Forum Structure

[JimLucas]

Since the discussion started under the Topic "Anglo, English, Duet Subforums?" has expanded to something more general, and since I know of no way to change the heading of an individual Topic, I have started this new one.

 

I would like to float a different idea, which is that the number of forums be reduced, rather than extended.

I'm curious. Which ones would you eliminate, and why? (It even seems from some of the things you say below that you think that the sub-Forums should be eliminated altogether. Yes? No?)

 

As it is, the general discussion is about very little. If you started a forum called "events" and also put the misplaced threads in the forums where they belong the general discussion forum would hardly exist.

I think an "Events" Forum would be an excellent idea, and things do sometimes appear in "General Discussion" which I think would be more appropriate elsewhere, but with 312 Topics since the new Forum was begun, there's plenty of other stuff. Some of it could be considered "Fluff", so maybe we should consider a separate Forum with that title? But I earlier proposed one or more additional Forums for "Off-Topic Topics" (Morris dance, tin whistles, etc.), and the response was underwhelming.

 

Meanwhile the other forums are so specific the thread can't be maintained without wandering off topic and theoretically belonging somewhere else.

"Isn't maintained" isn't the same as "can't be maintained". Actually, I think most of the Topics (threads) in the specific Forums have not strayed from their Forum's content, though the subjects of many individual Topics have diverged without new, appropriately titled Topics being started. The two Forums -- aside from "General Discussion" -- that appear to cross each others' boundaries most often are "History" and "Construction & Repair", because there are many historical issues related to the evolution over time of the concertina's design and construction.

 

Having it all in one forum would not mean everyone had to read everything, as the thread (Topic) is usually sufficiently accurate to warn off disinterested parties.

It wouldn't mean that everyone would have to read all the posts, but it would mean everyone having to read all the Topic titles, to find those that interested them. Right now, someone who doesn't care about "Construction & Repair" or "Ergonomics", or even this subForum, can skip its contents completely.

 

But for me it's not just a matter of what I want to read, but what I want to find, and the additional layer of information provided by each Forum's title/description helps me find what I'm interested in more quickly. And because those descriptive fields are of limited width, having the additional structural layer also allows the combination of Forum and Topic descriptions to contain more information, and thus be more specific.

 

Not everyone uses these Forums in the same way. Some are only interested in following the latest conversation. But I often look back to prior posts and even to Topics that haven't been active for a while. In a (sub)Forum with 8 ("Tunes/Songs") or 12 ("Ergonomics") Topics, this is easy. With 312 ("General Discussion") or even just 74 ("Buy/Sell") it's not. I would find it very frustrating if there were only one Forum, with 577 or more Topics to hunt through, especially since the order in which they are displayed keeps changing.