Merging forums?

CantGetNoSleep

Any opinions on merging forums in order to increase posting?

One forum I follow is Home Entertainment - here there are seven sub-forums all with very similar themes. These are all very quiet, some have no posts since August, and none of them have new threads each day. Surely it is better to merge all back to one Home Entertainment forum?

The same would apply to some of the regional forums - for a small county there are sometimes more than one forum.

gandalf

Yep they really messed up boards royally with the "reorganisation". I would definitely say flattening the structure of the quieter forums would be of benefit.

LoLth

forum merging is something that happens when we see two forums of a similar nature getting closer in content. There is no specific policy on when a forum merge takes place so any suggestions or heads up are appreciated.

dudara

I'd recommend contacting the CMods and suggesting it. Merging forums can make a lot of sense in the right circumstances

CantGetNoSleep

I'm not going to bother, but thanks for your reply

Insect Overlord

CantGetNoSleep wrote: »

I'm not going to bother, but thanks for your reply

The people you want to know about this idea might not see your thread here. No harm at all in sending a few suggestions to the CMods. It's happened fairly recently that forums were merged in a similar way.

Faith

We recently merged several of the Food forums. There was some resistence, but I think it has overall improved the forum and the number of posts. It's a great idea for forums like you describe, OP.

Steve

I cmod a lot of forums, some of them I've probably never opened. We rely on feedback like this to flag issues so, we greatly appreciate any feedback on issues like this.

D0NNELLY

Think this has been ongoing for the last while.. i saw a few posts in quiet forums from the cmods informing the forum that they'd be merged.

Steve

D0NNELLY wrote: »

Think this has been ongoing for the last while.. i saw a few posts in quiet forums from the cmods informing the forum that they'd be merged.

It's a constant thing, boards expands new forums to suit demand and retires / merges old ones as required.

Beasty

Steve wrote: »

I cmod a lot of forums, some of them I've probably never opened. We rely on feedback like this to flag issues so, we greatly appreciate any feedback on issues like this.

It's OK Steve. We already have a plan. We have a lot of forums that are "football" related and are planning to merge Aussie Rules, Rugby League, Rugby, American Football and Soccer. We think we'll get some pushback on the Boards Football Team so are leaving that one alone for now....



:P

Steve

Beasty wrote: »

It's OK Steve. We already have a plan. We have a lot of forums that are "football" related and are planning to merge Aussie Rules, Rugby League, Rugby, American Football and Soccer. We think we'll get some pushback on the Boards Football Team so are leaving that one alone for now....



:P

What I'm really looking forward to is merging Cycling with Airsoft and then dropping it in as a sub forum under motors.. :pac:

OldMrBrennan83

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sioda

Steve wrote: »

What I'm really looking forward to is merging Cycling with Airsoft and then dropping it in as a sub forum under motors.. :pac:

This new shooting cycling sport sounds great tell us more.
😊😊😊

Have to agree that navigating deep menus especially on m boards is a pain

Lovely Bloke

Patww79 wrote: »

This post has been deleted.

Ain't that the truth

Faith

Patww79 wrote: »

This post has been deleted.

Lovely Bloke wrote: »

Ain't that the truth

We have really appreciated your thoughtful and constructive feedba... Oh wait, neither of you have said a word about your issues to the mod team. You're just whinging in an unrelated forum instead. Well done, guys, that's how you get changes made :rolleyes:.

OldMrBrennan83

This post has been deleted.

The Hill Billy

In fairness, the Food & Drink mods have been very receptive to feedback from regular posters & have actively sought & listened to it before making any changes - or not making them as the case may be.

D0NNELLY

Faith wrote: »

We have really appreciated your thoughtful and constructive feedba... Oh wait, neither of you have said a word about your issues to the mod team. You're just whinging in an unrelated forum instead. Well done, guys, that's how you get changes made :rolleyes:.

The lads can have an opinion without necessarily giving an alternative. The Feedback Forum isn't an unrelated forum.

Any company is happy to receive feedback, good, bad, constructive etc. Rolling your eyes at feedback you don't want isn't the way to go about encouraging others to spend their time typing.

dudara

The Food & Drink mods did solicit feedback on the changes to the forum, and there is still a sticky running on the changes. Using that already available path for feedback would be much better than here.

LoLth

Patww79 wrote: »

This post has been deleted.

While you are correct that in some instances there are changes that cannot be stopped (and that is as it must be) there are instances where decisions have been changed based on user/mod-team feedback.

You may not be aware of them but that does not mean they don't exist.

The tricky part is determining when to ask and when to inform.

CantGetNoSleep

Patww79 wrote: »

This post has been deleted.

Those tags are pointless - a thread called 'Baking tin greasing / paper' tagged as 'Baking' - no sh1t sherlock?

The Hill Billy

You're missing the point of the tags.

If someone wishes to only view baking-related threads - they select the tag from the drop down at the top. Then only the baking threads are shown. Far easier than using the search function, but that's for another Feedback thread.

Now - back to forum merges...

Lovely Bloke

I'm almost sure I've given feedback on the appearance of those tags elsewhere in the past, so I'm sorry if it wasn't particular to F&D.

Nice unwarranted attack on me, a user, giving Feedback in the Feedback forum.

The Wolverine

Faith wrote: »

We have really appreciated your thoughtful and constructive feedba... Oh wait, neither of you have said a word about your issues to the mod team. You're just whinging in an unrelated forum instead. Well done, guys, that's how you get changes made :rolleyes:.

As a mod could you not have made your point without that passive aggressive post? Yet ye wonder why there's a them versus us mentality from so many users

Taltos

Admin note
OK guys back on track to the OPs actual question please in regards to consolidation/merging of forums. Anymore off topic diversions will just get snipped. Let's try to keep the discussion upbeat and helpful instead of going down any particular rabbit hole.

