Open Carnage - Advanced Review

[Tucker933]

Website Name: Open Carnage
Website Link: http://opencarnage.net
When was your website founded?: February 14th, 2012
Which would you like?: Advanced Review

 

[John]

Your Review is In Progress!​

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Thank you for requesting feedback. I have tagged your thread, and will finish an official review within at most 48 hours. In the meantime, you will receive informal feedback from other reviewers and members at Forum Promotion. Once your official review is complete, you will be free to ask questions and receive feedback so long as your website remains only, and this topic remains reasonably active. You will also be able to request a re-review 14 days after this review is completed.

Thank you, and good luck!

 

[John]

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Open Carnage
Review by PoH ​

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First Impressions
[note]========== BEGIN - First Impressions ==========[/note]
You need to put your login button somewhere more obvious. Right now it's kind-of floating on the right hand corner. You should put it somewhere more obvious, where your members and first time guests would expect to look for it. I would recommend putting it at the top left corner of your forum. That's where I would expect to see a registration box, because that's where it is on most other forums.

After I found the sign in page, I came to really like your first impressions. Your theme does a great job of "jumping" at me and making me want to look around and even join your forum.
[note]========== END - First Impressions ==========[/note]
Good

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Design Quality
[note]========== BEGIN - Design Quality ==========[/note]
Your theme is one of the best I've seen on FP. The dark theme is really light on my eyes and does a good job of making me want to look at your forum. I like that form of dark theme on a gaming forum. I do not see any bugs or issues with it.

You currently only have two themes currently. Your default theme, "Open Carnage" and "Mobile Carnage." Both of those themes are good, quality themes for a forum of the gaming genre. However, lots of people dislike dark themes, even soft ones. You should add a light theme. Even it's not your default theme and not many people use it, you'll still know that people who like dark themes will be satisfied, as well as people who like light themes.
[note]========== END - Design Quality ==========[/note]
Excellent

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Site Statistics
[note]========== BEGIN - Site Statistics ==========[/note]
You've been open about three years and a month. Throughout this time, you've allotted 62,066+ posts, which brings your average posts per day to about 55. Those aren't bad numbers. You do need to try to do better. With the amount of members you currently have, you should average about 100 posts per day. I know you already run a lottery style contest monthly. Have you thought about replacing it for a month and running a straight posting contest? This could bring you many spark your forum and motivate your members to post a lot for a month.
[note]========== END - Site Statistics ==========[/note]
Average

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Staff Professionalism
[note]========== BEGIN - Staff Professionalism ==========[/note]
Your announcements look good. Everything is spelled right and there aren't any major grammatical errors. The only thing I would say to improve your announcements is to cut down on comma splices. Whenever you have two different thoughts, add a period and start a new sentence. Your comma splices are very minor. Most casual viewers wouldn't even notice them. They're very minor.

In your "Intellectual Discussion" board, only "Editors" can start topics. I do not see a real reason for this. Unless, you believe that your members get out of hand easily and will fight with each other. You should allow your members to post topics in that section. That board is already active, so you would benefit a lot from allowing users to post their own topics.
[note]========== END - Staff Professionalism ==========[/note]
Good

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Originality
[note]========== BEGIN - Originality ==========[/note]
Unfortunately, you're just another gaming forum. You run contests and have a unique theme. However, you do not really have much originality in your forum aspect. You really need to do something to stand out to people who are looking for a gaming forum to join.

Have you thought about expanding your "Game Reviews" section? I think this forum have a lot of unused potential. I would arrange the forum to have your editors post a weekly game review to that section. That would really help your originality to other users, because then they would know that they can find a game review posted to your forum every week.
[note]========== END - Originality ==========[/note]
Average

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Site Structure
[note]========== BEGIN - Site Structure ==========[/note]
You need to restructure your forum a bit. It's hard to find my way around because of all the different categories with only a few forum included in them. Every category should normally have at least three forums within it. This is especially so for off topic forums. You do not want your forum to have a bunch of categories that aren't related to your forum's genre.

