More forums or not?

[Bill]

Some members have expressed an interest in splitting up the main forum so that similar threads are in the same place making it easier to find those you are particularly interested in. The counter argument to that is it will dilute contributions, increased the moderation work load and mean you might miss posts that you may have wanted to comment on.

What do you think?

Bill

[Hob]

Split to separate forums for cacti and succulents.

separate forums or separate sections of the same forum?

[Bill]

Smarty pants For separate forums read sub-forums.

Bill

[Phil_SK]

I've voted for 'other' - fewer splitting (more lumping :p ). This is based on my experience of the other main English language C&S forum which I follow. Every reorganisation results in more splinters which effectively groups together topics which I'm usually not that interested in and which I consequently never read. For example, there used to be a 'plant identification' subforum for people with unidentified plants. I regularly contributed and even managed to name some non-cacti This was then split into cactus identification and succulents identification with the result that I never look at the succulents. As moderator here I try to at least scan everything posted and before my elevation I tended to do the same anyway. I know that were I not moderating I would take advantage of the opportunity to filter out, for example, succulents talk and that would be both my loss and (albeit very occasionally) the forum's too.

[matchat]

The forum is great as it is Bill.

I personally enjoy the variety of a mixed forum and have learnt a lot from reading about the many topics. I am more interested in cacti than succulents but reading about the other side does have its uses. We had a branch meeting recently in which we were given an identification quiz and it surprised me just how much information had made it through this thick skull and stayed there.

If we had separate sub forums I would likely have missed a great many interesting topics and have a far less diverse collection as a result. Many of my other succulents are bought because I have read about them or how to grow them on this forum.

[Devrim]

I agree that the forum is great as it is, but a little addition would be nice, so I voted "species forum for the more popular species". As discussed before on the forum, ongoing threads about certain species would accumulate handy information easily reached. But of course, it shouldn't mean that every input about that species should be put in that thread only, I tend to understand species forum more as a reference forum.

[Acid John]

It is ok at the moment. In the discussion section I visit often enough that all the new posts are on the same page so it is easy to see stuff that I might not be interested in. If it is broken up into smaller sections like the other forum then it becomes more of a palaver looking at everything. And you get the feeling that some of the specialist sections do not get posted to very often so wither and die.

[IanW]

I voted other- I'd keep the forums themselves as is, but setup a Wiki for per-species information. Wiki's don't assume ongoing discussion like forums, and so don't die as such, they simply act to provide information, and it can be update when there's something to update. If there's nothing to update it doesn't really matter if it stays static because that's really what they're useful for- providing an uptodate reference.

[phil]

I've voted to keep in as it is for the time being. I think it would be better to let the new Forum run for a while in its current format before making too many changes.

[Cactus Jack]

There's not a section for "leave it as it was"