New Board Suggestions Suggestion (Don't Panic)

Puck

The amount of people asking for new boards to be added here has increased a lot lately and I can only see it increasing more. The way it's going there's going to just too many boards. People will get lost or fed up of being told they're in the wrong forum and just not bother posting at all.

So I've a suggestion: Limit the creation of new boards to a certain time of year and limit the number of new boards per year (for the purposes of this example say 5 new boards every Christmas). Clan boards and boards for existing societies (actual clubs that are already in existence in Real Life(tm)) as well as commercial interaction boards should be exempt from this but it should apply to boards in the main bulletin boards section.

If someone wants a new board they post in the Admin/Support board (or perhaps a special "New Boards" sub-forum of it* if ye like) and that's it. They wait, until Christmas for new board creation comes round. Then they get an email or reply asking if they're still interested in the board. If they are it gets sent to Feedback/Suggestions (or a special sub-forum for New Board Votes**) where people only post a reply if they want the board (slap on the wrist for people who break this rule). Threads are locked after, say, a week or two). The threads with the top five highest numbers of replies have those boards created.


*Yes I'm aware of the irony of suggesting a new board to solve the problem of new board suggestions.:)

** See above.

ecksor

There was suggestion of a 'forum suggestions' forum a few weeks ago. It seems like further splitting to me.

Puck

Originally posted by ecksor
There was suggestion of a 'forum suggestions' forum a few weeks ago. It seems like further splitting to me.

I agree with you, we'd have the same problem, we'd only have moved it somewhere else.

The new sub-fora I suggested aren't really important. They're just to help ye organise things if ye were to go with this suggestion. They key part of my evil^H^H^H^H plan is to limit the amount of new boards per year and have a special time for new boards to be created.

ecksor

Is your main problem with having more boards the navigational difficulties?

Puck

Well not really. Boards is huge now sure but we can always just subscribe to the boards that we want. Although come to think of it, I have to subscribe to more boards now than I used to. Now if I have a general interest in a certain subject instead of subscribing to a board that covers that one big subject, I have to subscribe to many boards covering each little part of that subject.

Also lately it seems that whenever something gets a little following or whenever someone can think of a subject that doesn't quite fit in with the tone of an existing board, they want a new board created. Many of these boards end up not being used much at all and dieing. Maybe if they had to wait until a certain time of year they'd lose interest before the board was created and not just after.

If I'm the only one with a problem with this then... eh... I gues it's just my problem then.

ecksor

Originally posted by Puck
Also lately it seems that whenever something gets a little following or whenever someone can think of a subject that doesn't quite fit in with the tone of an existing board, they want a new board created. Many of these boards end up not being used much at all and dieing. Maybe if they had to wait until a certain time of year they'd lose interest before the board was created and not just after.

I tend to agree with this. However we've seen plenty of examples in the past where folk claim to be uncomfortable with posting on a provided forum where their subject is on topic, but seem more interested in posting/discussing once a more specialised or niche forum has been created. As you say, it can often happen that these boards flounder after a while. Perhaps such boards need to be found and consolidated, but I suspect that it puts the discussion of the niche topic back to square one. Still, suggestions for consolidation are always welcome.

Victor

I think the first post is unnecessarily restrictive - what if someone had the idea of this really cool board that no one ever thought of before and it had lots of support? Would people have to go elsewhere until Christmas?

As it is Irish Pubs http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?s=&threadid=110944 has seems to have died not quite out of a lack of interest in the subject - it's just that too many of the topics end up elsewhere - AH, politics & humanities.

Perhaps some enthusiasm should go into better defining boards (without being facist about it)?

Woden

Could the boards which are dying just not be cleared off and integrated back into there parent boards so to speak if there is not much traffic on them? is that what you mean by consolidation ecksor? if so i agree with that

ecksor

Originally posted by Dataisgod
is that what you mean by consolidation ecksor?

Yep.

bloggs

How about a General Rants section? Where you can say what you like but don't get a rap on the knucks by the Mods, of course not allowing flaming or trolling. Just were people can let of steam and be liberal with their answers

Puck

Originally posted by bloggs
How about a General Rants section? Where you can say what you like but don't get a rap on the knucks by the Mods, of course not allowing flaming or trolling. Just were people can let of steam and be liberal with their answers

How does this help solve the problem of too many boards?

Puck

Originally posted by Victor
I think the first post is unnecessarily restrictive - what if someone had the idea of this really cool board that no one ever thought of before and it had lots of support? Would people have to go elsewhere until Christmas?

Well the Admins can do what they like I guess so if there was an amazingly good idea for a board that they wanted to create they could just create it.

sceptre

Originally posted by bloggs
How about a General Rants section? Where you can say what you like but don't get a rap on the knucks by the Mods, of course not allowing flaming or trolling. Just were people can let of steam and be liberal with their answers

<cough>
Libel problems with "say what you like"
</cough>

DeVore

The "smaller boards dying out" wisdom is a myth actually, we have a ton of slightly more backwater boards alright but you have to recall that no everyone reads boards 123187645 times a day like , well, us!
For those people those boards move along nicely and stuff like AH and Politics are just blurs...

Our policy is that if within a 30 day period the board has no new threads and is showing no old ones, its dead. But we've not had a lot of cases of that happening really... some of the community boards, yeah... cos the community comes and goes there perhaps. But very few main boards have been consolidated back in.

Time-limiting doesnt really fly with me, if I like an idea I'll do it now, if I dont I'll just say no.

DeV.

bloggs

Hey Mods,

Congrats on having the likes of Komplett.ie on the board to help people with queries and to give suggestions and take feedback. Is there any other companies you may be setting up pubilc forums for? Ryanair would be a good one i think (though they may laugh at the idea of listen to their customers)

ecksor

Commercial interaction forums are a service that those companies pay a small fee for.