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IMHO, too much forum specificity


Anita Handle
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I can see how on a very large site, that you'd need to split out some of the conversations into their own forum, by topic, but there's like 4 of us here rattling around in a mansion. Perhaps it could be driven by having evaluating as you go. You might get a very focused conversation about mountain bikes but this will probably squash lots of other topics since you've got to see if the thing you want to talk about or look into is in some other corner.

 

Maybe it's just me but it feels tedious to have to monitor various levels of the forum hierarchy for ride calls, events, riding my mtb on the road, etc... Bikemojo had all these focused forums that were hardly used. 

I do think that the destination forum could be useful in the way it was seeded with specific topics. 

Thoughts?

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I like how much more organized it is than Mojo, but I agree it might be too much. I would be in favor of consolidating a few of them. For example: Ride Calls, Trail Conditions, and Trail Work could be combined into just "Local Trails." All the Austin Ridge Riders subforums could be combined into one. Bikes for sale and Bike components could be combined (but keep non-bike stuff separate). Announcements and Site Feedback could probably be combined too.

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yeah, some organization is good, more can be added organically as the need becomes obvious.

Like, maybe a main "General" forum. This is already "austin mountainbiking" dot com so I think anything that we austin mountainbikers feel like chatting about could go in there.

perhaps road bike, cross, and gravel rides, events, routes, bikes, tech, etc could go in a "skinny tire" forum. 

A Ridgeriders forum.

bike stuff for sale forum.

non-bike stuff for sale forum.

I like the ride destination forum.

a trail, park, and jumps building forum.

If the jumpy types want one for themselves, a DJ/DH/Skills/Enduro forum.

A politics/shitposting forum. But be careful to not squash chatting amongst biking friends. We all discuss stuff in real life that isn't related to bikes. 

Do women riders need or want their own forum? RLAG, woman specific geometry bikes, reviews by ladies for ladies. 

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4 hours ago, cody said:

I like how much more organized it is than Mojo, but I agree it might be too much. I would be in favor of consolidating a few of them. For example: Ride Calls, Trail Conditions, and Trail Work could be combined into just "Local Trails." All the Austin Ridge Riders subforums could be combined into one. Bikes for sale and Bike components could be combined (but keep non-bike stuff separate). Announcements and Site Feedback could probably be combined too.

Mostly agree, but I don't think a 'Local Trails" forum is needed. I always liked the trail-system-specific threads. Brushy Creek, Pace Bend, SATN had ride calls, trail work notices, trail conditions, uncalled for trail modification identification, etc. There is lots less work involved in only having to go to the one area's thread that you are interested in to get all the information.

Some trail system threads were more used than others, but I think it was a good system. I thought it would be good to make them all stickies. But then I thought about it and decided it's not required.  It acts as a "new post" notification when you see them pop up to the top of the first page.

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Even small forums tend to have some organization to them.  I was never really keen on the "one forum for everything" nature of MoJo, as it makes it more difficult to find posts on specific subjects.  I expect this forum to grow over time, and I will be working to attract new members once I have a proper logo for the site.  I'm super busy right now, so won't have time to really work on that until November.  I can appreciate people used to a single forum finding multiple forums to be more work. 

There are various ways to browse new content without having to actually dive into each forum manually.  Such as the "Unread Content" and "All Activity" links at the top.  And you can subscribe to any threads and/or forums you're interested in, and even browse new posts just in those threads (click "My Activity Streams" at the top and then "Content I Follow").  You can bookmark any of these pages so you can get to them quickly. 

I will watch how the forum evolves over time and consolidate/add forums as necessary.  

 ..Al

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I'm in the "digging it" camp for all the reasons stated.  It makes it easy when I want to find info about a particular place to simply go to the section with the goods, rather than making a search in a general forum that nets every mention of the search term used.

Getting too granular might eventually become an issue in certain realms, but it doesn't feel that way to me as it is now. Keep doin' what you're doin'.

There's also several activity tools that can help keep current threads more visible.

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The layout of the Home Page along with the navigation features already mentioned really allow for the greater granularity IMO. Being able to see at a glance what the most recent posts are across all of the forums is nice, while also looking at each forum description to see which ones have updates. I simply ignore the forums that are of no interested to me, although I do agree as others have stated that some consolidation might make sense down the road. 

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