I'm actually on your side of this (not that I like to pick sides), as I'd prefer things to have a certain degree of organization. I'm in the works of organizing about 40 GB of music and I get really picky as to how I go about organizing things. So I would actually prefer the forum to have [say a few] more sub-categories for the sake of organization.
Yeah, I know what you mean about organization. It would be overdoing it to organize everything. There should be some level of organization for the areas with potential though. And I had a feeling you were debating for my proposition.
If you want to make it into a tree structure debate, then why not make subcategories within General and then have all the topics within each subcategory? In its current state, we're actually breaking tree structure by having some theads be on a higher level in the tree than other less deserving threads.
Well the way things are (and how they are probably going to be), it's not really debating. It's more like those for the sub-category are only coming from a suggestive standpoint since a decision has been made that it's not happening. I'm just throwing a suggestive statement, not really debating the issue as the issue has its answer. I'm sure with time, the sub-category will be necessary somewhere in the future.
Of course, but I think the true debate is about whether it's a good or a bad idea. Whether it influences the decision process itself is another matter.
I always knew a forum as, main threads housed the genre of things, sub-categories to distinguish different threads from others, and topics (threads) to discuss specific aspects of whatever category it fell into. True...
I don't see the point in such a subforum. It's not like we're overloaded with such threads, and most that we have can easily be placed straight on the wiki (which has discussion pages too). I don't know what a subforum would really add.
From what I think, the reason for this to be implemented was to just better organize things (if only just a little).
Rosti, the point is not that we're overloaded. We're actually stunting the growth of such discussion by not giving it room to overload. And again, putting it straight onto the wiki leaves little room for community discussion. Wiki regulars are the ones that add to and mend the wiki and it'll stay that way until we actually reach out to the larger audience of forum visitors. Yes, the user pages, recent changes, and talk pages can already accomplish most of what a subforum would do but it fails one thing. Grabbing the forum visitor's attention. I'm sure not that many people here go to the wiki and look at the user pages, recent changes, or talk pages.
Yep, that's what I'm thinking. It's what our wiki is based on too. Add something. If it's good, it's kept. If it's bad, it's fixed or removed.
Is it wrong of me to throw in the point that I don't actually find this place to be that cluttered? Sure, we have a sort of tetrisy broth of topics going on here, but generally I don't have much problem distinguishing between threads that interest me, and threads that don't. It's very rare that I ever want to find a specific post or thread which isn't on the first two pages, and when I do the search function, though far from brilliant, can usually do the job. More boards could be good, but we're not massively active here for a forum, and if it's split up over 4 or 5 different boards, it could quite easily make this place feel dead. I just don't think that this place continually feels disorganised to merit a large amount of work sorting things out, and for extra boards.
Which brings me back to my earlier point. General is not cluttered to extreme proportions because we are refraining from doing so. This in turn stifles growth.
Is that really the case though? I don't see why people aren't posting threads simply because it would cause clutter. Fair enough with the ARS guide, but that's a bit special, rather than just general activity. If we continue to grow, we will get to the point where one board isn't going to hold it all. I just don't think we're close to that point yet.
I sure have experienced it very often. Skimming, all the differing T-Spin types and setups that are linked to them, all the stuff in edo's thread, and a lot more stuff that have come up in IRC. All the newbie tips threads. It's not really a special case that recently came up because edo brought it up. People just aren't posting them on the forum.
"Which brings me back to my earlier point. General is not cluttered to extreme proportions because we are refraining from doing so. This in turn stifles growth." Believe me, the last thing I would want to do would be to hinder strategy discussion. I simply don't believe this to be the case. I don't think by creating a forum just for strategy a whole bunch of strategy discussions will suddenly appear. I'll tell you what I have noticed, though. I notice now that there's a record board, I sometimes go straight to general and don't bother reading any new threads there. Sometimes I'm just not interested. Now if those record threads were in General Discussion, I would've maybe read and even perhaps contributed to them. But by forcing me to do more work, I am less likely to do this. Now I visit this forum a lot. Just think of the people who don't visit so often and aren't as hardcore. They're more likely to go straight to General and skip Records. Then they won't see that 40 lines or Death thread, and won't get interested in competing. That's where I'm coming from. Unless we're swamped and we need organization, my belief is that it will only hurt growth.
They won't suddenly appear. They'll appear gradually. General didn't grow overnight. You may be looking at this from only one perspective. There may be people that do appreciate the split and do post more records as a direct result of them being easier to find. This may in turn constitute less work. I myself don't appreciate using the search function just to see if there is a certain records thread for me to post in. That's more work for me.
