[looksee]

In the parallel universe that is Feedforward there is another discussion going on that suggests there should not be categories at all, more a kind of search engine type thingy. Which might be a good idea or might not. There is also a thread which kind of offers an idea of why all this discussion is happening.

I don't feel inclined to plough through everyone else's ideas and offer a little thumbs up for ideas that kind of get somewhere near what I am thinking though.

In the meantime this thread is so vague that its like launching ideas into outer space, you are not sure which planet you are aiming for and whether you are using metric or imperial to get there.

We could have impassioned arguments about whether Ouldwans and Ouldfellas (from Soc) should be combined with Clearasil (from Rec) and Parenting (also from Soc) and Education (from Edu) and call it the Seven Ages of Man People. Or whether Clearasil belongs with Beer Guts and Hairy ones and call it the General Horribleness of Man. And at the end of it all be told, well that's not really what we were trying to do.

*Retires, muttering, to O&O to see if there is any gin*.

[5starpool]

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?

It wasn't marketing, it was set up because one of the original founder admins, Ecksor, likes mustard a lot and wanted a forum set up for it, probably for humourous reasons, and there it has remained.

On the wider topic, while there is some scope for reorganisation, the vast majority of current users are used to how things are, so this should be borne in mind in any reorg, and while new users being able to find what they need is something good, it shouldn't be done at the expense of people who use the forum every day, and have done for years.

Perhaps as well as this, a detailed new forum view available from the homepage could be incorporated into the new site design? This could mean that while the general forum organisation isn't drastically different from the drop down menu point of view, new users that arrive at boards.ie could have a user friendly interface to orient them with everything the site has to offer. You could probably have 20 different categories, but there isn't a lot wrong with the current list, although TV for example could do with some cleaning up, and should probably be a category of it's own with Radio and Film, perhaps.

[ken]

<---- get rid of this.
On a more serious note. 5starpool's idea about the new interface is good but i'd like to add that "Newbies and FAQ" be renamed so that it appears as close to the top of any new interface as possible. Maybe also the same thing for "Help Desk".

[Doctor DooM]

I wasn't about in the usenet days but when I started using Boards it was navigating the sub cats rather than understanding the logic of catagories that got me. It could take me a good few minutes to find anything.

I think you'd be better off focusing your strengths there, an easier way to navigate would help a lot.

[Spear]

The categories themselves are broadly okay, but there's little visibility of them. The menus at the very top of the screen are small and cluttered, the front page hides any suggestion of them, and the the text giving you location within the structure on the top left is small and also a little lost in the clutter.

How many people are aware that they can quickly see the entire cat structure at http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/index.php?

It would certainly help new users navigate about.

It also may not hurt to probably give the categories full names, recreation instead of rec, system instead of sys. Even long term users won't be familiar with newsgroup naming standards these days.

[Morag]

Why hasn't there been a series of youtube videos but together?
They dont' have to be very long, one going through the sign up process, and then one about what happens when a post is reported, one about starting a new thread, posting to a thread and then a spotlight on each of the categories and a few of the larger forums.

It would be an effective way to showcase what the site and certain forums are about and are very easily accessible.

[tricky D]

I wish you would look at sorting out the parent being repeated as the child in the hierarchy layout. There's no need to have Films>Films or Dublin County North>Dublin County North. Especially the single child ones like the latter mentioned, they just ramp up misclicks.

[looksee]

I have spoken about this before but its worth saying again. I don't see why forums with no subforums are in normal type but ones with subforums are in bold. It gives the impression that the bold ones are somehow more important.

[Boards.ie: Danny]

Originally Posted by looksee

I have spoken about this before but its worth saying again. I don't see why forums with no subforums are in normal type but ones with subforums are in bold. It gives the impression that the bold ones are somehow more important.

That is a user interface decision and is unrelated to the way categories/forums are organised.

[looksee]

Originally Posted by Boards.ie: Danny

That is a user interface decision and is unrelated to the way categories/forums are organised.

I chose to do that? So how do I change it?

[Boards.ie: Danny]

You dont use the beta skin. Forums with subforums are not bold on any other skin.

Again, this isn't anything to do with re-organising categories, changing the forum ordering won't change the way forums with subforums are bold on the beta menu. They are two separate things, one of which doesn't belong in this thread

[looksee]

OK then, well that's told me.

[Dav]

OK, the general idea is that we need to make it easier for people to find topics of discussion. This will of course feed into the idea of how we re-organise the site overall.

One of the ideas we've thought about here in the office is broadly in-line with what Looksee, 5Star and Ken have suggested - something like a cloud tag of subjects of discussion that would lead you to a selection of forums related to that with prompts to "follow" the forum being more obvious (or maybe even automatic) to make it quicker to get back there. Couple this with a change in the sign up process that asks for a series of subjects you're interested in and a sampling of forums automatically put into your "My Forums" list.

The first step though is to see are categories still as "viable" a means of organising our forums or should we be open to another idea entirely as looksee's suggested is happening in a parallel universe.

[minidazzler]

Originally Posted by Dav

One of the ideas we've thought about here in the office is broadly in-line with what Looksee, 5Star and Ken have suggested - something like a cloud tag of subjects of discussion that would lead you to a selection of forums related to that with prompts to "follow" the forum being more obvious (or maybe even automatic) to make it quicker to get back there. Couple this with a change in the sign up process that asks for a series of subjects you're interested in and a sampling of forums automatically put into your "My Forums" list.

Don't do that! I use the my forums tab for everything, being fleetingly interested to know something in one forum does not mean I want to be subbed to it, and I definitely don't want to have to go back after finding a forum that way and removing a forum. I know it sounds lazy, but as a general user it just doesn't fly well with me.

Maybe put it as an option to automatically follow forums, but don't make it the default option.

[Mr. Presentable]

If a system that works for most must be changed, how about alphabetic categories and a search box that'll predict what forum you might be looking for (like the username search does)? And maybe the search could interpret terms so a new user who forum searched "Cars" for example, could be offered "Motors"