would it be possible to regionalise this forum?

Junco Partner

I come on this forum to have a look for musicians in my area ( Tipperary) but after about the 7th page of dublin based ads i give up. i wonder would it be worthwile to divide this forum up by region like the region forum only specifically for bands and musicians it would make it easier to find bands in your own area.. sorry if this should be put into help desk but i just want to put it out there.

You could always use the search function

Truth be told, there's not a lot of ads from Tipp area on this forum. We also talked about prefix's (wanted musicians + available musicians iirc) with the possibility of expanding it to prefix's like guitarist wanted, bassist wanted etc. But the new search function is so pretty good, so we kept it as is. Strangely enough, prefixing by county has never been suggested before (afaik).

Junco Partner

well by county would prob be overkill but if it was south, south-east , midlands etc

roast

For anyone outside Dublin, generally threads in your area are few and far between. In which case, the search option is your best bet, and will bring up results, if theres any to be found...

Cork guitarist

I think a regional forum is a good idea. It might be quiet at the start, but I think more people would begin to use it for looking for musicians etc ...

A_Danger

it definitely should be done a great idea...

Owen

I suggested prefixing by county, and was told to start a feedback thread as no one here was interested. Did that, and no one contributed to it. It's probably still in the feedback forum if someone wants to search for it.

Malice

I'd much prefer to enforce the post template we put together a couple of years ago so that all relevant information is contained in the first post of the thread. That, coupled with the improved search facility should be enough to at least get started. Unfortunately it would mean quite a lot more work for the moderators so is pretty unlikely to meet with approval.

Here is a search for "Tipperary" to get you started f0ggy92.

DOTHEDOG

would it be possible to regionalise this forum

maybe i will start a form with regionalise catagories lemme know if ya think it would work

Owen

The problem with a post template, is no one's ever going to bother using it. No one's using it now. Prefixes are so much simpler and require no mod intervention, I really can't understand why it isn't implemented here.

Anyway, here's the thread in Feedback I created if anyone wants to add to it :
http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2056161149

threebeards

Instead of regionalising the forum, what about splitting it into 2 - Dublin & Outside Dublin?

Owen

Splitting the forum will require the Mods to move threads users will inevitably put into the wrong place. Using drop down prefixes doesn't require any intervention at all and makes the place really simple to use.

For an example - check out the DIY Motors forum.

Malice

PaintDoctor wrote: »

The problem with a post template, is no one's ever going to bother using it. No one's using it now.

Some people do and the whole point of it is not for people to see it as bother but to ensure that the overall quality of thread increases so that we don't get
"Guitarist wanted, city centre, call Jimbo on 087-12345678" type posts any more. Sadly a lot of people seemingly don't want to take the time to fill in 8 lines of information.

PaintDoctor wrote:

Prefixes are so much simpler and require no mod intervention, I really can't understand why it isn't implemented here.

Because there was never really an overall consensus reached. That Feedback thread got one response and there have been at least two others that I can think of. One was where we discussed using "Bassist Wanted", "Guitarist Available" as the the prefixes and this is where the difficulty arises because you can't have two sets of prefixes.

threebeards wrote:

Instead of regionalising the forum, what about splitting it into 2 - Dublin & Outside Dublin?

Definitely not for the reason PaintDoctor outlined.

Owen

Malice wrote: »

Because there was never really an overall consensus reached. That Feedback thread got one response and there have been at least two others that I can think of. One was where we discussed using "Bassist Wanted", "Guitarist Available" as the the prefixes and this is where the difficulty arises because you can't have two sets of prefixes.

Surely logically you're never going to just search for Bassists, or Trumpet players? You wouldn't want to have a player in Donegal if you live in Wexford.

If you were to search for musicians for a band, a geographic location would be your first port of call, type of musician second. And by also selecting your location from a prefix, you're already whittling down the matches of threads from 32 counties to one, making it a much smaller list of potential musicans to trawl through, making finding a certain instrument much easier too?

Malice

PaintDoctor wrote: »

Surely logically you're never going to just search for Bassists, or Trumpet players? You wouldn't want to have a player in Donegal if you live in Wexford.

Well yeah, obviously it ties into the thread giving the location of the bassist that's available or the band that's looking for a guitarist which is of course dependent on the person writing the post.

PaintDoctor wrote:

If you were to search for musicians for a band, a geographic location would be your first port of call, type of musician second. And by also selecting your location from a prefix, you're already whittling down the matches of threads from 32 counties to one, making it a much smaller list of potential musicans to trawl through, making finding a certain instrument much easier too?

That's a good point.

Rigsby

Malice wrote: »

Because there was never really an overall consensus reached.

If there was a consensus reached would the powers that be, act on it ??

This subject comes up from time to time. It does not bother me personally as I'm in Dublin, though PaintDoctor and I had a good discussion on it before. It was I who suggested he put it in the feedback forum, where to be honost, it did not get much attention.


If the answer to the above question is "YES", then perhaps a poll might be the answer. If it is "NO" to the above question, then we are all wasting our time on the subject.

Owen

We have a system which relies on users knowing the existance of a post template, and then following that template when creating threads - which leaves the possibility of boardsies not following the guidelines, and ads being created which aren't clear or easy to locate. And that's currently happening.