You should merge "Intellectual Discussion" and "Miscellaneous Discussion" together to make a big off topic category. This would get rid of the extra categories that aren't related to your forum's genre.
[note]========== END - Site Structure ==========[/note]
Average

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Grammar & Spelling
[note]========== BEGIN - Grammar & Spelling ==========[/note]
You have a unnecessary comma in your description. For example your description for "Questions and Suggestions" reads "Submit your questions or suggestions for the staff, here!" You don't need that comma at the end. That sentence would become "Submit your questions or suggestions for the staff here!" With the grammar suggestions.

Everything else looks very good. It really shows that you've taken your time to write out all of your names ne descriptions with proper English grammar and spelling.
[note]========== END - Grammar & Spelling ==========[/note]
Good

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Final Remarks​

Open Carnage has been around a while. You've found a good bit of success during your time. If you fix a few things that I pointed out, you'll continue to find success if you continue to stick with it. Good luck!​

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Your Score​

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[Tucker933]

I appreciate the review, and while I strongly disagree with much of it, I'll hold my tongue. =p

However, we're definitely not a gaming forum, as the majority of our content is unrelated to the subject.

A gist of what we cover is highlighted upon in the big guest message at the top of the site.

 

[Cierra]

I appreciate the review, and while I strongly disagree with much of it, I'll hold my tongue. =p

However, we're definitely not a gaming forum, as the majority of our content is unrelated to the subject.

A gist of what we cover is highlighted upon in the big guest message at the top of the site.

I wish there was a light theme as I (normally) hate dark ones. There is only a mobile theme and the regular one. 🙁 I also think your "donator" membership is a lot at $20.

Activity is okay I guess, but continue to work on it. 😉

 

[Tucker933]

I wish there was a light theme as I (normally) hate dark ones. There is only a mobile theme and the regular one.

It would be ideal to have a light and dark theme, rather than just one or the other, but that's a lot of work for something that over 95% of our current members wouldn't have an interest in. A great argument is that it would make us more appealing to new members, but it's just not a priority at the moment. IPB4 is coming out in a few months, and I'll be moving us to a lighter (but still dark) theme, which should strike a decent compromise.

Activity is okay I guess, but continue to work on it. 😉

Always am, but a posting competition would be one of the worst ways to go about doing it. It's activity at the cost of quality, and it has killed a large number of sites here on FP. I also quite dislike an emphasis on post counts, and as would our members.

Finding good ways to advertise is our failing in this particular department.

 

[Cosmic]

Cash has been Deducted!​

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Thank you for using the Forum Promotion review service. We have deducted 300 FP$ from your account in exchange for conducting an Advanced Review. You can request another review in 30 days.

To request a re-review, post on the Service Upgrades thread.

 

[Ash]

Meticulous Review - OpenCarnage.net

The theme is great looking. The header is beautiful and I love the blue and black colour scheme.

Content wise since you have been open since 2012 I was expecting more posts considering 3 years is quite a long time for a forum to be open. A huge plus is that you kept your forum and didn't close it as a lot of forums tend to close within a year or less. Comparing the number of your members to posts is not that bad - around 180 posts per user.

Overall I love your site and I wish you the best of luck with it in the future

 

[John]

Thank You for Requesting a Meticulous Review!​

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Your review is now in progress. It will take us some time to complete your review, up to two weeks. Post a reply to this thread if you would like to here an update on how your review is coming.

Reviewers to complete your review:

• PoH
• Cierra

 

[Tucker933]

Thanks. I'll restate my note though, since it was removed:

Please understand that our Killing Floor 2 sections are extremely new, with most of them being just a few days old.

 

[MasterA]

Your site looks great. The activity seems good and 3 years of opening with 67K posts is very impressive. I am not really a fan of dark theme so I think you should add a lighter option for people like me who prefer lighter ones. Overall, it is looking great. Good luck with your forum.

