How are we doing in here? What can we do better?

--amadeus--

One of the things that the (endlessly fascinating!) mods forum tends to discuss is how much influence a mod has over a forum. Weither you can lead a forum or just follow it.

And over the last few weeks I think that we (the Mods) have made a few changes in here. We've created the Race sub forum. We've got rid of stickies. We've moved all teh Bargain alerts to one thread. We've also had to be a lot more visible in terms of actual moderating in the last few weeks - controversial threads on topics like gender and race number swapping have lead to bannings, warnings, post editing or deletion and thread locking. And that in turn has lead to questions about Moderating style.

Over the last few months there have also been some big enough projects that have almost pushed us into interactive magazine territitory. The gear review thread for example or the Pace groups for DCM.

And we have grown - it used to be I could tell you the race background and current training of everyone on here. Now there are people who are regular contributors in niche areas (tri, multisport, IMRA for example) who I wouldn't know at all and the explosion in users means that there is far less of an "everyone knows everyone" feel.

And thats a good thing, more contributors are always welcome. But have we gained in quantity and lost in quality? Is the standard of advice still as high?

So what do you the users think? Are we going in the right direction? What aren't we doing that we should be doing? It's your forum, you drive it - what can we do to make it bigger and better?

Woddle

The next step should be to put on our own race inviting the fitness, cycling and all other interested forums to join us, obviously boards.ie would sponsor the event and a win win for them and us

Also just to add I think you the mods are doing a superb job. Also thanks to this forum I reckon I've met about 30 of my fellow boardsies if not more and it adds to the race day excitement.

RJC

I mean this as a constructive comment so I would hope that no offence is taken (none is intended):

I think the work of the mods is thankless and they are to be congratulated for all their effort. I think things would be a lot more 'wild west' without them,

but.................

I think you're totally overdoing it.

My view (and it is just that) is that your level of commitment to the sport is obscuring your objectivity on the task of moderation. There are examples of a subjective view based on your expert status (by this I mean your long standing commitment to the sport and your personal achievements) over taking your function when acting as a moderator. This leads to decisions that are 'debatable'.


Again, this is just my view so feel free to ignore it.


On a practical level, I think the sub-division of the board into sub-boards is noble but misconceived. It will lead to more work for the mods (I have no idea where to post stuff now) and will put off novice users. It is a change that will only suit long term users and will lead to a demise.

baza1976

RJC wrote: »

I mean this as a constructive comment so I would hope that no offence is taken (none is intended):

I think the work of the mods is thankless and they are to be congratulated for all their effort. I think things would be a lot more 'wild west' without them,

but.................

I think you're totally overdoing it.

My view (and it is just that) is that your level of commitment to the sport is obscuring your objectivity on the task of moderation. There are examples of a subjective view based on your expert status (by this I mean your long standing commitment to the sport and your personal achievements) over taking your function when acting as a moderator. This leads to decisions that are 'debatable'.


Again, this is just my view so feel free to ignore it.


On a practical level, I think the sub-division of the board into sub-boards is noble but misconceived. It will lead to more work for the mods (I have no idea where to post stuff now) and will put off novice users. It is a change that will only suit long term users and will lead to a demise.

The bold bit I'd have to agree with somewhat. I do a lot of lurking here and don't post as much as the inner circle do, but I do believe that it is more confusing where to post what. i very rarely check the subs forums except for the some peoples training.

But I also think the mods in this forum are miles better than mods in other forums i frequint. But then again this forum is probably the most friendly i have come across, which makes mods lifes easier i guess

Blueskye

I am fairly new to boards.ie and think the ART forum is brilliant. I find it easy to use and think it's a great source of information and support for me, someone who is doing their first marathon this year.

I like the new race sub forum, it hasn't put me off. And I have agreed with the majority of the threads that have been locked as I think it keeps things as fair as possible in such an arena. In terms of advice, I think the standard appears generally high but it does vary and essentially it is up to the individual to decide what information is worthwhile for them. Thumbs up from me

sideswipe

I'm also a newbie so can't comment on any changes but have found the forum excellent; I have personally gained a lot from the advice of others. After using and following the forum for a while you come to realize that a lot of posters know each other as amadeus alluded to when mentioning that there was a time when most people on the forum would know each others race background, but yet the forum itself does not feel cliquey in any way which is always good and important.

In relation to improvments, one suggestion would be to have 'key posts' with the most topical subjects such as marathon/tri training, advice for people starting to run etc. For example if you had a key post on 'injuries', you could have one post giving some basic advice and telling telling people to seek professional advice and not to ask for advice on the open forum, this could save the mods time as there is more of a chance of people reading an injury thread than there is of them reading the charter!

