Moving threads to dead pages.

Sorry if this is the wrong area to put this but I've noticed something pretty annoying happening. The other day I made a thread about the new MechWarrior game being announced in General. It got a few posts in it but then a mod moved it to the mechwarrior page, a page that's virtually dead, and the thread died. A few days later someone else made a thread about the same thing and again, ended up in the MechWarrior page and died.

Isn't it be a bit silly to do this? It might as well be locked if you move it to an area no one goes too.

It happened again just recently. I made a thread about Eidos and them trying to get reviewers to give good reviews for Batman. I felt it was more about Eidos and them being dodgy, however it was moved to the Batman page and the last post there was a week ago so, again, the thread will get little to no views now until the game gets closer and the news is week/months old.

Shouldn't game forums be left for more specific things about the game? Rather than for an announcement that many people might want to hear about have them for talking about subjects such as the story, requesting help, tips, posting screenshots, or whatever?

Threads should be in the most relevant forum. It would have died just as easily i general discussion since most people just view the newest topics board anyway, which shows topics from all the boards. The forum FAQ explains all this. Being in the mechwarior forum can only be a good thing, because when someone wants to post about it again, they can easily find your already existing thread, because it is in the appropriate forum.

The area that a thread is in doesn't change much as far as how many posts, views etc. because every thread from every forum is just compiled into one big mess of awesomeness.  In fact, it would probably improve the traffic, because not only will regular forum-viewers see it, so will people who are directly interested in the discussed game and made a point to talk in it's forums.

Nope.

We have boards for every page within the database. We ask the community make sure they post their topics in the correct and relevant board. Dumping everything into General Discussion not only clogs up that board and makes it difficult to find specific topics discussing specific things, Eg - Batman or Mechwarrior, it also gets that many topics dumped in it that within an hour or two topics get bumped down so far people miss them.

Moving a topic from GD to a specific board atleast allows people to more easily find the topic instead of surfing through page after page after page of topics in GD and still come up with nothing. And as our Forum FAQ has always stated we want people to discuss game specific subjects in that games board.

General Discussion is and always has been for Giant Bomb website discussion and general video games discussion. Usually this relates to subject matter that perhaps doesn't have a page within the database or discussion covering multiple subjects.

" Threads should be in the most relevant forum. It would have died just as easily i general discussion since most people just view the newest topics board anyway, which shows topics from all the boards. The forum FAQ explains all this. Being in the mechwarior forum can only be a good thing, because when someone wants to post about it again, they can easily find your already existing thread, because it is in the appropriate forum. "

My problem is that unless a thread stays popular for a reasonable time and you are on the site a lot of the time, many topics just go missing.  If there is a new topic on a game that I am unaware of, how the hell am I going to find it?  I can't find what I do not know exists.  

Threads do not "die instantly" when moved because most people view the forums through the Newest Topics feed. If anything, having threads in the appropriate forum only prolongs their life and will get you more responses in the long run because those people looking for information or topics about Eidos or Batman aren't going to be sifting through hundreds of pages of General Discussion to find them, they will be going straight to those pages.

I look at the New topics feed when I want something. It works.

The MW thread doesn't look too dead to me, it's on the first page of the newest threads section (ok it's not exactly your thread but it's still in the same forum and people are still using it... that's just a problem of a duplicate thread that we missed). And just because that Batman thread stopped getting replies for a couple hours doesn't mean it's dead, it was going to get buried like that whether it was in GD or Batman or Eidos's forum. I'm pretty sure if we might as well locked those threads, then they'll definitely die since people won't be able to bump them and continue the discussion.

You should put your suggestions in the current suggestion thread or send them to gb_community@giantbomb.com - both places where the people who make decisions about these things (and design the solutions) will see them.

Hamz, again, I don't disagree with separate boards for as many games as necessary, but you miss the point about finding out about games you are not aware of.  That is at the heart of my point.  In fact it is my point.  You say I can just go to the page on the game I want, but I don't know what I want until I see it.  As much time as I spend looking around the internet, I don't see everything.

Who doesn't browse through the "New Topics" area? I assumed everybody did.

I use Newest Topics all the time, but it's not ideal. I'm often forced to check my favorite forums, and other individual forums that I don't have listed in my favorites. Even still I end up missing numerous interesting topics.
If games can't be talked about on the platform-specific boards, and people don't constantly check the list of new or recently-edited games, they could end up completely in the dark about games of interest. Topics about games aren't always accompanied by edits to their wiki either, so those game listings are not an effective way of using the forums.

" @MattyFTM said:

" Threads should be in the most relevant forum. It would have died just as easily i general discussion since most people just view the newest topics board anyway, which shows topics from all the boards. The forum FAQ explains all this. Being in the mechwarior forum can only be a good thing, because when someone wants to post about it again, they can easily find your already existing thread, because it is in the appropriate forum. "

Not really. General is fairly popular and both MW threads died instantly when they were moved. Shouldn't there at least be a News forum then? Maybe even with the ability to have it in multiple forums, like how you can post blogs in an area of your choice. So you can have "MW5 announced" in news and the MW page so people can see the latest stuff going on(about any game related news) but if someone goes into the Mech page later on they'll see it too. Seems kinda crap if there is a new game announced but only the people viewing the newest topics will know about it and forgotten about after a few hours. "