[Dav]

"What? You mean Dav's finally got his finger out and remembered that Feed Forward exists?" Well, it was never far from my thoughts, but I simply had no time to devote to it. In the last 18 months the volume of stuff that "the office" has to deal with has sky-rocketted and all of it is very serious and a lot of it site threatening legal stuff. But I will offer my apologies that this process stalled the way it did - it is important to me and to the site.

So here we are, with a pretty monumental project to tackle: The organisation of Boards.ie Categories. I am also under orders from the top of the food chain in the company (i.e The Board of Directors) that this is my priority, so it will be getting looked after properly.

The Categories we currently have sprung out of how Usenet used to organise itself. To anyone who hasn't been using the internet for about 10+ years, they're not as clear as they whould be, so we need to fix that.

We have 800+ forums and there's possibly scope to re-build this from the ground up. I have had quite a few ideas about how this all might work myself, but I'll hold off on adding them in to avoid colouring anyone's opinions

This process will feed directly into the site re-design which is something that's being chipped away at slowly by the tech and design people in the office. When we have something concrete to show, we'll do so here, but I'd rather we didn't get wrapped up in that just yet. I can see us re-organising the categories a lot ssoner than we'll even have a prototype of the site redesign anyway, so lets concentrate on that for now.

So, good citizens of Boards.ie, I throw the doors of Feed Forward open and both welcome you in to have your say and would remind you that both I and "we" would greatly appreciate your help once again.

[Black Swan]

As a category, Region works. Several forums have developed a sense of community through interaction, which I believe is one important purpose of boards.

There are a few City and County forums that would benefit from merging into one forum (e.g., Mr Magnolia and I have requested that Kilkenny City and County be merged per member request), while others have enough frequency to justify their own separate City or County forum. Our metropolitan area of Dublin County should continue its sub-forums for the same reasons.

Region>Abroad needs some further thought. We will get back to you with recommendations within the next few days.

[looksee]

Are you trying to reduce the number of forums, or organise them in a different way?

For example, while it is of course easiest to reorganise forums that you do not post in/identify with, I have difficulty seeing why Beer Guts &RH and Facial Hair and the gentlemen's club are separate forums. I know at this stage they have their own followers and will come up with reasons why they are unique, but are they really?

Why does mustard need a forum? Most discussions can go into food, military uses can go into Military etc.

Why are dental and eyeglasses in Science, but hearing in Soc?

And incidentally, there appears to be a whole bunch of stuff that appears to be out of order (in Beta) in Soc, under Forestry. Its been like that for a while now.

AH seems to have lost its way a bit. It used to be for random stuff spouted after a lot of beer and after midnight, but it has got a lot more sensible and there are some potentially good discussions that need to be either kept tidy and put in such as Humanities, or not even attempted in AH.

I'm afraid this thread is a going to sound like a lot of criticism, but I am only picking up on things that I would suggest could be changed. There is considerably more that I like about Boards and would not change at all.

[TheZohanS]

Originally Posted by looksee

AH seems to have lost its way a bit. It used to be for random stuff spouted after a lot of beer and after midnight, but it has got a lot more sensible and there are some potentially good discussions that need to be either kept tidy and put in such as Humanities, or not even attempted in AH.

I'm afraid this thread is a going to sound like a lot of criticism, but I am only picking up on things that I would suggest could be changed. There is considerably more that I like about Boards and would not change at all.

+1

It's gone way too serious.

[Morag]

I think the topic being discussed is how to group together the existing forums with out questioning should forum exists.

There are some sections which may as well be a cat on thier own like food& drink and some which are under soc like forestry and farming which seem odd paired with parenting and PI.

So what new group heading should there be?
How many should/could there be?
How many forums per heading?
How do we split them up?

[Overheal]

I notice there is also the technical issues as well. Cool Vids was just yanked up from under AH not because it didn't make sense for it to be there, but because it was developing so much of it's own traffic it became necessary to split the load on the mods. The only way to stop AH mods from getting notifications about the subforum as I understand it would have been to disconnect the subforum from AH. Is this a technical limitation or just one I am imagining? If it is real is there a way to develop a workaround, so forum organization isn't limited by this technical factor? Perhaps take the organization of the forums the user navigates and decouple it from how the moderating is actually structured. eg. to the user Cool Vids would look like a subforum of politics but where the actual database of forums is concerned they would be two separate entities. The navigation panel is just really a fancy series of hyperlinks at the end of the day either way, treat it a bit more like one?

