Modeling forums question - Please respond

We are not able to change the internal functioning of the search feature. It is built into the software. However, we can possibly teach people different ways of using it as I believe it to function correctly.

Charlie

 

Without question, what the N-scale people are doing is of great interest to me as a HO'er.

Ken

 

Hi folks,

I am back with more on this (although I understand that the conversation so far may be fatiguing).

I have written a couple of long posts explaining why I am in favor of this change and what it means. I have received a couple of private messages and e-mail messages from people who did not want to post on the thread but wanted more information.

Those conversations have led me to believe that some percentage of people are not clearly understanding what exact change I am proposing here, and in fact some people may think that what I am saying is close to being the opposite of what I mean.

Furthermore, it appears that some folks are unaware of the present forum structure of the model railroading forum portion of the site to begin with.

Let’s take two steps backward and try a new explanation. For the sake of this explanation, I want to think ONLY of the N Scale portion of the model railroad forums. Bear in mind, however, that is representative of some of the other model scales as well.

Right now we have the equivalent of these forums related (only) to N Scale model railroading:

1) N Scale General (17 threads)
2) N Scale Steam Locomotives (3 threads)
3) N Scale Diesel Locomotives (15 threads)
4) N Scale Passenger Equipment (6 threads)
5) N Scale Freight Equipment (7 threads)
6) N Scale Cabooses (2 threads)
7) N Scale Maintenance of Way (1 thread)
8) N Scale Structures (2 threads)

Over the entire life of the Frisco.org forum there have been only 53 threads started about N Scale model railroading.

I believe that those 53 threads belong in one forum called “N Scale” and not 8 different forums, some with only one or two threads. The forum structure is too large for the content. For me, it means a lot more clicking of the mouse to find threads I want to read.

A forum *should* contain more information that what these contain. Things do not have to be broken down this far or into this much detail. A forum should be able to hold hundreds or thousands of threads without any confusion. We don’t have that kind of traffic here anyway.

I’ve been trying to think of a good analogy, and this one may not be the greatest, but remember the old card catalogues at the library? Those drawers did not contain 10 or 15 cards each. They contained a lot of cards.

A forum is the same kind of thing. With good thread titles and every thread in the right forum we don’t need to stretch the forum structure out too far. I am looking for a happy balance between the numbers of forums versus the amount of content contained in them. I believe that this change would be positive and not negative for the site.

We will continue to listen to comments arguing for it to be one way or the other.

Thanks for reading.

Charlie