Numerous Boards

Winters

I think, and I may not be alone in this, that there are starting to be too many boards being created. Im not talking about boards that will be constantly used but boards that are not required. Two new ones I see are "xbox and playstation". Im quite sure that those two topics are delt with under the generic "games" forum quite well. Maybe a seperate forum for games and consoles would have been a better choice?

Also, the "David Hasselhoff" forum, wtf like? I will never forgive him for his performance on Whos Line Is It Anyway.

Now, maybe some of these forums are part of the whole plan that you have for the expansion, im well for that. But its getting to a point where I dont know where to post something. I used to have that problem a year or two ago but now it seems even worse.

[Also, anyone remember the whole Boards redesign thing ... what the hell happened to that?]

billy the squid

Is having seperate forums for xbox and playstation any different to having two seperate forums for windows and Linux?

Nukem

Have to say i was for the Console forum seems valid and there is a lot of questions and news.etc......... but an Xbox and PS ?
David Hasslehoff forum *chuckle* *chuckle*

Winters

Yes.

Windows and Unix differ totally to each other by questions asked, users expierance etc. Most visitors to the Unix forum would be more advanced users and would discuss more complicated items and not have to deal with basic questions such as "Why does my screen go blank?" or "How do i get rid of XXX virus?" and the many "Spyware" questions that the Windows forum gets. The Windows forum usually deals with basic Windows requests and answers aswell as software problems associated with windows.

Both forums are regularly active during the week and so do require seperate forums insted of being merged under one "OS" forum.

However, can you really see the xbox or playstation forums getting as much use during the week? Most discussion would be about games, which are suited to the games forum.

billy the squid

There have been sily forums created, but the fact of the matter is they are only silly in the opinion of some users. There are those out there that actualy want them.

As soon as they loose interest in them they can be deleted after a certain period of time.

I dont see a problem with there being separate forums for different types of consoles. If your going to merge these forums then you might want to consider merging the "operating systems" forums as well.

billy the squid

However, can you really see the xbox or playstation forums getting as much use during the week? Most discussion would be about games, which are suited to the games forum.

the forum was created today and alas i do not have the gift of prophesy, therefore i cannot answer this for you.

joe.

I think it is just fabulous

Winters

I think I just explaind above how silly an idea it would be to merge the three OS forums into 1.

Why should admins have to create a new forum for a fortnight to satisfy some noobs need? Or someone's crazy idea thats super kwel and mad. Forums didnt use to be given out so easily back in the day.

Mimikyu

This post has been deleted.

Nietzschean

as winters said, merging the os forms would be silly, which thankfully all our glorious admins i'm quite confident are aware of.

As for the xbox/ps forms tbh i don't see the need, with the ammount of posts/stickies they generated in the games forum it still couldn't be considered busy really or hetic...

BuffyBot

David Hasslehoff..the man who was the beginning of the end of boards.ie

PiE

Winters wrote:

I think, and I may not be alone in this, that there are starting to be too many boards being created.

I've been thinking the same for a while now. There's far too much 'watering-down' of the main forums and, in my opinion, it's killing off discussion. The 'Music' forums are a prime example. At the moment it's a discussion wasteland, whereas before... sure you'd have silly debates about "which is better Rap or Rock!!" etc, but it was a helluva lot more interesting than just having everyone agreeing with everyone.

Rew

I looked for a Games->Handheld Forum before christmas and was told there was no need. Yet there is a **** load of DS/PSP traffic (wiht the offical launch of both still to come). The importing issues surrounding both has been discussed to death yet never stickified... Now we have an X-Box and PS thread with no charter's, no stickys and a couple of deadend threads...

Raphael

There will indeed be a **** load of traffic. For a few months. Then nowt. Before now, boards weren't created for things that wouldn't last. I wonder why it is the powers that be have changed their policy

Rabies

I'm with winters on this.

Really wasn't expecting a separate forum for xbox and playstation (no GC ). Firstly I think it could all be discussed under games or maybe make a sub forum for consoles and handhelds.

Hasselhoff, Frisbee and Chocolate forums :eek: come on....

On the other hand, Classic cars, Anime/Manga and open source are a good idea.

Amz

I don't see what the problem is with Ultimate Frisbee having a forum?

It's a growing sport and is a fantastic way to get/stay fit.

Sir Digby Chicken Caesar

how about a SLAM forum? I used to love that game

Makaveli

The amount of boards popping up is becoming a bit silly imo.
I think it only dilutes other boards. What is the point of a sports board now considering most sports have their own board now despite some of them being almost derelict.
Maybe it's time to scrap the boards that get minimal use.

Sir Digby Chicken Caesar

dudes.. boards is growing all the time


let's think ahead, ya?

