Phone Sections: Sub-forums vs Prefixes vs Nothing

[Frisco]

I say get rid of 'em all and have no prefixes. Look how much confusion is already there for new posters, when I joined I created 2 or 3 threads about various things related to my Fascinate in the main forum. Wait, you mean to find out a particular thing about this phone (when there is already a forum for it) I have to choose the correct sub-section?

If you have a question about the best case for your particular phone, you're already in a sub-forum forum based soley focusing on that phone, why make it even more complicated?

New members need to see a page during registration which briefly, but in bold, points out the device sub-forums for them, along with the user guidelines.

99% of the opposition to those sub-forums seems to revolve around either the work it takes to keep them organized or the confusion of our new members.

Confusion on any issue vanishes with education, along with true maintenance ("enforcement" for some; I do not like that word very much). That maintenance is the least we, as staffers, can do for you here at Android Forums.

 

[jayjay1122]

I do not want to "quote" the entire post, but Woop makes some excellent points in his post (#17) above.

My only area of disagreement would be that I believe a Tips and Tricks section that is actually populated with T&T remains valuable long after the phone comes out.

A device will always have people that are new to it and speaking for myself, even veterans seek out T&T long after they have purchased the device when they simply want to try something new. I believe that the date of the last post is not as big a deterrent as some would think.

That said, I tend to lean more toward #2!

At the end of the day, we are about as diplomatic a forum as I have seen and the more diplomatic a forum (posting rules) the more structure and organization it needs. And if that organization and structure requires a few more clicks then I am all for it.


Roze makes a great point (as always) that the T&T sections should be judged on views, not comments! Once something is deemed as a tip or trick, do we really expect hundreds or even dozens of comments? Does it have to be an ongoing discussion to be viable?

 

[Phases]

And what do you mean by 'show all the stickys'

.. I meant if you were to go to page 2, or 3, or whatever in a particular forum - the sticky threads you see on page 1 would still be displaying at the top.

... going to leave this open a bit more, I'd like this round table..

 

[jayjay1122]

.. I meant if you were to go to page 2, or 3, or whatever in a particular forum - the sticky threads you see on page 1 would still be displaying at the top.

... going to leave this open a bit more, I'd like this round table..

Excellent Idea!

Sticky the Sticky's, kind of like doing a "Window Split/Window Freeze" in Excel except it would not "freeze" the Sticky's for scrolling but page to page.

 

[Frisco]

Excellent Idea!

Sticky the Sticky's, kind of like doing a "Window Split/Window Freeze" in Excel except it would not "freeze" the Sticky's for scrolling but page to page.

Exactly. This way members can not read them on any page they go to.

 

[woop]

I see fewer and fewer posts/threads of support having to be moved, now that the idea is soaking in. No, not a "few," per se, but fewer this week than two weeks ago, for sure, especially in Captivate, Fascinate and the Droids.

I guess you don't visit the Incredible forum much then, because there is still the same amount of support threads being moved (or maybe you notice fewer because the redirect times have been lessen)

 

[Frisco]

I guess you don't visit the Incredible forum much then, because there is still the same amount of support threads being moved (or maybe you notice fewer because the redirect times have been lessen)

I haven't visited the Incredible forums, you're right. I have fifteen device forums on my list, and they keep me busy, along with the many other non-device forums we all visit and maintain.

And I have noticed that the thread movement in the forums I mentioned have been a bit fewer.. believe me, the length of the redirects don't affect that assessment, as I'm in several device forums long enough during the day to have a feel for what is going on.

But even if there were no change in the number of threads moved from one area to another, that to me is not a reason to toss the sub-forums; it's a reason to have a staff with the same goals about maintaining the place.

 

[woop]

I haven't visited the Incredible forums, you're right. I have fifteen device forums on my list, and they keep me busy, along with the many other non-device forums we all visit and maintain.

And I have noticed that the thread movement in the forums I mentioned have been a bit fewer.. believe me, the length of the redirects don't affect that assessment, as I'm in several device forums long enough during the day to have a feel for what is going on.

But even if there were no change in the number of threads moved from one area to another, that to me is not a reason to toss the sub-forums; it's a reason to have a staff with the same goals about maintaining the place.

