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[Official] New Forum Layout Discussion Thread

An official request, or post by staff acting with authority.

SkullTraill

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This is the current forum layout:

General

Announcements and Feedback

Suggestions

Get Help

Introductions

Staff Discussion

Occult Discussion

General Occult Discussion

Occult Tutorials, News, Articles

Occult Q&A

Religion, Spirituality and Meditation

Left Hand Path, Black Magic and Demonology

Right Hand Path, White Magic and Divination

Witchcraft, Folk Magic and Herbalism

Energy Manipulation and Vampirism

Scientific Discussion

Philosophy and Psychology

Technology

Economy and Politics

Health and Fitness

Science and Metaphysics

Hobbies and Entertainment

Lounge

Arts

Visual Entertainment

Cooking


This layout/structure was designed when WF 4.0 was being implemented to be as close as possible to the original WF (2.0). However, recently, while thinking of ways to add 2 new major sections (The Library and The Bazaar), I realised that I was not too happy with the current structure. I want to rework to more closely fit the "theme" of the 2 new sections I will be adding (sort of names of places in an ancient city...) and also to better divide the content sections.

Right now, the Occult Discussion section is divided in 2 different ways... 1 is by the type of content (OTNA, OQnA) sections, and the other way is by occult topic (GOD, RSM, LHPCMD, RHPWMD, WFMH, EMV). This may not be optimal. Ideally, the section would be broken up in only 1 type of way. Either by content type OR by occult topic and NOT both ways.

I will soon post my proposal for new category, section and sub-section names... in the mean time, I welcome your thoughts and ideas.
 

Yazata

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Hey man, thanks for asking πŸ€” I'm not too sure I could give a good suggestion.

When Magick in essence is either LHP (which I regard as "taking") and RHP ("giving" in my view),
I would make two main sections. One for typical LHP stuff : hexes, curses, demons etc.
And one for the "typical" RHP stuff: angels, wicca, chakra work etc.

In typing this i already see that there will be a lot of overlap in the categories though.
And a lot of encouragement for edgelordism haha.

I may come up with a better suggestion in the near future, but at the moment I can't really think of things.
 

Irish Bard

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As far as categorisation goes I would say topic is a more important distinction than type.
 

Irish Bard

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Hey man, thanks for asking πŸ€” I'm not too sure I could give a good suggestion.

When Magick in essence is either LHP (which I regard as "taking") and RHP ("giving" in my view),
I would make two main sections. One for typical LHP stuff : hexes, curses, demons etc.
And one for the "typical" RHP stuff: angels, wicca, chakra work etc.

In typing this i already see that there will be a lot of overlap in the categories though.
And a lot of encouragement for edgelordism haha.

I may come up with a better suggestion in the near future, but at the moment I can't really think of things.
You could have fun with the separation from a design perspective. The forum already allows you to choose a colour scheme. This could somehow be integrated?
 

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I actually like the current layout to be honest. :/
 

SkullTraill

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A marketplace would be a great addition, also what about upgraded user groups?

I wonder what kind of services could be sold
Upgraded user groups are 100% going to be a part of using the marketplace. It just has to be that way. You have to be risking your account and your subscription if you are going to try and scam people. So I'm going to make sure members must have upgraded accounts to sell their services on WF.

Hey man, thanks for asking πŸ€” I'm not too sure I could give a good suggestion.

When Magick in essence is either LHP (which I regard as "taking") and RHP ("giving" in my view),
I would make two main sections. One for typical LHP stuff : hexes, curses, demons etc.
And one for the "typical" RHP stuff: angels, wicca, chakra work etc.

In typing this i already see that there will be a lot of overlap in the categories though.
And a lot of encouragement for edgelordism haha.

I may come up with a better suggestion in the near future, but at the moment I can't really think of things.
I don't want to only break it up into 2 sections and then more sections within that. Trying to maintain a relatively "flat structure" so that the forums are visible on the main page. If there are "deep" subforums, then they will not be visible on the main page and might cause some confusion for people looking for them, if you get what I mean.

