Can we merge “Riding Advice” with “General Unicycling Discussions”? It seems strange to have a category just for riding advice; it seems like it is easy to miss this sub-section (I never knew it existed till my last post got moved there)…
Corbin
Counter proposal: Can we post forum feedback (such as this) to the forum feedback category, and use the sections as they were intended to be again, instead of posting everything in “general unicycling discussion” ? (Moved it for you)
Keeps relevant threads in each category up top, instead of having everything get lost like in facebook groups…
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When we moved to the new forum software, we reorganized the categories to something that felt more clear and more logical.
Until know, almost 1 year after the forum re-opening, I d’ont recall having someone dissatisfied with it, which makes me think that this reorganization was a good thing.
I’m open to any change if a lot of people agree to it. 
Also, merging categories is doable, but it can’t be undone, so we might be 100% sure this is the right thing to do.
LOL. Simply put: the forum will get less interactions when there is less stuff in the main category of “general unicycle discussions”. The categories are arbitrary, and should be optional for users to use. People are already moving away from this forum, and more people will leave when there is less “stuff” in the main category. I’ve basically left, and don’t visit often. Having people (like you) move threads is even more of a reason to leave. People see it as an administrator abuse of power to try to keep things in some arbitrary organization, and information gets lost in other sections. Hardly anyone will look at this thread, simply because it isn’t in the main group.
With regards to “how it was intended”: The “General Unicycling Discussion” used to be a a newsgroup called rec.sport.unicycling. It was intended as one place for all unicycling discussions. I believe this website started because Gilby created a wrapper forum around the newsgroup, and eventually it became its own system. So, don’t forget how it was intended, because all these sub-categories weren’t the original intent.
I’m super sad the forum is dying, and these are some of the reasons why. I used to be a really active contributor, starting when it was a newsgroup.
-Corbin
As a long time user, I’m quite disappointed. See my reply to finnspinn. It drives me a bit bonkers when an admin move my posts from one category to another.
Actually, I just realized anyone can move topics to other categories. That seems a bit strange.
Are they? It definitely feels to me like things have been more active since the software change and the reshuffle, but that might just be because I’ve been using the forum more.
Before the change everything seemed to have been moving to Facebook, but it’s a horrible platform (at least for anything technical) so I’ve been doing my best to try and shift relevant stuff back to here.
I don’t think that’s anything to do with how the forum is designed or categorised, just that Facebook is a platform that everyone’s already using so seems the logical choice for many when they wish to discuss stuff.
People who are particularly active get powers to move and rename threads.
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I should be more clear: I’m disappointed because other people are moving *my threads".
Yes, people are leaving and have left; many of the long term users no longer visit.
Moving my threads makes me want to leave. You should just leave them where I decide to put them. I mean, heck, I could just move it back if I wanted to…but that’d be silly.
In the organisational structure that has been decided for the platform, those threads do fit better in the categories they’ve been moved to, no?
I’m surprised that you didn’t realise the existence of some of them though as they’re prominently displayed on the main page, but I also don’t really understand why it matters.
If you’re on the default view then everything seems easily visible. Indeed all views show everything unless you go into a specific category.
I don’t feel like this is a new thing. Many hadn’t visited for an awfully long time before the refresh. It’s hard to bring people back to a platform once they’ve left, even if it does now have a snazzy paint job.
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Although I will say that I’m not sure that your gear change thread really fits into the category it’s been put in.
You weren’t looking for riding advice, but I’d suggest that perhaps the category should be retitled to include tips and guides (as most riding advice request threads will also include such) rather than necessarily having that thread back in general.
I understand your concerns. If other people feel like the forum needs some sort of rework, I’d like to hear it. Do you know other some people that could explain their feeling here?
I don’t think the fact that the forum was once a newsgroup more than 20 years ago is relevant since people, the internet, the use of the Internet, the technologies, everything evolves and our forum also evolves around that so we need to adapt. If everything was mixed up in a single category, I’m not sure it would be for the best, even if we use tags.
The forum’s home page displays all the latest posts regardless of their category, so nobody can miss this very topic by default. But I believe most users are just using the forum to read and post information and won’t really care about forum feedbacks discussions and won’t even open these threads.
Also, any registered user can customize their homepage to set their own accordingly to their preference.
I understand that too. Do you agree that discussions about technical stuff about the forum software wouldn’t really fit in the general unicycling discussion category?
A category specifically made for these technical discussions that have nothing to do with unicycling makes sense to me.
The topic was moved because it definitely fits in this particular category. 
This forum software uses a natural “trust level” system that allows users to have a bit more features available, the more they are active and appreciated by the community.
Users can move their own topics in any category, as they can edit the title or content.
Users that are trust level 3 can also recategorize and rename any topics, not only theirs, among other things.
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Isn’t the opposite also true?
Is this feeling shared by others? I didn’t have any complaint until there, but I know that most of the time, people dissatisfied with a chat or a forum will silently leave.
Is there a way to have people of a certain trust level recommend changes without them automatically just happening. Not sure who’d approve the changes though.
The requirements seem relatively low for such power, especially when something like merge is designated admins only rather than a power you can automatically earn.
It’s becoming a bit off-topic, but,
Not that as I know.
The power of renaming titles (usually to fix a typo, for example) and recategorizing topics are not tremendous powers. Most level 3 users won’t bother to use them and won’t even use report tools to make admins or moderators aware of an issue.
After almost 1 year on the new forum, 21 members are trust level 3.
But as far as I know, no issues have occurred yet.
Note that users that becomes less active will automatically set to trust level 2 again.
The trust level system allows a community to be self-moderated at a low level and seems to work right on many forums that use this software.
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I’m a newer member and I don’t mind the separate categories or format at all. The one thing I don’t like is how the search feature works. When I search I prefer newer information, as products and techniques aren’t the same as they were in 2005. I use a tablet most of the time and I just find it annoying to have to keep scrolling, and scrolling and scrolling back so that my search includes the last 5 years or so but doesn’t go back to the days of Cokers and no brakes.
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Good point. Relevance is not always the best criteria to order results, especially on a very old forum like this one.
Back on topic, unless “Riding Advice” is renamed to include other similar things, I am on board with getting rid of it. The other thread that got moved doesn’t really fit.
I still think that we want an events category though - perhaps that can replace it 
I think “Latest” might be a more useful default search option, but the advanced search does allow you to restrict your search to a relevant time period.
It’s never going to be as clever as a modern search engine at working out what’s most relevant to show you, and “Latest” can often give some not very relevant stuff unless you’re quite careful with your search terms.
Perhaps by default it could be set to only search within the last 5 years or so but still be sorted by relevance?
Any example of “similar things”?
Even if we don’t have any calendar feature integrated to the forum, we could still add this category and link the events to the current third-party calendar.