The Incredible forum has about the same amount of work as 10 less active forums. Trust me, we move alot of threads in that forum still (even with the phone being out for almost a year). So unless you are hitting all the high traffic forums, its hard to really judge whether threads are finally being created in the correct place or not (I go through about 40 forums on here - both high and low traffic). And no one is using that as the reason to ditch subforums - as Kelmar stated earlier, its to make this forum run more efficient. If theres a better way to handle something, why not do it? Having tons of threads in the wrong place, which then get moved anyways creating a hot mess of redirects everywhere, and having members essentially ignore subforums is not efficient (many times its regulars that have been on here for quite some time so obviously it isn't by "accident"). That brings me to what I've still been saying as the most efficient, easiest (for both staff and member alike) format for all: Merge support into the main forum. If people are going to disregard that subforum then to create less confusion and "ugliness" with redirects filling a forum, we can address the main issue here. I want to emphasize that almost ALL (if not all) the threads complaining about threads being moved were people who created a support thread that got moved.

 

[Frisco]

Again, I think our disagreement is about all of those threads having to be moved and PMs from some members complaining about their threads being moved; I feel that will go down over time.

We don't have numbers, yet, on how many threads per day by how many members are being moved, creating those redirects, but we do have this:

Threads: 198,957, Posts: 1,945,567, Members: 349,597, Active Members: 55,512 (as of about 5 am Central U.S. time, 10 Dec 2010).

Fifty-five thousand active members. Wow. Nearly two million posts. Double-Wow. Nearly two-hundred thousand threads. Wow City!

What we're moving around is tiny compared to the volume of activity in this place, it appears.

Once again, I find it preferable that we as staff here just do our job in the place as it is, and watch as it changes a bit over time to a lot less thread moving.

Whoever came up with the sub-forum idea came up with that for good reason and with a bit of a sense as to how that schema becomes optimum over time and with a diligent staff, I'm thinking. Thus the sudden influx of many more Guides and more Moderators.

I've aired my views on this (like a few here, several times ) as clearly as I can, and I know we all understand one another. With that in mind I'll say, again, that no matter what is implemented here, whether there are changes or not, I'm just another little cog in the machine happy to be a part of it and happy to accept what changes that may come about as the best.

 

[OfTheDamned]

I'm a little late to this particular party, but here are my thoughts.

#1 - What we have now and some people love it, others hate it and many don't care. It works and it does keep things organized, but as others have said people don't always see when someone needs help and some just aren't willing to visit the sub-forums. Many forums also contain digital agoraphobics that aren't willing to venture outside their phone forum and some of those still aren't willing to venture into the sub-forums. So we have threads that go unnoticed and unanswered in sub-forums.

#2 - Has real potential in either direction. It could solve the overlooked thread problem along with keeping the forum organized too. As stated Root would have to continue being a sub-forum and the prefix tags in that area should really be implemented regardless. The nice thing, IMHO, about option #2 is that unless someone just made a colossal error then the thread won't actually be moved, it will just have the prefix changed. No big deal at that point really.

#3 - This is the way the Eris forum was for almost a year. The forum was functional and you could read it, kind of, but threads did get lost fairly quickly.

Personally, I voted for option #2. It is a good combination of #1 and #3 if your really think about it. After being in the Eris forum for close to a year and not having any sub-forums for the majority of that time I think I prefer a set up where most of the threads appear in the general part of the forum. While it can be a little harder to deal with from a mod stand point, it lends to a much better user experience overall. Being able to see all the discussions that are currently happening in one centralized place leads people to join in on those discussions a little more often. I think that is good for a phone forum and good for the site overall.

 

[Frisco]

Thanks for checking in on this, OTD. I've been waiting for your opinion about it.

 

[Steven58]

I'm a little late to this particular party, but here are my thoughts.

#1 - What we have now and some people love it, others hate it and many don't care. It works and it does keep things organized, but as others have said people don't always see when someone needs help and some just aren't willing to visit the sub-forums. Many forums also contain digital agoraphobics that aren't willing to venture outside their phone forum and some of those still aren't willing to venture into the sub-forums. So we have threads that go unnoticed and unanswered in sub-forums.

#2 - Has real potential in either direction. It could solve the overlooked thread problem along with keeping the forum organized too. As stated Root would have to continue being a sub-forum and the prefix tags in that area should really be implemented regardless. The nice thing, IMHO, about option #2 is that unless someone just made a colossal error then the thread won't actually be moved, it will just have the prefix changed. No big deal at that point really.

#3 - This is the way the Eris forum was for almost a year. The forum was functional and you could read it, kind of, but threads did get lost fairly quickly.

