What would you like out of a Healing community?

[Ciderhelm]

TankSpot has a structural deficiency. It was originally built with the idea that there would only be a few classes sharing a single role discussing how the game worked and helping others in that role. The forum structure and navigation on the site is not built to accommodate more diversity. Even the prefixes you can choose when posting a new thread are very limiting.

Disregarding other classes and roles, the introduction of the general raiding and guild leading community has put a big spotlight on the deficiency. I'm aware of it, and we know we need to have this fixed well before the release of Cataclysm.

The question is, how? If we could rebuild the structure of the site from the ground up, how would we do it to accommodate our Healers, and others? Would we consolidate some forums and expand others? Would we change the structure of the entire site so players could have a healing-dedicated site with a single click?

Are there other features you'd like to see implemented on the site? Calculators, blue trackers, etc? (Be specific!)

The Healing community on TankSpot will grow and expand, just as it has been. Help us determine how we can support it.

[Wars]

I think the reason tankspot.com has come so far cider, is because we are a niche. A very well kept and well organized niche website. The only reason tankspot.com has gotten so big is because it stemmed in this order: Tanks checked it out. Lots of good discussion/resources. Tanks told other tanks. People made movies(always great job and very good commentary), others came to see movies and also got enamored with the community.

Here on TS we have some of the best and tightest moderation. We also see a lot of "XX armory help" threads these days but we, as a community, do not turn into other websites and flame/harass. We more often then not assure those members they should read "zyx link" which we find and provide.

The problem with expanding the website and it's design is that it will not be such a niche market anymore. We are already beyond that market at the moment, but with a redesign, we may lose some of the quality we have here, even with the best intentions.

If we are to expand the forums themselves then we need condensed menus on them and then subgenres. How to present them in a non-convoluted way is up to you but obviously something which starts with all the genres and then has some sort of overall drop-down effect.

We will need a good healing community first as well, and I sincerely hope we get some good healer feedback in this thread such that you guys can make some iterations to the plan at hand. Personally I love TS and like it because it's not mmo-champ/EJ/WoR, and we need to keep that kind of appeal of serious discussion, amazing quality, and stellar progressive features.

Hats off to you as always cider. Oh and I'm at work, you on vent so I can bug you? Ritalin + coffee + boredom....nah I'll spare you

[Ciderhelm]

As a related note:

vBulletin Community Forum - The Front Page

This is how our site will look in the near future, with all of the same functionality. Identifying news by class or role will very likely become a much easier process.

[Coro]

Whereas I mostly agree with Wars as to why TS is what it is, I disagree with his approach.

Like he said, TS is great because there is great talent here in many different aspects - There are great forum administrators/mods, there are great authors, great amount of help for the newer members, and everyone remains dedicated. Tankspot is just as well known as any of the other "bigger sites" (mmo-champion, elitist jerks, etc). TS is actually my second homepage tab. I reference TS every day, literally.

Now, where can we grow from that? There are a lot of different ways, as you have mentioned. This is not unlike leading anything else - businesses, raids, guilds, or sport teams - there has to be a time to define what TS is now, and where it wants to be. TS leadership must ask themselves, "Do we want to grow to reach more people" while knowing that there is a higher chance of getting "those kinds" of people who have no respect for others, but on the other hand becoming much larger and respected a lot higher......Or leadership needs to ask "Do we want to continue to focus on tanks, and just have small branches for everyone else?"


I started coming to TS when I first was learning how to tank two years ago. I came from tanking to healing, and now I'm going back to healing. I am trying very hard to keep the healing aspect of the website alive, and have been trying to get a name for myself in the healing community of TS. I say this because I am in huge favor to growing to a bigger aspect of people, and I say if there is a risk of getting "those kind of people", bring it. I trust the admin team here, and I know that if the community grows, so will the leadership team. I hope that someday I could make that team, but even if I can't, I know that the healing admins would do a great job to ensure the values and integrity of TS stays the same.

That was a tangent, and thus did not answer your question directly. I think the best way to grow as a community to reach other people would be to make a central website that has posted information and videos. Home page offers a portal to Movies, Guild And/or Raid Management, Tanks, DPS, Healers. Sub-domains are amazing for something like that. And would require a lot of maintenance, but I feel that the community and leadership team could make that work.

As far as the healing aspect would go, there will be a better understanding that it's not just for tanks (Usually on my server if I suggest to a healer to go check out Tankspot, I get laughed at), which would bring out a bigger variety of healers, different levels of experienced players and authors, and finally give healers a "home" like Tankspot offers their tanks for dedicated, specific information.

