i just know of a plugin which reduces the userdb from wiki + phpbb to one, so if you're logged in the one, your automatically in the other or so...
]]>Also, it has to be said, a plethora of forums doesn't seem to harm the gentoo boards! I know they are way busier than ours but we must consider our growth!
]]>I think dibble is dead-on when he said that people won't read the posting guidelines, they'll just post where they think it makes sense...hell, I've read the guidelines, but never refer to them when I making a new post.
I think it would be good to consolidate some of our sections, as having too many choices doesn't really do anything but confuse people more. My guess would be that most people read the forums by "View posts since last visit" or one of those other options anyway, so it shouldn't make a huge difference what category they're filed under. As long as we had a few, blatently-obvious sections, we'd be better off...IMHO
]]>Also, four posts a day logic is flawed. That's 28 posts per forum a week (you can view 25 a page by default), might not seem like a lot but we must assume that the forums will grow and that things will become more complex, not vica versa.
Case in point:
Why is security with announcments instead of network and protection?
It's not, that's security announcements, protection is in with networking...
It looks too many to us experienced users who check the forums 3 times a day but to Joe/Jane-newbie it shows clearly defined sections in which he/she may post. You can write posting guidelines until you go blue but people will still post in the place that appears most obvious to them. Also, what about the unspoken masses? Surely they find it ok or they would complain - if it ain't broke it don't need fixing.
I'm not against consolidation of some, like the AUR section. However, for me the addition of the sub-forums module would just muddy the main page without providing much in the way of hierarchical clarity. I never saw any benefit on the UCB boards. It just seems to add more graphical border chunks
]]>If a forum only has one or two new posts per day or less, then it seems to me its practically redundant. That's probably a good measure of which ones can be consolidated. The ones that seem important are Newbie Corner, Arch Discussion, and User Contributions.
At a big extreme, it may be possible to merge all the 'help' forums into maybe three or four total. Most of us that want to help are willing to help everyone, and those that want help don't care where they post. There are some different topics that people won't be interested in viewing (ie: some people may not have any interest in servers, or networking, or hardware, etc), but overall, I think its pretty good.
One thing I really appreciated was when the 'laptop' forum was created, cause it got all those pesky questions I know nothing about out of my way. So this is a good argument in favour of having *some* separation between forums.... perhaps not so much though.
I get the feeling I'm rambling, I'm sorry.
Dusty
]]>I think it might be time to swing back the other way a bit.
]]>A blinking 'Use the search function' banner would be a simple solution.
]]>As for the hierarchy, something like:
Discussion >
Arch Discussion
Linux Discussion
Off Topic
Help >
Installation
Making Packages
Workstation >
General
Desktop
Networking
Multimedia
Laptop
Low Level >
Other Architectures
Kernel
Hardware
etc etc - just musing here
edit: formatting
]]>I'd also like to suggest a mod that adds a "search within this forum" box to the bottom of the post listings. That speeds up searching alot.
The "hot list" of threads is a great idea though - it will prevent having 40 threads when there's an issues of some sort - like xorg7
]]>Another really simple thing that could be tried that I have pushed for in the past is FEWER FORUMS. We have 24 public forums! We get what, 100 posts per day? That's four posts per forum!!! A little over-organized I'd say.
Examples:
Do we really need four topics on AUR?
Why is security with announcments instead of network and protection?
Can Linux Discussion be merged with something else?
Pacman and Package Upgrade could go in with Arch Discussion. Pacman is integral to Arch.
Desktop Environments and Workstation User do not need to be separate forums.
Perhaps 'Other Architectures' can be merged with 'Kernel and Hardware'
Installation could be merged with 'Arch Discussion'
...and so on
Dusty
]]>