topic Re: Proposed Community Site Forum Structure in Community Site Feedback

Proposed Community Site Forum Structure

Wed, 09 Jul 2008 06:50:52 GMT

G'day all,
As many of you know the forum moderators met up at PlusNet earlier in the year, amongst the things we discussed was a new layout for the forums. We've had a draft of the new structure in a text form for a while now, but haven't had the time to progress this any further (we were hoping to get it implemented on the community beta site, but due to lack of time that never happened).
Therefore, not wanting to delay things any further we have decided to post up the text structure for feedback from the community. All feedback on the new layout is welcomed, although we do ask it is kept to this thread and that this thread is kept on topic.
So - share your thoughts.
Regards,
James_H on behalf of the Community Moderators
Proposed Community Forum Layout

* General Discusssion
============================
| 1. Informal Discussion
Description: New here? Introduce yourself and get started. [Or summat -JH]
| 
* Products and Services Discussions
===================================
Description: Discuss areas relating to the PlusNet product services
|- 2. Community Support
|Need help with any aspect of the service provided? 
|
||-- Sub: Broadband Connection and Speed
||-- Sub: Email and Webmail 
||-- Sub: Web Hosting and CGI
||-- Sub: Home Phone 
||-- Sub: Broadband Phone
||-- Sub: Referrers Forum
||-- Sub: Internet Event Calendar
|
|- 3. Service Feedback
||-- Sub: Testimonials
||-- Sub: Rants and Raves
||-- Sub: Product Ideas and Suggestions [Note: Should be closely managed in line with PUGIT comments]
|
|- 4. Gamers Forum
|-- Later sub groups possible for different games / clans? 
|- 5. Business Customers
|-- Sub: Partners [Note: Only available to partners + others nominated by MBK]
|- 6. Community site discussion
|-- Sub: Suggestions (Community Site & Forums)
|-- Sub: Report Bugs
|
* Usergroup Discussion (Rules and Modded by PUG Co-ordinators)
==================================================
|- 7. Community Trials
|-- Sub: <Example board for Trial> [Note: Each trial board perms managed seperately so we can grant access to each trial individually]
|-- Sub: <Example board for Trial> [Note: Each trial board perms managed seperately so we can grant access to each trial individually]
|-- More Added / Removed on Demand
| 8. Usergroup Discussions
|-- Sub forums on request - full control of PUG
| 9. PUGIT Comments
* Specialist Discussions
=======================
|- 10 Computers and Networking
|-- Sub: Microsoft Windows
|-- Sub: Apple Mac
|-- Sub: Linux and Other *nix
|-- Sub: Home Networking
|- 11 Web and Internet
* Archives
=============
| 12. Forum Archives
|-- All Archive Forums with posts since migration
|
* Trusted Users Forums [Note:Only available to users with correct permissions]
================
|- Moderators Lounge
|-- Sub: Thread Storage
|- Sub-Moderators Lounge [Note: Sub mod include PUG + any others who agree to mod subsections of the forums] 
|-- Sub: Thread Storage
|- PlusNet Staff 
|- PUG NDA forums as needed

Re: Proposed Community Site Forum Structure

Anotherone — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 10:47:07 GMT

Am I correct in assuming that you are not proposing a linky at the top of each (relevant) forum for the relevant Archive Forum, not complaining, just asking?

Re: Proposed Community Site Forum Structure

Wed, 09 Jul 2008 11:44:26 GMT

Possibly if its relevant.
At the minute, because the structure matches the structure of the old boards, its easy to have them as child boards.
When we move to a structure with greater segregation of topics, they won't fit quite so easily.
No reason we can't sticky a link in each of the boards which has a relevant 'archive' though pointing to the sub-board within the Archive set.
For those not aware - the archives are simply posts from the old boards from the time we migrated to this site. There is no archiving policy, and the current boards will simply continue to grow as time goes on.

Re: Proposed Community Site Forum Structure

Oldjim — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 13:42:22 GMT

Where has General Chit Chat gone

Re: Proposed Community Site Forum Structure

James — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 13:45:21 GMT

Quote
| 1. Informal Discussion
Description: New here? Introduce yourself and get started. [Or summat -JH]

Re: Proposed Community Site Forum Structure

Oldjim — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 13:51:06 GMT

Right at the top
You will be giving certain posters (usually over a certain age) ideas above their station
Seriously can I suggest that introduce yourself etc. should be kept well away from the sort of dodgy posting that one finds in General Chit Chat at present.

Re: Proposed Community Site Forum Structure

David_W — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 13:55:15 GMT

Linux and Other *nix for some reason doesn't seem to sound right, how about Linux, and another sub forum of "Other Operating Systems". Then depending on popularity you could later add in a sub forum of the Linux forum with say Ubuntu, Suse, Redhat etc?
I think the Linux crowd is very territorial, so having them posting in the same forum as Solaris may cause riots, and technically Apple Mac is a *nix (BSD).