 

[Tucker933]

In regards to the queries we have on the site for our game and TS servers timing out today, one of our servers automatically banned the other because they were talking to each other with "suspicious regularity". The hosting provider wasn't aware that we owned both servers, so the ban should be lifted soon. All our servers are still fully functional, they just can't talk between each other anymore at present.

 

[Cierra]

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Open Carnage
Review by[user]Cierra[/user]​

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First Impressions
[note]========== BEGIN - First Impressions ==========[/note]
When I first visit Open Carnage, I see a dark theme and a pleasant logo. I notice that all the forum icons are the same “three blue dot” icons, which I don't particularly like. I would prefer to have a different icon for each section that related to the subject of the forum. Having all the same icons looks boring to me, and having different ones would give some color to the dark theme and change up the look. I also notice that the “Team Speak Server” has an error currently: “Can't open connection to the server at 199.168.137.115:10011. It might be offline at the moment. “. I am not sure what that means but that is something that you need to check out because potential members or guests may want to see or use that. I see that certain user names, such as staff members names, have glow. This has always seemed unprofessional to me, in my opinion, because it looks childish and gives user names a distracting look. I would much rather like to see important names bold and colored.
[note]========== END - First Impressions ==========[/note]
Excellent

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Design Quality
[note]========== BEGIN - Design Quality ==========[/note]
While I like your dark theme, I did not like that you have no other theme options- besides a mobile theme. I for one do not like dark themes for various reasons (such as the colors, text, etc..), so when I went to look for a light alternative and didn't find one I was disappointed. My recommendation is either finding a light theme or making a copy of your dark theme and modifying it into a light one by changing the colors, this way you will be able to appeal to all audiences. Some people join forums based on their design or theme, so this could be an important factor to some. It's always nice to include all options when designing something. I like how clean and simple your dark theme is, good job on that. I find it easy to use and navigate around. The logo represents the forum well also.
[note]========== END - Design Quality ==========[/note]
Average

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Site Statistics
[note]========== BEGIN - Site Statistics ==========[/note]
Open Carnage currently has 67,643 posts and 389 members at the time of writing this review. I notice that there is no differentiation between threads and posts in the statistics, they are all lumped together. That makes it hard if someone wanted to see both threads and posts separately, so if you can change that to display both I think that would be good. I also could not find a full statistics (post per day, threads per day, posts per member, etc..) page link, if there was one please point it out. I look at those sometimes before joining forums to see their active and what the daily statistics are like. If there is one that I am missing I definitely recommend making it more visible by putting it in the header or footer. That is a good amount of posts for that amount of members. Of course, there is always room for improvement. The two sections that could use an activity posts topic wise are: “Experiences” and “Game Reviews”. With Open Carnage being a gaming forum, I was surprised to see that the number of game reviews were so low (26). I think both of those sections could benefit from an advertising boost to help with their activity. I see you are offering extra raffle tickets for writing a quality review which is a step in the right direction.
[note]========== END - Site Statistics ==========[/note]
Good

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Originality
[note]========== BEGIN - Originality ==========[/note]
I'm having trouble finding out what makes Open Carnage unique, unfortunately- besides the raffles which I think are a cool idea. While I know the Killing Floor 2 forum is new as you have stated earlier, I think that you might not have been ready to add that forum yet as I see that all the servers are offline at them moment. If I was looking for a server, that would cause me to move onto another forum quickly that did have one available and ready to use. I think you need to either sort out the server issues (if that's what causing them to be offline), or hide the board temporarily until you get the issues fixed because it doesn't look very good to members, or guests. An idea I ad for originality is too hold a weekly or monthly “game night”, where a game was agreed upon and everyone joined a Google Hangout, Skype call, etc.. and played it. You could have a discussion topic for the game afterwards too.



