I thought this still happened anyways with the Hot Topics. Does anyone knows what kind of IM we're getting? Is it going to be chatrooms or friends only?  

what about our plan Machina!?

http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/post.php?id=3007026

So, when will we see implemented whatever idea is chosen?

1.) Return the IM Chat
2.) Return the comments on game pages
3.) Return the photo section of profiles
4.) Remove the Activity section...
5.) Option 1 and Option 2 are ok

bring the old vgcharts back..my brain hurts :'(

Just keep it the way it is. How complicated does it really have to be to click on a forum and topic that you want? Simplicity is key. lol

Lack of new ideas is disturbing so I'll add something crazy.

I’ve always thought it’d be interesting to have a user rating system. However, I’m against having something portraying other users as being “better” than other posters. And having a plain five star rating system could be damaging, especially when in the hands of the community.

I have a different approach to the manner. Why don’t we make a rating system that rates behavior in forums according to how they contribute in them.

Now, I’m not saying we use this system to label people or call out trolls because that’s obnoxious and people would reject the idea.

The best way to explain this will be through an example.

And this is just a prototype idea so don’t take this half-assed list seriously.

A tab can be added on the user’s page so it can be viewed by others. If someone is not comfortable with it, they have the option to remove it.

Anyway, it’s an idea and I thought I’d share it with ya’ll

na, Rol would get like 9999999 and I'd have like -1000

think of the move to vgc 3.0 as an experiment: what happens when hot topics is removed?  well we have an answer now, all of the forums died except gaming and sales and people started posting topics that obviously didn't belong in these forums simply because it was the only way to get attention.

i'm not familur with gaf for comparision but the obsession with merging forums (for me) comes from seeing how dead nearly all of our forums have become and seeing our community naturaly gravitate to a single forum solution.

to me the key is to converge AND empower.  just combinding the gaming/nintendo/sony/ms/pc forums together is a bad idea because just like you said some of the communities are going to feel pushed out.  the key is empowering the user to sort/filter/ect the topics to find exactly what they want.

i dunno, as a guy who loves his hot topics this site is such a pain now.  if the site traffic really has dropped apparently a large chuck of our community agrees with me on that point.

while i can and definetly do ignore the activity feed maybe you can explain one thing to me....why should i care about this section?  all i see is a bunch of people posting on other peoples walls.  but, without context of the conversation the information seems so...useless.

example of what is on my activity feed right now.

Machina wrote on CGI-Quality's wall