If we have a market place it needs to be regulated, too many scammers in magic community in general.
I do not monitor members' PMs, so there really is no way for it to be super regulated. I won't name and shame, but I've been told some members are already selling services via PMs. What I will do is ensure that sellers are paying for an upgraded account, and have some sort of rating system tied to them that buyers can potentially use. Might end up just being profile posts. It's definitely something I will have to experiment with and keep improving as it goes. In the early stages, members can just leave their feedback on the seller's service thread in the marketplace. In the future, if it gets more popular, there will be a more bespoke solution for the marketplace.

As far as categorisation goes I would say topic is a more important distinction than type.
But then the concern is we lose out on some of the cool functionality of the forum, such as Q&A threads with voting and accepted solutions etc. As those are applied on a per-forum basis.

I like

You could have fun with the separation from a design perspective. The forum already allows you to choose a colour scheme. This could somehow be integrated?
I'm not sure I follow.

That seems like a cool thing too.
Yeah, I'm already set on calling the market place "The Bazaar" and I'm down to hear suggestions for the book section. For now "The Library".
And then what is the occult discussion section going to be called? "The Forum" would have been nice, but we call this whole site a forum... hmm...
And what about the scientific discussion section... the hobbies and entertainment section might be called "The Tavern"? Hmmm

Lots to think about.

I actually like the current layout to be honest. :/
Fair enough. The structure doesn't HAVE to change for the occult discussion category. I just think we for sure need 2 new categories for books and marketplace. Others can stay the same, but I do want to come up with cool names for all the top-level categories.
 

Pestifer Mundi

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Seems good, pretty much everything was covered already.

I'm seeing a lot of people talking about a "market place" and that won't end well, because it begs the question:
How do you vet whether something legitimate is being sold or not?

The majority of people that do sales in the occult niche don't even believe in any of it, and see it as a quick and easy buck to be made off of the "superstitious".

If people are buying something because they "like the look and feel of it" that's all well and good, so long as the product is advertised as such and no claims are made that can't be proven.

The only restriction I'd make on the market place (if it's implemented) is that no claims are made. The product description merely states what it's for, not what it WILL allow you to do or anything like that, because we all know how that's going to turn out:
Amazing claims that can't be observed or tested, and a long line of gullible and hopeful newbies, who will then blame you afterwards for their own naivety.


If we have a market place it needs to be regulated, too many scammers in magic community in general.
Once you make something about money the vultures start coming in with ill intentions and there are a lot of schemes they can pull.

For example, I could pay some people off site a few bucks, to join the site, spend a bit of time building familiarity within the community, and then when I start advertising my products, they say they have purchased it and are satisfied with the results/quality.

I'd more than make back what I paid them and then some, even a reputation can be manufactured when it comes to things like this.

You might say I'd be proven to be a fraud once people start purchasing, but depending on the "disclaimer" I place on my products description, I can just pass the blame on to the consumer. If you're a good enough talker you can even convince them to blame themselves, they'll even start second guessing themselves, asking if they used the product right or understood what was written in the book.

There will also be people who say they are getting results (some you paid and some who just "felt it work"), which will make people doubt themselves even more and retract their claims.

Even if you get removed at some point, by that time you already made a killing, your goal was accomplished.


None of this stuff is really being tested with a "methodology" anyways, so either side has just as much evidence of their claim.

If someones occult products are fraudulent how would you prove that?

I mean, how would one even prove that something occult was fraudulent, when occult communities spend no time trying to prove anything anyways?

There's no criteria so where would you even start?

Therein lies the root of the problem.
 

SkullTraill

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@SkullTraill
Seems good, pretty much everything was covered already.

I'm seeing a lot of people talking about a "market place" and that won't end well, because it begs the question:
How do you vet whether something legitimate is being sold or not?

