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How we can have a better forum - part I: what everybody can see
What can we do to have a better forum? Determine what we can do better, and build it! This is what I'm doing here. Let's take a look at today's forums, identify their problems, and see how we can do a better job.February 20, 2006 4:09 PM
First thing I see which can be improved is forum message categorization. Today's forums have done some effort to let users categorize messages. Which steps are? Today's forums have subforums. Or subgroups.
Forum has some superuser, or administrator, which has said that this forum will have this set of subforums. So the user coming to post question sees a list of forums/subforums, or big list of groups/subgroups/subsubgroups. The user decides which category to post the question to. And finally she or he posts.
Several problems can be seen here. It can be hard for administrator to define good set of subforums. And it can be hard for the user to determine which subforum to post to.
As a result, the visitor may start performing some unwelcomed behavior. She or he starts posting under subforum which administrator think about as inappropriate. Or the visitor copies post into several subforums which everyone think about as inappropriate.
But who said the visitor is wrong? What the forum is for? Is the forum for forum admins, or for its visitors?
My goal is to develop a self-organizing forum which in ideal will have no need for admins. First step is to give power to define message categories to the visitor. The visitor is always right.
So wish me luck, or better give me your feedback and recommendations.
Denis Krukovsky.
3 more in web2.0 dkrukovsky spam idea suggestion forum talkinghub business internet advice
How to Have a Better Forum - Continued
So here is a live story for you on today's forums BIG opportunity for improvement.I search for people to suggest me on talkinghub web design. I have seen a nice forum not so long ago -
http://www.sitepoint.com/forums/index.php?
There is a subforum on site design so I decided to ask people there. I arrived at "Design Your Site":
http://www.sitepoint.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=40
Wow. There are over 10 sub-sub-forums and I still can't post. Which subforum to post into? My question relates to organizing web page layout, and I'm very novice web designer. So subforums like "CSS" and "Graphics" are off and I'm thinking about "Just Starting Your Design" or "Web Page Design".
My next move is pretty predictable. To determine where I should post I do search a forum on my topic's keywords to see where other people post similar questions. I did search for "page layout" and got and idea that the best place to post my question was "Web Page Design" subsubforum. So I did post.
I was wrong. Soon my question was closed:
http://www.sitepoint.com/forums/showthread.php?t=368990
Sitepoint moderator was very kindly to suggest me 2 another subsubforums - "Website Review" and "Design Elements" - to post my question into.
Since the number of suggested subforums is greater then 1 I'm still unsure what forum to post into.
Hey people. This "closing threads" thing just prevents information exchange. Look at talkinghub service. Somebody posted absolutely unrelated spam regarding "emoney exchange" here. I just marked it with "spam" and let it live. Time has passed, and talkinghub started getting hits from people searching for "emoney exchange" service. Currently that post I thought of as "spam" is on top 10 of Google search for "emoney exchange". People reading it might not be thinking of it as "spam". Now they even can organize a community around "emoney exchange" or around the website advertised in the message, share information and tell other people their experiences.
Let it live. Use talkinghub - next generation forum service which is nice to its visitors.
Denis Krukovsky
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