Lovely Bloke

Is the discussion of tags to be considered an off topic diversion? I mean it's pretty relevant if it's the de facto status of forums post merge, and it looks incredibly -ugly-.

CantGetNoSleep

A lot of these forums are so quiet that tags are really unnecessary even if you merged seven into one.

From my perspective as the OP - I posted a thread on one of these forums, realised it had only been read seven times in 24 hours, so tried to post here to give a suggestion. As a user, I consider this to be already a bit of effort when I just wanted an answer to a question I posted in a thread. I am not going to bother finding who the CMod is and contacting them in the hope that maybe they agree with me. If there is a feedback forum - it should be read by mods or whoever is responsible for the organisation of the site. In the end I posted the same question on reddit.

Boards.ie: Niamh

Lovely Bloke wrote: »

Is the discussion of tags to be considered an off topic diversion? I mean it's pretty relevant if it's the de facto status of forums post merge, and it looks incredibly -ugly-.

It's relevant to some merges but not all - it's not mandatory to add tags after a forum merge and something that the community who use the forums can decide among themselves through discussion with the forum mods. So while it's related, it's not really relevant to this particular conversation about merging quieter forums into busier, related ones.

LoLth

In general , any forum merges are as a result of a conversation between the category mods and the administrators. We (admins) dont just decide to merge a set of forums without the input of those that know the forum best (Mods / Cmods / Users) as it is not a straightforward task. As such, forum merging is a topic that has a place in the Feedback forum and is something we respond to. (I replied to state that this is something that we do and dudara recommended that you give the cmod a heads up which is another avenue of approach as the cmod would then look into the suggestion and may request the merge themselves based on the evidence they see from a category level view)

In your particular case, merging a forum to increase the number of responses to your post would not have been an answer as it is not that dynamic a process. You would still have had a lengthy delay between the time you asked and the time newly merged forum users got to see it. Feedback is read by the Admins and the Community Reps (Niamh and Mark) who are responsible for the site organisation. Requesting that a mod or cmod move your post to a busier, but still related, forum may also have been an option for you and would have yielded faster results than forum merger.

As I said before, we appreciate any suggestions on what forums can be merged. We might not agree or, after discussion, a merge may not be considered necessary but the suggestion itself will never be ignored.

As for tags: Tags are a decent way to allow forum merger and still enable separation of topics by users. By filtering through tags a user can reduce the number of topics listed. handy for a food forum where the range of sub-topics can be quite varied (baking vs cooking vs eating vs drink etc). Appearance however...yeah, maybe something more in keeping with the colour scheme. Suggestions on alternatives to current tag appearance or handling are also welcome but perhaps better suited to a different feedback thread.

biko

Ask the local mods to initiate a thread in the forums asking the users for feedback.
The users are the main reason the forums exist and they should have insight before anything happens.

That some forums may have low attendance doesn't always have to be a bad thing.

o1s1n

gandalf wrote: »

Yep they really messed up boards royally with the "reorganisation". I would definitely say flattening the structure of the quieter forums would be of benefit.

Indeed, the reorganisation really killed a lot of the smaller forums as the chances of randomly browsing into them like under the older structure is gone now.

I actually used that way of browsing my favourite forums for years, didn't even bother with 'my forums' as it was really easy to find them.

Since the reorganisation it just seems like a ghosttown

I'd agree that the only way back from that is to start merging a lot together. To be honest I think before that, something would need to be done about the range of forums under 'topics' - it's basically the meat of the site combined under one heading, which imo is far too much in one place.

If it were up to me, I'd remove the 'adverts.ie' section from the headings as it's pretty redundant given all those headings are also on the adverts.ie website - just put a permalink to adverts.ie somewhere in general.

With the added extra space at the top, I'd split 'topics' out into at least two headings, (something like Rec and Soc again) to spread everything out so it's not all under one heading.

Then I'd start thinking about merging smaller forums together.

LuckyLloyd

dudara wrote: »

I'd recommend contacting the CMods and suggesting it. Merging forums can make a lot of sense in the right circumstances

I'm a pretty experienced user, and I wouldn't know who the CMods for various categories are. Nor would I care.

Zaph

LuckyLloyd wrote: »

I'm a pretty experienced user, and I wouldn't know who the CMods for various categories are. Nor would I care.

On desktop versions the CMods are listed at the bottom of each forum underneath the forum mods. Unfortunately on Touch they're all lumped in together so it is harder to know which are mods and which are CMods.

Canis Lupus

They need to merge After Hours and Personal Issues.

Sad Professor

I remember when Home Entertainment was just one forum. Its division into 6 or 7 wasn't justified IMO.

The "build it and they will come" philosophy to forum creation has never really worked on Boards in my experience.

loyatemu

the Mustard forum is gone?

how could you!

Zaph

loyatemu wrote: »

the Mustard forum is gone?

how could you!

No it isn't

Beasty

loyatemu wrote: »

the Mustard forum is gone?

how could you!

Gone here?

Where was it before?:pac:

Nody

Beasty wrote: »

Gone here?

Where was it before?:pac:

In my cupboard next to the red sauce...

loyatemu

Zaph wrote: »

No it isn't

thank god - I was foolishly looking for it under Food & Drink.

Zaph

loyatemu wrote: »

thank god - I was foolishly looking for it under Food & Drink.

Mustard is neither food nor drink, it is a state of mind.

kerry4sam

Zaph wrote: »

Mustard is neither food nor drink, it is a state of mind.

No joke but this post sent me off reading in the Mustard forum.

Thanks,