Increase traffic by decreasing subforums?

[ez4u]

...
I personally don't mind the structure, I just suspect we'd gain more users and therefore more content with simplicity...

And the evidence behind your suspicion?

[Bill Spight]

I guess the question is whether the goal is to maintain the site for current users or to grow and add more insightful users and useful content. If the latter, then I'd suggest making access easy and painless for noobs less BB-savvy than you.

KISS (Keep it simple, stupid) is a pretty good design concept, in general.

{From the original post}
If there was a primary forum to browse, it would be easy to ignore threads that didn't interest the reader, while not have to click through multiple subs to find one that does. Yes, I know that much of this functionality exists with the "View Unread Posts" feature, but I suspect only hard-core users take advantage of this capability, leaving the casual visiter somewhat bewildered.

Well, let's see. I clicked on "View Unread Posts" and got more that 1,000 discussions, of which 40 showed up on the first page. Suppose that I was interested in finding useful content provided by insightful users, how would I do that? How does that structure make it easy for me to find anything?

Suppose that I was one of those insightful users who provided useful content. I would like for others to find it without too much trouble. How is a potential reader going to find it by wading through hundreds of threads? Over time I have posted some problems I composed. I know from viewing my own posts that I also get a list of threads in reverse temporal order. It is not so easy for me to find my own stuff! Sometimes someone in a current discussion will provide a link to earlier discussions and, browsing around in them I will find posts of mine that I had forgotten about.

Yes, of course it is possible to use the search function to find stuff, but again, it usually takes time and effort to find what you want.

I fail to see how having few sub-forums would attract either users who wish to add useful content or users who are looking for it.

[tapir]

we should all work harder at migrating interesting discussions to SL so that we don't need to find them on L19.

That is not a good idea unless it is your own posts. People like JF who have posted interesting information for the readers of L19 have not given permission for further dissemination of their writings. And IIRC the SL copyright license is quite different from that of this forum.

This forum is quite ambiguous regarding copyright. You will definitely lose most of JF contributions if you go for GPL, CC, SL or a similar license (if I understood him correctly) but if you look on blogs, reddit whatever it certainly looks like some people are under the impression that such a license is in place.

Migration is, however, possible (you just have to ask people before doing so!) but so far improvement of SL content after L19 discussions has been meagre and it surely wasn't for the lack of insights in L19 discussions or because of license issues.

But when an important service (for spreading Go) like igolocal fells silent without anybody noticing or replacing it (it is btw still linked from the L19 start page) there are probably bigger problems in the online go community.

I suspect that if the number of subforums was drastically cut and most go conversation was steered to a single forum, both traffic and post-quality would increase.

While it might be a good idea to cut some subforums that aren't used anymore (Big Brother Malkovich, Rengo etc.) the hope you thereby can increase traffic and quality is most certainly unfounded.

[billywoods]

Go book reviews is a ghost town.

Is it? It's not posted in a lot, but how do you know how often it's visited? There aren't really that many English-language go books, and there are even fewer people who buy and review them - but it's great to have all of those reviews easy to find and easily accessible for any new user who comes along. I suspect, if we merged them all into General Go Chat, they would simply fall off the first page immediately and no one would ever know we had go book reviews.

I feel like a noob here. Rather than 'view unread posts', I use 'view new posts'.

[billywoods]

reddit

Reddit and the go community are very different animals. Reddit could say "posters retain copyright for their own work", but the internet is the internet, and those rights aren't humanly enforceable. Saying "you give up all rights to your work" is nothing more than a legally-phrased statement of the inevitable. It's far easier to enforce copyright in a small and reasonably closed community.

[Phelan]

Go book reviews is a ghost town.

Is it? It's not posted in a lot, but how do you know how often it's visited? There aren't really that many English-language go books, and there are even fewer people who buy and review them - but it's great to have all of those reviews easy to find and easily accessible for any new user who comes along. I suspect, if we merged them all into General Go Chat, they would simply fall off the first page immediately and no one would ever know we had go book reviews.

I feel like a noob here. Rather than 'view unread posts', I use 'view new posts'.

I use view new posts too.

[Bantari]

Talk is cheap... but I think the first step in making such changes should be trying to figure out if there are people out there who do not post or participate because we have too many subforums. Unless we do that - its all just a shot in the dark, with possibly lots of unnecessary effort involved.

PS>
Personally, the way I use this forum most of the time is to simply click on the 'Unread Posts' link. The only reason to actually go in and look at individual subforums that I can think of is when you are only interested in this particular subject, which I also do occasionally. And in this case - getting rid of subforums would reduce the functionality.

As a matter of fact - I would argue for MORE subforums rather then less. This way you can actually have it both ways - 'Unread Posts' for everything mixed, or subforums for more granular interests. Ane neither path interferes with the other.

