I don’t know if anyone else has the same concern, but I find it hard to find the topics in the MR Forum. The reason is that I think we have too few, and the ones we have are overpoplulated.
There are only four forums and they have the following usage to today:
General discussion - 24,894 topics
Where’s the MR 70th Anniversary Boxcar - 61 topics
Layouts and layout building - 6,335 topics
Prototype info for the modeller - 1,832 topics
I suggest that we should add several forums to replace the “Layout and layout building” forum. Something like this:
Track work
Benchwork
Locomotives
Rolling stock
DCC and Wiring
Scenery, Buildings, Vehicles and People
Signalling
Layout Photos
Track Plans
MR Software
Leave the other three as is. The “General Discussion” would inevitably be rationalised to some extent if people go to the more specific area.
I think it would be easier to find things of current interest if the forums were divided along those lines. Am I being over organised? Let me know if you agree or disagree.
One just for polls, so those who have nothing constructive to add can continue to create polls.
One for “How do I post photos”
One for “How do I make decals”
The forums are supposed to be rearranged or changed in the near future, but I wouldn’t get my hopes up too far that any such changes would occur. Can’t hurt to ask I guess.
I also agree with Fundy and Accord but, Have a “Ban” on the polls because they just eat up bandwith and are useless.
I would also have a “For Sale or Trade” section added. This section is where individuals could post their items that they would want to get rid of or make extra so they could buy more trains. (It wouldnt be for the Commerical HobbyShops thou.) Just the private sector. Kevin
I see your points and pretty much agree. The idea of the “Search the forums” at the top of the page is to allow you to find a specific topic–I 've found this at times to be helpful and at others not.
In recc. a different forum for the polls, I guess that would be okay, too, but I haven’t found the number of topics on the forums to be so numerous that this is really that much of an issue.
Bush: your idea of dividing the layout forum into the subcategories you listed probably would be helpful–again, using the search window at the top of the page doesn’t always allow one to find a particular category consistently–same issue as with google I guess.
Good idea, I agree sometimes it’s very difficult to find what you’re looking for, even in the entire Trains.com web site. It should make searching easier.
However, there will always be some folks that will post in the wrong forum.
Well I for one would prefer that they not subdivide the forum, at least certainly not into the number of different subforums as you have initially proposed. To me, that just means having to jump to that many more forums to see what has been posted recently. I visit here frequently enough that scanning through one or two pages can usually let me see if there is anything that is of interest to me.
Some change to the forum structure, sure. I think, for example, that the idea of the 70th Anniversary Boxcar has probably run its course and could be dropped. Maybe replace it with a DCC forum. But to subdivide into numerous very limited forums is probably just inviting people to simply continue posting in the General Discussion forum.
This being a FREE forum I think we are luck to have what we have. This Topic comes up every few months, usually from a new member and a lot of great ideas come up but nothing is ever acted on from MR.
Hey, if I am in a room having a discusion with other modelers and someone neardy hears a point of interest and chimes in, great. I feel the more people see all the posts the more often you will get feedback. If you only go into a particular section but never any other you will miss out.
Just think of it like this, if you dont like the choices dont click on it.
Add my vote to no on overspecialization. Indeed, multiple NOs!!
Movie style: NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!
When you divide too much, you get much less cross-traffic, more searching, more headaches, and ultimately less information. (You can see this on railroad.net, where several forums get a lot of traffic, and dozens of others get nads - 1 post a week if they are lucky) Thumbs down [V]
Now, if you want a seperate forum for sale/trade section, then yes! that’s definitely unique enough to warrent it’s own forum - and yes, lets nuke the 70th anniversy boxcar forum (to make way for the 80th Anniversy scrap gondola)
OK, I will accept IF you can do it like Usenet - post to several topics at once (of course, now you get lots o’ duplication in the forums)…
Fundy, your suggestions about ‘How do I post photos’ or make decals - do you mean a FAQ section, or perhaps a forum with stickys (in a forum named something like ‘how to do common tasks’ or ‘Baseline information’ or ‘New to Model Railroads - Check this out?’) - cause that’s a good idea - or were you just funning with us.
Polling:
People who want to poll must first issue a request to poll; if the MR chief editior agrees to the gravity of the poll situation, he then will release the polling codes from the poll ‘football’ so that two 3 star or above members can turn their 2 keys simulateously to launch the poll.
Alternatively, all polls should be exiled to some other board like cuteoverload or fark or adorablabunnies or something with weird japanese videos…
Ah, who am I kidding - not much will change anyway…
I think further subdivision and organization of the forums is a good idea, but, if anyone has noticed, there are still a lot of misplaced posts in general discussion that would be more appropriate for other already established forums. (And in the more railfan-oriented threads over in the Classic Trains and Trains forums, they still get a lot of questions about model railroad topics.)
Another issue is thread discipline. On another message board I frequented, if a person started a thread about a topic that was already under discussion, the moderators posted a link to the appropriate thread, and then deleted the redundant thread after a few days. That forum also had a forum for “Dead Horses” for threads about contentious issues that had been discussed so thouroughly that nothing could be really added, and over which everyone was getting testy because nobody was about to change his mind. They also had a forum strictly for flame wars so that people who had problems with each other could flame each other without disrupting the rest of the message boards.
How many threads do we need on “What’s your favorite scale, steam locomotive, railroad, etc.”?
Also, in my years of participating in message boards, I’ve found that the best ones were those that were heavily moderated according to a strict set of policies, and where there were probably less than a hundred regular participants at any given time. The best moderated boards I knew of had a small team of administrators who supervised a number of volunteer moderators in each forum, who were empowered to enforce the rules. (I doubt the MR staff will want to go this route. Also, the volunteer moderators had to read every word that was posted, whether they were interested in a particular thread or not.)
Finally, I wonder how the age spread of participants effects the discourse here. Most message boards in which I have participated were populated by adults. Here, we have everyone from pre-teens to
Obviously, MR has it setup how they have it setup because it’s the way they want it.
I like how the forum is setup. If there were more categories, I wouldn’t read the forum nearly as much, because then it becomes a headache. This forum isn’t a reference library. It’s a place for MRR’ers to hang out.
I also don’t see what the big deal is about the polls. Are they wasting precious time or something? This hobby is fun, that’s all it is (well, some people make money from it, of course), but one could argue all of the hobby is a waste of time.
The polls are as interesting to me as many other topics. I’ve never started one myself, but have enjoyed many of them.
This forum feels very casual to me, just as the magazine does (well, except for some of Tony K’s columns which can serve to stress me out that I don’t take the hobby seriously enough!)
I think it should stay the way it is. If anything, they should blast the boxcar and layout building section - since all the layout questions are just as general as anything else.
I also like the scales being mixed - just like the magazine - keeps you up on what the “other guys” are doing.
I don’t think we need any more MR forums. I don’t have time to visit 6 different forums on MR. However, I’ve seen a lot of threads in the General Discussion forum that should’ve been posted in the layouts & layout building forum. More forums will only make things more complicated.
I would say the two biggest problems here are the lack of thread discipline, and the large number of participants. One of the reasons I don’t come here often is that on any given day, there are no fewer than three pages of new posts. And this situation is the same, even if I check in three times a day, several hours apart.
I don’t think anything can or should be done about the number of participants. And I doubt MR has the resources or the desire to enforce meaningful thread discipline.
I like going to the general forum and scan the topics for interest. Once in a while I’ll check the layout construction forum. Perhaps if the “search the forums” could be based on one key word it would help.