Rabies

Sport! I need to check the drop down list to see if it was under the category of sport and not hosted. I presumed the forum was asked for as a piss take. It can't really be classed as a sport, can it? If it is then can I have a forum for a sport called Catch or Fetch.

Amz

Makaveli wrote:

Maybe it's time to scrap the boards that get minimal use.

What? Like Greyhound racing?

I don't know why people don't object to new forum proposals in the "Forums" forum.

Makaveli

Like any boards that have pretty much died.
The Horror board comes to mind. Greyhound racing is new enough is it?

Rew

Amz wrote:

What? Like Greyhound racing?

I don't know why people don't object to new forum proposals in the "Forums" forum.

Didn't see any threads in Fourms about creating XBox or PS fourms...

Amz

It only has 8 posts since last August.

Amz

Rabies wrote:

Sport! I need to check the drop down list to see if it was under the category of sport and not hosted. I presumed the forum was asked for as a piss take. It can't really be classed as a sport, can it? If it is then can I have a forum for a sport called Catch or Fetch.

I think you need to educate yourself on modern sports before you go presuming things and making smart comments.

Karl Hungus

Makaveli wrote:

Like any boards that have pretty much died.
The Horror board comes to mind. Greyhound racing is new enough is it?

The Horror board still plays host to some absolutely excellent discussion. Just because it's not going a mile a minute, doesn't mean it's died.

Jim

Amz wrote:

What? Like Greyhound racing?

I don't know why people don't object to new forum proposals in the "Forums" forum.

I do.
But noone listens to me.

Makaveli

Karl Hungus wrote:

The Horror board still plays host to some absolutely excellent discussion. Just because it's not going a mile a minute, doesn't mean it's died.

When? Every 6 months or so? The place used to go quite well but it gets minimal traffic, probably down to it's location on the drop down menus.

PHB

I'd be a big fan of the system they use on other boards, which is that all of games would be under one of two main forums, and then they would have tags, like PC, that you can turn on and off

ecksor

Perhaps a decent system of cross-posting would improve things.

However, in the case of something like the horror forum, what is it diluting?

mad m

Winters wrote:

The "David Hasselhoff" forum,]

Holy cow there is a Hasselhoff forum,im off top find.Thanks for pointing it out.

Makaveli

No it isn't diluting anything. That was just an example of a board that is dying off.
The likes of Xbox and Playstation boards are diltuing the Games board though, as are all the music genres being given their own forum, and with individual sports being given their own forums.

Karl Hungus

Makaveli wrote:

When? Every 6 months or so? The place used to go quite well but it gets minimal traffic, probably down to it's location on the drop down menus.

Here's a good example of some of the great discussion that can go on there. Granted, it's far from the busiest of boards, but I think that's one of its strong points.

But of course, with that said... If a board on a serious subject gets in the way of these new fangled oh so zany boards where newbies get to up their post counts without saying anything of any intelligable worth whatsoever, then who am I to stand in the way of progress? Perhaps we should remove the "Now ye're talkin'" moto with "What crazy board will we make next!?"

'scuse me while I go over and pine about the good old days when people would make fun of newbies who suggested silly boards of the like, because we've gone way past the point of 'Big Shiny Toaster With Built In Radio Appreciation Community' with so many novelty boards.

Now don't get me wrong here, I certainly had a chuckle when the Hasselhoff bpards was suggested, but is tearing down some of the less popular boards in favour of more 'Novelty Act' boards really progressing at all? Perhaps I'm being a little radical now, but wouldn't encouraging more indepth discussion be more interesting in the long run compared to the inane gibberish of the hasselhoff boards?

Shrimp

I've got david hass. star from the walk of fame on my phone as my background.

Karl Hungus

Shrimp wrote:

I've got david hass. star from the walk of fame on my phone as my background.

Wow... You do know how to drop these nuggets of wisdom on us. You're like the buddah of boards.

BuffyBot

You're like the buddah of boards.

But a really crap one at that..

Tusky

There isnt enough traffic on the games forum to warrant a split.. theres only a few new threads per day. Its rediculous, its just gonna take longer to browse the different forums now.

waaaaay to many forums being created.

Makaveli

Karl Hungus wrote:

Here's a good example of some of the great discussion that can go on there. Granted, it's far from the busiest of boards, but I think that's one of its strong points.

But of course, with that said... If a board on a serious subject gets in the way of these new fangled oh so zany boards where newbies get to up their post counts without saying anything of any intelligable worth whatsoever, then who am I to stand in the way of progress? Perhaps we should remove the "Now ye're talkin'" moto with "What crazy board will we make next!?"

'scuse me while I go over and pine about the good old days when people would make fun of newbies who suggested silly boards of the like, because we've gone way past the point of 'Big Shiny Toaster With Built In Radio Appreciation Community' with so many novelty boards.