Personally, I voted for option #2. It is a good combination of #1 and #3 if your really think about it. After being in the Eris forum for close to a year and not having any sub-forums for the majority of that time I think I prefer a set up where most of the threads appear in the general part of the forum. While it can be a little harder to deal with from a mod stand point, it lends to a much better user experience overall. Being able to see all the discussions that are currently happening in one centralized place leads people to join in on those discussions a little more often. I think that is good for a phone forum and good for the site overall.

That's kind of how I see it.

 

[woop]

Again, I think our disagreement is about all of those threads having to be moved and PMs from some members complaining about their threads being moved; I feel that will go down over time.

We don't have numbers, yet, on how many threads per day by how many members are being moved, creating those redirects, but we do have this:

Threads: 198,957, Posts: 1,945,567, Members: 349,597, Active Members: 55,512 (as of about 5 am Central U.S. time, 10 Dec 2010).

Fifty-five thousand active members. Wow. Nearly two million posts. Double-Wow. Nearly two-hundred thousand threads. Wow City!

What we're moving around is tiny compared to the volume of activity in this place, it appears.

Once again, I find it preferable that we as staff here just do our job in the place as it is, and watch as it changes a bit over time to a lot less thread moving.

Whoever came up with the sub-forum idea came up with that for good reason and with a bit of a sense as to how that schema becomes optimum over time and with a diligent staff, I'm thinking. Thus the sudden influx of many more Guides and more Moderators.

I've aired my views on this (like a few here, several times ) as clearly as I can, and I know we all understand one another. With that in mind I'll say, again, that no matter what is implemented here, whether there are changes or not, I'm just another little cog in the machine happy to be a part of it and happy to accept what changes that may come about as the best.

Well no, thats not the main disagreement. I think when you said that some people's reason for deleting the subforums is to make their own job easier was misled and inaccurate, in which case I was giving you scenarios as to why that is. Yes that may seem like a small percentage however, keep in mind if it wasn't a big deal, this discussion would not be brought up. Obviously there is enough concern about the moving of threads and how the structure of the forum is placed to hold a poll. Another thing to keep in mind is that although some people may (or may not) be finally utilizing the subforums, the member growth here is tremendous and with the huge numbers of new users (many of which won't use the subforums), they end up just replacing and repeating the cycle.

If you look at some of the forums, there are still many that don't have the subforum. Matter of fact, the Motorola Droid forum did not even have them to begin with, then Accessories/Root/Tips were added, and finally the Support. Although it definitely adds order and does the job, there can be more efficient ways of handling it as has been repeated. So yes, it may have been with good reason (barring the fact that many of the forums don't have subforums) but there is always room for improvement. With that said, #1 is fine if we decide to stick with it. We handled it when I was just a Guide back in the day with ALOT less staff members, so if we stay that way, it should be alright.

 

[Frisco]

I think when you said that some people's reason for deleting the subforums is to make their own job easier was misled and inaccurate..

My insinuation/remark about making it easier is not a great way to put my point. As it is, I was referring to the OP's:

"..This is much easier on staff.." in the option #2 description, as well as the option #1, "it results in many users' threads being moved and adding to annoyance, as our staff finds threads that should be in sub-forums but aren't."

Those two quotes add up to (some of the) reasons for this vote, for this whole subject.

It is not some sort of value judgment on the working habits of the staff, but it can easily appear that way because I do keep repeating that the staff needs to accept the responsibility of option #1, no change basically, and just keep going at it.

It has the look of me saying the staff is not accepting that responsibility, which is false. I'm talking about the vote, not our great staff's work, just the vote.

Fwiw, and more to the point, we already have the Lounge, and an Android Lounge, for general talk about Android and of course chat about politics or whatever; I feel those are enough, as far as non-specific areas for general discussion goes.

It seems to me that we should not be talking about removing any sub-forums in the device areas at all, but should be talking about removing the generic, big catch-all forum in those areas, leaving only sub-forums.

If that were an option, we'd need only go through and move every thread to Android Lounge, the Lounge or the sub-forums, then remove the generic forum altogether, which would be great, and would solve a lot of the problems we're discussing in here about ongoing thread movement.

 

[reinbeau]

I moderate a very large chicken forum (backyardchickens.com) and can't imagine managing that community without subforums. Over 70,000 members now at this point, and I don't know how many million posts. Many members are very young, and the social games they play are a real PITA to manage, but we keep them confined to one section. It's just easier when you've got that many people posting to keep things broken up a bit.

 

[Frisco]

I moderate a very large chicken forum (backyardchickens.com) and can't imagine managing that community without subforums. Over 70,000 members now at this point, and I don't know how many million posts. Many members are very young, and the social games they play are a real PITA to manage, but we keep them confined to one section. It's just easier when you've got that many people posting to keep things broken up a bit.

