Let's collect some ideas for a better OCW.

I work after a specific schematic.

1) Keep the main purposes.
2) Keep it possible.
3) Keep it simple.
4) Keep the main purposes in the foreground.

I started making a think tank on Bamboo Space, which works fairly good, so if anyone else has Bamboo Space, let me know it.
If any idea is validated as a proper suggestion that fulfills every point, I'll edit this post and write it in here.

EDIT:

Things that were validated:
* Play Now on frontpage
* Redo of Activity Feed
* Improvement of RSS Feed

I think we need to decide what we want the site to become and what problems we have now.

For me, a main problem is this place is traditionally anti-newcomer/people that would actually play the games.

How about we do this for OCW? Like, make the leaderboards visible on the front page, make it so you don't have to dig through the site to challenge someone, show individual activity for recently played games in a section other than the feed (such as in the main and profile Games tab), etc.

As for Play Now, I believe the original system worked out fine. Wasn't a chat at all, just a place where you said you wanted to play a game, and people sent you a challenge, working out the details via PM.

If I recall the time I joined OCW, I was disappointed due to fact I didn't see any ongoing activity.
If we ant to keep newcomers, we have to put them right in the face "Look, we are making a tournament of game X tomorrow and this person plays game Y you own".
Like those annoying advertises.

shadow, we've also been (whispering) for a while that we should really just have some sort of check-box for games to say if you want to play them.

I think.

Ack, lost a giant post due to bad wi-fi.

Summerized: More moderation will be coming from me. Reread the rules if you really need to so you don't get ban hamma'd.

Here's my idea of the Play Now-feature.

Nincodedo, come again?

He says he's going to ban you if you don't come up with great ideas.

I suggest having more flame wars.

Keep the forums heavily and strictly moderated. Have a forum that costs at least a month's worth of points to join that is still moderated but with far fewer rules (off topicality etc). That way everyone is smiley and nice, but regulars still have a place to vent.

Let's just put Communism into play.

My wireless failed, but I got my wireless PCI card, so I should get a better reliability now. Rush type time.

1) A more lax forum is a good idea, but the requirement is eh. "Unlocking" features in social sites never flew well for me, perhaps we should just put a warning on the description.
2) News takes valuable real estate, but the discussion we get is always nice. Perhaps we can have a news forum or encourage people to post news up for discussion.
3) I agree with what was said of games. Make it a forefront for Play Now, users who are online, leaderboards, and groups.
4) Sliker mentioned this in the other topic, but a more specific version of this may be a "willingness" to play option when adding a game, as in Very, moderate, almost never. This along with displaying the descriptions may reduce the vast amount of "do you want to play, not really" private messages.
5) Something about groups never seemed great to me, mostly the fact that their existance seems a bit hidden, which hurts some stuff like the Pokemon League. I'd really like to emphasize groups as just clans, or at the very least allow people who aren't in the group to view their forums and such.

They can.

Ah, its probably just guests that can't then.

I suggest a featured group. You could put the latest featured group on the front page, thereby advertising that particular group and the existence of groups as a whole to newer members. It's a win-win, although it would cost a tiny bit of the homepage real estate.