The majority of people that do sales in the occult niche don't even believe in any of it, and see it as a quick and easy buck to be made off of the "superstitious".

If people are buying something because they "like the look and feel of it" that's all well and good, so long as the product is advertised as such and no claims are made that can't be proven.

The only restriction I'd make on the market place (if it's implemented) is that no claims are made. The product description merely states what it's for, not what it WILL allow you to do or anything like that, because we all know how that's going to turn out:
Amazing claims that can't be observed or tested, and a long line of gullible and hopeful newbies, who will then blame you afterwards for their own naivety.



Once you make something about money the vultures start coming in with ill intentions and there are a lot of schemes they can pull.

For example, I could pay some people off site a few bucks, to join the site, spend a bit of time building familiarity within the community, and then when I start advertising my products, they say they have purchased it and are satisfied with the results/quality.

I'd more than make back what I paid them and then some, even a reputation can be manufactured when it comes to things like this.

You might say I'd be proven to be a fraud once people start purchasing, but depending on the "disclaimer" I place on my products description, I can just pass the blame on to the consumer. If you're a good enough talker you can even convince them to blame themselves, they'll even start second guessing themselves, asking if they used the product right or understood what was written in the book.

There will also be people who say they are getting results (some you paid and some who just "felt it work"), which will make people doubt themselves even more and retract their claims.

Even if you get removed at some point, by that time you already made a killing, your goal was accomplished.


None of this stuff is really being tested with a "methodology" anyways, so either side has just as much evidence of their claim.

If someones occult products are fraudulent how would you prove that?

I mean, how would one even prove that something occult was fraudulent, when occult communities spend no time trying to prove anything anyways?

There's no criteria so where would you even start?

Therein lies the root of the problem.
I agree with a lot of what you're saying, but let me just tell you my thought process: I've owned or run WF and other occult forums for several years at this point. Many more years of running other forums and other types of communities. If your site does not have a marketplace, people will start selling their services via PMs and by having their private practice websites in their signatures, and dealing with "clients" off-site. As I mentioned above, this has already started happening at a small scale on WF.

If I don't actively monitor PMs or outright ban any sort of sales or transactions on site, as well as ban any links or references to private websites which sell services (which I do not intend to do, due to the sheer amount of effort it requires) then this sort of commerce will be entirely unregulated.

This whole "marketplace" idea I'm having, is a method of trying to regulate this commerce in a way which requires the least overhead and man-hours to police. Firstly, making only "upgraded" accounts allowed to advertise services, gives people something to lose when scamming others. Sure, it may not be much, but it compounds over time, and it's something better than nothing. It also just takes like half the potential scammers off the table right away, those who have no money but want to scam others.

Keeping everything on site will also make it easier for people to spot new accounts, and suspicious players... as long as you have common sense, and as long as you stick to the rules of only trading with accounts that have some kind of "marketplace" upgraded tag. Of course, there will be people with no common sense, or people who willingly disregard the rules and engage with non-marketplace accounts, or do trades off-site, and I can't stop that. Never will be able to. This all relies on people following the rules, and reporting those who break them. Beyond that, I can't help or stop anything.

The takeaway, though, is that there will be some control, some guidelines, some awareness, some preventitive measures, and some consequences for rule breakers and potential scammers.

Of course I'm not just going to blindly believe someone's claim that someone else is scamming. It's up to you to take that risk, and do your due dilligence to avoid that. If you feel like someone's not being honest or accurate with their services you can post a review on their thread. It only takes like 1-5 poor reviews for others to start thinking twice. And you can always report people who're trying to take deals off-site or do something blatantly dodgy, and those will be taken seriously and swiftly face consequences.

I don't know man, if it doesn't go well, I'll scrap the whole thing. I'm just trying to do right by all of you. I obviously can't please everyone, but I'm gonna at least try to please as many people as possible. Maybe the real solution will be to just ban all commerce and off-site activity. Time will tell.
 

