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Message started by fattybones on May 19th, 2011 at 4:57am

Title: Forum categories suggestion
Post by fattybones on May 19th, 2011 at 4:57am
In a couple of the forums there are some giant threads that would make really sweet sub-forums.

The reason for doing this (if you wanted to), would be to make searching for information easier, and encouraging new threads to start.  Picture "today I wanna see how to make some ammo, and find out which type is best," bam, click the ammo thread, ideas galore!  You could use search, but searching a forum is frustrating.  The word "ammo" gets used in many unrelated contexts.

For example, in General:
Pics of slings and slinging
Non-conventional sling designs

A couple good new categories perhaps:
Slinging styles
Building instructions
Ammo
Darts
Tips and tricks
Safety
Noob help

And keep "general", but maybe change it to "general slinging"

The primitive weapons has lots of obvious candidates too (Any thread in all-caps)
Primitive knives
Rabbit sticks
Celts and hawks . . .

the title "other primitive weapons" fits really well here.

I have never done a forum before, so I apologize if I'm suggesting a lot of work here.  I suppose you'd make a new forum topic, move the monster thread into it, and lock the monster thread.  I wouldn't bother sorting the old stuff by hand or anything.

Title: Re: Forum categories suggestion
Post by fattybones on May 19th, 2011 at 5:01am

Curious Aardvark wrote on Aug 3rd, 2010 at 6:55am:
think you'll find that other topics and other primitive weapons covers it quite nicely.

I'm not a fan of sites where there are hundreds of seperate topics.
So any new sections will only ever be added reluctantly and after much debate lol
And not at all if one of the existing areas already covers it.


K sorry guess you might be philosophically opposed to it. Different strokes.

Title: Re: Forum categories suggestion
Post by curious_aardvark on May 19th, 2011 at 7:36am
not philosophically opposed.

But in forums where there is a section for everything little thing under the sun - you tend to get a lot of little cliques appear.
And most people won't look through several navigation layers to find the more 'out of the way' topics.

If we think a topic deserves permament recognition we'll sticky it. Effectively making a mini-section.

But Most don't merit it.
With fewer topic heading you actually get more people reading and respondig to more threads - I think :-)  

Title: Re: Forum categories suggestion
Post by fattybones on May 20th, 2011 at 5:07am
That's a good point, I was not thinking of the social effect on the community.

Title: Re: Forum categories suggestion
Post by Masiakasaurus on May 20th, 2011 at 11:16am

fattybones wrote on May 19th, 2011 at 4:57am:
In a couple of the forums there are some giant threads that would make really sweet sub-forums.

The reason for doing this (if you wanted to), would be to make searching for information easier, and encouraging new threads to start.  Picture "today I wanna see how to make some ammo, and find out which type is best," bam, click the ammo thread, ideas galore!  You could use search, but searching a forum is frustrating.  The word "ammo" gets used in many unrelated contexts.


With the search you can just search one board or another which makes it more likely to find what you're looking for. Search for "ammo" only in "General" and you won't get gun ammo (Other Primitive Weapons) or ancient ammo dug up from Greece (Project Goliath).

fattybones wrote on May 19th, 2011 at 4:57am:
And keep "general", but maybe change it to "general slinging"

I've thought about this too, but I can never come up with a convincing enough reason to change a name that already works. The only real reason is to keep new members from posting everything randomly in General instead of where it's meant to be, but they'd probably still do it with a more specific label because we aren't changing their newness. Food for thought regardless.

Title: Re: Forum categories suggestion
Post by curious_aardvark on May 22nd, 2011 at 7:32am
kind of a good point - but as the forum is dedicated to slinging - the slinging in 'general slinging' is pretty much taken as a given I would think :-)

To be honest we don't move many topics - so I think the vast majority of members get it :-)

Title: Re: Forum categories suggestion
Post by xxkid123 on May 25th, 2011 at 8:43pm
another point is the small amount of members and topics. with the big forums you see 50-60 people on at one time, if not more. with this you'll be lucky to see more than ten. without such a large amount of people we won't be able to even partly fill them up. for example, we've compiled most of the threads onto one list in aussie's FAQ. there's maybe 10 threads for each topic. if each topic made a separate forum, we would have an empty looking forum.

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