Re: New Forum as requested...

Posted by BH On 2009/7/28 11:00:06

LINC400 -

I'm not sure that can be done within the confines of any forum application. I would rahter avoid a calendar function becuase that disconnects from the opportunity to discuss and attach photos, links, etc. Given past discussion of shows and events, I thought this dedicated forum would be a good compromise.

I'd like to suggest the base year and location (city, state) ALWAYS be entered in the Subject line of the opening post of each thread. That info then defaults through each subsequent post, unless somebody changes it (and they should NOT change in this case). You don't have to look very far to see that some members have taken care to enter exactly such info in the past.

Now, you have a point that when new posts are added to past threads, they move up the list. However, from what I have seen there's a pattern to discussion of shows and events:

1) News of event gets posted.

2) Activity of that thread increases as the event gets closer, keeping it near the top of the list of topics, but might drop off a bit during the event (while the interested members are participating there).

3) Activity in that thread returns immediately following the event, and may even increase for a few days after, floating it all the while, but then falls off.

4) The thread moves back down the list of Forum Topics as news of other events gets posted.

Yet, how many events would be competing for the same time and space? How far down the list do you have to look down the list to find what you want, compared to wading through all the posts in the General Forum (and a few that were actually in the V8 Forum)?

Meanwhile, did you take a look at the end of the Forum Topics list? There's a drop down menu that lets you resort the list by a variety of criteria. The default is by "last post time", which is best all-around, but you might try sorting by "Publish date" for your purposes.

I must admit that people sometimes start a new thread for the same event and not only to attach photos. However, there's no law against that, and no one can control that. Yet, I wonder how much of that was due to a previous thread on the same event being lost in the THOUSANDS of posts now in the General Forum. Users have to take some responsibility and accept some trade-offs.

However, if you can paint a clear picture of a better approach (like storyboarding it) or help with programming a new feature, I'm sure BigKev will listen.