forum reorg. Options

[micron]

PROPOSAL

introduction
the lounge
-vip lounge
pictures
music / tv / movies
relationships
academia
-books
-debate
-school
-news
entertainment
-anime
-humor
-sandbox
-sports
interests
-art
-writing
-food
-technology
lifestyle
-boys locker
-girls locker
-health
-fashion

ok. before you go berserk, here's my reasons for the reoganization proposal. looking at how the forums are currently organized, some of the more popular forums are subforums, and some of the less popular ones are top level forums. so while i was working on the reoganization (with trish, although she may or may not be for it), i wanted to emphasize organization and popularity equally. i think its important to have popular forums as top level forums for the sake of ease of use; people dont like navigating 3243242 pages just to get to the page they want. on the other end, we dont want to waste pricey real estate on forums that are seldom active. i should note that when i say "popular" i do not mean how vocal a handful of members may be for a forum, but by the amount of the forum's topics / posts - they are the best indicators of how truly popular each forum is.


POINT BY POINT

vip lounge: i think the vip lounge best fits under the lounge because, frankly, its not that popular. i know that previously there were some complaints that having the vip lounge as a subforum meant that you dont see the last post info. i think this is a moot point as you can browse the lounge while keeping an eye at the vip lounge (they are, afterall, both lounge's). and once again, it is simply not popular enough to warrant wasting real estate space.

music / tv / movies: i did two things here, combined these forums into one and made it a top level forum. i remember saying this and i will say again: people who are intersted in music are also intersted in tv and movies. in another words, these forums go hand in hand. this is pretty evident when you look at how they are currently organized (separated), and music and movies / tv has a paltry 400 topics, combined. the reason why this combined forum is a top level forum is because of its popularity.

relationships: relationship is a top level forum once again because of its sheer popularity. 6,881 topics / 144,468 replies says a lot. and it would be quite a tedious task to have to navigate several pages to get to it, when it is obviously one of the most popular communiy center forums.

academia: here's a new forum catagory containing books, debate, school, and news. i should note that debate is moved here because, quite frankly, debate isn't popular (as much as some of you say it is). if you dont beleive me, look at the number of topics (149) and number of posts (6,312), and compare that to other top level forums and you'll see there's an oddity here. whats unfortunate is the "handful" who actually go there are very vocal members, making the debate forums seem more popular than it actually is. the number of topics / replies says all, and there is no reason why it should be a top level forum. plus, and it fits better here.

entertainment: this catagory contain forums that you watch (anime, sports), and well as forums that are fun (sandbox, humor).

intersts: art, writing, food and tech go here. i dont know what else to say.

lifestyle: lifestyle is essentially the same except relationships is moved to a top level forum, and school is moved to academia.


WHY DO IT?
so, why do it? the main reason is to make it easier to access the forums that are visited more oten, and thereby improve the overal forum experience for all (or the majority). at its current organization, its sad that some of the popular forums are pushed aside as sub forums (relationships / entertainment), forcing memebrs to navigate several pages between each one. with this new proposed organization, the more visted forums will be at the tip of your fingertips.

the reoganization isnt to revitalize teh community, its to make it easier to navigate to the more popular forums. and for consistency. i find the current organization rather disorganized.


SOME STATS
ive decided to make a little script to counter those who say that the debate topics are "viewed" more often (ie the total topic / posts counts are inaccurate).

http://www.createblog.com/forums.php?sort=views

if you go down to row 10, you'll see that the debate forum has 1148277 views - that's all of its topic views added up. this may be significant, but lets compare them with other top level forums (as proposed by this topic).

The Lounge: 8708936
Pictures: 7078437
General Entertainment: 4732072*
Relationships: 3145658

*excluding the other forums that have been separated (ie movies / tv / etc, that will be combined once again)

here you can see that the debate forum is indeed rather small (in terms of posts, topics, and views). to get another perspective, the fashion forum has 1267173 views, 100,000 more views than the debate forum. sandbox and boy's locker gets twice as much traffic with 1966236 and 2069196 views respectively, and the girls locker tree times with 3336441 total views. fashion, sandbox, boys locker, and girls locker are all subforums under the newly proposed organization.

if you look at the hard numbers, i think it is somewhat silly to suggest that debate be a top level forum. if that was the case, how about fashion? sandbox? boys locker? girls locker? they all recieve more traffic, in terms of posts, topics, and views.

also, for those who like the current organization, i wonder if you browse each and every forum daily. it gets rather annoying to have to go through several pages to get to the forums you want, the way its organized now..


LAST NOTES
subforums will be directly linked from the forum index, ie instead of forum descreptions, we'll have links to the subforums. this will help improve visibility and members will be able to directly "jump" to the subforums without having to go through the forum catagory first.

this is pretty much a copy and paste from the discussion i had on backstage, please excuse my organization, grammar, spelling.