The new alert feature, in the top right, is how I find all my threads. It usually alerts me when someone responds to one of my posts or if there's new posts in any of the threads I've been in recently. I mainly use that to navigate the site. I find it very helpful because before they switched over to the new theme I would look through every single thread in the index and open the ones I thought I might be interested in new tabs. That took up a lot more time and like you said it was easy to miss stuff on the second page and beyond. I still do that but a lot more casually - we seem to be getting a lot less new threads than in the past so it's a lot more manageable. The alerts keep me on top of the discussions I'm involved in and most of the time that's all I care about
I depend on the alerts as well, and they're nice in that they tell me if someone "liked" a post (a little praise is a good thing now and then).
With vBulletin, I had my preferences set to 40 posts/page, 40 threads/page (the maximum, I believe). That meant a lot less time wasted on loading new pages, and greater likelihood of finding interesting stuff on the first page. XenForo doesn't allow that flexibility.
I've been harping on about U.S. politics because in my mind if there is such a large sub-section of the site about a specific .. genre.. then to me that implies that there should be a subforum for the genre/subject/whatever. Enough people seem to talk about Entertainment related issues, so we have an Entertainment subforum to talk about all that. Makes sense to me. So why not having one for politics? In contrast we have a subforum for "Computer Talk" and there's hardly anything going on in there. Logistically speaking and from a usability point of view that doesn't make sense to me. IMO it just leads to people avoiding that subforum because they know that it's dead and it leads to greenhorns looking at the OT forum and concluding that it's perhaps not for them because they don't care about politics.
Something TrekBBS did several years ago was to make a U.S. Politics subforum just for the duration of the presidential election campaign, and after it was over, the threads were just folded back into the main forum. It made it a lot nicer for the non-Americans and people who weren't into talking about that stuff, and those who did want to discuss it could do so without being grouched at by the people who didn't like to see 10 threads on the first page that dealt with the election.
What I'd prefer, actually, is a subforum of OT for the serial threads. That way the old ones wouldn't have to be archived and forgotten, and many of the excellent posts not even counted in literal terms. I'd held off for a long time posting in those threads because it just seems like a waste of effort when they end up archived - because how many people remember they're there? Sometimes it would be nice to go back and read some of the conversations - maybe turn them into a thread if there's scope for new discussion.
I'd also like an index of the "Ask" threads. Of course it would take a great deal of manual effort to put one together, since we can't actually do a search for them (the word "ask" is too short and too common, so the search is disallowed).
One reason why I rarely start new threads is the preponderance of religion, politics, American pop culture, and serial threads, which give the impression that nobody's interested in Canadian stuff. So most of what I want to say gets said on CBC.ca, where the moderation is... incompetent and unaccountable, to put it nicely. There's a lot to talk about, but considering the
reluctance some people seem to have to treat Canada as anything but a dumb joke, I've been reluctant to make the effort. Why bother, when it will just be spammed?
I bet a lot of thought and strategy has gone into the forum's and subforums' design, so it must make sense from some point of view that I'm not privy to. Which is fine. And I don't think the forum is dying, but I remember it being a lot livelier with a lot of different topics being discussed. Which as has already been pointed out is something I could help improve, but I'm just one user and it's a lot easier to just point out the problems and sit back and take a sip of my drink and move on
Some forums and subforums are standard on most sites (or should be). Those would include a "welcome to the forum" area where the rules are laid out (and kept up to date), a "how to do ____" subforum (upload an avatar, change a sig, use the search feature, use BBCode, etc.), a subforum for questions, comments, and feedback, and a subforum where new people can say hello and introduce themselves. This stuff is
basic, but it's amazing how some forum owners either don't bother, or consider it a waste of time - and then wonder why some people get frustrated because they're having trouble. It's like inviting someone to your home and then snarling at them because they don't know the house rules and you didn't bother to mention them - just assumed that people would know them automatically.
The main area where the thought and creativity come in is deciding how to organize the categories, forums, and subforums that pertain to the main reason for the forum's existence. CFC is well-organized in terms of the Civ area, for example.
Of course every site needs an off-topic area. It drove me nuts on TWoP (Television Without Pity) in that they would allow people to discuss Sonny Corinthos (the General Hospital character) having bipolar disorder, but they would delete the posts and infract the poster if they said so much as a sentence about Maurice Benard the actor having bipolar disorder or anything about the disease itself.
The visuals matter. I'm using the black forum skin right now because it's more restful on the eyes than the others. I miss the old blue forum skin I had. Even smileys matter. Petek installed the hug smileys I asked for -
and
- and it's appreciated that we can ask for new ones and get them if a good enough reason is presented as to why they would be beneficial and not abused. Would you believe that TrekBBS doesn't even have a tribble smiley? The admins there are not receptive to new smiley requests, even if they're absolutely relevant to the board.
On the Invision forums I run, we have many smileys.
Many. There can never be too many. The avatar sizes are quite generous as well, since people like to be creative. Some avatars are miniature works of art, and people should be able to show them off as long as they're not the kind to invoke the Wrath of Google for being "inappropriate" or are too busy.
TrekBBS has avatar contests in most of the forums there. I've entered (won a few times), and they're fun. My suggestion to have this activity here went over like the proverbial lead balloon, though, and I honestly don't understand why. It's all in fun, the winner chooses the theme for the next contest, and people can find new avatars to use if they want.
I'm only checking the OT section, but I think the forum is still going.
As
@Hygro said. I'd like to merge all the OT forums into one though. I think that would make for more diverse and interesting threads, with more activity overall.
It took a long time to lobby for the A&E forum, and convince the admins to allow it. There is a definite need for it to remain separate, for the sake of the creative activities there that would get swallowed up and lost in OT. The DYOS guys were pushed around from forum to forum to forum in years past, and lost some of their material to arbitrary pruning. Last I heard, they're still content to have a home in A&E where they can discuss their stories and art without risk of anything being deleted or moved somewhere else. As for Iron Pen... if there was any chance at all of it making a go in OT, I'd have tried it already. I sincerely doubt it would remain on the main page for longer than a day, if even that long. It's an activity that relies not only on the writers, but on other people being willing to read and critique the stories (in a constructive way). That can't happen if they end up 5 pages down.
This seems to be a fight that comes up at least once or twice a year, and it's disrespectful to the people who
are okay with the subforums. I'm not only talking about A&E, but also others. If I have a question about computers, I know where to ask. If I want to read about history, I know where I can find threads about history. If I want to discuss the Olympics (and it's one of the years when the Games are happening), I'll drop into the Sports forum.
I'm in favor of trying new things, but throwing everything all together is not something I'd support. There's a reason these subforums were created - there were people who saw the need for them, and they work. Daily traffic isn't everything. Doctor Who, for example, is seasonal. In the years (or half-years) when the show isn't on, of course that thread will be quiet. You don't see people discussing the Olympics every day, but they do when the Games are actually happening. And consider how many views a thread gets. There's a lot of activity going on even if posting isn't - because people are reading, and information and opinions are being conveyed. I don't comment on everything I read, because if someone else has already expressed the same opinion as I have, why should I bother repeating it? So if I find the post useful, interesting, or entertaining, I'll "like" it and move on.
). While the most interest I noticed on the Canadian election, which has arguably more of an impact on the U.S., most people just kinda commented that "oh, the pretty guy won yesterday...".
