Re: Forum with sub headings
- Posted by ghaberek (admin) Oct 02, 2014
- 1325 views
So, just to be clear, you don't want to change to what is generally the currently accepted method, or more common method at least, method of group communication, because it'll look like we're inactive, therefore creating less activity?
That's not what I meant. I will elaborate.
If I look at the forum page today, I see the last activity at the top of the page. I have one heading that says, "Last Post" followed by a chronological list of topics. I can quickly assess how busy the forum is based on these dates alone. The newest content is always on top.
| subjet | last post |
|---|---|
| forum with sub headings | 30 minutes ago |
| open euphony -- for "offline" Euphoria discussions | 2 hours ago |
| Append | 2 days ago |
| Dot notation | 3 days ago |
If we use your example sub-headings, and throw some plausible dates next to them, we see a mixed-bag of activity with no chronological order. A section like "introduce yourself" or "off topic" might still goes days, weeks, or months without any activity, which (IMHO) adds to the staleness of the content and seems unnecessarily "inactive" for the entire forum. If we sort these new sub-headings by "last post" then the sub-headings will move around every day, or even get pushed off the first page where they're forgotten. (I can see "introduce yourself" being useful, but rarely used.)
| sub-heading | last post |
|---|---|
| introduce yourself | 2 months ago |
| euphoria programming | 3 hours ago |
| gui programming | 10 minutes ago |
| general/off topic | 4 days ago |
Is that activity not visible in the list replies as well?
Yes, and I can certainly look at the Recent Activity page to see everything in one nicely-organized and filtered list. However, that is not what visitors see when they visit the "forum" and it's not even immediately obvious to forum users that this functionality exists. One change I think might help is to move this link to the top of the forum page instead of in the middle of the "Quick Links" section on the right. Most other forums that I use have a "recent activity" or "new posts" link at the top for quick access and visibility.
Like I said: I think it's a great idea. I'm not arguing against it. I just think it's unnecessary at this time. You're putting the cart before the horse. Let's fix the problem of drawing people to Euphoria and the community as a whole, and then address the need for an expanded forum when we see an increase in activity. I am fully on-board for drawing more folks to Euphoria. The more, the merrier!
Keep in mind that categories work for messages as well, so maybe we could encourage that functionality some more, and make it easier to locate "hot" categories for popular topics. Just a thought.
-Greg
