Hi! I’m Lemon, a Computer Science student officially, but a de facto web developer. Let’s talk about the design of the NSFL Forums. Throughout this article I’ll highlight what I like, what I dislike, and topics I dislike will include what I would change if I had artistic direction. I’ll bring up a lot of comparisons to the website I wrote, operate and maintain for a separate sim league, MLR, quite a bit. If you haven’t previously seen it, I recommend keeping a tab open on https://redditball.com to browse these comparisons live.
[div align=\\\"center\\\"]What I Like[/div]
The NSFL Forums are fantastic for enabling player-made media. This includes articles (like this one), analysis, and graphics. Basically, anything you would find under the Community // NSFL Media and Community // Graphics categories.
Under the NSFL Media section, you can quickly browse articles created by members of the community, read through them, and immediately get right into the discussion the article has spawned. This is a perfect use of the forum structure. Additionally, the extra subcategories within the category allow for the identification of which articles that have been graded, statistical analysis which is more likely to lean heavier on the data collated, than the ideas expressed, and pressers from players and teams. These are each unique and distinct from each other, and fall exactly where you would expect them to be within the site structure.
Similarly, over in the Graphics section, you’ll find the same idea. The subsections GFX Submissions, SOTM Entries and Tutorials are all unique, and don’t have any other area on the site that you would expect them to be. Within this category, you’ll also find many longer threads of submissions, perfect for a category where the graphics are the focus, and discussion is sparse.
Additional, great uses of the forum space are Point Tasks, Activity Checks and Player Update threads. Each one is well-suited to the conversational design of a forum, in a way that is less conversational. Point Tasks use this by organizing each thread into its own Point Task. Then, “responses” are submissions. Each is typically short, and isn’t deserving of its own thread. Activity Checks are a simple “hello” as you walk by someone. Brief, effortless, but a two-way communication nonetheless that assures everyone that both ends of the relationship are still around. Lastly, Player Update threads are nearly perfectly conversational between the player requesting the updates, and the updaters themselves.
[div align=\\\"center\\\"]What I Dislike[/div]
Unfortunately, the list of things I like stops there. Why so soon? Many of the remaining sections of the forum are poorly optimized towards the forum structure, and would do much better on either a separate site structure or, in a perfect world, a custom website. Let’s dive in.
[div align=\\\"center\\\"]Signatures[/div]
Since this is not a specific forum section, I’ll stick it up here on its own.
Gripes: I really just dislike how big and flashy they can be. It can feel very annoying to see a single-sentence response to a forum thread, taking one line of text, then the user’s signature takes up the space of 25 lines worth of images.
Alternative: Honestly, either remove them or put a size limit on it. One thing that I have really enjoyed in other forums was the requirement of large signatures to be placed within spoiler brackets, to prevent them from overshadowing the thread itself. As popular as signatures are, I’m not sure this would ever take off, but I thought I would include it. I do, at least, abide by my own principle, with what may be the shortest signature on the forum.
Custom: Not applicable.
[div align=\\\"center\\\"]Create a Player[/div]
Gripes: Starting at the top, we have the Create a Player section. Although the pinned threads are fantastic, in the sense that they give the player long, detailed descriptions of what they need to do, they could be moved to nearly any other platform and still serve the same purpose. So I’ll consider it neutral. However, the worst part of this section is by far the player creation threads themselves. New Player threads are a lengthy form and likely the first intimidating portion of the league to newcomers. Players need to make sure they gather correct information about how the league works, make decisions about their player, and apply it all correctly onto the form, then manually receive feedback if necessary.
Alternative: I’m sure everyone reading this has seen a Google Form before. Did you know that they can separate their topics into different pages? Did you also know that they can lead to different pages of the form based on how you answer previous questions? Using these two features, one can construct a form that guides the user through creating their player, denying invalid options at each stage, and allowing different inputs to stat customization based on the archetype picked. All this data would then be spit out into a spreadsheet, likely to be much easier for importers to review, approve, and process.
Custom: On a custom website, this form can be completely arbitrary, and provide an even more granular level. The new player form for MLR can be found at https://redditball.com/players/new. Although I slapped this page together in less than an hour, and have barely touched it since, you’ll notice that it provides new players much more guidance in filling out the data, and it can also validate player data against its internal database upon submission. This validation can include checking for player names that are already taken, invalid player type combinations, and more. Once this page is submitted, the user is sent to another landing page, reminding them to join the Discord if they haven’t already, and it is sent off to the administration team. Since you can’t view this page if you are not an admin, here’s a screenshot of it below:
![[Image: 16tHJiI.png]](https://i.imgur.com/16tHJiI.png)
You’ll notice that this page provides administrators the ability to quickly view all the relevant information, and process it as needed. If rejected, the form will return to the player, with the rejection reason provided, and allow the user to edit and resubmit the form at a later date. If a player is accepted to the league, their data is automatically used to populate a new entry within the player database, with all the relevant information. No additional copy-over is necessary. I believe a form like this one would streamline new entry into the league much more than any other feature added.