I am, and will continue to be, a huge supporter of TS. I am not a donor, because I literally make enough cash to pay my bills and play wow through gift cards from friends and family, as I go through college. Whether we get a more dedicated "part" of TS for healing or not, I know it will be right for the site and thankful for what I have.

[Llego]

Whereas I mostly agree with Wars as to why TS is what it is, I disagree with his approach.

Like he said, TS is great because there is great talent here in many different aspects - There are great forum administrators/mods, there are great authors, great amount of help for the newer members, and everyone remains dedicated. Tankspot is just as well known as any of the other "bigger sites" (mmo-champion, elitist jerks, etc). TS is actually my second homepage tab. I reference TS every day, literally.

Now, where can we grow from that? There are a lot of different ways, as you have mentioned. This is not unlike leading anything else - businesses, raids, guilds, or sport teams - there has to be a time to define what TS is now, and where it wants to be. TS leadership must ask themselves, "Do we want to grow to reach more people" while knowing that there is a higher chance of getting "those kinds" of people who have no respect for others, but on the other hand becoming much larger and respected a lot higher......Or leadership needs to ask "Do we want to continue to focus on tanks, and just have small branches for everyone else?"


I started coming to TS when I first was learning how to tank two years ago. I came from tanking to healing, and now I'm going back to healing. I am trying very hard to keep the healing aspect of the website alive, and have been trying to get a name for myself in the healing community of TS. I say this because I am in huge favor to growing to a bigger aspect of people, and I say if there is a risk of getting "those kind of people", bring it. I trust the admin team here, and I know that if the community grows, so will the leadership team. I hope that someday I could make that team, but even if I can't, I know that the healing admins would do a great job to ensure the values and integrity of TS stays the same.

That was a tangent, and thus did not answer your question directly. I think the best way to grow as a community to reach other people would be to make a central website that has posted information and videos. Home page offers a portal to Movies, Guild And/or Raid Management, Tanks, DPS, Healers. Sub-domains are amazing for something like that. And would require a lot of maintenance, but I feel that the community and leadership team could make that work.

As far as the healing aspect would go, there will be a better understanding that it's not just for tanks (Usually on my server if I suggest to a healer to go check out Tankspot, I get laughed at), which would bring out a bigger variety of healers, different levels of experienced players and authors, and finally give healers a "home" like Tankspot offers their tanks for dedicated, specific information.

I am, and will continue to be, a huge supporter of TS. I am not a donor, because I literally make enough cash to pay my bills and play wow through gift cards from friends and family, as I go through college. Whether we get a more dedicated "part" of TS for healing or not, I know it will be right for the site and thankful for what I have.

I agree with a lot of what you said, and I really think the new homepage will make the different sections of TS (healing, dps, etc..) more readily available to people. A lot of people think of tankspot as what it started as, a tanking website. As far as attracting the trolls, they only stay if you bite on what their trolling. Its a matter of not biting to keep them away

[Knighterrant81]

As a former tank who's now raiding as a healer - I'd love to see what tankspot has to say about healing. It's been such a great resource for Tanking.

It could move this site more towards an Elitist Jerks format, although more focused on Tanking and Healing than DPS. There could also be lots of conversations about how to work together, since our jobs coincide often.

[Shortypop]

Personally if I could I would vote against a healer-specific (or anything else specific) site, I love the cross-pollination of ideas and while more healer-specific forums would be nice (maybe a gear-orientated one as well as a general spec/playstyle one - or opening up the current gear, enchants, help and UI forums for healers, with an option to search for non-healer/healer just to make it easier to find what people are looking for if they have a specific question), there's a lot that goes on in WoW which is not a single-class specific, even someone asking "why does XX kill me" is rarely only a tank problem.

I'm not a big visitor to elitistjerks and so maybe I'm doing something wrong, but to me threads of 100+ pages make finding anything really trick.

[Airowird]

I joined TankSpot actively about half a year to a year ago, when I was looking for a decent discussion forum, but that was still open to newer people joining that site or Theorycrafting in general (such as myself).

