Forum structure re-vamp ideas

[David Bailey]

OK, just because I'm a glutton for punishment, here goes

At the moment, we have the following sections and areas:

Ceroc / dance technical discussions
- Let's talk about dance
- Beginners corner
- Intermediate Corner
- The Land of a 1000 dances
- The DJ Booth

Discussion Lounge
- Chit Chat
- Social events
- Hall of Fame
- Big Forum Gathering & Awards
- Geeks' Corner
- Take it upstairs...

Fun & games
- Fun and Games
- Ceroc Scotland Book Club
- Big Brother House
- The Diary Room

Testing testing
- Forum technical problems / Questions / Suggestions..
- test messages
- Take it outside!

That's 4 main sections and 18 subsections - which is a lot. 3 pages of screen to scroll through, just for naviagation :eek:.

For purposes of simplification and rationalisation - e.g. to remove bits that aren't used much - I'd suggest making the following changes:

Merge "Beginners Corner" and "Intermediate Corner" subsections into a new subsection "Learning Ceroc".
EITHER, merge "Big Forum Gathering & Awards" subsection (and relevant threads from "Social events") into a new "Weekenders" subsection, OR merge "Big Forum Gathering & Awards" into "Social events".
Move "Hall of Fame" threads into "Chit Chat" subsection
Move the "I have just read" thread into Chit Chat and zap Ceroc Scotland Book Club
Zap both the "Big Brother House" and "The Diary Room" subsections
Merge the "Fun and Games" subsection into the "Discussion Lounge" section
Move "Take it upstairs..." subsection to "Testing Testing" - and rename "Testing Testing" as "The Outer Limits" :)


So, after all that, we'd then have a structure looking something like this:

Ceroc / dance technical discussions
- Let's talk about dance
- Learning Ceroc
- The Land of a 1000 dances
- The DJ Booth

Discussion Lounge
- Chit Chat
- Social events
- Fun and Games
- Geeks' Corner

The Outer Limits
- Take it upstairs...
- Take it outside!
- Forum technical problems / Questions / Suggestions..
- test messages

So that would be 3 main sections and 12 subsections, which would hopefully be more user-friendly.

What do people think?
Alternative suggestions?
It's fine as is?

[killingtime]

Since I mostly use my User CP/Recent Posts or Search (well not really the latter) then I don't really mind how it is laid out :really:.

[WittyBird]

So... Just out of curiousity while you were lurking and not posting you were dreaming up ways of bombarding us on your return? :rolleyes:

[David Bailey]

Since I mostly use my User CP/Recent Posts or Search (well not really the latter) then I don't really mind how it is laid out :really:.
Lots of people do use "New Posts" only - I do - but lots of people, especially newbies, will probably use the default navigation structure. And a clear, consistent structure should encourage more usage and more posting.


So... Just out of curiousity while you were lurking and not posting you were dreaming up ways of bombarding us on your return? :rolleyes:
I've got a list, I'm working through it... :na:

[El Salsero Gringo]

I've got a list, I'm working through it... :na:Let's just hope it's the best ideas that you're saving 'till last.

[David Franklin]

I've got a list, I'm working through it... :na:That wouldn't be a little list (http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/poems/135.html), by any chance?

[LMC]

I've got a list, I'm working through it... :na:
*breaks into Gilbert & Sullivan mode*

David Franklin, we need you...

EDIT: note to self: refresh screen when interrupted by phone call before hitting 'Post' button :rolleyes:

[David Bailey]

Blimey, and people complain about drivellous threads :rolleyes:

Anyone want to, you know, bother to comment on the actual topic?

[killingtime]

Anyone want to, you know, bother to comment on the actual topic?

I did :flower:.

[Gadget]

What do people think?
Alternative suggestions?
It's fine as is?
I agree that the BBHouse and DiaryRoom should go.

I like the fact that "Beginners" are seperate in the technical bit, because it means that you know how to pitch any replys.

I think that "Testing Testing" should be re-named, but I don't know to what (it needs to be something like "Technical", but more friendly and less dance orientated) Perhaps move Geeks corner in here? Or perhaps the three sub-sections just put into the root rather than under the one heading? (but I don't like having "outside" as one of the primary folders)

I think that "Fun & Games" and "Book Club" should be moved into the discussion lounge and the "Fun & Games" sub-group removed.

"Hall of Fame" I think is quite good and probably would like it moved to the "Technical" rather than "Chit-chat" since it should be for bios of teachers and/or folk that have influenced MJ.

