Breaking RSU into many categories

[Gilby]

I'll be adding some more categories to the forums and will be breaking up the RSU forum into these. Below are the categories I came up with, please let me know if I missed something or about any other changes you recommend. This also affects the newsgroup and email users as they will be sent to RSU with the different prefixes to help you all sort through it all.

Beginner Help - sent to RSU with prefix [Beginners]
MUni and Trials - with prefix [MUni]
Freestyle - with prefix [Freestyle]
Commuting and Long Distance - with prefix [Commuting]
Games - with prefix [Games]

Building Unicycles - with prefix [Building]
Product Review - with prefix [Products]
MarketPlace (for sale, wanted) - with prefix [MarketPlace]

Events - with prefix [Events]
Multimedia (Videos, Photos, and Websites) - with prefix [Multimedia]
Stories - with prefix [Stories]

Miscellaneous Unicycling Topics - with prefix [Misc]
Just Conversation - not sent to RSU

[john_childs]

What happens when someone starts a thread from the newsgroup or mailing list without a prefix in the subject?

[Gilby]

Originally posted by john_childs
What happens when someone starts a thread from the newsgroup or mailing list without a prefix in the subject?

Then it goes into a default forum, such as misc, where a moderator can later move to another forum.

[nbrazzi]

Sounds good, sir. My suggestion is that you may have too many categories. These forums are, compared to ther online forums, fairly low-volume (either that or the other forums I visit are super-high volume). I think that if you have too many categories, everything will be spread too thin. It might be a bit awkward to flip through 13 categories and only find 8 threads you want to read.

I like the current set-up, but I can see how others might be bothered by the off-topic chatter. I would suggest maybe 4 categories. All of the categories you have listed are kinda divided into 4 basic groups - maybe they could be combined into 4 singular categores:

1)Advice/help/questions/technique:
post here to ask for or offer help in muni, trials, freestyle, distance riding, or basic skills. Also post here for questions or advice about unicycle related games (hockey, basketball, quidditch)

2)Hardware:
post here for discussions about unicycles, unicycle hardware, product reviews, and equipment maintenance (suggested moderators, john childs and harper )

3)Community hotline:
post here for discussions about events, war stories, or if you have pictures or multimedia to share (suggested moderator, yoopers)

4)Potpourri


As always, Gilby, you are my captain in this area. These are my humble thoughts.

[RancidFlannel]

i like the idea of only having 4 basic groups, but i'd be willing to put the more detailed brackets around the threads that i start, then put those in one of the 4 main groups

right now it seems as if we have a pretty tight community, and i dont want to see us spead ourselves too thin, esp. since so many people are into all the different types of unicycling, all at the same time

[bagpiperboy]

How about you have all those categories where those exist, but also have a category where it has all the categories, for all you people who like to see what is happening in the world of unicycling, or for you that want specifics. I know it depends on the time for me. thanks Gilby, that is my advice.

[Gilby]

Originally posted by bagpiperboy
How about you have all those categories where those exist, but also have a category where it has all the categories

I'm going to be making a link where one can view all the topics in all the categories, it's part of the search functions and can be done with this link:
http://www.unicyclist.com/forums/sea...rumid=2&days=7

[yoopers]

Again, I may not know how all the many aspects of contributing to the newsgroup work together but I have to agree that the proposed sub-categories seem like an over-abundance. If I'm imagining things correctly, it would take quite a bit of work for the Unicyclist.com user to sort through all the categories just to see what's there. Is that how it would work? I really like seeing the messages all in one place so I can sort through them mentally and get the big picture of the conversation on the newsgroup.

My humble input.
Bruce

[nbrazzi]

For all you guys who want to see a high-volume UBBFboard with lots of categories, check out this home theater site that I frequent:

http://www.dvdfile.com/interactive/forum/

This site is way overcrowded (so much so that I don't go that often anymore) and even then, there seems to be a lot of categories. I only ever look through 3 of those categories - the rest would be too much.



Gilby, that's awesome to have it set up so that we can look at all threads unsorted even after the category system is set up. That should make everybody happy.

[yoopers]

Originally posted by nbrazzi
Gilby, that's awesome to have it set up so that we can look at all threads unsorted even after the category system is set up. That should make everybody happy.

I see...Okay, that'll work.

Bruce

[teachndad]

Bruce,

The Muniac.com bulletin board is set up the way, I think, Gilby is proposing setting up the RSU board.

The Muniac.com board is divided into catagories to which you can chose if interested.

Here is the link to view.

http://www.muniac.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi

[yoopers]

Thanks for the link, Rod. I did check it out and it seems to be very organized, easy to find info. I think the general search function Gilby proposes will work for when I just want to get a general feel of what's bubbling up in the newsgroup.

Bruce

[AccordNSX]

I do think category division would be a perk to the site, but I also think the number of categories should be limited.

How is this going to affect people, such as yours truly, who
post exclusively from a newsreader - are there going to be
corresponding newsgroups?

I agree with Nick that there are too many low traffic groups.


Arnold the Aardvark

[teachndad]

I would like to state that I favor the multiple categories that Gilby has suggested. It would only necessitate a few extra clicks of the mouse and save me time from having to sift through what interests me and what doesn't.

As work begins next week for me, I need to minimize time on the board. The multiple categories will help me, anyways.


Whatever the outcome, we will all adjust.