[note]========== END - Originality ==========[/note]
Average

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Site Structure
[note]========== BEGIN - Site Structure ==========[/note]
Your forums is structured well, I can find everything pretty easy and with in a mouse click. I like the header navigation bar and the alerts and messages integration. I don't like the recent status update sidebar because I feel it is unnecessary. Most people probably only check the status of their friends or members that they already know, so they'll go check out that persons profile. This would also free up some space to use for something else. “Experiences” looks weird being a category all by it's self, I think it would be better suited in with the off-topic category as a sub-forum. The activity isn't the greatest in there either so that would be a good way to “hide” it, so to speak.
[note]========== END - Site Structure ==========[/note]
Good

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Grammar & Spelling
[note]========== BEGIN - Spelling & Professionalism ==========[/note]
I did not find many grammar and spelling issues with forum descriptions or topics. I did notice that in the “News Room” forum, there is an unnecessary space and missing period in the description. I've corrected it below: A place to get caught up with and discuss current events from around the world. Topics by Editors. Here is what it currently looks like: http://prntscr.com/7gdgei. To make sure you never miss a spelling or grammar error, you should use a word processor with those features built in or website to check your content before making major public site changes.
[note]========== END - Spelling & Professionalism ==========[/note]
Excellent

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Community Interaction
[note]========== BEGIN - Community Interaction ==========[/note]
The community seems to interact well with each other. I notice a lot of members take advantage of the like and quote feature. A lot of members also have very personalized profiles so that suggests to me that they would like other members to get to know them. Many members also have various social media accounts and gaming platforms linked up to their accounts. They have no problem discussing sensitive topics, such as depression ( http://opencarnage.net/index.php?/topic ... epression/ ) and autism (http://opencarnage.net/index.php?/topic/4718-autism/)- a personal account at that. I did notice that some discussions go too off topic, so you might need to remember to watch out for that and reign in “stray” discussions if need be.
[note]========== END - Community Interaction ==========[/note]
Average

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Content Value
[note]========== BEGIN - Content Value ==========[/note]
One thing I notice right off the bat is this thread. It sets a bad tone for me when starting right off the with foul language, which continues into the post. I think that thread could have been stated in a much better way, while still getting the point across. You as an administrator could ask him to change his topic or archive it. There's really no need for the cursing at all. I'll be honest here- this is a place where Open Carnage is really lacking. I believe signature rules are needed: http://prntscr.com/7gdn0s. That could be seen as offensive to many people, and as you say in your rules:

Freedom of speech does not apply on Open Carnage

. Not every member, but a lot of them, have short, low quality posts. On the flip side, the people who are high quality posters really go above and beyond with their posts, adding quotes, videos, and so on. A lot of posts are just a few words long, in crucial areas such as the gaming sections, which you forum is about. While you can not control this to a degree, there are some things you can do, such as having stricter rules.
[note]========== END - Content Value ==========[/note]
Very Poor

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Final Remarks​

I enjoyed reviewing Open Carnage. While there are some improvements that need to made, it is a pretty good forum overall. With hard work and dedication I believe the forum will continue to be successful. Good luck with Open Carnage, [user]Tucker933[/user]!​

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Your Score​

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[John]

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Open Carnage
Review by PoH​

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First Impressions
[note]========== BEGIN - First Impressions ==========[/note]
My first impressions on Open Carnage were good, but not great. When I'm logged in, my user control panel breaks up the logo a little bit. You have a good logo and header, and you need to show it more. Example of what I'm talking about:

Spoiler

It would look a bit better if you moved the user control panel up to the right side, above the logo, or even the left side if you think that looks better when you change it up. Right now it's a big bar that breaks the logo by cutting a line in it with the user control panel.
[note]========== END - First Impressions ==========[/note]
Average

