Forums over organized?
How is everyone else liking this new forum setup versus the simple list we had before?
It feels over organized to me. Too much uneeded data and too much scattering of information. Except to notice in specific terms that the addition of new information is slow, I'm not sure knowing how many days, hours and minutes ago someone posted something enhances my experience. There are too many categories to flip through to decide whether or not I might be interested in what someone has to say. Guess I've just been conditioned to having a simple list of all topics and then picking and choosing what to look at based on the title of any given posting. Maybe this is just me. If this were a super busy bulletin board then all of this organization would be helpful. At the current slow pace the setup seems to me a bit daunting and diluting.
Anyone else have an opinion?
Jeff
Forums over organized?
Not sure what you mean by "the simple list we had before". Do you mean the Yahoo group? If so, the problem with that is that it was too simple and people had a hard time following threads and planning things.
I love it.
I think this system is awesome and it seems ready to handle whatver volume we can throw at each other - and it all ends up being very clear and organized.
Major Kudos to the designers on this site, it's one of the best forum management systems I've seen. I like seeing any data related to the posts - it tells us what's most recent. It also tells us if someone's likely to be in the chatroom (if a post occured just a few minutes ago).
The only difficulty I had initially was figuring out how to start a post and it didn't take me too long to see that. In fact I like it not being on the first page - so you're able to see all the categories first and decide which is most appropriate or if something's been posted recently on your topic.
In the end I hope the organization of this forum would help to reduce the number and length of meandering posts. That's my two cents.
I like it, but interested in specific recommendations
I like the structure of the forums, and I think the active forums block takes care the simple browsing. Do you have a specific recommenation on categories?
Jeremy O'Leary, Working to suport my biology habit.
I'd suggest fewer topics
hmm
The working group forums are not going to be removed as they are where the working groups discuss their options. Lumping everything into disucssion would re-create the problem we had with the mailing list. One of the points of the different forum threads is so people can subscribe to the topics they are interested in.
Here is a first crack at a possible modification and I reserve the right to not like the idea in a few hours. :-)
Announcements
Barter Central
Talk about Wednesday night events
Community and neighborhood
Emotional and spiritual
Energy
Food, gardening and permaculture
Household and housing
Personal finances and economics
Politics & the media
Sustainability and conservation
Transportation
Site technical help
Everything else
Working Groups
PPO: Business
PPO: Neighborhood
PPO: Outreach
PPO: Policy
PPO: Preparedness
Jeremy O'Leary, Working to suport my biology habit.
Discussion and forums possible modification
I like the prosposed modication set-up. Over all I like the way the discussion area is set up. I like the side bar listing to see if there are any updates on what I am following. I also like how "clean and neatly organized" the site appears.
Keep up the good work.
Forums over organized?
The only real advantage to getting rid of the time/date/user stamp is that it would probably squish the topics together (making it quicker to scroll through and more visually appealing.) I think I like it better how it is for basic functionality.
I think Jeremy's new format for the forums gets rid of some redundant topics, which is a good thing :).
As for switching to new forum software, I like how this software integrates into the website.
Robin Canaday
robincanaday@hotmail.com
ICQ 27717216