Forum suggestion.

[Gasmantle]

Hi all,

I really enjoy reading this forum and it's a credit to people who moderate / admin it, so firstly many thanks 

I'd like to make a suggestion on how I think it could be improved and would like to hear what others think.

At the moment we have a video thread that is literally 1000s of posts over 100s of pages but there is no way to have any idea what has been updated without looking though all the new posts. In a lot of cases the new material may be something a person isn't interested in but it has been tagged onto something that was of interest.

Would it be possible to create a new forum section solely for videos (and possibly photos) then each new topic could have it's own thread and people could more easily follow the videos they are interested in.

Any thoughts ? 

[Guest PogArt Artur]

2 hours ago, Gasmantle said:

Hi all,

I really enjoy reading this forum and it's a credit to people who moderate / admin it, so firstly many thanks 

I'd like to make a suggestion on how I think it could be improved and would like to hear what others think.

At the moment we have a video thread that is literally 1000s of posts over 100s of pages but there is no way to have any idea what has been updated without looking though all the new posts. In a lot of cases the new material may be something a person isn't interested in but it has been tagged onto something that was of interest.

Would it be possible to create a new forum section solely for videos (and possibly photos) then each new topic could have it's own thread and people could more easily follow the videos they are interested in.

Any thoughts ? 

You might be right @Gasmantle, I'm reading multiple posts, and also trying to catch up the recent posts.

I'm not an expert by any means, but if your suggestion could simplified the things, and it wouldn't have require a lot of efforts to improve, why not then 🙂

[Gasmantle]

Thanks Artur,

I do read the video thread to catch up on local videos or those featuring a particular wheel I may be interested in but I find it a pain having to scroll through pages of posts I'm not interested in.

To me it makes sense to have a complete new video forum and each topic can then have its own thread with a description, it will then be a simple matter to see if the video thread you are interested in has had any updates.

[Planemo]

I just use the 'unread content' button which saves visiting different parts of the forum to see whats new but I'm not sure if this would help with the thing you are talking about

[Guest PogArt Artur]

1 hour ago, Gasmantle said:

Thanks Artur,

I do read the video thread to catch up on local videos or those featuring a particular wheel I may be interested in but I find it a pain having to scroll through pages of posts I'm not interested in.

To me it makes sense to have a complete new video forum and each topic can then have its own thread with a description, it will then be a simple matter to see if the video thread you are interested in has had any updates.

I got it my friend.

[meepmeepmayer]

The Video Thread is one of the things a new member will look at first. I think it is much easier to browse through pages of a thread to find and see various things (scroll) than through posts in a subforum (click all of them?).

And most people will only post one picture in the Photo Thread, that's not worth starting a separate thread.

I fear splitting the threads up will reduce visibility for a lot of content.

But maybe a "Videos, Photos, and Ride Reports" subforum would be nice. (Ride Reports for stuff like "1000km through Poland on a V8" and other epic long rides, which gets too easily lost in the General Discussion but would belong in such a heavily video/photo-centric subforum) Move the Photo and Video Threads there, pin them,  and allow people to make separate posts if they want (with a recommendation or even requirement to leave a link in either the pinned Photo or Video Thread so they can discovered later easily by just browsing these threads).The Ride Reports Part is a bit troubling because often people will posts Videos and Photos of epic rides on the "Local Group Meet Ups" post where they originally organized it, so it wouldn't end up in the new subforum. Not sure how to improve this.

I'm just worried about worse visibility if the forum content is split in too many places. Not sure if this would work or the "Video, Photo and Ride Reports" subforum would be mostly ignored. I say: let's try it anyways (the new subforum, but keep the old threads intact!).

Edited August 29, 2019 by meepmeepmayer

[Gasmantle]

Thanks meep,

I can't speak for everyone but I find the video thread has so much in one thread it is confusing and I no longer look at it. The information in the thread is so diverse that a lot of its content isn't of interest so I'd have to wade through everything in the hope of finding something I'm interested in.