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Design Quality
[note]========== BEGIN - Design Quality ==========[/note]
Previously, in my last review, I didn't especially like your default theme, "Open Carnage." After being around your forum for the past couple weeks, I've started to like your theme. It's a very clean, easy on the eyes dark theme. There are two things I see about it that you'd probably label as a "bug" or a "glitch," depending on your preference. First off, the back to the top feature covers the "Private Policy" that is in your footer. Example:

Spoiler

A Private Policy is something that's very important to read, due to it being your legal ground against almost everything. I'd strongly recommend that you make it a floating buttons that follows me on either the right or left hand side. If you're not a huge fan of floating buttons, moving the button over to the right, or even eliminating it completely would do better than having it cover your Private Policy. Secondly, on my small screen, your "Statistics" menu at the bottom of the index has some of the statistics columns are written off centered with each other. Example:

Spoiler

I strongly recommend you try to fix this. It looks rather jumbled up and hard to read right now. While it's not the most important statistic, it's still important to have clean columns so that your members can read everything with ease.
[note]========== END - Design Quality ==========[/note]
Average

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Site Statistics
[note]========== BEGIN - Site Statistics ==========[/note]
Statistics is a tough one here. While you hold a motto of "quality over quantity," your quantity has not been very good lately. On the recent topics sidebar on the right hand side which displays the five most recent threads, only one thread has been made in the past forty eight hours. With your current post and member count, you could definitely be doing better. Now your question is as a forum admin, why am I getting so few threads recently? I know you're not a fan of posting contests, and I agree that they promote quantity over quality. Now, I know about your monthly newsletter. However, I'd first recommend that you send a mass email out to all your members promoting something that you're going to do soon that you haven't done before. You should try to do something that will draw members back to Open Carnage to see an improvement idea (or contest) that you have. Maybe hold some sort of gaming tournament? Release a new theme maybe? It doesn't have to be an all original idea or anything, just something so that people will want to take a quick look at OC again, and maybe that'll entice them to stick around OC once again.
[note]========== END - Site Statistics ==========[/note]
Average

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Originality
[note]========== BEGIN - Originality ==========[/note]
Open Carnage seems to have broken the "just another gaming forum" mold I gave it previously. You run a contest monthly with cash prizes, have your own gaming servers, and a custom theme. All or this adds up to quality originality. Unfortunately, I can't really add much to this section this time around. There isn't anything I see that's needing a major improvement. Good job breaking a mold that so many gaming forums fall for.
[note]========== END - Originality ==========[/note]
Excellent

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Site Structure
[note]========== BEGIN - Site Structure ==========[/note]
You first start with the Meta categories, then move onto the gaming sections, then it goes to the technology discussions, and finally ends with the off topic forums. This is the best way to order a forum tree, especially in your genre. Members will first look for forum announcements, then forum genre related discussions, and then finally most members will go to the off topic discussions. With Open Carnage's current layout, it fits perfectly for what I said above. This is something I love about Open Carnage. Everything is very neat and tidy, I have absolutely no problems finding my way around.
[note]========== END - Site Structure ==========[/note]
Excellent

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Grammar & Spelling
[note]========== BEGIN - Spelling & Professionalism ==========[/note]
This is another one of Open Carnage's strengths. You've taken your time to write announcements clearly and have ensured that everyone can read them, because you use proper English grammar and spelling in all of your announcements. Unfortunately, quite a few gaming and technology forums don't do this. It's a major plus that you can write everything in such high quality grammar.
[note]========== END - Spelling & Professionalism ==========[/note]
Excellent

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Community Interaction
[note]========== BEGIN - Community Interaction ==========[/note]
This is something that's very tough to judge right now. As I said earlier, Open Carnage's activity is not where it probably should be. An unfortunate side effect of that is that the community will interact less, because there are less places for them to interact content wise now. The easiest way to fix that is with your staff team, while your staff is currently doing a good job staying active around the forum, they could probably do better. A good idea to pick up some quick activity is to ask every staff member to post one thread per day, for a week. One thread per day might not sound like much, but it'll add up big time if you can get your entire staff to help you with it. If your staff team commits to being active and interacting with the community, you'll very quickly start to regain a bit of activity.
[note]========== END - Community Interaction ==========[/note]
Average

