Merge some forums?

Alright, anyone who's familiar with my advice on AdminAddict/Zone and Simple Machines knows that I tend to be a bit of a broken record about this, but it bears mentioning, I think.

1) Too many forums confuse members about where threads belong. If people aren't sure where to post something, they hesitate, and end up not.

2) Empty forums create the empty diner effect - in order to generate activity, you need topic momentum - the sports forums, for example, are not going to achieve that as they are now.

3) This probably sounds nonsensical to anyone who hasn't actually tracked activity across merging - but the time people spend clicking between forums is time they could be spending posting or reading. This adds up not only as a factor of time but also out of frustration.

4) When a topic begins to overwhelm the forum it occupies, it's rather easy to split them off.

Just my two cents : )

 

1. Do you think we have to many forums? What would you suggest we remove, or merge here?
2. I'm on the look for some sports content to merge, I'm talking to one guy with a great basketball forum, and sort of talking to a few others with sports forums. I agree our sports and automotive sections need more content and they will in time
3. Again, any suggestions?
4. same as above

thanks for your time and suggestions

 

I generally recommend a cap of 20 public forums, but if for some reason you have a need, any topic with less than 1k posts that does not serve a board function should be at risk of merging. Also, "Home & Family" and Family, etc : )

 

I've been meaning to merge the home family and family forums together, thx for the reminders. Done
Generally I would agree with you, but not in this case. This forum is going to be very large and there is no way we could fit everything in only 20 visible forums.
We're open to suggestions, or forums you think should be merged ATM.

Thanks again
-Brandon

 

What I'm suggesting is that rather than start with so many, you grow as you actually get the content (or are aware you'll be getting it).

For example, if you're eating a basketball forum - but no other sports forums just yet - separate out basketball for now and merge the others. Then, when you eat a baseball forum, chances will be better that someone actually talked about baseball in the interim. You move the ~20 threads out and enjoy your meal : )

 

Well... This forum wasn't started in the traditional sense of a forum. I picked up this domain with full intentions of buying other forums and merging them with this one.

I do see what you mean about the sports section, we can go ahead and merge all those post to the "sports" forum. We already merged all the automotive forums a few weeks ago.

 

I understand that. I did say 'normally'. But my general impression is that you're buying them to build off of, not buying them to archive and enshrine their place in history. I.E., you're trying to be the next offtopic dot com, not the Wayback Machine of forums.

Music Mayhem, Electronics, Stereo & Electronics,

There should be only two!

Every rule has exceptions. For example, I would also collapse "The Internet" forums, but keeping the Marketplace segregated serves a valuable function.

----

To put it another way, when you are buying a forum, you are buying its content, and the opportunity to get all of its traffic (and I count the long tail search traffic you will be getting). Here you're faced with an interesting dilemma - the people who are the most vocal about keeping their niche board open are going to be the ones who are most committed. They want their board, they can have it with enough activity.

Make them make you.

The people who you are most at risk of losing (whether from site traffic or search engines) are the ones who aren't going to say much. and making things easy, straightforward and valuable for them is a much more subtle challenge.

And I hope I'm not overstepping my place, here. I know you're taking the advice for the most part, I just want to expand on my reasoning : )

 

Not at all, this is very vauable for me
It's like if you're a painter or an artist and working on detail, sometimes you need to step back and look at the whole picture.
I actually just looked at our technology section, via your pm, and see the 3 forums with 20 threads each, those can certainly be consolidated.
Can you expand out a little one what you mean about the internet section?

Thanks

 

http://www.general-forums.com/f47/

I see "Free Wordpress Themes" is particularly vibrant : )

 

hehe

ya I know, I did that for a reason.
We have a few users who go around submitting wordpress styles, I'm working on adding our forum to their list. :desire:

 

The free wordpress styles section should look a little better now

-Brandon

 

I did a little more cleaning and consolidating on the forums

 

thx, any suggestions about the sections ?

 

I would like to get an auto and a sports forum, but I need cash first..lol

 

you can buy my toyota forum.....for one MILLION dollars!!!

not really...i just wanted to post in here and had nothing better to say! lol

 

if only I had a million dollars.............. :embarass:

 

I’ve been working on the forums a little this morning, merging some of the ones that had redundant info in them and cleaned up the forum descriptions on a few that really needed more info. I’ll go over each forum and redo the descriptions if needed. This will help guest and user know which forums to post or search in as well as helping the search engine rankings, to attract more guests.