Hidden/Orphan Forum

By Mumblefratz on September 19, 2008 2:55:48 AM from

This forum, https://forums.demigodthegame.com/forum/485, Home > Game Journals, is apparently an unlisted orphan forum.

I've recently discovered that there are a *lot* of Forums that are present on *all* of the 11 Stardock forum sites that are "hidden". By hidden I mean they are not listed in the Category list on the first page of the forum i.e. https://forums.demigodthegame.com. However by "walking the tree" and selecting each Category in turn and then scrolling down to the bottom of the first page you can view the complete list of Sub Categories for that forum at least at that particular site.

However this is the first case where I've discovered a Top level Category contained on a particular site that's itself not listed in the front page category list. The only way I happened to find the forum at all was when I checked out posting on this site and the pulldown category list included this "Game Journals" forum.

Just one of many strange things I've discovered by "walking the tree" through over 500 forums spread out over Stardock's 11 different forum sites. I'm in process of writing something up about the entirety of stardocks forums/blogs, but in the meantime thought I'd mention this orphan before I forget about it.

+163 Karma | 7 Replies

Success?

Sort of. I was obviously editing the OP before you responded.

BTW are you reading this from the Demigod site? I haven't encountered this forum elsewhere but that's not always a good indicator. As I mentioned in the (now edited) OP I've been on a very long walkabout and am pretty sure that I have exhaustively examined all 519 forums. Of course there are *many* forums repeated over the many sites and I'm not totally sure how many *unique* forums I've visited. At this point probably close to 300 or so probably more since there are 47 different forums alone under the Personal Computing forum on Joe User for example.

Talk about convoluted.

I was obviously editing the OP before you responded.

Whoops. Didn't realise that's what you were doing.

are you reading this from the Demigod site?

I can see it in the recent posts list of both Sins and Demigod.

519 though? Even if the cross posting whittles it down... Yikes. You really could get lost in there...

Ah, here it is on Sins.

I'm walking through the sites alphabetically and Sins was next on the list. On the Sins Site this forum is "hidden" in the more coventional sense in that it's not listed in the top level category list but is listed in the Off-topic forum sub catagory list if you specifically go to that forum and scroll down to the bottom.

Where else may this forum live as well? Only forums.stardock.com, tgnforums.stardock.com, forums.vistathemes.com, and forums.wincustomize.com to check out and I'll be done.

Hello Mumble. I'm here on Demigod also. I have always admired your diligence and attention to detail, but 519 forums? I certainly hope that you remembered to leave a trail of string in order to find your way out of this maze.

I have always admired your diligence and attention to detail, but 519 forums?

Actually more and I've yet to fully investigate the blog access versus forum access at the two blog sites Impulsedriven and JoeUser.

The thing is that there is a *lot* of forum sharing going on and actually has always been going on. I'm not entirely sure what the difference is now but there most definitely is a difference. It's probably a combination of many factors.

In any case as an engineer the only way that I find that I can understand something is to take it apart and see if I can put it together again. But it really is quite confusing, the exceptions far outnumber the rules. But in the end I hope to simply *know* that when I post to such and such a forum then that appears on this and that site.

The other thing is the importance of any particular forum can be very deceiving. Personal Computing for example. On some sites it's a top level category with many sub and sub-sub categories under it (47 on Joe User) whereas on GalCiv2 it's merely a sub-forum of Off-topic. On Wincustomize it gains significant import as well. Posting something frivolous in the forum may seem prefectly fine on GalCiv2 yet risk the ire of a lot of folks on WC.

I just need to know and understand my environment. An exhaustive map of stardocks forums over it's 11 sites is tedious work but far less tedious than mid-game of a gigantic all abundant. I'll have something to publish probably within a week.

Oh I am lost, where am I? Is this the matrix?

The Forums Are Now Closed!

The content will remain as a historical reference, thank you.

Hidden/Orphan Forum