on Sunday (1/19)! I'm so curious who'll win this one.