What I currently 'miss' as a healer are;
* Healer class tags on the forums.
* Healing & DPS are separate subsections, while tanking is usually posted in General. I would consider creating a tanking (only) subsection and have General Forum for any discussion that are cross-role (e.g. raid buffs/dps as a tank, how tanks gearing for certain encounters impacts the healing they need, ...)
* Short description on threads. Like when you mouse over a thread title on the forums, you see the first lines in the OPs post, perhaps add a posting option to change this into a 2-line description of what the thread is meant for? I know titles are supposed to do that, but "Tanking Trinket discussion" is hardly enough to know if you're talking specific trinkets, on use vs proc, EH vs avoidance, and so on.
* Community-wise, we're currently missing a bit of 'pure' theorycrafting info (guides on spell scaling, talents, ..) which are the base of the discussion that are going on there.


I strongly discourage separating forums in subsites (even if it has a nifty name like healingyour.tankspot.com)

[Maèl]

We need to keep tanks and healers close together. Many tanks ask healing stuff in the healing forums and I guess all healers carefully watch the tanking forums. Tanking and mechanics is what brought us here in the first place so I wouldn't separate those aspects.

I wouldn't even split the healing forums into subsites. Healing and tanking is highly cooperative stuff so in my opinion it is necessary to keep it as closely together as possible.

Only the help forums are a bit cluttered. It sometimes is hard to find out if a question has already been asked or not. A healing help forum would be nice.

For theory crafting there still is EJ. I don't think TS and EJ are in competition with each other since TS focusses more on the "soft" aspects of WoW.

[Ciderhelm]

I should clarify that I agree w/ everyone saying that tanking and healing really ought not be bifurcated. The "click here to see healing stuff" would be more in line with the link I posted earlier, such as categories that help identify news, etc. It wouldn't be a hard line between a tanking site and a healing site.

[Coro]

Yeah, when you had first posted that link it wasn't working for me, but now it does so I see more on what your talking about Cider.

I completely like the idea, and the format of that website would be nice. How would you put in healing aspect with that? Would you keep (similar how it is now) top tabs being forums, movies, blogs, etc (generic), or would you have Tanking Forums | Healing Forums | Movies | Blogs (specific)

Because, if it's just an organization approach I don't see how it would make things much different then how it is now, but if now were going into role specific tabs, it could make things a lot more different and closer to the approach I came up, which is what I understand you saying.

[Amamaeth]

Honestly I'm probably one of the few people that would rather see just a separate site, a HealSpot as it were, instead of reworking TankSpot but...

I just see this site as needing better overall organization. More stuff needs to be segregated into collapsible subsections so we can easily find what we need. That is really the biggest key here, and that's not just forums. This goes for the guides and movies (and maybe blogs? idk I dont read them much) as well. The calculator tab up top could also be renamed 'Tools' to be more all encompassing if you get other programs for other classes.

Another thing to consider, while going into this new format is ease of expandability. You are probably wishing you took this more into consideration before Make sure you have an easy way to add onto what exists in case down the road you think of something else you might want, be it a new forum, new tab, new tags, whatever you can think of.

[Kavtor]

Certainly the biggest challenge is to allow for a 'healer conversations go here' area, that allows for specific discussions, with out having healers (or specific users in general) go exclusively that portion of the site / forums. For example, I think it's very helpful that we don't have class specific forums.

Setting things up such that there are specific areas for specific conversations is great, so long as readers are still encouraged to make broader use of the site and participate in other discussions.

I find that the 'last 5 posts' at the top forum menu are is a good way to see an interesting topic that you may not have looked in your regular forum browsing.

I wonder if there's a way to expand on the idea, and have users highlight interesting discussions that might be of interest to a broader audience, and not just those specifically involved.

[Coro]

Honestly I'm probably one of the few people that would rather see just a separate site, a HealSpot as it were, instead of reworking TankSpot but...

That's kind of what I was getting at as well. HealSpot, hosted by Tankspot would be a great sub-domain.

[Quietsch]

HealSpot, hosted by Tankspot would be a great sub-domain.

In my opinion, that would be a great mistake. With the actual "one-site-system" there are all readers/posters on one site, so that everyone could read and post in every topic. With a "two-sites-system", you would split the community, so that tanks don't look anymore into the heal topics, while heals don't look into the tank topics. And also, even if some people would look at both sites, it isn't very likely, that the actual variability of knowledge, or rather the different points of view exist further.
And it is interessting/helpful, if you haven't only the view of other tanks.

[geros]

I think Sat should've replied in here with his suggestions for forum restructuring as they were pretty darn good and would've helped the discussion. Though I guess it's cool if everyone just donates instead and then they can view it.

I'm a cat and not a tree but I'm interested in helping grow out the TS community to DPS in addition to healers so I thought I'd join in.

