A little something that's been confusing me lately is exactly what the link between Bit Gamer and the Gaming forum is supposed to be. From a Bit Gamer article you're redirected to the Gaming section when you click "Forums" on the navigation bar, but none of the Bit Gamer articles actually go there. As a result there are often threads posted in the Gaming forum covering the same topic or news item as a Bit Gamer article, most recently with the Crysis DX11 patch. I'm not sure what ideas were already looked at when the current organization was decided but it may be worth looking at again, perhaps posting Bit Gamer article discussion threads directly in Gaming or creating a "Gaming Article Discussion" sub-forum with the Gaming forum.
It's irritating is what it is, I always end up in the gaming section and then having to click the forum header again to get to the forum proper. Its been annoying me for ages, the header navigation points really shouldn't change just because I'm on a gaming page.
And again. A case in point being the LA Noire article and linked thread. It's a game. We (who are reading this article) are gamers. And there's a gaming section. So why not link there in the first place?
At the moment, all forum threads linked to articles on bit-tech and bit-gamer are created in the Article Discussion forum, rather than any of the subject specific forums to differentiate them from user generated content. However, when we launched bit-gamer late last year we did create a new navigation structure whereby when you click on the forum link it takes you to the gaming forum rather than forum homepage, as we thought that most people reading bit-gamer would want to access the gaming forum. Still, if it's confusing people, it's something that we can look into changing. However, it doesn't make sense to post gaming article discussion threads into the gaming forum, as it then wouldn't be clear whether the thread was from an article on the site or a user starting their own thread about something.
I think the way it is, is good. It confused me the first time I tried to access the forum directly after reading an article on bit-gamer. When I realised why I had landed on the gaming forum I thought it was pretty nifty and immediately sussed out why it had been set like this. It makes perfect sense to direct those reading a gaming article to the gaming sub-forum, the reasons are multiple, but I think the most important to me would be if there was a user created thread discussing the release, game or points highlighted in the article then it would be an opportunity to quickly and easily read user's perspectives on the article subject, after all, it does say at the bottom of most if not all articles 'Tell us what you think in our forums..'. And for those that are regular readers of the other forums and sub forums but also bit-gamer articles, then one click to direct you to the main forum page isn't too much hassle, I don't think so anyway.
Works both ways, the one extra click though, doesn't it. it isn't too much hassel to direct to the main forum page, like every other page on the site, and then to click once on the gaming subsection?
This tbh, I was confused how I ended up directly in the gaming forum instead of the Forum menu page when I clicked the forums button, thought it was a glitch for a while.
True, but then it makes more sense to start at the top of the tree and work your way down than it is to go the other way (at least IMO at least). Also, maybe we want to go to a different section first? I agree with most of the opinions in this thread that it's slightly annoying... mainly because sometimes i'm not reading a Bit-Gamer article specifically, i just end up opening tabs on most of the new content and sometimes it just so happens that the Gaming one is the last one i read.
Yeah I understand the reasoning for that entirely, I can't say I think any of you are wrong. However, I do think that from bit-gamer's angle, it does make more sense to have it the way it is at this moment in time, as regular users we know how to navigate the forum with confidence, remember with Facebook and Twitter branching out ever more in the past months there will be and has been an influx of new readership, some of which may not be familiar with Vbulletin forums, or forums at all! (I know, weird right?) So if it's serving to make new readers feel more at home, then i'm all for that and willing to set aside any personal grievances I may or may not have with it.
Can't say that it ever bothered me. Mind you I'm not sure why the "Gaming" section has to be branded "Bit Gamer" in the first place, but that's a different issue. I hardly use the links to get to the forum anyway. Press F6 to move the cursor address bar, start typing "forums.b..." and "forums.bit-tech.net/usercp.php" is auto-completed for me. (But then again, when I'm at work I tend to launch applications by opening the Run dialog with the shortcut key combo and typing the executable name, rather than navigating the Start menu...)
Thanks for your feedback over the last few weeks. We've looked into the situation, and decided that it's clearer for navigational purposes if the forum button in the nav bar always links to the forum homepage, rather than specific sub forums. That way, whether you're reading bit-tech or bit-gamer content, the navigation is consistent. Hopefully, this will avoid any of the confusion some bit readers have experienced over the last few months.
