TOO MANY FORUMS - THIS MUST BE SORTED OUT!!!!!!

[DrJazzz]

This is such an easy mistake to make when starting boards.

For starting boards up it is VITAL that each forum keeps turning over and appears lively.

If you guys want to save these boards from a painful, lingering death we must condense it into no more than two forums. In fact, I would suggest just one.

Really, no more are needed; all they do is serve to dilute the energy.

Having a forum that you need to split because it becomes too busy is NOT A PROBLEM. It's a bridge you are very happy to cross when you get to it. You must think of forums as rooms at a party. One forum can hold hundreds of posts a day. It is crucial that you have one busy room where you direct your guests to, rather than spreading them out, otherwise your party will soon lose it's life.

may I add I have had a lot of experience posting on BBs.

[DrJazzz]

If you doubt me here's some advice on starting a web community

[Ian]

I suggest everyone uses the "View posts since last visit" function on the right of the forum homepage.

This is the only way I can keep an up to date track of what's going on.

[DrJazzz]

exactly Ian. The reason 'view new posts' helps is because is effectively makes one forum out of the whole site. But it would be far more sensible to just have one (or at most two) forums. In fact, not just sensible, the whole thing is going to fall flat on its arse otherwise, trust me

[xmasdale]

I'm sorry, Dr Jazzz,

but I don't agree with you. Having a mere one or two categories will make it difficult to find posts on the topic you're interested in. If, for example you are interested in campaigning issues, and there is no designated category for that, you will have to waste a lot of time searching through all the categories to see if someone has written anything about campaigning in any of them; because of the difficulty you might not bother.

Your suggestion reminds me of a proposal to reorganise the way books are sorted in a library: do away with the normal Dewey categorisation which enables us to pinpoint exactly where a book is within a moment or so and merely have three broad categories: fiction, non-fiction and reference. Our library will now look so much more lively as borrowers jostle with each other endlessly sorting through masses of books in the hope of finding what they want.

Give me the quiet, ordered library any day.

And I want a category on this forum for posting campaigning issues, which are central to what we do.

Noel

[DrJazzz]