In relation to moderation/locking posts etc I think it's a necessary aspect and thankless job.

All in all it's 2 big thumbs up from me.

MrCreosote

I quite like the new subforum thing. Took a bit of getting used to at first, but things don't vanish from the first page as quickly as before.

I'd agree about the mods job being pretty thankless, but I think you do a grand job.

And well done to Hunnymonster on getting "Age-Grouper of the Week (tm)"!

HardyEustace

Some post topics are repeated relatively frequently. I'm thinking of posts along the lines of
"I'm just starting out what should I do?"
"I'm just starting out is x,y,z a good/bad idea"
"I'm just starting out what kit shoudl I need"

...

anyway, people here are very kind and thoughtful and give great advice.

Would it be useful to have a type of FAQ list for people starting out with hyperlinks to relevant threads?

RoyMcC

baza1976 wrote: »

But I also think the mods in this forum are miles better than mods in other forums i frequint. But then again this forum is probably the most friendly i have come across, which makes mods lifes easier i guess

+1 to that - I wandered onto another forum for a few minutes once and picked up a yellow card

I've been hanging around here for 18 months or so and it is a mine of information as well as having a nice 'pubby' atmosphere (I think anyway). There are a number of posters who are expert or experienced and it is notable that they stick to their particular area of expertise - and give some great advice.

I also find there is far less twaddle/uninformed rubbish appearing here compared with other forums - and then it is pretty quickly dealt with by other posters.

At the same time I believe and hope that newbies to running/tri/athletics feel safe to come on here and ask newbie questions - they most always get good and sensible advice.

Like Woddle, all the boardsies that I've met in person have been sound out (a great Irish expression that I've recently learnt).

I'd like some good field event topics to get my teeth into sometimes, but I'm afraid they are a minority interest.

No suggestions Amadeus but keep up the great work.

donothoponpop

The sheer amount of threads meant that some subbing had to be done, took a bit of getting used to but no biggie. I'd like to see the training logs linked to the race event page, and vice versa. I agree with HardyEustace, a FAQ (in the READ ME stickie) would be useful for noobies.

I've agreed with any of the thread locking you've done recently, and no harm to have a sense of humour when doing it either. Anyone who's sincere gets a decent welcome here; jerks get dealt with quickly enough, thats how you run a tight ship.

So thumbs up from me too.

MCOS

Mods are doing fine IMO. I find the thread locking a bit 'snappy' though and thats just my view of course. Snappy as in, you log on and see a thread has been locked and if not for the usual race swap request scenario you may dive in to see what it was locked for. It can seem as if a Mothership UFO sent a red beam down to zap the poster to ash and a bit of a full stop or comma is all that remains!

Perhaps a generic set of locking templates (reasons for locking) could be used so that when a Mod locks the thread the just pop in the generic template that applies.

Anyway, on the format its grand. The sub format leaves discussion thread visible for longer and the race specific thread is good as that has a fair bit of traffic.

So all good

Oh just one more suggestion. I know you can view x number of thread titles per page but there are some good thread that keep rearing their heads where a poster has gobne back a few pages and dug it out. I suspect many who dip in and out such as myself dont have the patience to turn the leaves over to find what they are looking for. Is a longer page list an option, where you can scroll down 100+ titles? It would be quicker than having to track back and load another page?

GoHardOrGoHome

RJC wrote: »

On a practical level, I think the sub-division of the board into sub-boards is noble but misconceived. It will lead to more work for the mods (I have no idea where to post stuff now) and will put off novice users. It is a change that will only suit long term users and will lead to a demise.

Everything goes on the main page apart from races. It's not that hard.

Other forums (fora?) have separate threads for training, banter, gear, off-topic etc. which is not a good idea unless the volume of traffic means that threads are getting pushed off the first page within an hour. Race discussions were pushing out every other topic from the first page so I think it was a good idea to have a sub-forum for that.

Newbies should be able to work out that all posts go in the main forum except specific race questions/discussions and personal training logs.

RJC

MCOS wrote: »

Oh just one more suggestion. I know you can view x number of thread titles per page but there are some good thread that keep rearing their heads where a poster has gobne back a few pages and dug it out. I suspect many who dip in and out such as myself dont have the patience to turn the leaves over to find what they are looking for. Is a longer page list an option, where you can scroll down 100+ titles? It would be quicker than having to track back and load another page?

Good suggestion.

