Marathon Sub-Forum?

RayCun

I think because the suggestion was to move only marathon threads, it came across less as "let's give marathon threads their own space to flourish, yay!" and more as "those pesky marathon threads are taking over, we must isolate them!"
Especially since some of the prominent athletics fans have enormous chips on their a completely understandable desire to see the subjects that interest them given more prominence.

robinph

Looking at the layouts found on other running type forums and they would have separate forums for different distances etc and the general chat area. That could work, and we are potentially already heading down that road since the creation of the Events and Training Logs sub-fora. I'm not sure you could do it one step at a time, such as this year extract all the marathon stuff to it's own area and then next if there is enough 10km threads create another forum for all of that chat. But also I don't think there is enough traffic to justify creating the additional X forums in one go now without also then creating several ghost forums. But does the current main ART forum then become a general chit chat area, or does it not remain a forum anymore and just becomes a category place holder for all the sub forums?

bart simpson

there might be a solution guys but im not too sure if it can be done with the operating software of boards.ie

you could have a filter system.....this way every thing remains as it is but you have a filter section that any poster can use to filter threads that they are interested in

this system is used on the gaa forum "an fear rua" as there is a lot of bull**** posted on there, the main forum page contains all threads but, a poster can choose to filter them out.
id say its the mod that tags the threads category so the filter knows which way to filter but im not sure, it might be the OP

http://www.anfearrua.com/db.asp

dna_leri

I voted to maintain the status quo because I think it would be a backwards step to the old Marathon forum. I first checked out the boards Marathon forum as a returnee runner a few years ago and found the Marathon (and I think Triathalon) forum which was completely dominated by DCM (it was september/october) and the Athletics forum which was too quiet. There was no place for a beginner (non-Marathon) runner to ask questions or get information.

I later figured out the Marathon forum also catered for sub-Marathon road runners and the athletics forum allowed people to ask beginner questions but the real postive change was when these fora were combined into the current format.

There is still a problem if you first visit this forum around DCM time when it is dominated by marathon discussions but it's better than it was as there are still other events and discussions on the front page. I think the megathreads are the correct way to manage repeat questions but maybe that's more work for the mods to combine threads?

It's not perfect but its better than it was so don't go backwards.

RacoonQueen

Oisin11178 wrote: »

I think the reason there is so much marathons topics is the sheer commitment it takes to run 1 or for some over 100.

Going a bit OT but I completely disagree.

Triathletes, in general, train every day or several times a day, marathon runners, in genereal, do not.

It takes just as much commitment and often just as many miles per week to train for 10k as it does for a marathon.

A lot of T&F sports need a lot of gym time as well as discipline specific training and again, they would often train several times a day.

Marathon runners/long distance runners in general have the luxury of rest days which the other disciplines catered for in this section don't necessarily have.

Just thought I'd point that out.

token56

I'm happy with the way things are.

bart simpson wrote: »

there might be a solution guys but im not too sure if it can be done with the operating software of boards.ie

you could have a filter system.....this way every thing remains as it is but you have a filter section that any poster can use to filter threads that they are interested in

this system is used on the gaa forum "an fear rua" as there is a lot of bull**** posted on there, the main forum page contains all threads but, a poster can choose to filter them out.
id say its the mod that tags the threads category so the filter knows which way to filter but im not sure, it might be the OP

http://www.anfearrua.com/db.asp

It is possible by adding a prefix to a thread and basically there would be another drop down menu in the "filter threads" section of the page. I wasn't sure before but after checking on the soccer forum which have use them, I think the users themselves can add prefix's to threads themselves when they are creating threads. So in theory it could work fine, just two things, you have to trust people are going to add the right prefix and there will be times when there is ambiguity and second and probably most importantly you have to determine how many prefix's you want and for what sections. This would probably be the biggest cause of debate with, it will really come down what would be the best way to categorise the different topics the come through this forum, for example:
Marathon
Multisport
Road Running (sub marathon)
Track & Field
General (what is classified as general)
Help threads
What about the odd ultra running or mountain running thread and probably some other sections I've forgotten?

If an ideal set of prefix's was found it would provide very easy access to just the threads a person is interested in. There is also a risk of scaring away potential newbies who are looking to start their first thread and are met with loads of options, dont know which one to choose and dont bother asking. There may also be the problem of informing people who are new to the forum which prefix they should use and when. In an ideal scenario you could have this is the forum charter, or a Please read this before starting a thread sticky, but in reality the number of people who actually read those are probably very small. These are probably small issues but still have to be considered.