[Tessalicious]

OK, DJ, because I'm bored and you obviously want some feedback:

I partly agree with KT, that most people probably use the New Posts or my User CP for subscribed threads, but back when I was a noob with no clue about how these things worked (well, at least I'm not a noob anymore) I used the navigation-by-forum system, so it would be good to have these tidied up. I like most of it, although not sure about merging Beginners and Intermediate sections - what would you allow non-member access to?

Oh, and where would you put this Weekenders section of which you speak? Not to mention the lack of area-specification within Social Events that you seemed so keen on?

[LMC]

Anyone want to, you know, bother to comment on the actual topic?
Don't be silly, it's much more fun to mock.

Since DF only posted a link to the proper version, here's a modest attempt from me:

As some day it may happen that a victim must be found,
I've got a little list--I've got a little list
Of forum deep offenders who might well be underground,
And who never would be missed--who never would be missed!
There's the pestilential nuisances who insist on writing text--
All posters who restrict themselves to which event is next--
All the low'rers of the tone - innuendo? No, sledgehammer--
All the geeks (with too much physics) must go straight to the slammer--
And all hotshots, perves and stinkers we can easily resist--
They'd none of 'em be missed--they'd none of 'em be missed!

CHORUS. He's got 'em on the list--he's got 'em on the list;
And they'll none of 'em be missed--they'll none of
'em be missed.

[ducasi]

David, I like your proposals in general, except I think that Beginner's Corner is valuable on its own.

Intermediate corner is lacking a positive mission statement to drive it forward, but renamed to something like "Technique and Tips" it would be a good place for the really technical stuff, allowing "Let's talk about dance" to be more relaxed...

[David Franklin]

I tried to keep a little closer to the original text than LMC...


As some day it may happen that a victim must be found,
I've got a little list--I've got a little list
Of dance etiquette offenders who might well be underground,
And who never would be missed--who never would be missed!
There's the pestilential nuisances who bounce on every beat --
All people who wear hob nailed boots, and trample on my feet --
All leaders who will drop you till you land on the floor flat --
All follows who are up themselves, and look at you like that --
And all third person dancers who on double-trouble insist--
They'd none of 'em be missed--they'd none of 'em be missed!

CHORUS. He's got 'em on the list--he's got 'em on the list;
And they'll none of 'em be missed--they'll none of
'em be missed.

There's the priapic blues dancer, and the others of his race,
And the strictly sinful plaguarist--I've got him on the list!
And the people who eat garlic and puff it in your face,
They never would be missed--they never would be missed!
Then the idiot who praises, with enthusiastic tone,
All dances but MJ, and every venue but his own;
And the lady from the provinces, who dresses like a guy,
And who "doesn't think she waltzes, but would rather like to try"; {N.B. didn't edit those 2 lines - the more things change... }
And that singular anomaly, the lady talking pish--
I don't think she'd be missed--I'm sure she'd not he missed!

[David Bailey]

I like most of it, although not sure about merging Beginners and Intermediate sections - what would you allow non-member access to?
Good point - maybe best keep them as is then...


Oh, and where would you put this Weekenders section of which you speak? Not to mention the lack of area-specification within Social Events that you seemed so keen on?
That'll be in the comment:

EITHER, merge "Big Forum Gathering & Awards" subsection (and relevant threads from "Social events") into a new "Weekenders" subsection, OR merge "Big Forum Gathering & Awards" into "Social events".
The "Weekenders" subsection would of course be under the Discussion Lounge section. I didn't list it, because I dunno if it's a good idea or not. As the majority of Social Events threads are about weekenders anyway, a "Non-weekender social events" subsection could then be left as a desert of underuse, punctuated only by the occasional plaintive "Who's going where this weekend" thread... :devil:

Or maybe we could simply rename Social Events as "Something for the weekend" :whistle:


{ snip, well, all of it }
And people think I spend too much time on this stuff... (Oh, and it's "plagiarist" )

[WittyBird]

Let's just hope it's the best ideas that you're saving 'till last.

:rofl: I'm finding it so difficult to concentrate at work this afternoon :clap:
Going to the pub didn't help, now I'm in an even more P1$$ taking mood than normal :rolleyes:

[David Franklin]

Anyone want to, you know, bother to comment on the actual topic?Oh all right (drags serious self, kicking and screaming, from under the bed).

I think you're right that the current substructure of "Ceroc / dance technical discussions" is confusing; when I'm looking for a post I often end up searching about 4 categories before I find it. I'm not sure your suggestion is much better though - it's not clear what the differences are between

- Let's talk about dance
- Learning Ceroc
- The Land of a 1000 dances

While we're at it, is it "Learning Ceroc" or "Learning Modern Jive"?