I got reading a cycling forum post recently. 15 pages of he said/she said to get to the meat of it.

scottreynolds

My 2c is that I hate the sub forums for events begin moved out. I don't understand the point of it as they are realy just general topics with a limited timespan. My thread was moved the other day we mentioned an event in the title but was move about my experience of trail running now people don't read it cause the think its even specific.

Also threads should be allowed to migrate to a different topic -- one recently had all the threads relating to the new topic split off to a different thread. I'm 50 / 50 on that one but the mods are very hands on.

scottreynolds

GoHardOrGoHome wrote: »

Everything goes on the main page apart from races. It's not that hard.

Other forums (fora?) have separate threads for training, banter, gear, off-topic etc. which is not a good idea unless the volume of traffic means that threads are getting pushed off the first page within an hour. Race discussions were pushing out every other topic from the first page so I think it was a good idea to have a sub-forum for that.

Newbies should be able to work out that all posts go in the main forum except specific race questions/discussions and personal training logs.

I agree with RJC sorry its silly people can just turn the page.

robinph

I've been barely paying attention to anything much boards.ie for the last couple of months, but I didn't like the idea of moving the race topics out to another sub forum initially when I saw it happening. But as I was just lurking so I kept quiet. I do now see the benefits though, I will just have to keep reminding myself to check sub-forums as well for anything of interest which is not always something that I do.

They are very hands-on and visible mods in here compared to most other forums, that is all in a good way though.

dna_leri

--amadeus-- wrote: »

So what do you the users think? Are we going in the right direction? What aren't we doing that we should be doing? It's your forum, you drive it - what can we do to make it bigger and better?

The race sub-forum works but now that topics stay on the front page longer, we can afford to have a few stickies. I don't think the current stickie killer works - maybe the stats on views per day will prove me wrong but it does not shout READ ME. Then again the the thread with that title often gets ignored too - its a bit like the manual with your new HRM, you only read it when you get stuck.

IMO we definitely need a Newbie stickie of Frequently Asked Questions that answers What do I post where? What trainers should I buy? and Should I do the DCM? Maybe even put the charter in there.

More contributors are always welcome as long as its not just to ask which is better Nike or ASICS. With new contributors, the standard of replies can be variable but that's part of the experience of asking a question on a forum like this. I certainly would not try to moderate the quality of the advice, we are all adults and can judge for ourselves if someone's advice is worth following.

[Just noticed I am using the royal "we", so although I am not a frequent poster - 0.4 posts per day - I must feel I am part of the virtual community.]

In general the level of moderation feels right, though I think a snip or a thread lock should always get a short explanation.
Its right to allow 'controversial' topics to be discussed and in fact a snip or individual ban should be used rather than deprive everyone of the opportunity to discuss within the acceptable boundaries.

Anyway enough rambling, keep doing what your doing well. Respect to the mods!

RJM22

I really like this forum. I'm fairly new but it has a nice atmosphere, no bitching or moaning just lots of pats on the back, and please and thankyou's! It's probably the nicest forum I've spent time in. I don't understand what Mod's do but it seems your'e doing it right to me so thankyou.

I am interested in a Boards AC race/meeting mentioned by Woddle. I know alot of people are already members of different clubs so will never compete in a Boards vest. This means that we never get to meet the rest of you.

Could a fun Boards AC/all welcome sports day be on the cards one day?

HardyEustace

I know that in our club we nominate a certain event and make that our "away" event and everyone in the club makes an effort to attend and participate in that event.

Maybe we could do something like that every few months?

It might be a good way to keep people and training logs focused in teh short to medium term and might be useful for newbies who want to pick a 5k/10k to start in.

If someone is an active participant on the forum who contributes a lot and is organising an event, I think it would be a nice idea to give them some support in this way.

RJM22

HardyEustace wrote: »

I know that in our club we nominate a certain event and make that our "away" event and everyone in the club makes an effort to attend and participate in that event.

Maybe we could do something like that every few months?

It might be a good way to keep people and training logs focused in teh short to medium term and might be useful for newbies who want to pick a 5k/10k to start in.

If someone is an active participant on the forum who contributes a lot and is organising an event, I think it would be a nice idea to give them some support in this way.

that's a good idea but not as much fun I can't run a 10k - that's not my event so I'm unlikely to show up. We need something in between for everybody - like....TRIPPLE JUMP!

hunnymonster

Thanks for all the feedback folks. Some explainations of some of the points below and a couple of questions from me.

RJC wrote: »

....
I think you're totally overdoing it.

My view (and it is just that) is that your level of commitment to the sport is obscuring your objectivity on the task of moderation. There are examples of a subjective view based on your expert status (by this I mean your long standing commitment to the sport and your personal achievements) over taking your function when acting as a moderator. This leads to decisions that are 'debatable'.

