Ending the Underutilization of Forum Areas

[danarhea]

There are many areas of this forum where excellent discussion could take place, but it isnt because many threads which are not news are being posted in the News section of the forum. Why do people do that? Lets ask one of the offenders - Myself :lol:.

Yes, I am one of those who has been posting non-news items in the News forum, and have been doing that because it is the most popular forum here. That does not make it right, and I realize that. So should everyone else, but they understandably fear that, should they post their threads in the appropriate areas, there might not be much discussion on an issue that they might feel is important to them.

This is where the mods come in. It is my honest opinion that the mods should take charge and start moving threads which are not news to the appropriate forums (and there are a lot of them, and there undoubtedly will be a lot more). This will most likely be a lot of work at first, but the end result will be the proper utilization of each and every area of this forum, and this will be good for the board in general. I will make it a little easier for the mods by promising to post threads where they should be posted, and not everything in the News forum. Once the other areas start becoming popular enough that threads are being posted in the proper areas, then the problem of underutilization will diminish greatly, as more members enter the discussions in those areas. The problem, however, will never go completely away, which is why the mods should always be on top of it, in order to keep discussion up in the other areas.

Anyone have more thoughts on this?

 

[Simon W. Moon]

I'd just as soon close threads in the wrong forums.

 

[teacher]

Yes, I am one of those who has been posting non-news items in the News forum, and have been doing that because it is the most popular forum here.

And yet your new threads still get ignored. Go figure.

I'd just as soon close threads in the wrong forums.

Thread censoring DP Nazi.

 

[danarhea]

I'd just as soon close threads in the wrong forums.

That is actually one solution, but in my humble opinion, the problem exists because it has never been addressed to a great extent. Because of that, it has become kind of the norm for people to post threads in the most popular area of the forum, because they are assured that those threads will get the most traffic there. However, any thread in any area of the forum could get good traffic if the threads were "spread out", so to speak. The most obvious solution would be to start moving all threads which are not news out of the News forum. This would benefit the board in 2 ways:

1) I would keep the News forum full of threads on news, which of course, is its purpose, but more importantly......

2) ........ The other areas of the forum would be allowed to prosper.

Just closing threads in the News forum which are not news, would help point 1, but without threads in the areas you wish to create enough interest in, enough interest would not be created, and those other forums would continue to languish.

Once again, I will be the first to admit that I am guilty to overutilizing the News forum for threads other than news, and as of right now, I am going to change that habit on my own. However, many people, especially newbies, dont see this as a problem, and I understand. After all, the News forum is the most popular one, which leads most people (although not all) to post new threads there, whether they are about news or not. With all due respect, I would suggest that the situation there is caused in part by a lack of policing of the News forum.

 

[cascadian]

First of all, I'd like to say I'm happy to be here. But I'd like to offer a bit constructive criticism that I think relates to danarhea's issue.

I think this board has over categorized. If there are only 10-15 people online at any one time, how are discussions supposed to take place on over thirty different areas? I'm not going to click on thirty different links just to see what people are saying in each area. Despite this, there might be a thread in each one that I would be interested in.

I think that's why you have people posting on the most popular ones even if they aren't related. Nobody is going to bother to click on all of the forums to see what is going on. Also this will help eliminate the need for mods to police and make it easier on beginners to find the appropriate category.

A rule of thumb that I think would be the most conducive to discussion:

if a posted thread drops to off of the 1st page within 24 hours, it might be time to consider breaking the category into more manageable chunks.

Inversely, if dead threads sits unposted on the first page for over a week, then it's probably time to merge it with another category.

 

[Captain America]

Myself, when I come in here, I just ALWAYS click on New Posts as I prefer to opine in real time with the others that are currently online. I pay little attention as to what topic forum the thread was originated from. Usually topics sway to and fro during the course of dialog and all too often lead into areas that have little or nothing to do with the original post or thread topic anyways.

That's one reason I brought up preventing topics from the basement from popping up on New Posts, some time back, because members who wish to avoid the sewage would find themselves wading waist deep in it because they used the New Posts feature and ended up in the basement.

 

[cascadian]

Myself, when I come in here, I just ALWAYS click on New Posts as I prefer to opine in real time with the others that are currently online.

I see the logic in that, but I'm guessing many people don't know about the "new posts" and if you applied the guidelines to it that I mentioned earlier, it gets too many posts for its own good. In other words it's "categories galore" or "one big mess" neither of which is optimal to me.

 

[danarhea]

Myself, when I come in here, I just ALWAYS click on New Posts as I prefer to opine in real time with the others that are currently online. I pay little attention as to what topic forum the thread was originated from. Usually topics sway to and fro during the course of dialog and all too often lead into areas that have little or nothing to do with the original post or thread topic anyways.

That's one reason I brought up preventing topics from the basement from popping up on New Posts, some time back, because members who wish to avoid the sewage would find themselves wading waist deep in it because they used the New Posts feature and ended up in the basement.

But sometimes sewage can be fun.

 

[Stace]

Just dropping in a little note to let y'all know that the mod team IS currently discussing this. There's no set agreement just yet, but the issue has been noted.