If anyone from MR is monitoring this, as a fairly new user to the MR forums, i would just like to make the following point.
No offence intended, but this “General Discussion” part of the forum is the most user-unfriendly forum I have ever experienced.
I mean over 2000 topics for goodness sakes. How is a newcomer supposed to plow his way throught that lot[?]
Please consider doing a bit of moderating or refining or somwething to make it easier for the new guy, especially those of us who don’t get unmetered or free Internet access
No offence to timbo2, but if you are looking for something specific there is search engine for this site in the blue bar near the top of the page and it works fine. Use it. That should help you "plow " through it. I think it’s just fine the way it is. I don’t think there should be a “big brother” editor deciding your post or mine is undesireable and deleting it. Then the free exchange of ideas fail. As to us having free and unmetered access, I think you are misinformed. Most of us Americans pay around $20 a month for 56K or less internet access. We get lots of busy signals as providers run a 7 customers per modem ratio. Very few of us have high speed internet, and those that do have it mostly at work where they shouldn’t be cruising the net anyway.
To make valuable info easier to find by others in future searches, it would be helpful when posting to make the subject as descriptive as possible with key words and descriptors. ie “My derails on <frog #> turnouts, please help” rather than a concise but non-searchable "please help ". Search engines need help too.
Agreed, i’ve searched too and wished for easier ways to find what i’m looking for.
But aren’t we lucky to have so much available by so many friendly folks so willing to share their hard-learned know-how? Forums like this are invaluable, even if a bit hard to wade through. In pre-internet times we had to find whatever at a local library, without the benefit of the collective community.
There is 2000 new subjects the first time you read the forums. If you read the forums day to day there are only about 10-20 new messages a day to read through.
I usually scan through topics rapidly and only read subjects that interest me. So I might only read 5 messsages a day. Quite manageable.
You might have a real dilemma if you read 6 different Model Railroad forums. They have 2000 each on those too. The trick is to skim and read only what interests you.
If you want to look through old information use the search function.
In my opinion, the forum is not big enough. I’d like to see even more information.
Actually, on the search function it searches the text of a message. Like if you want to find info about cf7 you type it in an whalla, you get about 7 hits. If you want posts with say baseball and field you type “baseball AND field” and you get 4 hits of threads that contain both baseball and field. Then one step further, click edit on you browser bar and select find on this page and the browser will even find the word for you.
The number of topics posted in the past is irrelevant to a forum, other than to have a richness to search through. What makes a forum is how busy it is on a day to day basis. If you think this forum is bad, then you should have been here for the old one… lol - won’t go there.
This forum isn’t busy enough to warrant more forums.
No offence taken, flee307, but I tried the search. That’s what caused me to raise my post, I got so many “hits” to my search that it was virtually useless
If anyone from MR is monitoring this, as a fairly new user to the MR forums, i would just like to make the following point.
No offence intended, but this “General Discussion” part of the forum is the most user-unfriendly forum I have ever experienced.
I mean over 2000 topics for goodness sakes. How is a newcomer supposed to plow his way throught that lot[?]
Please consider doing a bit of moderating or refining or somwething to make it easier for the new guy, especially those of us who don’t get unmetered or free Internet access
No offence to timbo2, but if you are looking for something specific there is search engine for this site in the blue bar near the top of the page and it works fine. Use it. That should help you "plow " through it. I think it’s just fine the way it is. I don’t think there should be a “big brother” editor deciding your post or mine is undesireable and deleting it. Then the free exchange of ideas fail. As to us having free and unmetered access, I think you are misinformed. Most of us Americans pay around $20 a month for 56K or less internet access. We get lots of busy signals as providers run a 7 customers per modem ratio. Very few of us have high speed internet, and those that do have it mostly at work where they shouldn’t be cruising the net anyway.
To make valuable info easier to find by others in future searches, it would be helpful when posting to make the subject as descriptive as possible with key words and descriptors. ie “My derails on <frog #> turnouts, please help” rather than a concise but non-searchable "please help ". Search engines need help too.
Agreed, i’ve searched too and wished for easier ways to find what i’m looking for.
But aren’t we lucky to have so much available by so many friendly folks so willing to share their hard-learned know-how? Forums like this are invaluable, even if a bit hard to wade through. In pre-internet times we had to find whatever at a local library, without the benefit of the collective community.
There is 2000 new subjects the first time you read the forums. If you read the forums day to day there are only about 10-20 new messages a day to read through.
I usually scan through topics rapidly and only read subjects that interest me. So I might only read 5 messsages a day. Quite manageable.
You might have a real dilemma if you read 6 different Model Railroad forums. They have 2000 each on those too. The trick is to skim and read only what interests you.
If you want to look through old information use the search function.
In my opinion, the forum is not big enough. I’d like to see even more information.
Actually, on the search function it searches the text of a message. Like if you want to find info about cf7 you type it in an whalla, you get about 7 hits. If you want posts with say baseball and field you type “baseball AND field” and you get 4 hits of threads that contain both baseball and field. Then one step further, click edit on you browser bar and select find on this page and the browser will even find the word for you.
The number of topics posted in the past is irrelevant to a forum, other than to have a richness to search through. What makes a forum is how busy it is on a day to day basis. If you think this forum is bad, then you should have been here for the old one… lol - won’t go there.
This forum isn’t busy enough to warrant more forums.
No offence taken, flee307, but I tried the search. That’s what caused me to raise my post, I got so many “hits” to my search that it was virtually useless
