Hi everyone. As you may know, OWA, TeamWolf, Triattack and myself met up in London today to discuss many things over a variety of beverages and foodstuffs typically found in an English pub. One of the topics we discussed was Teamspeak, specifically how we could reorganise it to make it easier for newcomers to find their way around. To that end, I'd like to propose the following structure. This is by no means final, nor has it been discussed with anyone else yet (hence this post). It should serve only as a starting point for a discussion on the subject.
<Root>
Rules
Lobby
Recording Booth
Games
CnC
Westwood RTS Games
Tiberian Sun: Reborn
Renegade X
Minecraft & Terraria
World of Tanks
Warframe
Open Room #1
Open Room #2
Open Room #3
SG Clan
Clan Chat
Staff Chat
Ghost Reactive
Chat
Staff Chat
W3D Hub
Testing
Staff
Founders
AFK
So, you're probably screaming at your monitors already because <favourite channel X> is missing or moved, so let me explain some of the rationale I applied here before we open the floor to discussion. 1) Private channels move to the bottom of the listings Since all W3D Hub channels are private, we've moved to the very bottom. SG and GR (not entirely sure who these are - presumably a clan?) are above since their "clan chat" areas are somewhat more public (all clan members) than any of the W3D Hub channels (all require specific permissions) 2) Shared channels move to the top of the listings Any channels not associated with a specific clan or community are considered shared, common channels and are probably what a newcomer is looking for when they join TS, hence they live at the top 3) Game channels grouped together under one top level item Rather than having "C&C" and "Other Games" and "SG/Clan Area" all containing random assortments of games, I've brought all of these together under a single top level Games category. I also rationalised the list somewhat and removed items that, to my knowledge, are not really being used much. Scream and shout at me if I am wrong about any of those. Warframe is reduced to a single channel, although we could retain some or all of its subchannels if necessary - but I see no need for it to live under the SG area of TS. I included "Open Room ##" channels to cover people who want to play other games to those listed, or for cases where more than one group of people are playing different RTS games concurrently - the idea is to find a free room and reserve it for the duration that you need it for. Hopefully we can use the channel commander logic here and thus require people joining the channel after the commander must be manually given voice rights, ensuring an interruption free gameplay session. 4) Clan areas stripped back to basics Each clan area will now only contain a "clan chat" style channel and a "staff chat" style channel. If anyone knows of any real reason why we'd need more do let me know, but in the spirit of inclusion and getting people talking outside of their own communities I'd rather keep the majority of channels outside of clan / community areas. Note that the clan areas will require a "clan membership" tag/permission/whatever in TS before someone can join any channel inside the clan area - staff would get an extra permission for the staff area. The W3D Hub community area will operate on a similar principle, but replacing "clan chat" with "testing" (general chit chat for the community lives in the lobby) and adding a "founders" chat for the six founding members to discuss things in private if necessary. Server moderators will have access to the W3D Hub community staff area, thus removing the need for their own channel. OK, now that I've explained some stuff, begin your ranting and raving. Please try not to break your keyboards as you hammer our your angry replies to all the things I did wrong