Main Area and Open Discussion > Living Room

Close the Blog Section?

<< < (2/3) > >>

Carol Haynes:
Re: Loss of formatting in the review section if it were moved to the forums ...

Actually there is no real reason why this should be true. SMF supports limited HTML and BBC inc. tables, embedded graphics, attachments and easy editing.

Surely there is sufficient scope there to present reviews just as neatly as they are currelntly displayed?

Review topics are decided upon - they aren't whims, and there is already a mini review boards. So it would make sense to have a Review Forum with child boards - one per topic. Make the author based review posts sticky and editable only by you and the author, and then let people have their say below ...

This would make browsing reviews quick and easy, and searching would pop up all sorts of related stuff too.

dtrud0h:
Here's a thought,
  Just a heading for a section of the forum "Drop Box" , or something.  A Place where an inspired member could drop off either an article, or How-To or whatnot and let it be reviewed from there, or all the originating posts there could have a poll attached to them asking where users think they belong, or  if they should be stickied.  This way not only the administrators would get a say, nor have to necessarily take the time to review each separate post and make a decision.    Maybe 25, 100 , 500 or whatever.. votes and the topic is moved, if not by an admin beforehand(at the time of move voting no longer registers). It would be good if the topic itself wasn't moved, but Stickied into the appropriate child board, ie.."Articles","HowTo's","Rants", or whatever,   I don't know if this type of automation exists in the forum software, but I would bet most anything that Skrommel could script it.
 If nothing else a centrally accessible place for members and admins to review and comment on articles, reviews, howTo's and the like would take some of the strain off managing your time. An active topic or really good how-to becomes sticky, or gets sent to a sidebar in the front page, or ends up creating it's own child board, or finally ends up dying out and ends up in a "Top Threads of All Times" locked archive. 
  Anyway just a few ideas to play with, I'm rambling now so I'll leave it there and see where it all goes (Oh Yeah, I almost forgot.  Trash Bin should probably not be included in the poll options  ;-)   )

mouser:
Ok, i guess the board has spoken.. actually not many spoke but i think that speaks for itself..  I've removed the blog (columns) link from the top navigation bar..  I will find a way to put the past blogs somewhere useful - probably integrate them into the forum somehow.

Maybe a section like "Noteworthy Posts"
which would normally just be weekly list of pointers to the best posts on the forum, but could be initialized with the older blogs..

mouser:
Can i take a moment to say thank you to all of the blog columnists who were generous enough to spend time writing columns..

It's hard to remember back 8 months but when we started the site there was very little actual discussion on this forum, and the blog columns were a great source of content on the site.

They were entertaining and informative little articles that were always fun to come read when there was nothing else new, and they really gave the site some personality.  Thanks especially to nudone, jibz, vrgirl, and tensieken who volunteered early and kept the blogs interesting.

As the forum grew in activity, the blogs became more and more redundant, and I think it's natural that as the activity and discussion grows here, the need for an independent blog section decreases.

So let's just view this as a natural evolution of the site; i'll bring the older blog columns into the forum for everyone to read, and we can see what's next in store for us..

f0dder:
It probably makes sense to move the blog section to the forum - I'm a bit worried about blog quality, though. It "feels different" to write for a blog than "just doing a forum post". But making a blog subforum might help a bit? Would be nice to still have a centralized place to go, like "blog subforum -> jibz subsubforum"...

I don't think reviews should be moved to the forum. It could probably work okay technically speaking, but it would feel wrong, and might end up with half-baked reviews that are "patched" as time goes. Better to keep them as a "special feature", this looks more professional anyway. But for discussion of a review, make a "Reviews" subforum, and create a thread there for each review, and link to it from the review page. This keeps the distinction between mini-reviews, and larger reviews that require more time and effort.

Just a few stray thoughts :)

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page

[*] Previous page