Now don't get me wrong here, I certainly had a chuckle when the Hasselhoff bpards was suggested, but is tearing down some of the less popular boards in favour of more 'Novelty Act' boards really progressing at all? Perhaps I'm being a little radical now, but wouldn't encouraging more indepth discussion be more interesting in the long run compared to the inane gibberish of the hasselhoff boards?

I really should have explained myself a whole lot better. I'm not suggesting get rid of the old when we usher in the new. Overall, I think there are far too many new boards popping up every week, but if there's traffic for them who am I to say otherwise. I'm not a fan of the gimmick boards being created. I think they are useless. I don't see what they offer to boards overall, other than post count ++.

Onto the old boards out bit, what I was getting at is, maybe they old ones seeing no use should be remerged with original boards that they may have split from. Say Golf or Snooker/Pool for example could be remerged with Sport. What is the point of having idle forums in the off chance someone might post there twice a year? I feel people have a stigma that they cant post something somwhere unless there is a specific board dedicated to it. There was no need to split Playstation and Xbox from Games, despite the numerous times people have requested a Consoles forum.

You can almost guarantee when GTA San Andreas comes out on the PC, people will call for a GTA forum. It happens every time. The Games board may for a while have five or six threads on the game but eventually they dissappear. The Games forum isnt hurt by the threads, just like it's not hurt by Xbox and PS threads.

Tusky

Makaveli wrote:

I really should have explained myself a whole lot better. I'm not suggesting get rid of the old when we usher in the new. Overall, I think there are far too many new boards popping up every week, but if there's traffic for them who am I to say otherwise. I'm not a fan of the gimmick boards being created. I think they are useless. I don't see what they offer to boards overall, other than post count ++.

Onto the old boards out bit, what I was getting at is, maybe they old ones seeing no use should be remerged with original boards that they may have split from. Say Golf or Snooker/Pool for example could be remerged with Sport. What is the point of having idle forums in the off chance someone might post there twice a year? I feel people have a stigma that they cant post something somwhere unless there is a specific board dedicated to it. There was no need to split Playstation and Xbox from Games, despite the numerous times people have requested a Consoles forum.

You can almost guarantee when GTA San Andreas comes out on the PC, people will call for a GTA forum. It happens every time. The Games board may for a while have five or six threads on the game but eventually they dissappear. The Games forum isnt hurt by the threads, just like it's not hurt by Xbox and PS threads.

Good post, I agree. I dont say we get rid fo boards that have low traffic but the dilution thats happening at the moment is silly and makes the boards feel messier in general.

The horror forum should stay though!!!

Karl Hungus

Indeed.

I would agree with you that some of the spin-off boards are rather unessicary, but perhaps the point I'm trying to make (and failing, as it seems), is that smaller boards still have their place in the big picture. So what if people don't post like madmen on the Horror board? It's got it's regulars, and when something gets a discussion going, there is actual discussion, opinions and posts with depth. I see far to many boards where people just post one-line responses that add nothing to the thread in question (Step forward Shrimp), and a lot of users just don't take the time to reply with an interesting, well thought-out post. These are mainly younger types who posts in "Txt spk" and turn threads into chatrooms, not even realising that you're meant to discuss what the topic of the thread is. Again, step forward Shrimp.

All these new novelty boards are encouraging more of this:

I've got david hass. star from the walk of fame on my phone as my background.

Posts that have nothing to do with anything, ever mind what the thread in particular is about!

Makaveli

The Horror forum should indeed stay. It was just an example of a forum that is getting forgotten about because of the sheer amount of forums on boards.ie now.

Karl Hungus

Makaveli wrote:

The Horror forum should indeed stay. It was just an example of a forum that is getting forgotten about because of the sheer amount of forums on boards.ie now.

Ah, in that case, yes... I concur in full.

Sherifu

David Hasselhoff forum should be sub-forum of Humour.
It is a piss-take? right?

PiE

The novelty forums are retarded, but at least they fade away after a few weeks when something else that's just oh-so-hilarious pops up.

However... Frisbee? Classic Cars? My god.

koneko

I don't like the idea of consoles with their own boards, I like posting in a general Games forum. This new idea scares me and makes me a little bit sleepy.

Lots of games are cross-platform anyway. Now I don't know where to post.

Boro

Like Koneko said - the splitting up of the Games Forum is a bad idea. It seems that every time a new (Best Thing TM) game comes out, people call for a forum to be made for it. As someone else said earlier, the posts die down after a while and the need for a seperate forum goes away.