[div align=\\\"center\\\"]Player Retirement[/div]
Gripes: This section doesn’t belong under Getting Started. It also does not promote much conversation, aside from nostalgia trips, which don’t really need to be on a public forum in threads that not many people will browse. There’s not a ton to say here so let’s quickly move on.
Alternative: Retirements could instead be a simple Google Form submission, which trips a flag on the player’s backend spreadsheet data. If needed, administrators could also change this option on their own.
Custom: A custom website would handle this very similarly, where players could submit a retirement notice, which would no longer require human review. Retirement processes could be automatic, and simply send a notification to the administrators letting them know it has occurred. Same as above, administrators could submit one of these processes on their own as well.
[div align=\\\"center\\\"]NSFL & DSFL Rulebooks[/div]
Gripes: This section of the forum is incredibly empty, as you would probably expect. Conversation is disallowed, and instead each thread simply lists all the information one would expect to be in the rulebooks. Although it is fairly easy to read, I believe a forum is too complex of a structure to use. The player signatures and avatars distract from the text, and the forum does not provide alternative reading methods such as a dark mode.
Alternative: As simple as it is, I believe this information would be better presented in either a read-only Google Doc or a PDF. Word processors have been in design for decades, to provide an easy-to-read, easy-to-write setup. Additionally, users in Google Docs can apply their own color themes through popular extensions, like Darkdocs. Editors can also share editing power amongst themselves, removing the need for editing permissions on the forum. Finally, Google Docs also provides much more fine control over the presentation of the text, with support for in-line photos, navigation bars, and more.
Custom: Although possible to design a custom website to present this information, it is likely not worth the effort. Instead, I’ll use this section to talk about LaTeX. LaTeX is a plaintext markdown language for designing professional documents. Take a look at the MLR rulebook for an example of what it can produce: https://fakebaseball.gitlab.io/rulebook/rulebook.pdf. The PDF generates a table of contents automatically, with clickable links to its pages, that are also updated automatically whenever the PDF sections move across page boundaries. Most reasonable PDF readers (like the one I use, built in to Firefox) can also provide a navigation bar to get anywhere within the document in a fraction of a second.
This has been quite a bit of writing, so I’m going to come back another time to continue with other sections. Check in later (maybe a few days, maybe a few weeks, who knows), and I’ll be dissecting the largest forum section: Community.
[div align=\\\"center\\\"]What I Like[/div]
The NSFL Forums are fantastic for enabling player-made media. This includes articles (like this one), analysis, and graphics. Basically, anything you would find under the Community // NSFL Media and Community // Graphics categories.
Under the NSFL Media section, you can quickly browse articles created by members of the community, read through them, and immediately get right into the discussion the article has spawned. This is a perfect use of the forum structure. Additionally, the extra subcategories within the category allow for the identification of which articles that have been graded, statistical analysis which is more likely to lean heavier on the data collated, than the ideas expressed, and pressers from players and teams. These are each unique and distinct from each other, and fall exactly where you would expect them to be within the site structure.
Similarly, over in the Graphics section, you’ll find the same idea. The subsections GFX Submissions, SOTM Entries and Tutorials are all unique, and don’t have any other area on the site that you would expect them to be. Within this category, you’ll also find many longer threads of submissions, perfect for a category where the graphics are the focus, and discussion is sparse.
Additional, great uses of the forum space are Point Tasks, Activity Checks and Player Update threads. Each one is well-suited to the conversational design of a forum, in a way that is less conversational. Point Tasks use this by organizing each thread into its own Point Task. Then, “responses” are submissions. Each is typically short, and isn’t deserving of its own thread. Activity Checks are a simple “hello” as you walk by someone. Brief, effortless, but a two-way communication nonetheless that assures everyone that both ends of the relationship are still around. Lastly, Player Update threads are nearly perfectly conversational between the player requesting the updates, and the updaters themselves.
[div align=\\\"center\\\"]What I Dislike[/div]
Unfortunately, the list of things I like stops there. Why so soon? Many of the remaining sections of the forum are poorly optimized towards the forum structure, and would do much better on either a separate site structure or, in a perfect world, a custom website. Let’s dive in.
[div align=\\\"center\\\"]Signatures[/div]
Since this is not a specific forum section, I’ll stick it up here on its own.
Gripes: I really just dislike how big and flashy they can be. It can feel very annoying to see a single-sentence response to a forum thread, taking one line of text, then the user’s signature takes up the space of 25 lines worth of images.
Alternative: Honestly, either remove them or put a size limit on it. One thing that I have really enjoyed in other forums was the requirement of large signatures to be placed within spoiler brackets, to prevent them from overshadowing the thread itself. As popular as signatures are, I’m not sure this would ever take off, but I thought I would include it. I do, at least, abide by my own principle, with what may be the shortest signature on the forum.
Custom: Not applicable.
[div align=\\\"center\\\"]Create a Player[/div]
Gripes: Starting at the top, we have the Create a Player section. Although the pinned threads are fantastic, in the sense that they give the player long, detailed descriptions of what they need to do, they could be moved to nearly any other platform and still serve the same purpose. So I’ll consider it neutral. However, the worst part of this section is by far the player creation threads themselves. New Player threads are a lengthy form and likely the first intimidating portion of the league to newcomers. Players need to make sure they gather correct information about how the league works, make decisions about their player, and apply it all correctly onto the form, then manually receive feedback if necessary.