Could you elaborate on this a little. I'm not sure I understand.

sideswipe wrote: »

In relation to improvments, one suggestion would be to have 'key posts' with the most topical subjects such as marathon/tri training, advice for people starting to run etc.

This has been suggested several times. It sounds easy but the problem is there is no "right" answer to a lot of the newbie questions. E.G. do I need a HRM to start triathlon, answer from me would be no way, answer from Tunney would be that you're wasting your time without one. Both valid opinions but we'd need to know more about the OP's goals to give a definitive answer. I like the each person gets their own individual answer to a question. People can always use the search function to find out about similar questions in the past (although the search function leaves a bit to be desired sometimes but thats a bigger issue than ART)

MrCreosote wrote: »

And well done to Hunnymonster on getting "Age-Grouper of the Week (tm)"!

I've obviously missed something

scottreynolds wrote: »

Also threads should be allowed to migrate to a different topic

That's a boards.ie policy not a ART one. Runners world or tritalk allow you to wander around a topic but we can't here. sorry. I think moving the posts to a new thread is better than locking/deleting stuff just because it's gone off topic, but I'm open to opinions.

HardyEustace

RJM22 wrote: »

that's a good idea but not as much fun I can't run a 10k - that's not my event so I'm unlikely to show up. We need something in between for everybody - like....TRIPPLE JUMP!

egg and spoon?

Oh... three-legged race

How about an old-fashioned boards sports day? LOL

robinph

Something I just thought of re the having multiple forums to keep track of is that the "Meet and race" thread is now also in the events sub-forum. Now it would be too much to expect everyone to link the race titles to the relevant "events" thread, but just having that thread in the main forum would act as a reminder of what events are coming up and to go and chat about them in the sub-forum.

aburke

HardyEustace wrote: »

If someone is an active participant on the forum who contributes a lot and is organising an event, I think it would be a nice idea to give them some support in this way.

Never miss an opportunity to promote your race!
Let me be the first to suggest the Fields of Athenry 10km, 26th December.

Brutes, Mick Rice and myself are all involved in organising that race - none of us prolific posters, but can't we add them together?

osnola ibax

Firstly, a/r/t is extremely important to my training. The support and advice that I have availed of in here has been excellent and is my number one motivational tool (aswell as the unspoken friendly competition). The mods really do an excellent job for my money and one in particular has gone beyond the regualar duties and made himself available to us marathon noobs for critical advice and support . That particular thread is a real success story of a/r/t with the ultimate success to follow, fingers crossed.

Now, just to reiterate a couple of suggestions.

A link from training to events and vice versa is a good idea and has been mentioned in here, I've mentioned it before aswell.

In terms of an FAQ, this should be included in that biki that was being developed. There is huge scope within that to host loads of info on a/r/t and I would like to see it developed further and the link stickied. This should then be the first port of call for noobs or anyone really. But essentially this is the ideal place for faq's

RJC

hunnymonster wrote: »

Thanks for all the feedback folks. Some explainations of some of the points below and a couple of questions from me.


Could you elaborate on this a little. I'm not sure I understand.

I suppose what I'm saying is (and I'm trying myself to be as objective as I can be) that this forum is (or should be) for everybody from the 11 minute miler who is happy at that and only does 1 or 2 runs a week to the committed (or should that be obsessed ) marathoner on a 100 mile a week schedule. When you're in the second of these two camps it can be hard to see the well intentioned but sometimes misguided posts and opinions of novices/new posters/innocents abroad as not being a wind up or as being trivial or an unintentional repeat of a previous post.

Everybody is of different ability (natural or trained) and of different commitment or obsession but everybody should be fostered as part of a common community.

I don't have an answer and I think the right level of moderation is hard to achieve. I just think that you have to make a huge (voluntary) commitment which may be hard to keep up over time.

I'm only giving this feedback because I trust the mods to accept the feedback as constructive. I'd have kept silent if I didn't have confidence in the mods. I don't believe in sniping from the tall grass.

I enjoy this forum more than I should and I would hate to see people put off by 'snips' and 'locks'.

thirtyfoot

RJC wrote: »

I suppose what I'm saying is (and I'm trying myself to be as objective as I can be) that this forum is (or should be) for everybody from the 11 minute miler who is happy at that and only does 1 or 2 runs a week to the committed (or should that be obsessed ) marathoner on a 100 mile a week schedule. When you're in the second of these two camps it can be hard to see the well intentioned but sometimes misguided posts and opinions of novices/new posters/innocents abroad as not being a wind up or as being trivial or an unintentional repeat of a previous post.