[Sad Professor]

The biggest problem with the current categories is that all the forums are listed alphabetically, which is great if you know exactly what you're looking for, but is probably quite confusing/overwhelming for new users. I think smaller groupings of similar forums would be the best solution. With certain forums it makes sense for them to be close together. looksee mentioned Beer Guts, Facial Hair and the Gentlemen's Club earlier. I don't think they should be merged into a single forum, but it would make sense for them to be side-by-side under a "Men's" heading or something.

Similarly perhaps AH, Thunderdome and the Cuckoo's Nest should be part of an off-topic/relaxed/fun group or something.

[KKkitty]

I've only been here since the 9th of August but leave AH the way it is. There's a bit of everything in AH. One minute it's serious, the next minute it's weird and wacky and then it's hilarious. Merging both Kilkenny forums is a great idea because even though I'm from Kilkenny there's not enough traffic in either forum separately. Would you entertain a household cleaning tips/easy cooking tricks forum? Mustard could be merged into the cooking forum.

[Cardinal Richelieu]

Originally Posted by KKkitty

I've only been here since the 9th of August but leave AH the way it is. There's a bit of everything in AH. One minute it's serious, the next minute it's weird and wacky and then it's hilarious. Merging both Kilkenny forums is a great idea because even though I'm from Kilkenny there's not enough traffic in either forum separately. Would you entertain a household cleaning tips/easy cooking tricks forum? Mustard could be merged into the cooking forum.

Mustard forum was more of a marketing gimmick than a food/military related forum. During any boards media interview I eve heard, it was always mentioned to show the breath of forum and topics covered by the site. Probably outlived its value by now.

Oulwans "n" Oulfellas with Palaeontology perhaps?

[OldGoat]

Originally Posted by Cardinal Richelieu

Oulwans "n" Oulfellas with Palaeontology perhaps?

If I ever catch up to you I'll harangue you for that, whippersnapper!

So are we talking about creating new categories here or just moving stuff about? If it's new categories then would a Film, TV & Radio category be big and busy enough to be stand alone?

[My name is URL]

I don't want to sound like an ass, but what about all the other FF stuff which has fallen by the wayside in recent months? Are people expected to chime in with their input and opinions while year+ old questions go unanswered in other threads that some of those in charge obviously don't see to be of any great importance?

There hasn't been a reply to the S&S thread; by an admin.. in over a year.. A YEAR!

It took you what.. 2 minutes to put together this thread, Dav? And in 18 months you couldn't find the time to give some acknowledgement or input in that other thread?

I don't know what FF is aiming to be, but it doesn't seem to work very well whatever it is presently.

[Overheal]

Please for the sake of this discussion, save that argument for another time.

[Cardinal Richelieu]

Of the 800+ forums how many have less than 20 posts per week?

[Skid]

Originally Posted by looksee

Are you trying to reduce the number of forums, or organise them in a different way?

For example, while it is of course easiest to reorganise forums that you do not post in/identify with, I have difficulty seeing why Beer Guts &RH and Facial Hair and the gentlemen's club are separate forums. I know at this stage they have their own followers and will come up with reasons why they are unique, but are they really?

But by that logic your very own 'Oulwans n Oulfellas' would be at risk of a merger into the all new 'Gentlemens Beer Guts and Facial Hair and Receding Hairlines' Forum. Well, the Oulfellas part anyway

[KKkitty]

Originally Posted by Cardinal Richelieu

Mustard forum was more of a marketing gimmick than a food/military related forum. During any boards media interview I eve heard, it was always mentioned to show the breath of forum and topics covered by the site. Probably outlived its value by now.

Oulwans "n" Oulfellas with Palaeontology perhaps?

Oulwans "n" Oulfellas with Paleontology kinda makes sense doesn't it