Alternative: I’m sure everyone reading this has seen a Google Form before. Did you know that they can separate their topics into different pages? Did you also know that they can lead to different pages of the form based on how you answer previous questions? Using these two features, one can construct a form that guides the user through creating their player, denying invalid options at each stage, and allowing different inputs to stat customization based on the archetype picked. All this data would then be spit out into a spreadsheet, likely to be much easier for importers to review, approve, and process.
Custom: On a custom website, this form can be completely arbitrary, and provide an even more granular level. The new player form for MLR can be found at https://redditball.com/players/new. Although I slapped this page together in less than an hour, and have barely touched it since, you’ll notice that it provides new players much more guidance in filling out the data, and it can also validate player data against its internal database upon submission. This validation can include checking for player names that are already taken, invalid player type combinations, and more. Once this page is submitted, the user is sent to another landing page, reminding them to join the Discord if they haven’t already, and it is sent off to the administration team. Since you can’t view this page if you are not an admin, here’s a screenshot of it below:
You’ll notice that this page provides administrators the ability to quickly view all the relevant information, and process it as needed. If rejected, the form will return to the player, with the rejection reason provided, and allow the user to edit and resubmit the form at a later date. If a player is accepted to the league, their data is automatically used to populate a new entry within the player database, with all the relevant information. No additional copy-over is necessary. I believe a form like this one would streamline new entry into the league much more than any other feature added.
[div align=\\\"center\\\"]Player Retirement[/div]
Gripes: This section doesn’t belong under Getting Started. It also does not promote much conversation, aside from nostalgia trips, which don’t really need to be on a public forum in threads that not many people will browse. There’s not a ton to say here so let’s quickly move on.
Alternative: Retirements could instead be a simple Google Form submission, which trips a flag on the player’s backend spreadsheet data. If needed, administrators could also change this option on their own.
Custom: A custom website would handle this very similarly, where players could submit a retirement notice, which would no longer require human review. Retirement processes could be automatic, and simply send a notification to the administrators letting them know it has occurred. Same as above, administrators could submit one of these processes on their own as well.
[div align=\\\"center\\\"]NSFL & DSFL Rulebooks[/div]
Gripes: This section of the forum is incredibly empty, as you would probably expect. Conversation is disallowed, and instead each thread simply lists all the information one would expect to be in the rulebooks. Although it is fairly easy to read, I believe a forum is too complex of a structure to use. The player signatures and avatars distract from the text, and the forum does not provide alternative reading methods such as a dark mode.
Alternative: As simple as it is, I believe this information would be better presented in either a read-only Google Doc or a PDF. Word processors have been in design for decades, to provide an easy-to-read, easy-to-write setup. Additionally, users in Google Docs can apply their own color themes through popular extensions, like Darkdocs. Editors can also share editing power amongst themselves, removing the need for editing permissions on the forum. Finally, Google Docs also provides much more fine control over the presentation of the text, with support for in-line photos, navigation bars, and more.
Custom: Although possible to design a custom website to present this information, it is likely not worth the effort. Instead, I’ll use this section to talk about LaTeX. LaTeX is a plaintext markdown language for designing professional documents. Take a look at the MLR rulebook for an example of what it can produce: https://fakebaseball.gitlab.io/rulebook/rulebook.pdf. The PDF generates a table of contents automatically, with clickable links to its pages, that are also updated automatically whenever the PDF sections move across page boundaries. Most reasonable PDF readers (like the one I use, built in to Firefox) can also provide a navigation bar to get anywhere within the document in a fraction of a second.
This has been quite a bit of writing, so I’m going to come back another time to continue with other sections. Check in later (maybe a few days, maybe a few weeks, who knows), and I’ll be dissecting the largest forum section: Community.
![[Image: RiSLPqW.jpg]](https://i.imgur.com/RiSLPqW.jpg)
![[Image: 7F47ZQG.gif]](https://i.imgur.com/7F47ZQG.gif)
![[Image: 67366_s.gif]](https://signavatar.com/67366_s.gif)
![[Image: brooks.png]](https://i.ibb.co/JW13P77m/brooks.png)
![[Image: bam_bam.png]](https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/742845006389444778/780215137557807124/bam_bam.png)
![[Image: rqph9tT.jpg]](https://i.imgur.com/rqph9tT.jpg)
![[Image: 6HEXEeb.png]](https://i.imgur.com/6HEXEeb.png)
![[Image: WackaWacka.gif]](https://sig.grumpybumpers.com/host/WackaWacka.gif)
![[Image: Gc5BmXW.png]](http://imgur.com/Gc5BmXW.png)
||![[Image: dYOGZep.jpg]](https://i.imgur.com/dYOGZep.jpg)
![[Image: Crvxj68.jpg]](https://i.imgur.com/Crvxj68.jpg)
