Why there isn't more activity on these forums
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| Feb 16th, 03:35 | |
Bart_KJ6BWBJoined: Aug 28th 2009, 08:43Total Topics: 0 Total Posts: 0 |
Continued from: http://www.arrl.org/forum/topics/view/618 Here's my thoughts on the matter. 1. Some people don't like the forum software. Some have suggested PHPBB. Some have said that then the forums wouldn't look like this. It's not difficult to give a PHPBB forum a new skin and make it look like whatever a person wants to make it look like. Personally, I prefer a wiki. It's way more customizable and far more powerful. On my wiki, I can host YouTube videos, run all sorts of cool CSS tricks (like putting photo captions under an image so it looks like a polaroid where someone wrote on the bottom what the image is of), etc. A wiki can be set so that only registered users can post, so that users must verify their email, that an administrator must approve the account, etc., mediawiki software is really powerful and you can customize the heck out of it. Go with what seem to make the most people happy. :) 2. There are way too many subforums. The forum looks really complicated. I understand the desire to have a place for everything and everything in its place, but at first glance it's overwhelming. In the five different contesting subforums, over the past couple years, there's been an average of a new topic ever fortnight (every two weeks). That's too many places to check for new posts, because it takes a second for each page to load. So a person has to jump into a forum, see if there's a new post, go back to the main page, jump into a new forum, see if there's a new post, etc. "But people don't want to see posts that they don't care about, we want to only show posts that they want to see." The traffic here is light enough that people can handle seeing a post or two that they don't care about. If it take people 5 months to come back and check the forums again, then there might be 10 topics and it might take two minutes to read the titles and see whether the topic might be interesting. The goal is to drive traffic, not to so compartmentalize things that it's a real pain to go see what people are posting about. 3. Thread Necromancy. Threads that are over 3-4 weeks old or so can't be responded to. Why's it a bad thing? "Because the discussion is over and done with." It's not over and done with for random new person X. If the problem is that people keep beating a dead horse, then some forum management is required, possibly warning people not to keep beating that horse, or even giving out day-long bans (or longer, as seems appropriate). If someone sees something interesting from a long time ago and wants to comment on it, what's the harm in that? And isn't it better to have comments be in the proper context, so that you can more easily see what other people have said on the subject and how or why the new person is responding? 4. Advertising. It's difficult to find the forums. Sure, the html link is easy, arrl.org/forum but I only saw a brief text link to the forums on the main page. If you want people to get involved with the forums, it needs screen real estate up on top, up with the "On the Air" and Membership tabs, etc. Edit: 5. (although something of a rehash of 1) On pretty much every other forum on the internet, my browser signs me in. It won't do that for these forums. |
| Feb 18th, 04:04 | |
AA6ETotal Topics: 0 Total Posts: 0 |
I agree about having too many topical sub-forums here. I generally don't look at them at all. I just use "view new posts", which gives all new postings in all forums. This works as long as there aren't too many posts -- and there aren't, alas. It's fair to say the League is completely fired up about "social media" in general, and that would include forums. If you want something better, talk it up with your League folks. Take your SM or Division Director out to lunch. (Complaining here is fine, but probably not especially productive. :-) 73 Martin AA6E |
| Feb 23rd, 06:14 | |
frog78Joined: Feb 20th, 15:14Total Topics: 0 Total Posts: 0 |
Hi, I just passed my tech and gen exam and am looking to study for the Extra Class. I was lucky to discover the Ham Whisperer, and am hoping to find something similar to study for the Extra. One of my particular stumbling blocks is the math. The rest I can get my arms around. Any suggestions or thoughts? |
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