Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes..........

Dr Galen

Hey everyone

This is just a question to the forum in general. Whether your a first time poster or a regular. All opinions are welcome.

If you could add, delete or change anythig about this forum, what would it be?

This is not a loaded question. There aren't any secret changes being planned or talked about, but more what you guys, the users would like to see/not see. Users are most definitely what makes a forum successful and grow.

Personally I think the forum potters along great. There'e never any real bother, and it seems like a lot of users see it as a good place to come and ask questions, a gardening resource if you will. What I'd love to see happen over the next while is that it becomes more of community too. How you define that is very broad, but with the massive growth in all things gardening related, the sky really is the limit.

I'll sticky this thread for a while and see how we get on. Post your thoughts, no matter how small they may seem. If any bigger points come out of this then we can open new threads to discuss those ideas in particular and find a way to progress them.

Cheers and look forward to hearing your thoughts

MM

rocknchef

maybe a intro sticky a little bit about yourself, interests i.e flowers, veg etc

Dizzyblonde

I think it potters along very well too, though with so many of us starting to grow our own veg for the first time this will no doubt create new requirements in time.
On the whole I find it a very friendly and non-elitist forum which makes it easy for first-timers to post.

foxinsox

rocknchef wrote: »

maybe a intro sticky a little bit about yourself, interests i.e flowers, veg etc

^^ good idea..

A sticky for pics ... My garden : before and after?
Plant ID : for the wtf is this pics?

A sticky for bargains/finds... as in some other forums...

Oh... and a random waffling thread... Gardening Gossip?

Just my ideas...

Dr Galen

foxinsox wrote: »

^^ good idea..

A sticky for pics ... My garden : before and after?
Plant ID : for the wtf is this pics?

A sticky for bargains/finds... as in some other forums...

Oh... and a random waffling thread... Gardening Gossip?

Just my ideas...

i like the garden pics idea, had been thinking of something similar myself. The plant ID thread might be a runner too. There's always a few threads somewhere about that sort of thing.

If you look at the DIY forum, Delly has created a FAQ thread, as like here they get loads of random questions, that have probably been asked before. Helps to prevent clogging of the frontpage, but also for a newbie user they can find the answer to the commonest questions like say lawncare or lawnmowers or potatoes in one shot.

Dr Galen

one thing I would say is regarding stickies.

People don't read them much, unless, they've got a constant enough flow of posts. Personally I'd be wary of lashing up the stickies, as that can clutter the discussion too.

If we do go down the route of stickying anything on the frontpage, if it doesn't work out or get enugh postings, then it'll get unstickyed and we'll chalk it up to experience. Agree? Disagree?

Dizzyblonde

Mystik Monkey wrote: »

If we do go down the route of stickying anything on the frontpage, if it doesn't work out or get enugh postings, then it'll get unstickyed and we'll chalk it up to experience. Agree? Disagree?

Agree

foxinsox

Agree - I know what you mean about folk not reading them!

Maybe don't bother sticking them and see if they deserve a sticky then?

The Sweeper

The "Here's what I had for dinner last night" thread on the Cooking & Recipes forum is a good example of a non-sticky multi-post thread that almost never drops off the front page. If it's popular, it'll keep popping up...

Dr Galen

My thoughts pretty much exactly.

While there may be room for 1 or 2 stickies, purely because there's a pretty high thread starting number on this forum and things could bumped off the front page relatively quickly, I'd say having 5 or 6 stickies would not be of benefit in the longer term.

Dr Galen

anything else?