Having a Xbox/Playstation/etc forum as well as games means more posts - but mostly of the same stuff. Different people will post the same information in multiple places - many games are multi-format these, and we will have people posting the xbox version, the playstation version, the gamecube version (well if there was a gamecube forum) and the PC version - the result? 4 threads instead of one. Then of course, you will have the threads saying this game rocks/sucks, please help me threads, arrggghh stuck, threads. A load of pointless information that will be repeated (up to) 4 times. Is that really what boards wants? Traffic to quadruple over an insignificant item?

With the current trend in console gaming (ie the decreasing amount of console unique titles) about the only difference between the consoles is the hardware contained within them, and hacks/exploits on said hardware. Couldnt this be easily kept in one single forum such as 'Console Harware Discussion' or something similar?

As to everything else? Well i liked reading all these discussions in the games thread. It is food for thought, exposure to new concepts/ideas. What is the point of compartmentalising everything? The best way to spread ideas and beliefs is to share them, and that means a central thread. Keep the games threads in 'Games'.

ecksor

A few general points.

On the particular instance of the Horror forum (and there are others like it), if it's not interfering or conflicting with anything else then being low traffic isn't a problem in my opinion. If what "I can't believe it's not AngelWhore" is correct it's certainly better than some of the very busy monstrosities we have with a low signal to noise ratio from my point of view.

The idea of there being a stigma attached to posting on forums that aren't specialised enough is an odd one (I don't think it's a stigma exactly, but certainly some sort of reluctance), but the fact remains that people are often unwilling to post about certain topics on pre-existing suitable fora. I don't know why but that's the way it is. I'd love to beat sense into all of our users (oh $DEITY how I'd love to do that, but I shouldn't stray off-topic here) but it isn't practical to do that. We work with the users we have.

What forum ideas are runners and what aren't runners isn't as easy to predict as people let on. Often people come along and criticise a forum idea on the basis that it's a fad or it's a stupid topic or whatever. I couldn't care less about such criticisms and I don't think the other admins put much stock in them either. What I do put stock in is the possibility that another forum will suffer as a result of it, whether or not all the supporters are acting like muppets or suspiciously and whether or not the forum is likely to represent more hassle (or hassel ) than it's worth.

Lastly, if you spot a forum that you think is busy and is ready to be consumed by another busier and/or more general forum, then feel free to post on the Forums forum suggesting such a thing.

steveland?

I don't really get the objections to all these new forums being created. If it annoys you don't post there. For instance, I can never see myself EVER posting in the David Hasslehoff board....

Yeh, I don't get the XBox Playstation thing and there was no need for it but does it really make all that big a difference to you? Maybe if you have a question you'll find someone more speciallized to answer you.

The quieter boards have much less spam which seems like the only reason they look quiet. There's some forums that have very little spam that can be very helpful such as Photoshoppage which doesn't (in my limited experience) get huge traffic.

Some of the forums that have been created seem like great ideas, such as the Open Source forum, and I'd say they're gonna generate a nice amount of traffic as they seem like they could be put to work well.

ecksor wrote:

"I can't believe it's not AngelWhore"

Heh heh, genius

DeVore

Use the Subscribe To This Forum option, create your own flavoured Boards.ie and forget the rest ever existed. Why would they bother you?

You know, I keep forgetting we have a Motors forum and a Parenting forum. You know why? I havent subbed to them, so I dont see posts to them in my Subbed list on the front page. They dont show up on my subbed list of Forums (which neatly arranges all the subbed forums I'm interested in in one drop down so I dont have to go hunting for them). They might as well not exist for me.

Xbox and PS were created because both are going online in a big way and more and more games are specific (Halo2 on Nintendo? Over Bill Gates dead body, you cant even play it on PC yet). And if something gets discussed in two places, that isnt a travesty of nature you know...

Sports has ALWAYS been planned to be phased out, in fact you'll see that most of the mods who started modding the "generic" forums are now "category mods" with domain over the whole area. The Frisbee forum had support, I dont see why they shouldnt get one either... it may not be your thing but... *shrug*.

Hasselhoff etc ISNT a change of policy for us. Its just that some/most of you havent been here long enough to know that sometimes the admins go a bit ... funny and do things that make us laugh. I think the whole running joke of Monsieur Hasselhoff is a scream and VERY Boards.ie. Ninjas anyone? Kitten Cake? Freemasons? Knights? etc etc etc. Unclench already

Why does the board have to interest you to be allowed to be created? If I'd taken that p.o.v. from the start the only forums here would be Poker and Masturbation.

I've said too much.

DeV.

koneko

DeVore wrote:

Kitten Cake?

I hope you're not suggesting Kittencake was a joke?

galactus

rkm wrote:

David Hasselhoff forum should be sub-forum of Humour.
It is a piss-take? right?

What has David Hasselhoff ever done to you? Leave the poor man alone.