SkullTraill

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The Council
β”œβ”€β”€ Announcements and Feedback
β”‚ β”œβ”€β”€ Suggestions
β”‚ └── Get Help
β”œβ”€β”€ Introductions
└── Staff Discussion

The Congress
β”œβ”€β”€ General Occult Discussion
β”œβ”€β”€ Occult Tutorials, News, Articles
β”œβ”€β”€ Occult Q&A
β”œβ”€β”€ Religion, Spirituality and Meditation
β”œβ”€β”€ Left Hand Path, Black Magic and Demonology
β”œβ”€β”€ Right Hand Path, White Magic and Divination
β”œβ”€β”€ Witchcraft, Folk Magic and Herbalism
└── Energy Manipulation and Vampirism

The Library
β”œβ”€β”€ Book Club - Discussions about books (and authors??)
β”œβ”€β”€ Book Shares ?? - sharing books...
└── Book Requests ?? - requesting books...

The Bazaar
β”œβ”€β”€ Market - for offering services/products
β”œβ”€β”€ Reviews and Disputes ?? - review another members services and/or dispute the trade for others to see?
β”œβ”€β”€ 3rd Party Services (Billboard ??) - to talk about and review websites/stores that are not owned by WF
β”‚β€ˆβ€ˆβ€ˆβ€ˆβ€ˆ members (will go through thorough review)
└── ??

The Academy
β”œβ”€β”€ Philosophy and Psychology
β”œβ”€β”€ Technology
β”œβ”€β”€ Economy and Politics
β”œβ”€β”€ Health and Fitness
└── Science and Metaphysics

The Tavern
β”œβ”€β”€ Lounge
β”œβ”€β”€ Arts
β”œβ”€β”€ Visual Entertainment
└── Cooking


Thoughts? Gotta start somewhere...
 

Yazata

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Looks good man. To be honest when you said " old city names" ( or something like that) i interpreted it as Babylon, Alexandria, Jerusalem etc πŸ˜‚
 

SkullTraill

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Looks good man. To be honest when you said " old city names" ( or something like that) i interpreted it as Babylon, Alexandria, Jerusalem etc πŸ˜‚
I was afraid of that confusion that's why I specifically said "names of places in an ancient city" πŸ˜‚

But really, I am open to literally anything. Only concern is not being too esoteric for SEO and newbies to understand...
 

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Yes. Regarding a market place: I think it can be good if you allow people to rate their experience (as you said).
I have seen another place where members got banned because they were unsatisfied with services they bought at that place.
 

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I agree with a lot of what you're saying, but let me just tell you my thought process: I've owned or run WF and other occult forums for several years at this point. Many more years of running other forums and other types of communities. If your site does not have a marketplace, people will start selling their services via PMs and by having their private practice websites in their signatures, and dealing with "clients" off-site. As I mentioned above, this has already started happening at a small scale on WF.
Well you have the experience so I'm sure you know what you're doing, and it's always up to the buyer to use their own discretion anyways. It's better for the market to be out in the open because like you said, they're going to sell privately anyways.
 

SkullTraill

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Yes. Regarding a market place: I think it can be good if you allow people to rate their experience (as you said).
I have seen another place where members got banned because they were unsatisfied with services they bought at that place.
Yeah for sure. Good thing is, unlike BALG or certain other places, I as the owner am not going to be selling anything (aside from user account upgrades of course). So there is no pressure from the administration for anyone to post only good reviews, and certainly never going to obstruct negative reviews.

Well you have the experience so I'm sure you know what you're doing, and it's always up to the buyer to use their own discretion anyways. It's better for the market to be out in the open because like you said, they're going to sell privately anyways.
I know what's happened to me before. Beyond that, it's an experiment and I can only see how it goes. And yeah exactly. I'd much rather have it out in the open, with open channels for buyers to post feedback.
 
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