Calculators for DPS classes would be nice to have in addition to the EH calculator we have kicking around. Toskk's calculator located here: The Druid Wiki - ToskksDPSGearMethod is an excellent feral druid resource. It is a great help in answering the question for kitties in the matter of Agi vs ArP which is one of the most frequently asked question in gemming discussions. I personally don't feel like I have the spare time to implement something very similar to this in php otherwise I'd volunteer.

I really liked Aliena's Healing perspective video for ToGC. It's nice to cover tips and tricks that many people may never realize in a tier of content. It would be fantastic if that concept could be applied to the tanking/DPS communities as well.

I'd also like to be able to filter the news on the front page a bit better (which will be quite possible in the vB CMS). Lore does a good job in handling tanking updates by the devs and encourage discussion but it would be great to have healers/DPS'ers with their ears to the ground looking out for all of that as well. I don't think TS needs a dedicated blue tracker or the need to turn into MMO-champs, but bringing more coverage will help bring in a stronger community in healing/DPS.

[Amamaeth]

In my opinion, that would be a great mistake. With the actual "one-site-system" there are all readers/posters on one site, so that everyone could read and post in every topic. With a "two-sites-system", you would split the community, so that tanks don't look anymore into the heal topics, while heals don't look into the tank topics. And also, even if some people would look at both sites, it isn't very likely, that the actual variability of knowledge, or rather the different points of view exist further.
And it is interessting/helpful, if you haven't only the view of other tanks.

Honestly, it probably wouldn't split the community that much, it would make people interested in only one aspect able to better find information on that aspect then have to filter through all the other stuff they aren't interested in. An example would be the front news page where I'd have to, likely, scroll through a bunch of healing or dps stuff to find tank stuff. If people really want to be a part of healing and tank discussions, they can visit each site.

However, this discussion is moot as it seems that it will a be a one-site design.

[Blue]

What I'd like to see out of a Healing community, is more of the video explanations of the mechanics involved, whether in real instances, or some sort of simulation. For example, it's one thing to describe the benefits of COH vs. POH, but much more helpful to actually see it in practice. Perhaps recording a premade battleground area, with volunteers for the effort? I don't know if that's possible--just a thought. I do know it would help to be able to see how someone else actually does any of the roles in a fight...tank, healer, or DPS. Something one could stop/rewind/look at again, or pointer to show something, like what healer should be looking at here, to be able to do there...(with "8x10 glossy pics, with circles and arrows, and an explanation on the back of each one..."--Arlo Guthrie).

As for different parts of the Forum, for different classes...it doesn't really matter, as long as the availability is simple, and a click away. If I'm looking for Healing tips, I want to see a tab for that--I think even breaking it down into specific types of healers, or tanks, for that matter, would be great. I really don't like looking at a thread's title, only to click on it and find that it's a DK asking about his specs, since I don't have a DK, for example.

Only other thing I find important, I suppose, is to keep up with the changing conditions of each class, with eacn new version of WoW. Something this site does better than most, I might add (and thanks are in order to Cider and all the admins here, for that!).

[Erja]

Somebody mentioned this and it bears repeating, in my opinion.

EJ is a great resource, but it is not easily accessible. Any design/organizational decisions made should keep accessibility AND quality of information as mutual goals. EJ has, in many ways, sacrificed accessibility for quality and a narrowly-focused player-base appeal (hardcore raiders).

[Ollin]

IMO, while TS is growing there's no need to head off the growth. While the tanking community here is quite developed and in need of a number of topic-specific forums the healing and dps communities aren't quite there yet. Until there's actually a need for new sub-forums, you don't need to make them.

The one exception I would say is the project marmot forum. With the newest movie posted (Aliena's wonderful TotGC: Healing movie) you might be able to expand the scope of the project marmot videos enough to divide each encounter into, at the least, a pair of movies if not three or four. The ability (or need) to do something like this might become more easily accomplished as TS's non-tanking communities mature. Especially if you can find good authors for the different styles of play.

While finding good authors for the project marmot videos are probably the hardest part of expanding your site, nothing will mature the different communities faster.

Also, please stay away from the EJ style of doing business. For all they preach about reading first and asking later it can be incredibly difficult to find anything useful that's up to date on their site at times. Especially when their search function decides to not cooperate because you can't specify your query in more than three words (IIRC their search function requires at least four or five before it actually does anything, and many of their guide posts will stay upwards of a patch behind before being updated). I'm all for encouraging people to contribute to discussions in progress over making new threads, but when something falls off the front page it's pretty much dead. In any forum you go to.