Overall though I do think its an idea that could work well in theory, its just getting it from theory to being implemented will be tricky and then if it is implemented how will it actually work is a big question. At the end of the days its up to the powers at be though.

bart simpson

token56 wrote: »

It is possible by adding a prefix to a thread and basically there would be another drop down menu in the "filter threads" section of the page. I wasn't sure before but after checking on the soccer forum which have use them, I think the users themselves can add prefix's to threads themselves when they are creating threads. So in theory it could work fine, just two things, you have to trust people are going to add the right prefix and there will be times when there is ambiguity and second and probably most importantly you have to determine how many prefix's you want and for what sections. This would probably be the biggest cause of debate with, it will really come down what would be the best way to categorise the different topics the come through this forum, for example:
Marathon
Multisport
Road Running (sub marathon)
Track & Field
General (what is classified as general)
Help threads
What about the odd ultra running or mountain running thread and probably some other sections I've forgotten?

If an ideal set of prefix's was found it would provide very easy access to just the threads a person is interested in. There is also a risk of scaring away potential newbies who are looking to start their first thread and are met with loads of options, dont know which one to choose and dont bother asking. There may also be the problem of informing people who are new to the forum which prefix they should use and when. In an ideal scenario you could have this is the forum charter, or a Please read this before starting a thread sticky, but in reality the number of people who actually read those are probably very small. These are probably small issues but still have to be considered.

Overall though I do think its an idea that could work well in theory, its just getting it from theory to being implemented will be tricky and then if it is implemented how will it actually work is a big question. At the end of the days its up to the powers at be though.

thanks for that,
yeah wel on the an fear rua website, when you start a thread there is a drop down menu when you are writing your original post, here the poster picks the category of the new thread..... but i think most of the time the mod on that site does it after the thread is put up.
anyway it was just an idea, dont know if it would improve the site either

robinph

The tagging the threads with a prefix is a good idea, I don't think that it is a compulsory setting though so shouldn't be an issue for people starting up threads who don't know or care about them.

token56

I'm happy with the way things are.

robinph wrote: »

The tagging the threads with a prefix is a good idea, I don't think that it is a compulsory setting though so shouldn't be an issue for people starting up threads who don't know or care about them.

It's also possible to not have the prefix's show up beside the thread title on the main page afaik, so it wouldn't actually change anyones default viewing experience but provides the option to narrow down ones selection of threads if they want. However if it were implemented I think the more people that would use it the better really. The biggest problem with it is how many prefix's do you have and for what.

RayCun

Would it be worth setting up a Clothes & equipment - and where to buy it megathread? There are a lot of this type of question, they push other threads off the page, but they rarely lead to any interesting discussion in themselves. I don't see any harm in combining them all?

5h4mr0(k

As a running newbie this year, there have been a lot of newbie questions that have come up - things which I'd wanted to know as well - which I proposed should be in a newbies sticky. All the info that a newbie needs in one place. Don't think of it as a "thread killer". A decent newbie FAQ should have lots of hits, and ideally few posts. Decent information stops people spawning the same old threads (some of the stickies in the Sat TV and skiing forums come to mind).


From the over all boards view, it should be possible to add the ability to ignore a thread. The software already keeps track or what threads you've read, new messages in threads, what threads you've marked to follow. Shouldn't be a whole lot more to ignore a thread.

Personally, I'd prefer if the organisation was kept as it is at the moment (i.e. don't split them out) as I find it interesting to read some of the tri, or extreme threads. I wouldn't go looking for them if they were in a forum on their own.

tunney

RayCun wrote: »

Would it be worth setting up a Clothes & equipment - and where to buy it megathread? There are a lot of this type of question, they push other threads off the page, but they rarely lead to any interesting discussion in themselves. I don't see any harm in combining them all?

I hate megathreads. Useless dead repositories.
A clothes and gear sub forum would weed most of the offending threads out.

Cabaal

I'm happy with the way things are.

tunney wrote: »

I hate megathreads. Useless dead repositories.
A clothes and gear sub forum would weed most of the offending threads out.

Clothes and geer would be a excellent idea and would certainly remove alot of the FAQ stuff from the main forum, Ok it won't sort everything but how about starting with clothes and gear and see where that takes us?

bart simpson

tunney wrote: »

I hate megathreads. Useless dead repositories.
A clothes and gear sub forum would weed most of the offending threads out.

how offending are these threads?, in my opinion creating a sub forum would be an overmeasured reponse.
i agree with you about the megathread.

