I was told some of you wished to make our threads more immediately visible to new players in an effort to engage them from the very start. After all, we provide lots of info but the actual roleplaying is a few more clicks away and people are left wondering where the real thing is. That got me thinking. I could have implemented a section on the front page with the latest IC threads, but a mechanical approach left me unsatisfied. Isn't there something more user-friendly, providing a little info on our threads instead of just throwing up links? Or we - the Founders - could have picked out sample threads, like we do in the welcome PM new players get. But those threads would look old after a while, and we'd have to keep picking new ones.
So I was reminded of an old feature I wanted to add - thread summaries - and merged the two. You may have noticed a new field under the title when you post a thread in the IC forums. "Thread summary". There you can write, in up to 400 characters, what the thread is about. It's optional, and should only be used for IC threads (and spellchecked!) Now, the latest threads with a summary are picked and shown on the front page together with their summary. You can edit the summary by editing the first post in a thread, so the thread starter and mods are able to do so.
I'm also going to display the summaries elsewhere tomorrow or so. Let me know if you have any suggestions!
