Board Thread:News and Announcements/@comment-25101690-20160208183149

After some discussions and considerations, I decided to redesign the suggestion forum board.

Why is it needed?
Every cleanout, all discussions in the forum are deleted. That includes a lot of good suggestions. As a quick solution, we told people to collect lists of links to their favorite suggestions. But I want a better long-term solution. Beside that, the forums are currently not in good order. We have a Feedback board (that is almost never used; and there is not much difference between suggestions and feedback) and we have a relict of the LoD.

How will it work?
It's basically a combination of the current system (regularly cleanouts) and the old LoD system. Suggestions have to collect enough kudos (exact amount to be discussed) until the next cleanout (but always at least 3 weeks), or they will be removed. There are four different states a suggestion can have:
 * Running: Any suggestion before the time limit has run out. These will be in Board:Suggestions_forum.
 * Disapproved: Any suggestion that is already planned, violates the FAQ, has already been suggested before, or is not valid for other reasons. These suggestions will be removed by an admin or moderator as soon as it's clear that the suggestion is invalid.
 * Approved: Any suggestion that reached the kudos limit. These suggestions will be moved to Board:Approved Suggestions during the next cleanout. The threads will stay open for further discussion, ie. necroposting is generally allowed.
 * Expired: Any suggestion that failed to reach the kudos limit. These threads will be removed on the next cleanout.

That means, the Feedback and LoD boards have no further use and will be removed. Cleanouts will happen as before, but I strongly suggest to have them not after mod releases, but rather before them. Moderators who do cleanouts just have to remember to check the date (no thread newer than 3 weeks will expire) and the kudos.

When will it happen?
As soon as:
 * 1) this message has reached most users,
 * 2) any critic for the system is resolved,
 * 3) we have agreed on a kudos limit,
 * 4) and we made a first forum cleanout, using these rules.

And finally, AlteOgre suggested to rename the Suggestions to "Proposals". Please discuss this too.

@AlteOgre (clickme) We came to the conclusion that the idea of a suggestion template would not be appropriate because it would discourage smaller (but still good) suggestions, while encouraging very long and complex ones (that are unlikely to get added).  