h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

If you create lots of forums, people get lost as to where is deemed right to post, and with everybody spread out, it then looks like the site is inactive.
So what you then get is everybody just using the one forum inappropriately, and encouraging others to do so, which then makes it worse.
Which is what has happened, and is what we're currently trying to sort out.

Yeah, Mr603's Current Event forum sound like a better idea. It would get more traffic than just a condolence forum. I like it.

And surely, with the last six posts across the site on the Front Page, the site would only look inactive if some of those post were really old?


Geggs

"Mr603's Current Event forum"

I insist we use that as the title.

Besides the Review forums, I didn't think that forums are much different from a regular entry?
I may be totally wrong, though.

Issues with Ask have come up from time to time over the years, and usually, like this one, about its proper use and intention. As far as I understand it, it was set up to be an online enquire within where we went to ask the community for information if we had a question about... anything, and Miscellaneous Chat was meant as a general chat forum. It didn't work out that way and Ask became Misc Chat, while Misc Chat has withered on the vine.

It's been suggested in the past that Ask be renamed as something more relevant to what it's turned into, a request that was always turned down by the BBC Eds. Personally, I think that would be a good solution because Miscellaneous Chat is an awful name for a forum and Ask is now so much more than just a place to find out what people think is the best firewall or how to get rail pass if you're visiting Britain.

I do agree with Pastey that too many forums can dilute the conversation, but Ask works perfectly well. It just doesn't have the right name.

If you opened the new forums, while this might make the site appear quiet for a while, the idea is to stimulate new activity within them and to hopefully draw new people in the discussion and social side to h2g2, now that is either going to work or not, so sooner rather than later would be good.

At the moment I think you are making work for yourself moving threads from here to there in the absence of somewhere else more suitable or compromising to put them and it is counter productive

Forget the cleaning up for now and channel that into moving forward with plans and energy into opening the forum you have planned

I think that it will solve many of the issues that have raised on recent thread moves on Ask and I am looking forward to a comfy chair.

I do really like the current events forum idea as well. But the lounge has been in the pipeline for a while so perhaps just stick with the one extra for now

reply was to post 21 which was the last one then

eek,goes back to read other posts

Cleaning up is part of moving forward.

Every time in the past when things were tried to be moved forward, nothing was done to tidy up, which is one of the reasons everything is in such a mess.

Pastey

Is it technical stuff you are talking about which makes opening up a new forum so difficult?

Nobody has said it was difficult.

It is a time thing then in that no-one has the time to make one?

I don't know what the technical terms there are for making a forum and linking to it on the front page

The first stage in any new main forum is to make sure it's actually needed. Do we really think it's a good idea? What would it be for? How would it be governed? Would there be a need for any additional rules? How would it be different from existing forums? Is it *really* needed and wanted?
We ask those questions amongst the core team to get an initial idea, and then we ask the wider volunteer groups to get their ideas. Then, depending on the forum or change we're looking at, we ask other researchers that may have valid, constructive input.
Once we've got all those answers, we draw up plans for the new forum, including how to implement it, how and what needs changing, if anything.

We don't just do knee jerk reactions. Everything done by the volunteer teams is fully considered and discussed to make sure that whatever action is taken is both warranted and done right.

This is why the Lounge is still coming, because it's a *potential* large change. Even though as a normal user of the site the change won't be that massive, because it'll be, in a way, taking us back to pre-BBC days with general chat forums that are actively chaired an encouraged. But behind the scenes we have to make sure that the volunteers are in place and trained about the new forums, we have to make sure that the designs, crests and layouts all work for it, and then when we do launch it, it works.

Thanks for that reply I will get back to it, need to get to other things for now

Back to the moving of condolences threads in the here and now,

How do people feel and think about Misc Chat being the least worst for these types of threads?

the least worse *option*

Personally I'm hoping that not enough notables die that we need to worry that much about it, but maybe I'm not as macabre as some

So I take that as 'no not an option' from you then Pastey, that is one researchers view

No, my preferred opinion is a Condolences / Obituaries page/forum.

Not just for public notables, but for those researchers who've gone on to hitchhike their way across the stars. Over the many years we've been running, we've lost some truly amazing people who've contributed so much to this site.

{Over the many years we've been running, we've lost some truly amazing people who've contributed so much to this site.}

You're doing well if mortality catches up with you before Pastey's told you to leave