Re: Proposed Community Site Forum Structure

James — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 13:55:45 GMT

We want to encourage new posters to join the forums and post

Re: Proposed Community Site Forum Structure

Oldjim — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 14:01:20 GMT

Computers and Networking
Can we have a sub section hardware
Jamesh - I think that might have the opposite effect and it is a serious suggestion that General Chit Chat is kept well away from Introduce yourself and similar threads welcoming newcomers

Re: Proposed Community Site Forum Structure

Wed, 09 Jul 2008 14:03:16 GMT

Quote from: Oldjim
Right at the top
You will be giving certain posters (usually over a certain age) ideas above their station
Seriously can I suggest that introduce yourself etc. should be kept well away from the sort of dodgy posting that one finds in General Chit Chat at present.

We can always add a sub board below the 'introduce yourself...' board for the ramblers amongst us I suppose if that seems like the most sensible idea.
~~~
Also, WRT other subforums/divisions of stuff, the main principle we've gone for with the structure is that we should be able to find homes for more stuff, whilst making it easier for folks to ignore stuff they aren't interested in particularly.
Kinda hinted at in the gamers part, where it may become useful to categorise stuff in different ways (type of game? clan? platform?)
At the same time though, we don't want to spread stuff out too much in case we end up with parts that get very few posts and actually make things harder to navigate around.

Re: Proposed Community Site Forum Structure

jmd — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 15:14:21 GMT

We still need a general chit-chat forum as some of us like posting useless information and finding what people think about events/products/situations/etc
I am at the thought of not having my favourite forum!

and it needs to seperate from "Introduce yourself" so that under "General Discussion you would have 2 sub forums?
please

Re: Proposed Community Site Forum Structure

Wed, 09 Jul 2008 15:24:44 GMT

Quote from: James_H
We can always add a sub board below the 'introduce yourself...' board for the ramblers amongst us I suppose if that seems like the most sensible idea.

Re: Proposed Community Site Forum Structure

Oldjim — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 15:56:42 GMT

James_H
I am not sure whether you agree to create a sub forum for hardware discussions but it shouldn't be under a specific operating system as to a large extent it is software independent (perhaps, except for Mac users).
It is possible that I am misunderstanding what the structure is. You may be having a main board with posts and then sub boards for more specialist areas. If this is what you intend then it may be that a hardware sub forum is not necessary.

Re: Proposed Community Site Forum Structure

zubel — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 16:13:44 GMT

Anything prefixed with a * is a 'Category' and merely breaks up the front page of the forums.
Anything prefixed with '|-' is a parent forum, and can be posted in
Anything prefixed with '||-- Sub' is a sub forum and can also be posted in
does that help?
B.

Re: Proposed Community Site Forum Structure

Wed, 09 Jul 2008 16:18:46 GMT

Our hope is that we might be able to persuade people to moderate the smaller areas of the boards, if there is a particular area they tend to post most frequently. (For example, there are quite a few who predominantly post in Webspace, or Gaming, or etc... at the minute.)
On this kind of a basis, the moderator for section 10 may decide to move threads from the more general top level 'Specialist Discussion' board into say, the Apple Mac board, if its a particular thing specific to Macs.
The plan is a little woolly as its not really the sort of thing that we [mods] can decide on unanimously - but its a direction that I think will reap rewards. (We've approached a number of folks in the past about being moderators, and they've often felt that the whole role is quite an undertaking - smaller chunks will hopefully make the role more appealling.)
More on the Moderating angle later on sometime.

Re: Proposed Community Site Forum Structure

Oldjim — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 16:28:12 GMT

Thanks Barry,
That is very clear and I now understand rather better how it is intended to work

Re: Proposed Community Site Forum Structure

Wed, 09 Jul 2008 16:31:37 GMT

Ian drew it up for us with his elite ASCII drawing skills. Ain't he a star?

Re: Proposed Community Site Forum Structure

Waldo — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 20:35:45 GMT

Quote from: dgwebb
Linux and Other *nix for some reason doesn't seem to sound right, how about Linux, and another sub forum of "Other Operating Systems". Then depending on popularity you could later add in a sub forum of the Linux forum with say Ubuntu, Suse, Redhat etc?
I think the Linux crowd is very territorial, so having them posting in the same forum as Solaris may cause riots, and technically Apple Mac is a *nix (BSD).

Obviously it should be 'Unix and Unix-like Operating Systems'
Ought to be enough to keep the Linux plebs in their place.....
--
/W

Re: Proposed Community Site Forum Structure

Assos — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 22:08:41 GMT

What about Unix Like Systems, Including Linux?

Re: Proposed Community Site Forum Structure

hootiegibbon — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 22:19:39 GMT

Quote from: Waldo
<snip>
Obviously it should be 'Unix and Unix-like Operating Systems'
Ought to be enough to keep the Linux plebs in their place.....
--
/W

Waldo,
LOL you sound like an openBSD user!

Seriously though a board for alternate operating systems should not bundle into an 'all in one but perhaps have child boards for each Linux,BSD,openSolaris as each of these is very different by way of support advise, I speak Linux, I understand *BSD, and opensolaris I am just about picking up.
Jase