Player Features and Ideas Discussion

The problem with forums is that its easy to spend a lifetime reading them without further game play or even making your own comments. And raw searches on millions of posts on the narrow and rambling subject of EVE (lots of overlap & recomment) are just about useless most times

(though adding a most recent order sort to results within a given posting time range would help lots. So would being able to match to only threads containing GM posts or Dev posts or started by GM / Dev . Or to locate only threads with high CCP interest or presence match only threads containing a certain minimum number GM/Dev posts or posts by multiple GM / Dev in addition to the old standard of searching a specific GM or Dev).

How about adding some of that drop down menu based organization and filing technology from petitions and bug reports to the forums for new posts? Or at least to certain Forum areas like Features and Ideas.

For instance discussions mainly about Ships would be a primary subject area which might then split into major areas of modules vs hulls then modules might be split into Resource Extraction vs Weapons vs Tanking vs Maneuver etc. Some organizing tag drop downs might be suggested but optional. For instance posts talking about modification of an existing module might find tagging with a specific module name appropriate whereas suggesting a new Micro-Dodge Maneuver module would not.

I realize code to support this idea would be a non-trivial deviation from in-game development. However, since CCP uses this as a (if not THE) primary source of EVE documentation and for brewing RAW customer-oriented product development...

CSM is great. But even the best of CSM start gathering new ideas and weighing practical considerations in forum to balance the narrow focus of thinking coming primarily from internal player corp goals and politics.

Make forums a bit easier to sort into useable info without becoming a larger time than in game.