Merging the Forums (Poll)

Should the Current Events section be merged with General Politics?

  • Total voters
    13
B

BRUTALITOPS

on indefiniate mod break
Contributor
Greetings everyone. I am JUST curious... this doesn't have to mean anything, I am just interested in everyone elses thoughts.

Would you like it if the current events forum and the general politics forum was merged?

For me, I feel it hard to keep track of various threads I have participated in. Yes I use the search function but the disorganization I think hampers me. I prefer to have everything just laid out.

I am just interested in everyone elses thoughts . .
 
It may seem more convenient now to merge them. I believe it would be a mistake, however. If the site takes off and the number of regular posters rises above a certain level -- maybe a hundred or so -- keeping everying mushed together into one forum becomes really chaotic. Believe me: I've been there, done that and have been forced to dig out from under it.

Grouping threads together by general theme really does make sense.
 
Watermark said:
In a smaller forum like this it simply causes lot's of confusion.

Maybe one "economic policy" and one "social policy" thread.
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Some people are easily confused, it seems. :cof1:

I certainly agree that re-labelling the forums might be in order. "General Politics" is like saying "Miscelaneous." I like "Current Events," personally, but "Social Policy" might be a good companion. Or how about "Culture War" if Damo wants to be more flamboyant?

:D
 
I've been trying to think of a good divide. The two are relatively closely named.

I think two forums is starting to get more needed. I have been to boards where too few of them makes it far more confusing than you think. There are also more features like Subscribing to the thread to find out which threads you have taken part in. You can even set it up to e-mail you an replies.
 
Any thread that's has "general" in its name will eventually get so much dumped into it that the rest of the forums will become absolutely irrelevant.

Social policy, Economic policy, Foreign policy, and Whatever Goes cover just about everything imaginable.

In a smaller forum like this setting up 10 different forums would mean that each would have so few posts and threads that the site would seem dead to everyone.
 
If the site get's large enough to mandate it, however, splitting, for instance, "social policy" into two different forums that cover as much territory would get difficult withough creating a "general" forum, and a general forum would make the other forum irrelevant.

If we are going to split up the forums, there needs to be enough difference between each one that a near-equal amount of threads is in each one. No one needs to have 90% of the posts or else we're basically in the same situation we are in now.

With what I proposed, you pretty much know what you're getting. However, for instance, Brent's 7 forums were a nightmare to navigate, and there was very little to distingiush each one. Let's not fall into Brent's or SR's mistakes.
 
But there's very little distinction between the two political ones. It's basically balanced because everyone randomly decides which of the two to post their political threads in. It's pointless to have two forums which are practically the same.

Economs, social, and foreign are well divided, and Rob will hopefully no longer post the information about his latest ingrown toenail in them either. Lumping a 'general' in there, however, would simply mean that everyone will put all of their economic, social, and foreign news in the general forum - I've seen it happen to many sites.

I don't honestly see much point for the games forum...

Then again, I don't even believe I've ever looked in there.
 
Anyway, in the future if it gets to a level where there is serious confusion I'll change things. Getting "confused" between two choices that are well-used? Come on... you can do better than that there H2O.
 
Damocles said:
Anyway, in the future if it gets to a level where there is serious confusion I'll change things. Getting "confused" between two choices that are well-used? Come on... you can do better than that there H2O.
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Well, I wouldn't say it's confusion. It's simply redundant. Everyone uses the current events thread for general politics also, and the less used general politics forum often has current events in it as well as general politics. They're just so simialar it's pointless. It also makes it more difficult to read all of the threads, since they're divided between two forums that are exactly the same.
 
Watermark said:
Well, I wouldn't say it's confusion. It's simply redundant. Everyone uses the current events thread for general politics also, and the less used general politics forum often has current events in it as well as general politics. They're just so simialar it's pointless. It also makes it more difficult to read all of the threads, since they're divided between two forums that are exactly the same.
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The separation actually makes it easier to keep track of new posts. I'm keeping them. I may rename them, but for now it is staying as it is.
 
Damocles said:
I'm sure you do. But it was requested... If you don't care then don't go.
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Well, it's just out of place. We have three very general forums, and then suddenly a very specific forum. If we're going to have a single specific forum, I can think of other much more important topics.
 
LOL. It's not so specific... Deep Breathely. It's the stuff the least on this board will care about, therefore separated enough so people don't have to sort through an overly huge amount of dross to get to the meat.
 
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