If there is a will and resources to improve this forum, I think there are better ways.... For example:
- give the user the ability to mark thread as 'uninteresting' - all posts in this thread automatically marked as 'read', and
- do the same for whole subforums.
- give the user the ability to mark forums as 'interesting' so the new posts in this forums show on top of the 'Unread Posts' list (or are marked with different color, or whatever) and
- do the same for specific threads
- and so on...

[xed_over]

in the old days (godiscussions, and before adding a turned-based server), I used to read everything. Now its too much and I can't keep up.

I never use "view unread posts" link or similar. I only read targeted sub-forums that interest me, and ignore the rest. But I don't always mark them as having been read, because I might want to come back when I have more time (which of course I never do ).

As it is now, I might read a post and want to respond but not have time to put my thoughts togeter, and wished I had someway to mark it as unread again so I can come back later to respond -- but once its been read, it drops off my radar and I forget where to find it again later.

Having sub-forums at least helps me group topics in my mind so I might remember where they are and come back and find them later -- the search function sucks. It always has. Google's site: search is the only way to go.

I already have trouble when posts get moved from one sub-forum to another. Its why I quit reading Tiger's Mouth.

[Phelan]

As it is now, I might read a post and want to respond but not have time to put my thoughts togeter, and wished I had someway to mark it as unread again so I can come back later to respond -- but once its been read, it drops off my radar and I forget where to find it again later.

You can bookmark topics to view later. I sometimes do that.

[xed_over]

Which reminds me. How is the Go Discussions archive coming along?

not so well, to be honest.

there was data corruption, so I'm sure we don't have all of it.

and I've been super busy at work.

replying to Bill's PM request here in public..

Bill, I found 25 posts in 11 threads containing the string "button go".

I've restored the raw text here: http://www.eskimo.com/~wheelers/godiscussions_archive/

if any of these still are not what you're looking for, let me know and we'll keep looking. If one of more of these is what you're looking for, then let me know which one(s) and I'll clean it up further for an actual restorative posting on here (maybe).

[Bill Spight]

Which reminds me. How is the Go Discussions archive coming along?

not so well, to be honest.

there was data corruption, so I'm sure we don't have all of it.

and I've been super busy at work.

replying to Bill's PM request here in public..

Bill, I found 25 posts in 11 threads containing the string "button go".

I've restored the raw text here: http://www.eskimo.com/~wheelers/godiscussions_archive/

if any of these still are not what you're looking for, let me know and we'll keep looking. If one of more of these is what you're looking for, then let me know which one(s) and I'll clean it up further for an actual restorative posting on here (maybe).

Many thanks.

Button Go is the wave of the future!

I took a quick look, and I think that the Universal Ruleset thread is definitely worth resurrecting, at least for those interested in rules. Even John Fairbairn took part.

[Joaz Banbeck]

...
Suppose that I was one of those insightful users who provided useful content. I would like for others to find it without too much trouble. How is a potential reader going to find it by wading through hundreds of threads? ...

The answer to organizing stuff is indexes (indices?). Anyone can do it. Pick any subject, even 'my greatest posts', and just make a list of them.

I've done two already, the 'index to useful posts for beginners', and the 'best of L19'. Daal did an 'index to book reviews'. Eventually I hope to do an 'index of indexes'.

[quantumf]

...
Suppose that I was one of those insightful users who provided useful content. I would like for others to find it without too much trouble. How is a potential reader going to find it by wading through hundreds of threads? ...

The answer to organizing stuff is indexes (indices?). Anyone can do it. Pick any subject, even 'my greatest posts', and just make a list of them.

I've done two already, the 'index to useful posts for beginners', and the 'best of L19'. Daal did an 'index to book reviews'. Eventually I hope to do an 'index of indexes'.

Doing these index posts is certainly a good service, and appreciated, but suffers from a few problems:

it's somewhat meta - using posts to index posts seems a little odd, and has the potential to get a bit recursive, as your "index of indexes" idea suggests (imagine also a best "best of" post)
it's subjective and one person's opinion - it's unlikely that someone else will edit your original post, and will just add replies. Navigating a thread to find topics is incredibly inefficient compared to seeing them in a simple grid or list

[Joaz Banbeck]

...
it's subjective and one person's opinion - it's unlikely that someone else will edit your original post, and will just add replies. Navigating a thread to find topics is incredibly inefficient compared to seeing them in a simple grid or list

Most index thread starters regularly copy new links from the end of the thread to the first post.

[ez4u]

...
Suppose that I was one of those insightful users who provided useful content. I would like for others to find it without too much trouble. How is a potential reader going to find it by wading through hundreds of threads? ...

The answer to organizing stuff is indexes (indices?). Anyone can do it. Pick any subject, even 'my greatest posts', and just make a list of them.

I've done two already, the 'index to useful posts for beginners', and the 'best of L19'. Daal did an 'index to book reviews'. Eventually I hope to do an 'index of indexes'.

What about tagging rather than indices? Does PHPBB support it?