I don't particularly care what the categories are, as long as it's reasonably clear where a particular thread belongs (though there will always be gray areas).

Kind of agree with you on most of the rest, but to be honest, not that bothered about the non-dance sections anyhow. I think subdividing "Social Events" (by region and/or having a section specifically for weekenders) might be a good idea as well.

[Lou]

- The Land of a 1000 dances

And while we're at it - can that one get renamed, please? Either The land of a thousand dances, or The land of 1000 dances...

Thankyou. :blush:

[Gojive]

In addition to the re-structure proposals, I really think this idea from Merovingian warrants some better airtime too :) ...

http://www.cerocscotland.com/forum/showthread.php?p=235294#post235294

[bigdjiver]

I think we have to have "Beginners corner" in order to make them feel that they belong here.

[Gadget]

What, just so they can feel like they belong? :rolleyes:

[David Bailey]

What, just so they can feel like they belong? :rolleyes:
Hey, life's all about feeling, maaaan......

Anyway, I'm not proposing a restructure to be fuzzy and cuddly, I'm proposing it because, in my semi-professional opinion, I think it'll be more user-friendly if we have less sections, and more clarity of definition of each section / subsection.

[fletch]

Hey, life's all about feeling, maaaan......

Anyway, I'm not proposing a restructure to be fuzzy and cuddly, I'm proposing it because, in my semi-professional opinion, I think it'll be more user-friendly if we have less sections, and more clarity of definition of each section / subsection.
i'll get confused what ever happens:confused:

but can we have spell check on it please:rolleyes:

[bigdjiver]

What, just so they can feel like they belong? :rolleyes:I see all of the discussions on weekenders, Scottish venues, London venues. WCS, Tango, pages on single move, chit chat, etc and quite often I feel that I do not belong here.

How many people do MJ every week? How many regularly come to this forum? It is a recurring problem that the insiders cannot see things as an outsider does. The "A clique is invisible from inside" syndrome.

[fletch]

insiders cannot see things as an outsider does. The "A clique is invisible from inside" syndrome.

So how do you know when you are 'in' or 'out' :confused:

:rolleyes:

[El Salsero Gringo]

So how do you know when you are 'in' or 'out' :confused:

:rolleyes:If you have to ask...

[Gadget]

Not sure if this is someone else's idea; but I would like to be able to 'police' my own threads in the 'technical' area:
- set a self-destruct on chit-chat posts,
- split them if they go on a tangent.
- cut 'chit-chat' or 'insulting' text from otherwise good responses by other people. (leave in a footprint)

Perhaps only able to do this after you gain so much rep or have been a member for so long... but would this add to the 'cliqueism'?

[David Bailey]

Not sure if this is someone else's idea; but I would like to be able to 'police' my own threads in the 'technical' area:
- set a self-destruct on chit-chat posts,
- split them if they go on a tangent.
- cut 'chit-chat' or 'insulting' text from otherwise good responses by other people. (leave in a footprint)
Excellent idea :clap: - thread ownership, hopefully reducing the workload for the moderators and keeping topics on-topic.

At the moment, this is done simply by posting "please stay on-topic" requests - for example, I know Lynn has (very successfully IMO) informally done this on her Learning Tango thread by insisting we talk about, well, learning tango. But it'd be nice to have some moderating tools to back it up.


Perhaps only able to do this after you gain so much rep or have been a member for so long... but would this add to the 'cliqueism'?
Nah, let anyone do it - if you can start a good thread, you should be able to moderate it. And if you over-moderate, you'll kill the thread, so there's a built-in incentive to anyone to keep threads both interesting and on-topic.

[ducasi]

Not sure if this is someone else's idea; but I would like to be able to 'police' my own threads in the 'technical' area:
- set a self-destruct on chit-chat posts,
- split them if they go on a tangent.
- cut 'chit-chat' or 'insulting' text from otherwise good responses by other people. (leave in a footprint) I've been looking at a rival piece of software to vBulletin called "SMF (http://www.simplemachines.org/)".

It has, amongst its many features...

"Ability to allow members to use moderation on just topics they posted."

I don't think that vBulletin offers this feature.

However, you are relying on the thread "owner" being around, interested, and wise enough to moderate their thread. Perhaps what you're really asking for is more pro-active moderators? :)

[David Bailey]

However, you are relying on the thread "owner" being around, interested, and wise enough to moderate their thread. Perhaps what you're really asking for is more pro-active moderators? :)
You could say the same about moderators themselves - unless there's a special Moderator Course / Certificate of course (there could be, it's unlikely I'll ever find out).

