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1. This is a moderated forum, all posts will be checked for bad language and composition. 2. Before you post in the information section, make sure the information you add is fully accurate. 3. All posts within the local and national policy sections must be factually correct and substantively debatable. 4. Feel free to be provocative or even politically incorrect, within the rules set. 5. No threats, sexual or racist remarks of any nature will be tolerated. Any posts that violate these common sense rules will be removed. Your account may also be suspended after so many violations. 6. Creating multiple accounts and pretending to be someone else will result in instant termination of all accounts. We check up on all accounts / IP addresses frequently. You must register and login in order to post within the forums. Your information will not be given out or sold for mailing lists. The register and login section is at the top right. You can also register or login here.
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Fiery Darts
Posts:133
Senior User
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| 05/12/2007 10:59 PM |
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I don't know if anyone has noticed, but this site has 24 separate forums, most of which aren't used very often. Three of them are completely empty and three others only have 1 thread. In the meantime, it is almost impossible to find a place to post some topics that are fairly within the realm of discussion. For example, if someone wanted to talk about water rights, there is no place for that.
An obvious solution to this would be to combine forums. For example, the three other Information forums and all of the Things to Do forums could be combined into one Local Information forum. The Local Public Policy pages could all be combined into one, and let's be honest, there is no good reason to leave the national Public Policy pages out of this super-page. It would combine all of the political discussions outside of the two "Blog" forums into one centralized location, making the whole site easier to read.
The Blog forums are fine as is, although I think that the forum format is an odd choice for a blog. It is different, and it runs into problems occasionally, but it works in its own way.
Almost every board that I have ever seen has a single forum that may be used for any topic that does not readily fit into other places. The natural title for this is "General". A great example of a good General topic was my resent post titled "Fence Posts", although it could also fit well into a more general Public Policy forum.
On other boards, I've seen a tendency to start with fewer forums that are then expanded as demand grows for them. For example, on one board, they only had a single forum for a long time but due to the number of Game threads (such as trivia games where board members quiz each other) and threads discussing TV shows led to the creation of separate forums for those two topics. In spite of a large, active population of board members, they still only have a few forums with most topics going easily into the General forum. This board would be easier to use if it only had 5-8 forums instead of the current 24.
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Zasch
Posts:134
Senior User
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| 05/13/2007 9:07 PM |
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| I agree. 24 is a bit much. |
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admin
Posts:5521
Admin / Moderator
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| 05/15/2007 1:25 PM |
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Give us an example of how you would like to see this forum structured. We are always open for feedback. This website is undergoing another major upgrade and expansion as we speak. Now is the time. The site is now on loganutah.com, bridgerland.com, and cacheutah.com. More high profile domains will be added soon.
We set up the forums the way they are due to the many different areas of discussion. Some of the forums are set aside for information only. You would not want political debate going on under an information Q&A thread.
Some of them need to be restructured, I agree. The worst section is the National section. Let me know.
Thanks for the input! |
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Fiery Darts
Posts:133
Senior User
Online Status:
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| 05/15/2007 10:33 PM |
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Okay, to explain my formatting, major divisions (e.g. Information and Things to Do in the current layout) are left justified, forums within them are indented and (where appropriate) captions or explanations for the forums are double indented.
This is what I think would work:
General
_____Forum Information
__________ Administrative stuff about the forum
_____ Main Forum
__________ Chat about anything under the sun
Local
_____ Things to Do
_____ Local Issues
Politics
_____ Local Politics
_____ National Politics
Blogs
_____ A Call to Action!
_____ In Defense of the Constitution
The key here is to keep it simple. If you see a category popping up a lot in some given forum, and the topic would make sense as its own forum, then it would make sense to give it a separate place. The thing is that by starting out more general, you give people a chance to go more places. For example, if I wanted to talk about the job market in Logan, there's no place to do that. If you generalize the forums, then I can do it under local issues or the Main forum. If I have an uncontrollable desire to talk about something non-political (like unicorns!) then that could go in the main forum.
Actually, my key point is to make one or more catch-all forums where users who want to post on topics outside of the scope of the other forums can do so. I wanted to post something about the death penalty the other day, but there was no place where it fit. The solution isn't to create a forum for that topic, but to create one for all other topics. |
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Zasch
Posts:134
Senior User
Online Status:
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| 06/06/2007 12:04 PM |
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I support this plan  |
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ActiveForums 3.7
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