Is it still ok for us to eat chickens here?



Seriously, though, I see you have a similar group/members/staff system there as here:

Legend: [Admins] [Moderators] [GoldenFeatherMembers] [PlatinumPoultryMembers] [Members]

 

[reinbeau]

Is it still ok for us to eat chickens here?



Seriously, though, I see you have a similar group/members/staff system there as here:

Legend: [Admins] [Moderators] [GoldenFeatherMembers] [PlatinumPoultryMembers] [Members]

The GFMs and the PPMs are people who pay a premium, GFMs for image storage and more PM storage, PPMs get what the GFMs get (they pay more) and are usually people who sell a lot and get more advertising posts allotted - there's a lot of chicken and egg trading (and other Buy-Sell-Trade stuff) that goes on there. Neither one of those groups have any kind of moderation powers (trust me, we evaluate potential moderators there quite thoroughly, we need levelheadedness to prevail amongst our moderators, because those chicken folks can be very crazy! )

As for eating chicken, we have plenty of PETA people who get their knickers in a knot over the Meat Bird section

But we digress. As you saw, we do have things organized into subforums. We get many, many, many (did I say many) requests for new subforums, but the need is evaluated thoroughly - most are denied. It can get too fragmented. For the most part people respect the subforums, although we do our fair share of moving things around!

 

[EarlyMon]

As for eating chicken, we have plenty of PETA people who get their knickers in a knot over the Meat Bird section

I'm surprised People Eating Tasty Animals would act that way, personally.

That said -

I've been following this closely, especially the Guides' opinions, as I think those guys do the heavy lifting when it comes to thread management (hats off and low bows, compadres). It always seems by the time I've started to move a thread, a Guide's beaten me to it - you cats are fast, efficient and do great work!

Frisco - would you clarify that post about the Lounge and sub-forums. I've read it several times, and I'm just foggy.

 

[Frisco]

Frisco - would you clarify that post about the Lounge and sub-forums. I've read it several times, and I'm just foggy.

Ok. Thanks for asking!

The Lounge and the Android Lounge seem to cover all the frivolous, generic talk needed here, device specific or not.

We're always going to be moving device specific matter from those two areas to the device sub-forums. I'd like to see the generic device areas picked apart thread per thread, moving those threads to their proper device sub-forums, and then the generic areas removed (being empty after we do the thread moving ).

There would have to be a few more sub-forums, in addition to the Support, Accessories, Tricks and How Tos, Rooting.. perhaps Updates (Lord, if you do nothing else, will you please cause the Updates and Cupcakes forum to vanish ), etc.

 

[Phases]

Thread cleaned up - keep it polite everyone.

 

[woop]

Thread cleaned up - keep it polite everyone.

I was gonna make a post in the mod forum about that response but thanks for doing that

Edit: Phases, any ETA on a decision? Doesn't really seem like an overwhelming majority for one option vs another.

 

[Frisco]

Device sub-forum suggestions (envisioning this for each device, with no big, generic area for each phone/tablet at all, that being covered by Android Lounge and the Lounge and its sub-forums):

- All Things Root

- Accessories

- Support and Troubleshooting

- I have a Tip/Trick to Share

- Updates

Maybe the "Tips" sub-forum will have a lot less thread movement if the title is changed a bit to reflect that it's not for questions.

The device "Updates" sub-forums would, hopefully, be populated by threads which we new see in the "Updates and Cupcakes" forum out there, which would be emptied by us, taking the threads to the proper device areas.

With apologies for reiteration, plus for putting stuff out there that is not in the OP's options.

 

[Phases]

Hm, no posting in the general/main forum, only in subforums?

 

[NightAngel79]

Hm, no posting in the general/main forum, only in subforums?

Not a fan of that idea at all, need a general area for the plenty of threads that are specific to device but don't fall into the standard sub forums. Also don't think more sub forums are the answer, seems like that may be over complicating things...
My $0.02

 

[OMJ]

Hm, no posting in the general/main forum, only in subforums?

Not a fan of that idea at all, need a general area for the plenty of threads that are specific to device but don't fall into the standard sub forums. Also don't think more sub forums are the answer, seems like that may be over complicating things...
My $0.02

I agree with NA on this completely. If you take away posting in the main forum there will need to be another 3 or 4 subforums to make up for that. It would also make things increasingly confusing for new forum members.