- This topic has 9 replies, 4 voices, and was last updated 11 years, 5 months ago by
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Get rid of the Off Topic forum and FS forum too.
When someone posts an OT item, they do it because they want the community to see it. People will see the subject heading and decide for themselves whether to open it. Posting it in an OT forum guarantees that no one will see it and thus there is no point in posting it. The only reason for trying to force OT items into a ghetto is so that some people get upset when they see messages they are not interested in reading. We should have some trust that posters use their judgement and the OT items actually might have some interest to a subset of the community.
The same is true of For Sale/Wanted. That forum should also be deleted and General used instead. I would bet that 100% of items purchased from FS emails were impulse buys. No one thinks, "gee I think I'll look inside the Gear forum in case someone is selling a CK headset today." Jason posted a Wanted email last year and I sold him a set of wheels. If he had posted that in a FS forum, he would have had to get his wheels elsewhere because I would not have seen it and I would have been deprived of a nice bottle of wine.
-Bob
Get rid of the Off Topic forum and FS forum too.
When someone posts an OT item, they do it because they want the community to see it. People will see the subject heading and decide for themselves whether to open it. Posting it in an OT forum guarantees that no one will see it and thus there is no point in posting it. The only reason for trying to force OT items into a ghetto is so that some people get upset when they see messages they are not interested in reading. We should have some trust that posters use their judgement and the OT items actually might have some interest to a subset of the community.
The same is true of For Sale/Wanted. That forum should also be deleted and General used instead. I would bet that 100% of items purchased from FS emails were impulse buys. No one thinks, "gee I think I'll look inside the Gear forum in case someone is selling a CK headset today." Jason posted a Wanted email last year and I sold him a set of wheels. If he had posted that in a FS forum, he would have had to get his wheels elsewhere because I would not have seen it and I would have been deprived of a nice bottle of wine.
-Bob
Let us ride!
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As of today there have been 249 views of the topics in Off Topic. Seems to me that people do use that forum and isn't wasting space.
chris
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And in the General forum there have been more then 3000 views. Thank you for helping make the point.
-Bob
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So we should just go with one topic…the most popular and get rid of the ones that have low flow?
chris
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Then we could call it… a listserv.
:kim
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Apparently you did not understand my suggestion. There would be exactly the same number of topics, they would just appear in fewer forums and be seen by more people*.
-Bob
*Apparently some of whom will resent seeing them even though they are in a forum and they need not open them.
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I understood. You want to get rid of a forum because you don't think anybody looks there.
" Posting it in an OT forum guarantees that no one will see it and thus there is no point in posting it."
I pointed out that there were 249 views in the OT forum which is a lot more than "no one". PEOPLE DO USE THE OT FORUM I GUARANTEE IT.
chris
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Check the other post. I want to get rid of a forum because I think more people will benefit from the site that way.
-Bob
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Completely, totally, 100% disagree (sorry Bob.)
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This discussion about OT and FS occurs on listservs too. It boils down to this: You can view people who make OT posts and FS/WTB posts as pests or perhaps just mildly annoying. You can try to make them do their thing somewhere else so you don't have to see it if you don't want to. Or you can view them as having something that they think is valuable to others of us on the site and you want them to succeed in whatever their aim is. Whatever that aim, exposing it to more eyes will make that aim more likely to be reached. You have to trust their judgement a little bit. I take the latter view.
The nature of forums is that topics stay near the top if they receive replies, those that don't drift down and onto the second page. 99% of all interaction will be with items on the first page. Less interesting topics will disappear more quickly.
If the volume is high enough in a given forum then topics will disappear onto the second page too quickly. That is the time to subdivide the traffic in that forum by creating a new one.
In my mind there are two reasons to create new forums. 1) Because the area benefits from the single focus, or 2) because the traffic in an existing forum is too high. Rides clearly fall into 1).
FS/WTB and OT do not benefit from a single focus because they suffer from being seen by fewer eyeballs. They are "impulse" topics. Who is interested in a given post in these areas is unpredictable.
When the general forum gets too crowded then OT or FS might be candidates to move out. However, trail work and new trail development seem more likely to benefit from a focused forum.
-Bob
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