Oisin11178

RacoonQueen wrote: »

Going a bit OT but I completely disagree.

Triathletes, in general, train every day or several times a day, marathon runners, in genereal, do not.

It takes just as much commitment and often just as many miles per week to train for 10k as it does for a marathon.

A lot of T&F sports need a lot of gym time as well as discipline specific training and again, they would often train several times a day.

Marathon runners/long distance runners in general have the luxury of rest days which the other disciplines catered for in this section don't necessarily have.

Just thought I'd point that out.

Yeah i agree on the ironman side there is a collosal amount of training. By the way all the training you pointed out like gym work ect.. I do this plus much more. Ill be blunt, i have respect for people who do tris esp ironman but i have less than 0 interest in them and therefore i never go into those sort of threads. Just my opinion.

token56

I'm happy with the way things are.

bart simpson wrote: »

how offending are these threads?, in my opinion creating a sub forum would be an overmeasured reponse.
i agree with you about the megathread.

To be fair I dont think he meant that they were offensive, but more in the sense of them being the culprits.

RayCun

They're interesting and useful threads - if you're the person posting them. And it's great that the forum is here and can answer that kind of question.

But they take up a lot of space on the front page, which means threads with more potential to provoke discussion disappear faster than is ideal.

A Clothes/Equipment/Shops forum would be good. We could throw in a few stickies at the start -
ask Krusty to write a definitive comparison of GPS watches (and other alternatives for timing & mapping)
put together a list of shops by area, and what they stock
what equipment do you need to start running/tri, and what do you need for winter
choosing a tri bike
buying runners

The general problem with stickies is that no-one knows whats in them, but in a subforum there'd be room for five separate threads with full titles. I'll volunteer to do some of the work on running equipment/shoes if we decide to go ahead with it.

Woddle

I'm happy with the way things are.

RayCun wrote: »

They're interesting and useful threads - if you're the person posting them. And it's great that the forum is here and can answer that kind of question.

But they take up a lot of space on the front page, which means threads with more potential to provoke discussion disappear faster than is ideal.

A Clothes/Equipment/Shops forum would be good. We could throw in a few stickies at the start -
ask Krusty to write a definitive comparison of GPS watches (and other alternatives for timing & mapping)
put together a list of shops by area, and what they stock
what equipment do you need to start running/tri, and what do you need for winter
choosing a tri bike
buying runners

The general problem with stickies is that no-one knows whats in them, but in a subforum there'd be room for five separate threads with full titles. I'll volunteer to do some of the work on running equipment/shoes if we decide to go ahead with it.

Best suggestion so far.

bart simpson

token56 wrote: »

To be fair I dont think he meant that they were offensive, but more in the sense of them being the culprits.

point taken, what i am really asking is, are they that much of a nuisance that the warrent their own sub forum?....if clothing was put in a sub forum....unless a board user checked it every time they came on (which wont happen because it would be a ghost forum) they will miss good info like the "lidl running gear offers".
the clothing threads usually drop off the first main page fairly quickly anyway

shazkea

Woddle wrote: »

Best suggestion so far.

+1 on that suggestion. I have to admit I am one of those culprits who doesn't read stickies and think a sub-forum for these items would be great - very clear and concise.

robinph

Actually having a gear forum would be something I'd +1 as well, would give space for that Garmin info to be de-mega threaded as well. But more importantly it's not moving a particular sub-set of us out somewhere else, we all need gear of some type and then the tri people can chat about their flippers for swimming and fancy handlebars as well.

donothoponpop

I'm happy with the way things are.

Thanks for all the responses. The poll results were very close, but we will go with the majority, and not create a marathon sub-forum. Since the idea behind this was to bunch popular marathon questions together, perhaps we'll try an FAQ on marathon questions and try and put it somewhere.

The gear sub-forum seems popular and makes sense, so we'll ask the powers that be to set this up. As mentioned, it should free up space on the main page and limit the amount of repeat questions.

The forum is only as strong as those who post on it. The sheer amount (and quality) of questions that are asked and answered for new (and old) posters shows us that it's serving its main function, which is to facilitate discussion. Anyone who feels it has lost interest for them, is more than welcome to start interesting threads.

A bit of periodic introspection is always a good idea, and I believe that this one is already reaping benefits. Hopefully some of the group training sessions coming down the line will prove popular and useful. Thanks to the many, many, posters who are willing to share their expertise and experience for the benefit of the community on the forum, onwards and upwards from here!