Links to the PA West Forum on the new website?

ArtDragon

I am noticing that there are no links on the new Penny Arcade West website that link to the Penny Arcade West Forums.

Is this in error or will it be that the PA West forum will be shrinking/otherwise due to being unlisted?

zerzhul

Unknown! looking in to it.

every day's great

@zerzhul were you able to find out what was going on?

I guess Eurogamer suddenly axed its forums last week, and I hope PA/PAX doesn't follow suit.

zerzhul

I did not get a clear answer, but it appears that links to the forums are not included in the new unplugged site either, so I would say it's not an accident. I don't think we're axing them, but the sites are very much Reed from what I can see, as opposed to the previous design which was PA.

every day's great

zerzhul wrote: »

I did not get a clear answer, but it appears that links to the forums are not included in the new unplugged site either, so I would say it's not an accident. I don't think we're axing them, but the sites are very much Reed from what I can see, as opposed to the previous design which was PA.

Would it be possible to get some clarification on that? As you know, one of the best things about PAX (and I would argue the sort of thing that gets people to return even during a pandemic when all of the major game exhibitors pulled out) is the (usually) friendly PAX community. It is beneficial to everyone - and almost certainly financially beneficial to Reedpop - to foster that community.

(Perhaps appropriately for last year's PAX University branding - universities know this well and do their best to foster a feeling of connectedness so they can suck as much money out of their alumni as possible.)

What would it take to get the forum link back, or perhaps even a community section on the PAX web sites that could link to the forums as well as the PAX community discord and perhaps other community-building things?

zerzhul

I'm not entirely sure what you're specifically asking for clarification on. It's been true for a very long while now that official pax messaging has come via methods that aren't these forums, with the sole exception being some BYOC organization. I don't disagree with you about the benefits, but Reed hasn't has a significant presence on these forums for even longer than that. As far as linking to community sites, the closest we've got that I can remember was just us here on the forums creating those links.

It's entirely me guessing, but I'm just assuming since it *appears* that the site design is by Reed this time and not PA, that Reed is sticking to stuff they have as part of their overall social media portfolio. You can see this on sites like c2e2, nycc, and eccc. Facebook, instagram, twitter, and youtube (for pax, Twitch).

As far as getting the forum link back, I'm not sure? I don't work for Reed or PA, and I've asked the forum administration about it already. Maybe include it as part of the post-pax survey?

every day's great

zerzhul wrote: »

I'm not entirely sure what you're specifically asking for clarification on.

The original question for this thread,

Is this in error or will it be that the PA West forum will be shrinking/otherwise due to being unlisted?

A clear confirmation one way or the other would be something like "PA and/or Reedpop (or their spokesperson X) confirmed that they intentionally removed/did not include the forum link on the new site design" or "they say that it was an inadvertent omission and they are going to add it back," etc..
And to be more specific:
If it was intentional, why was it done? Are the organizers on the PA side OK with this?
Since PAX is all about building gaming community, is there any chance of including some community links on the new site, possibly including a link to this forum?
Maybe the answer is "we don't know anything and can't find anything out because nobody who knows anything will say anything," but that would be sad.

Pavio

And if they want a community somewhere else--where?