With a mandatory county (32 + an 'other' option to cover all bases) based drop down prefix system, users have to select one, which means the entire thing is seamless.

Less work for the Mods, less work for the users. Win win.

Rigsby

PaintDoctor wrote: »

We have a system which relies on users knowing the existance of a post template, and then following that template when creating threads - which leaves the possibility of boardsies not following the guidelines, and ads being created which aren't clear or easy to locate. And that's currently happening.

With a mandatory county (32 + an 'other' option to cover all bases) based drop down prefix system, users have to select one, which means the entire thing is seamless.

Less work for the Mods, less work for the users. Win win.

What you say seems to make sense. I am not a computer expert so I dont know how much work would be involved in implimenting your suggestion.

At one time I suggested leaving a gap in each forum list, between the stickies and the first thread. It seemed like a good idea as it would make the stickies "stick" out more, in which case they might get more readers. I was told it would involve too much work. From this, I dont hold out much hope that you'll get what you would like.

Owen

It's not difficult at all to implement, it's already been done in several forums - the Motors DIY one being a good example, that forum was up and running about 8 months before the prefixes were introduced. For the admins, they just need to do it in the back end of vBulletin.

I run a forum on a different but similar platform, and it's pretty easy to do.

Rigsby

PaintDoctor wrote: »

and it's pretty easy to do.

* Makes a note to watch this space.*

TheElement

My two cents....I've put up posts here to try to find musicians in Cork and have gotten barely any reply which Im confident is down to the fact that it isnt regional. Not everybody is an internet wizard...the setup now relies on someone being so, to go into the search part of this section. I have ads up on another site which is regional, and I have gotten 10 times the amount of replies. I'd say that the limited amount of posts in this section outside of Dublin would be in a large part due to the fact that it isnt regional. If you make it a more useful site --the people will come!

Rigsby

TheElement wrote: »

My two cents....I've put up posts here to try to find musicians in Cork and have gotten barely any reply which Im confident is down to the fact that it isnt regional. Not everybody is an internet wizard...the setup now relies on someone being so, to go into the search part of this section. I have ads up on another site which is regional, and I have gotten 10 times the amount of replies. I'd say that the limited amount of posts in this section outside of Dublin would be in a large part due to the fact that it isnt regional. If you make it a more useful site --the people will come!

I can see both sides of the coin in this debate. To be fair, people themselves have to take some responsibility. If people put more information in the thread title e.g. "Bassist wanted Cork", it would make things a lot easier for everyone. You dont have to be a computer wizard to use the search function. I have a basic knowledge of using the Internet and I have no problem with the search function.


Perhaps the post template could be made to stand out more. At present it is under the sticky title "How to find yourself a band mate" which a lot of people dismiss with the thought... "I know how to do that, all I have to do is to post a thread." A good idea would be to rename the sticky "Looking for band mates ? /For optimum results read this". It might attract more attention this way.

Owen

People don't read charters on boards, they're not going to read the template rules either. This is one of those forum's too which seems to have a lot of people who only register on boards to post here - so they won't be familiar with how the place works. As long as the format of the thread title is optional, it will always be a problem.

Rigsby

PaintDoctor wrote: »

People don't read charters on boards, they're not going to read the template rules either. This is one of those forum's too which seems to have a lot of people who only register on boards to post here

I agree, and this is what I meant when I said that the people themselves have to take more responsibility. If they cant be bothered to read up on how to get the best use out of the forum, then they dont have much of a case to be moaning about lack of results, or problems in finding certain threads. There is a certain element of "dont shoot the messenger" here.

TheElement

PaintDoctor wrote: »

People don't read charters on boards, they're not going to read the template rules either. This is one of those forum's too which seems to have a lot of people who only register on boards to post here - so they won't be familiar with how the place works. As long as the format of the thread title is optional, it will always be a problem.

very true....and even with a proper title on a post which includes the city, as soon as the post gets a little bit old then it becomes lost in a sea of Dublin ads....and the idea here is to find people--but thats hard when they cant be bothered to shuffle through loads of irrelevant stuff. A simple regionalisation would mean people would be more willing to pop in and have a look. I dont see why it should be so difficult to simply have sub sections inside the "bands&musicians" section. If the mods wanted to keep it simple, it could be just something like 5 sections..one for dublin and one for each province. That alone would make a huge difference.

Malice

Well this thread seems to have grown legs since I checked in on it earlier.

Rigsby wrote:

If there was a consensus reached would the powers that be, act on it ??

Absolutely, when the prefixes were discussed before we were told that they are pretty simple to set up.

Owen

Out of the 15 threads on the first page of this forum looking for musicians, 8 don't have locations, and the other's are pretty much all Dublin. Don't think the post template is working if more than half of the threads aren't following it.

Could we at least try mandatory forum prefixes for a month and then vote on whether to keep them or not? IMHO from the Motors DIY forum, having optional prefixes isn't the best idea, as we have people there who don't always select them either.

Malice

PaintDoctor wrote: »

Could we at least try mandatory forum prefixes for a month and then vote on whether to keep them or not? IMHO from the Motors DIY forum, having optional prefixes isn't the best idea, as we have people there who don't always select them either.

I've contacted the other Bands & Musicians moderators so we'll have a super-secret chat about it and see. I've no objection myself to introducing mandatory prefixes.