And if the owners don't do any moderation, where's the loss? It's no different from the situation now.

[ducasi]

You could say the same about moderators themselves ...
Well our current moderators do a pretty good job... :worthy:

Sometimes I wish they were a little more pro-active, but I'm sure they do a lot more work behind the scenes that I don't see. :respect:

[DavidY]

Lots of people do use "New Posts" only - I do I used to do this. I used to read every thread on the forum. However as the forum grows and the number of posts per day increases, it gets increasingly harder to keep up in this way.

So the structure of the forum matters to me more as having other navigation tools (in addition to New Posts) becomes more important.

[robd]

Not sure it is necessarily evidence of the need for a revamp but I remember when I first found the forum (via a Google Search) I then bookmarked the place I arrived at which was http://www.cerocscotland.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=8

I didn't realise for 2 months that there were whole other groups of subforums there and it was only after posting a review of MJC in the wrong forum that someone kindly pointed me in the right direction. My background is in information retrieval (read: librarianship) and now my role is more related to IT so if I missed the entire structure of the forum I suspect many others did and do too.

I would vote to keep Beginners corner and Intermediates separate as I see a different role for each - I know they aren't the most high traffic of sections but I do return to them more often than the others.

Robert

[Franck]

Just to let you know I'm reading all these suggestions and agree with many of them. I have been working on a general re-structure for a while now, so things will happen. I'm also waiting for the new version of vbulletin which offers some exciting new features.
Keep the suggestions / debate coming and watch out for a few changes in the next month or two! :cheers:

[Stuart M]

Was thinking of hanging about for a learned posting actualy on dance ..... could end up being like Waiting for Godot though. :rolleyes:
In the light of this comment, and the fact that whenever I hit "New Posts" it tends to look like this nowadays:


Happy Birthday Person A!
Look at this flash game wot I found
Hair-splitting political debate
Word association
Anyone going to that event somewhere?
Special Happy Birthday Person B!
Movie/book/quotes/lyrics
Even More Special Happy Birthday Person C!!!
What's on this weekend?
Word disassociation


... and so on, how about 10 points of rep to anyone starting a thread which is actually about dancing? Could even extend the idea further and zero off everyone's rep, or neg-rep folk starting threads in the non-dance sections.

Not that I'm speaking from a position of strength here, I know, or knocking any of the above threads per se - it'd be nice to see an incentivisation scheme though to remind folk that it is, ATEOTD, a dance forum

[David Bailey]

... and so on, how about 10 points of rep to anyone starting a thread which is actually about dancing?
You crazy fool you. :innocent:

Personally, I doubt that'd work. What I'd really like to see is a "mark thread as read" function...

[Rhythm King]

What- like the "Mark Threads As Read" option, under Quick Links?

[Lou]

What- like the "Mark Threads As Read" option, under Quick Links?
Surely that's Threads. As in plural. As in all.

It would be really useful to select only specific ones . :flower:

[Stuart M]

You crazy fool you. :innocent:

Personally, I doubt that'd work. What I'd really like to see is a "mark thread as read" function...
I do that already - regularly. But they keep coming - I mean they're in the room man, they're in the f***ing room...Reading's off the charts man! They're all around us man!


:eek:

[David Bailey]

What- like the "Mark Threads As Read" option, under Quick Links?
:confused: I've got "Mark Forums Read", but I thought that was for the whole unread bits of the Forum rather than specific threads?

So I don't think I can, for example, mark a birthday thread as read - unless I'm being dumber than usual?

[El Salsero Gringo]

How about the ability to filter out forums from the "New Posts" search?

(Maybe you can already do this and I'm too stupid to work out how.)

[Cruella]

What- like the "Mark Threads As Read" option, under Quick Links?
Oh Pants! Last time i listen to you RK. Thought i'd click on that to see what it did...........:rolleyes:

(Makes mental note to listen to Lou instead)

[Gadget]

How about the ability to filter out forums from the "New Posts" search?

(Maybe you can already do this and I'm too stupid to work out how.)
:yeah: took the words out of my mouth
(actually I was thinking on opting in to the forums you wanted to view, but it's the same thing.)

The alternative is to simply click on the relevant area of the forum and the ones you've not looked at are in bold.

[David Bailey]

Can I just say, :respect: to Franck for taking on board these wild ideas, listening to people and making changes. I love you Franck :flower: :na:

Any more suggestions?

[Gojive]

Can I just say, :respect: to Franck for taking on board these wild ideas, listening to people and making changes. I love you Franck :flower: :na:

Any more suggestions?

Ask for his hand in marriage? :na: