Forums | MacLife

Former Windork wrote:

That's just what comes off the top of my head.  I've seen forums with 3 times the activity with less than half this many forums.  All the subdividing of every different possible subject matter into different forums just makes things seem even more slow and dead.

I agree and I would add that the reason why many of them are dead is that people don't take the time to go into every single forum every time they visit. I know that I don't. However, if they were grouped together I would be much more likely to find a thread that I might be interested in or want to respond to. I feel really bad for the people that are forced to post in the help forums whose posts are then pretty much ignored due to lack of traffic.

Also, some of the responses that are claiming the need for separation of certain forums kind of miss the fact that the subject of each thread will do the separating for them. If you have three forums that each get about a dozen posts a month then combining them won't cause people to miss any posts, even if they topics aren't really really close to one another. They seem to be missing your point completely. Separating them is causing them to shrivel and die.

http://www.maclife.com/forums/post/1627389#p1627389   ++
http://www.maclife.com/forums/post/1627391#p1627391   ++


Frank

Macskeeball wrote:

As of this writing, the Mac|Life Forums have 1,604,295 total posts. I did the math, and literally 80% of those (1,287,907 posts) are in Unplugged, MiniThink, In Tech News, and Everyday Tech.

What does that mean? It means that 84% of the total number of forums (21/25) make up only 20% of the forum activity. Forum organization should try to reflect the reality of the activity.

All the Clan forums combined get only 3% of the forum activity (48,953/1604296), yet they make up 36% of the total number of forums. The concern about preserving the history of 3% of the forum activity seems a bit removed from reality if you ask me.

Do the Clan forums really need to be a part of this discussion? Since only Clan people use those forums they don't really have an effect on the way the average user uses the forums. If we are talking about consolidating so that forum topics that are missed now (in low traffic forums) will be seen because they are merged with other forums then we can just leave the Clan forums as is.

If you go into a Clan forum 0 times then does it matter whether or not it is merged?

They're also at the bottom of the main page and aren't even seen unless you scroll down to them, so are unlikely to be confusing folks and diluting traffic; and they are of continuing use to some- at least some of them are. I'd be fine with making some, like the Squad forums, read-only and/or invisible to non-Clanners if that's thought to be important. Others are problematic, if only because it's unpredictable where traffic might pick up (e.g. Neffy took a shine to one of those games and has made many posts in recent times to one that even I would've thought would remain fairly inactive).

Macskeeball wrote:

Yeah, these forums have arguably been dead for a few years now (which makes all the Mac gaming clan forums even more silly).

You would think that; you were never a member, and AFAIK have never even posted in Gaming. None of it is, or apparently ever has been important to you personally; it's not your ox that would be gored- this is basically academic for you, an exercise in organization. For myself I'm somewhat puzzled folks can get so exercised over this, with potential benefits small, harm to some significant. Hardware Hacking has perhaps a dozen posts this month; you might suggest rolling it into a general help forum, as fewer and fewer folks hack their Macs, upgrade CPUs etc. G'head. (Alien, matt, I am not so suggesting nor am I in favor of that).

frankly wrote:

Bat wrote:

You would think that; you were never a member, and AFAIK have never even posted in Gaming. None of it is, or apparently ever has been important to you personally; it's not your ox that would be gored- this is basically academic for you, an exercise in organization. For myself I'm somewhat puzzled folks can get so exercised over this, with potential benefits small, harm to some significant. Hardware Hacking has perhaps a dozen posts this month; you might suggest rolling it into a general help forum, as fewer and fewer folks hack their Macs, upgrade CPUs etc. G'head. (Alien, matt, I am not so suggesting nor am I in favor of that).

Please explain how rolling some forums together would cause significant harm to some.

There are several, but a couple that come quickly to mind is that many forums have rather unique identities and regulars... related but not synomymous with that, many threads in almost all forums have rather nondescript titles. Sorting them only by date would make finding threads and posts related to those topics difficult... look just at F@H. You have titles like "test," "New all-time highs," "The MacMenace thread," & "Welcome, new members!" just on page one. Those titles could go in any number of forums without anyone knowing what they were about. You'd have to check each (talk about a waste of time)... regulars know what's what and where, and I have a hard time imagining any circumstances that would lead to a flood of new members. Typically, when I joined, I didn't know my way around. Over time I learned. I doubt fewer forums would've hastened that; in fact, fewer, more general/amorphous forums might've slowed that process.

The benefits would not be small and they would affect many.

I'm not seeing that.

Many of us simply do not visit all of the forums because there are too many of them. If they were condensed we would see more posts and be able to respond.

No reason you should visit forums with subjects that don't interest you- that saves you time from the get-go. You've been around long enough to know your way around; I doubt you'd read more topics were there a condensation. You know where to look, where to avoid for lack of interest in their topics.

You can always utilize the 'Show Recent Posts' link on the index page if you're too busy to check all the forums.

I don't see the problem with putting all the tech support forums into one. heck a lot of the time the posts either belong in another one or could go in multiple ones.

mrreet2001 wrote:

justine wrote:

You can always utilize the 'Show Recent Posts' link on the index page if you're too busy to check all the forums.

then it shows everything... I try to stay out of minithink

Franks argument was that he's too busy to be going in and out forums. I provided a solution.

I think we should just take this to its logical conclusion and give every post its own forum.

There's no pleasing some people, is there? there's ways to view posts no matter what forum they're in, but, oh, noes, then we see posts we don't wanna see!

Special interest forums are not going to be lumped in with general forums. to people interested in, say, vintage hardware, there's nothing more annoying than seeing each and every thread interjected with, "just buy a new one, duh." Yes, it happens.

Don't have the time to visit special interest forums? Well, then you're not really interested, apparently, are you?

.tsooJ

frankly wrote:

I go to Forum Feedback and In Tech News. If they were condensed I would enjoy keeping up with posts in Everyday Tech, On-the-Go, and Programming & Web Dev but I don't in the current configuration.

Well, those are exactly the special interest forums that shouldn't be lumped together.

Sorry, we're not gonna change the forum layout (just) for your convenience. If I'm still "purposely missing the point", please elaborate on the point.

.tsooJ

The point is, you subdivide into more specific forums when the traffic and posting activity is such that it's hard to  keep up, not just to have a separate forum for any niche subject matter one can think up.  Not even In Tech News and Everyday Tech are that busy.  There are threads on the first page in ITN that haven't had a reply in over 3 weeks.  That's not exactly burning things up.

When you dilute the forums into so many small, narrowly focused subjects, it gives the appearance of the forum being dead.  You can tout the "show new threads" or whatever feature, but that not how most people interact with message boards.  They like some narrowing, but not so much that they have to click through a dozen places to see new discussions.  Neither do they like everything dumped into one big queue.

All I was doing is giving a suggestion that I think would help assuage the impression that this board is slowly dying.  It might help foster more conversations if it looks like the place is hopping a bit more.  That's all.  Sorry for trying to help.  But this forum is MUCH less busy than it was a couple of years ago and I'd like to see it regain some momentum.  But I do believe the insane amount of niche forums is hindering that right now.

Former Windork wrote:

When you dilute the forums into so many small, narrowly focused subjects, it gives the appearance of the forum being dead.  You can tout the "show new threads" or whatever feature, but that not how most people interact with message boards.  They like some narrowing, but not so much that they have to click through a dozen places to see new discussions.  Neither do they like everything dumped into one big queue.

All I was doing is giving a suggestion that I think would help assuage the impression that this board is slowly dying.  It might help foster more conversations if it looks like the place is hopping a bit more.  That's all...

Exactly.

For a more extreme example of the problem with having too many forums, see my university's bulletin boards.

Last edited by Macskeeball (2009-01-23 2:44 pm)