Too many forums...

[Luke]

Just wanted to post my 2 cents. I think there are way too many forums. Consolidation would be nice.

For example, instead of breaking "OKCTALK Community News" into three forums like it is, make "OKCTALK Community News" the forum. Same with "Lifestyle, Culture & Entertainment." Don't break it into eight different forum topics. Consolidate those eight into one forum. Do that with each of the seven areas of the board and we have just seven forums instead of 26. That would make it easier for all of us I think.

We wouldn't be eliminating any of the current topic suggestions. Just putting them in one forum.

Just an idea.

[Todd]

Luke,

Thanks for the feedback!

I'm going to see what I can get done today to make it a little easier. One solution is to make use of sub-forums. I may try that on one forum just to see what the response is.

[downtownguy]

For what it's worth, I agree with Luke, to an extent. I can't understand the need for two OKC forums... likewise, not sure if there needs to be separate political forums, especially now that the elections are over.

[Patrick]

Yeah, I can see where you guys are coming from. Todd tried a technique earlier that limited scrolling, but that was a mess. So Todd, I wouldn't avicse resorting back to that. I think maybe just consolidating some of the redundant forums might be a better solution.
For example, as downtownguy suggested, instead of having separate forums for State, National, and International Politics, we can just have one for Politics! Some of the others need to remain though...for example, the Health forum is far different from the Arts and Entertainment forum. It seems like TV and Movies, and Literature could all be deleted and put under Arts and Entertainment! Leave the Peanut Butter 'N Jelly Forum. Leave the Singles Forum. Leave the Boardroom to Bedroom Forum. Leave the health an Fitness Forum. We could probably just have 1 sports forum. Education, Faith, and Values could just be one forum.

Here are the forums I suggest to limit it down some:

1. Forum Rules
2. Intro and Welcome
3. Annoucements, etc.
4. Arts, Music, TV, and Entertainment
5. Peanut Butter and Jelly
6. Singles
7. Boardroom to Bedroom
8. Health and Fitness
9. OKC Community Talk
10. Poll Vault
11. Tech Talk and Science
12. Best and Worst
13. Business
14. Sports
15. In the News
16. Politics
17. Education, Faith & Values

That would at least cut us down from an original 26 forums.

[Patrick]

Todd is going to try some different things regarding this issue. Feel free to express your opinions my sending him a PM!

[Luke]

My suggestion:

1. Forum Rules/Announcements/Welcomes
2. Arts, Music, TV, and Entertainment
3. Singles
4. Sex Talk (let's just call it what it is)
5. Health and Fitness
6. OKC Talk
7. Poll Vault
8. Best and Worst
9. Sports
10. Politics
11. Education, Faith & Values

Much more manageable.

[Todd]

Thanks for all the good feedback!

I agree that it is getting very cumbersome to scroll thought all the forums and some of them are redundant to an extent. Combining forums is one solution, however, moving all the info that is tucked inside a database and merging into another forum is not an easy task. This also can create indexing issues like we saw two weeks ago that brought the site down and cost me another $200 to get it fixed.

I get PM's daily from members with ideas for new forums and some of them are pretty good ideas. I think a better solution would be to combine where absolutely needed and try using sub-forums for any new forums that are created.

[Todd]

Hi everyone!

Please check out the Education, Faith & Values forum. This is an exmaple of using sub-forums while still keeping the current layout.

[Todd]

Okay gang...I did the whole darn board. Tell me what you think.

[mranderson]

So far, it looks better. I still wish the information that use to be on the left was still on the left. However, I am adjusting.

[Midtowner]

I miss having the "recent posts" thing there.

[Keith]

Yeah, me too. I do like the new format, however, I am afraid that some of the recent posts will not be read because they are subforums, and kind of hidden.

[Patrick]

That's my problem with the new set up Keith! The recent posts aren't listed for all of the subforums....just the recent post for the category of forums. I honestly never had a problem with scrolling......I also read another forum page regarding health matters, and there's a lot more scolling on it. It just seems like the old set up was more conducive to newbies, which is what we're trying to attract. I didn't have any problem with cutting a few redundant forums (like OKC Talk Lounge), but I'm not so sure I like this new set up. Sure, if we cut some fo the old redundant forums we'd lose some of the psots in them, but are the posts in some of the lesser used forums really all that important? I say go back to the old set up and just cut a few of the old redundant forums. For example, just keep the Religion forum and rename it with education in the name.....ax the education forum because there really aren't that many important posts in it anyways.

What do you guys think?

Hey, I think we could probably get used to anything. Change is just hard sometimes. It took me awhile to get used to all of these forums, because originally on most of the other forum boards we've participted on, we've only had a few forums like Tulsa Now does. But I've gotten to like the fact that this site offers a variety of forums, not just forums about city issues.

[Patrick]

Todd is still playing around with a few things...for awhile he went back to the old set up and just removed some of the forum descriptions under the titles. That's limited some of the scrolling. Continue to post your comments here.

[Luke]

The whole point I was trying to make is, I just don't like checking every forum to check new messages. A few forums with more general topics would be more manageable.

That's all I was thinking.

[Patrick]

Todd has consolidated some of the forums down. Personally, I think it's a huge improvement. For example, we now have 1 sports forum instead of 2. We just have 1 politics forum now (where you can talk about Local, State, National, or International Politics). Also, the Literature forum was merged with the A&E forum. There's definitely less scrolling and fewer forums to check. Of course we need to keep a good list of forums to keep the diversity of topics available, but as you know, many of the forums were redundant.
I personally didn't like the subforums idea Todd threw out there for awhile. It sounded good, but once it was actually put into place, it didn't solve the overall problem...in fact it just made the forum board more complex.

Anyways, I think the recent changes that are now in effect are good.

Todd will probably continue to make changes as time goes on. Let us know what you think about the changes when they occur. Todd is always trying to come up with better features and ideas for this site.