.

There is no elitism here and I should know as I am much more talented than you so my opinion carries more weight as a result so what I says goes:P

All levels and areas are covered I'd say. In fact I'd say its more weighted towards the non-elite/competitive side of things and all posters are treated well. If we lose one or two through a mis-understanding, then thats a pity but I'd say the vast majority are looked after.

--amadeus--

Thanks for all the responses I really just wanted to get a feel for the mood - there have been a couple of complaints recently, some subtle, some not, some by PM some in threads so I wanted a sense of the general mood.

On some of teh specifics...

Links to the sub forums from within the sub forums and an expanded list of teh sub forums is probably a development issue. I know that a new version of the vBulletin sysyem is due soon so development bu Connor And Ross on this version is pretty much at a standstill but I can ask the question and see what they say.

On the seeing more than 20 replies, more than page 1 - I have the answer

If you use Firefox (and if you don't, you should) then there is an extenion called AutoPager. It is probably the single best add on you could have - it basically loads linked pages inline so if you are on page 1 of teh forum it will load page 2 directly underneath, page 3 below that and so on. It does teh same for threads - click on page 1 and it loads all teh rest of the pages underneath.

As for the FAQ and teh like that really is what I hoped the Biki would take care of. It's kind of drifted off again but we should be able to put a lot of teh good generic advice in there.

On RLCs points...

I *think* I know where you are coming from. If there is a thread on a topic and a Mod comes in with a "this is what you should do" then I suppose that could be seen as almost closing down the conversation. Rineanna (and Tingle before him) are deeply knowledgable on T&F and elite stuff. HM knows everything there is to know about Tri & adventure / ultra racing. I can see how a newbie might disagree with thier comment but not want to say so because of a combination of thier reputations and the Mod badge.

But to be honest there is not a lot we can do about that. And they are as likely to be intimidated by the likes of Woddle, Enduro, Peckham, DP, MCOS, Terget etc, etc, etc - in any forum there will be the frequent posters and the accepted experts and that's not a bad thing.

Speaking personally I am a contributer / member here first and Mod later. 99.9% of teh time what I do here is the same as what everyone else does here. And so if I see a thread with what I consider bad training advice and it's in an area I have experience (mainly marathons) then I'll stick in my oar and say my piece. And if people disagree (which they shouldn't do , I'm never wrong ) they usually shout out and say so (the recent long run thread is a good example).

I don't see anything wrong with that. What I would see a problem with is if a Mod here used thier "powers" to bully a poster into agreeing or artificially closed down a conversation. As in if I saw advice I thought was wrong and I deleted it, or if I locked a thread where I was losing an argument. And I don't think that happens here.

robinph

--amadeus-- wrote: »

...

On the seeing more than 20 replies, more than page 1 - I have the answer

If you use Firefox (and if you don't, you should) then there is an extenion called AutoPager. It is probably the single best add on you could have - it basically loads linked pages inline so if you are on page 1 of teh forum it will load page 2 directly underneath, page 3 below that and so on. It does teh same for threads - click on page 1 and it loads all teh rest of the pages underneath.

... or you can change the options in Boards itself. Click "User CP" which you'll find along the top of the screen, then "Edit Options" which you'll find down the left hand side of that page, then under "Thread Display Options" you can set the default behaviour of Boards.ie for you to show up to 40 posts per page.

Funkyzeit

We IMO defo need a separate Triathlon forum (esp given the unreal rate it is growing).

We had two polls last year and despite the majority of boardsies voting for separate athl/tri forums it seemed to be ignored in the shake up?

From a running point of view though the forum is excellent and full of boardsies willing to help/advise...

--amadeus--

Funkyzeit wrote: »

We IMO defo need a separate Triathlon forum (esp given the unreal rate it is growing).

We had two polls last year and despite the majority of boardsies voting for separate athl/tri forums it seemed to be ignored in the shake up?

From a running point of view though the forum is excellent and full of boardsies willing to help/advise...

I don't remember those? I'm not saying they didn't happen just that I don't remember them. If you want to set up a new one we can have a look at it, we certainly have more tri threads than we used to. I don't think it's busy enough for a separate forum yet though, tbh

<edit> you're right, there was one in Nov last year that voted fairly heavily in favour of a split. That was before we merged with Athletics though so I would guess that a split out didn't happen because of that.

I genuinely don't see a dedicated Tri forum getting enough traffic to justify itself - you have to go to page 2 to find a tri thread on here for example. I really think that us working on building up Tri traffic to the point where it's a significant minority rather than the occasional thread would make more sense than having a dedicated forum that no-one reads,