New thread groupings

[chamoniards]

I like what's been done with the rearrangment of the message board. I wonder if we need three separate groups for rides though, couldn't we just lump all the rides groups together, into one 'rides' or at least into two, road and off road?

They all seem to be inverted too, with the most recent at the bottom.

[Forum Admin]

Consider it as "work in progress"... I'll see what I can do. I think the re-order is due to me working through the threads starting with the newest. This will probably all come out in the wash as people start posting again - unless I can find a button somewhere that does it. Guess that's the trouble with software that's endlessly configurable (ever have one of those "I know it's here somewhere" moments?).

I'm tempted to delete stuff more than a couple of months old if noone has any objection. That would include what's in the current "Archive" board.

[Forum Admin]

I've found the button and re-ordered all existing threads. I've re-assigned the first three pages of posts, and deleted everything else. Hope that's gonna be OK!

I'll leave the categories alone for a few days, and see what other suggestions come forward.

[Deleted]

Actually I have to say the opposite - I much prefer having all the threads in a single place, so that I don't have to go searching through 5 folders on the off chance there's something interesting down there. Single-folder forums have been shown to scale to large groups, eg. singletrackworld.com (though the signal/noise has vanished there over the years), so that shouldn't be an argument against.

I felt one of the reasons the dp board was doing so well was that by concentrating everybody's attention on a single "subgroup" there is enough of a critical mass to promote lively discussion. Having multiple subgroups would tend to spread people thinner and result in some people being unaware of some threads, etc.

I would say that most road forums fall into this trap of over-organizing to the ultimate detriment of the site. The addiscombe forum is like this, as are the forums (forae?) on the non-club news sites which you would expect to be thriving.

At least if you do this, can there be a view which includes all threads from all subgroups? The dynamo forum has one of these, though it is an annoying scolling script thingy which is almost as slow as checking all the subgroups manually.

[Steve Sorba]

I think Keith makes some good points. It now takes significantly longer to check through the various categories to find out what's going on. Is there a possibility of an 'active topics' link which will immediately bring up all the threads which have been updated since the users last visit? cf the cyclingplus forum

[Forum Admin]

I've had a hunt around and can't find any way of either bringing up "updates since your last visit" or "alternative view, showing all threads together".

There is, however, a "last 10 posts" link at the bottom of the opening page, which will quickly give someone a flavour of current debates. Likewise, the right-hand column of the opening page shows who has been updating what.

I will hold off doing any more and wait and see what other feedback there is. It may be worth pulling back again from the 8 or so topics we currently have.

[Deleted]

Hi Bob,

Not to detract from the organizing you've done, but I'm with Keith on the reconsolidating the categories into a single one.

--T

[Deleted]

On a related note - it looks like the recent change to move content to the dulwichparagon.com site has payed off - now google is indexing it properly and www.dulwichparagon.com is the first entry (as you would expect it to be!) when you search for "dulwich paragon"!

This is a big improvement...

[SeanMcKibben]

i far prefer the previous single list of topics - easy to see what people are talking about and a nice randomness of subjcts plus definitley quicker to check out. I find it a pain having to look through the different subject lists.

[Deleted]

Have to agree with Sean on this one.