An idea for the FFXI tradeskills forum...Follow

Now, I don't know how feasable this is (I know Illia custom-made the board system so I don't even know if it would be possible to work it in), but there have been a few threads in the tradeskill forum arguing about how some would like to see each of the crafts broken out into separate boards, and others would like to see things stay the way they are now. I thought of a way to compromise AND make the tradeskills forum significantly easier to read.

Would there be a way to make it so the topic creator could click a check box labelling which craft their post is in relation to, then give readers the ability to just filter for that craft? Like, say I make a new thread talking about the relationship between goldsmithing and clothcraft, and how a lot of the higher level goldsmithing recipes want clothcraft as a support craft (blah blah blah, random FFXI crafting jargon here). When I get ready to post my thread, I could click the boxes for both clothcraft and goldsmithing. Then, Joe Newbieweaver comes along and wants to view only threads pertaining to clothcraft. He sets the filter to only show clothcraft threads, and viola. He's viewing my newly-created thread with ease. Peter Metalworker does both smithing and goldsmithing, so he clicks the checkboxes for both crafts. Since my thread is marked "goldsmithing" as well as "clothcraft", Peter sees my thread when the other crafts are filtered out. Meanwhile, Melissa Synthaholic has been levelling every craft and wants to read every thread ever posted in the crafting forum. She chooses not to filter and leaves all the checkboxes alone, and sees the board exactly as it is now. It would be sort of a combination of the rating filter and the subscription members' ability to search the board. But it would have more utility than my ability to search, too. When I search for "digging" looking for info on chocobo digging, I get clam digging, and I get every thread even MENTIONING chocobo digging, even if it's only in passing. Often, the threads that come back in a search aren't even related to the craft I'm looking for, they just happen to contain the search words I used.

It seems like this would be a good compromise between keeping things the way they are and splitting the crafts up. What do you guys think? Would it be possible to do this, or would it be too much of a hassle?

[Edit: 2:30 in the morning and you want proper spelling?]

Edited, Fri Sep 24 10:26:49 2004 by Saboruto

I think anything that separated the crafts out would be great. Each tradeskill is so different from the others that most people will only find maybe 1/10 of the threads in that forum to actually pertain to them. If I'm imaging your idea the way you're thinking of it, it would definitely help sort things a bit and make trade-specific information a lot easier to find. At the moment, it's kind of a jumbled mess over there.