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Content Value
[note]========== BEGIN - Content Value ==========[/note]
Open Carnage does follow your motto of "quality over quantity" very well. However, there are certain topics where there is quite a bit of harsh swearing. While some swearing is by no means a bad thing, you need to make sure you draw a hard line on what your members can and can't do. I see a few n-words and f-words on your forum. As I said above, some of this isn't a huge deal, but it needs to be at a controllable level to make sure your content is as high quality as possible. Topics filled with swear words generally will knock your content quality down a good bit, and this seems to be the case on OC.
[note]========== END - Content Value ==========[/note]
Average

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Final Remarks​

Open Carnage is always a fun forum to review. As I said in my above thoughts, some things need fixing like the errors in the theme and you could use a boost in activity. Open Carnage has been around a while, and it's a testament to admin dedication. Best of luck in the future.​

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Your Score​

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[John]

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Thank you for Requesting a Meticulous Review!​

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Your review has been complete, and you have been given the combined score which can be seen below. I have now deducted the total of 2,500 FP$ from your account. You may request any kind of other review in 90 days. Also, you can post a reply to this thread to request additional thoughts after you've made changes to your website.

Note, no actual cash was deducted due to your SBM coupon.

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Your Score: 7/10​

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[Tucker933]

I noticed that the “Team Speak Server” has an error currently: “Can't open connection to the server at 199.168.137.115:10011. It might be offline at the moment. “. I am not sure what that means but that is something that you need to check out because potential members or guests may want to see or use that.

While I know the Killing Floor 2 forum is new as you have stated earlier, I think that you might not have been ready to add that forum yet as I see that all the servers are offline at them moment. If I was looking for a server, that would cause me to move onto another forum quickly that did have one available and ready to use. I think you need to either sort out the server issues (if that's what causing them to be offline), or hide the board temporarily until you get the issues fixed because it doesn't look very good to members, or guests.

You had spent over a week on the site and saw all these services working fine for that period until a few hours at the end, which I had made sure to address to you well in advance of you submitting this review. Yet you act as if the problem existed for more than a short time.

One thing I notice right off the bat is this thread.

I don't know what you're refering to. Please link?

My first impressions on Open Carnage were good, but not great. When I'm logged in, my user control panel breaks up the logo a little bit. You have a good logo and header, and you need to show it more.

Previously, in my last review, I didn't especially like your default theme, "Open Carnage." After being around your forum for the past couple weeks, I've started to like your theme. It's a very clean, easy on the eyes dark theme. There are two things I see about it that you'd probably label as a "bug" or a "glitch," depending on your preference. First off, the back to the top feature covers the "Private Policy" that is in your footer. Example:

Spoiler

A Private Policy is something that's very important to read, due to it being your legal ground against almost everything. I'd strongly recommend that you make it a floating buttons that follows me on either the right or left hand side. If you're not a huge fan of floating buttons, moving the button over to the right, or even eliminating it completely would do better than having it cover your Private Policy. Secondly, on my small screen, your "Statistics" menu at the bottom of the index has some of the statistics columns are written off centered with each other. Example:

Spoiler

I strongly recommend you try to fix this. It looks rather jumbled up and hard to read right now. While it's not the most important statistic, it's still important to have clean columns so that your members can read everything with ease.

You wont have these issues if you use a desktop or smartphone resolution. You should be using the mobile theme if you don't have access to either devices.

 

[Geoffrey]

I like your forum overall, some of your forum sections are really specific on the index but I'm assuming that's because your community is most interested in them (games, mostly).

Your theme is rather dark, too dark in my opinion and it would be pretty annoying if I was going to use it for a long period of time. I checked to see if you have other theme options, only saw a mobile theme there. I suggest adding a lighter theme option, just so you can appeal to everyone.