An example is another rider living close to me quite often posts videos of local interest that I like to see but I need to visit the video thread countless times after updates incase I miss the local posting, invariably the updates are about a wheel that is of no interest to me and on the other side of the world. I just think it makes far more sense to have a complete video section then people could post under headings like 'Z10 ride at Blackpool' or 'My latest ride in Detroit' etc Once each video has its own thread it will be far easier to keep an eye on updates and see new threads that are likely to be of interest to yourself.

I'm not saying that videos from far away aren't interesting or aren't well made but I just think a better system of organising them would be a great help, at the moment there must be hours of interesting stuff in the early part of the video thread that no-one ever looks at because it is so difficult to find. I don't expect the admin to organise retrospectively but if new posts were separated with their own titled thread thinking wouldn't get lost in history.

At the moment a new member wanting to find videos about say a KS18XL cant just go to a video section then scroll through a list of posting that look as though the may be of interest, admittedly it is possible to use a search facility but it is far from ideal.

I'd be interested in what other members think 

Edited August 29, 2019 by Gasmantle

[meepmeepmayer]

27 minutes ago, Gasmantle said:

At the moment a new member wanting to find videos about say a KS18XL cant just go to a video section then scroll through a list of posting that look as though the may be of interest, admittedly it is possible to use a search facility but it is far from ideal.

That's another problem. Shouldn't such a video be found in the Kingsong subforum?

In my opinion, the important thing is that it must be clear where to post and find a certain thing. Otherwise, more things will get overlooked or be double because it is hard enough to follow the forum already.

So the basic idea of a new subforum is good, but it needs some more refinement. There shouldn't be overlap with the manufacturer subforums (for wheel specific videos), the General Discussion (for ambiguous cases), and the Local Meet Up subforum (where videos of local rides might end up).

Edited August 29, 2019 by meepmeepmayer

[Gasmantle]

Thanks meep,

I guess it would be useful to hear what others think, I'm not saying my suggestion is perfect but it sounds like you agree that a video section is worth looking into.

At the moment it seems like 50% of the posts end up in 1 thread.

How about videos showing rides, general interest, scenery etc in a seperate video section each with its own thread - ie 'Summer day ride in Boston etc'

Then videos that are reviews put in the relevant wheel sub forum. 

 

Edited August 29, 2019 by Gasmantle

[meepmeepmayer]

I'm not sure about a "video" section because you suddenly sort stuff not by content, but by format. But maybe that's the right thing to do anyways.

I'll let others say what they think because I think I'm going into a different direction than you intend But your base idea is good.

Edited August 29, 2019 by meepmeepmayer

[houseofjob]

I like @Gasmantle's line of thinking, as I usually miss the majority of what's on the Video thread, amidst the daily volume of forum posting traffic.

More than a Video section, I wish we could quickly sort search results more granularly (maybe filtered view on the All Activities section(?)), based on the post containing video, photos, etc. (dunno if this is possible), then create alerts based on this (ala Google Alerts). This way, it wouldn't depend on how content is split up into sections.

I realize that might be quite an undertaking for the forum webmaster(s), but thought I'd just put it out there.

Edited August 29, 2019 by houseofjob

[Gasmantle]

13 minutes ago, meepmeepmayer said:

I'm not sure about a "video" section because you suddenly sort stuff not by content, but by format. But maybe that's the right thing to do anyways.

I'll let others say what they think because I think I'm going into a different direction than you intend But your base idea is good.

What I was meaning was a forum section called 'video section' containing only videos, so in that sense they would be classified by format but each new thread would have it's own title. Obviously people can still reply to a posting without adding a video but all the replies would be relevant to the original video in the thread.

So @stephennew posting in the video thread would be a new posting in its own thread titled something like 'Blackpool lights ride' making it easier to follow that topic and its replies without scrolling through videos of a ride in outer Mongolia etc

[Gasmantle]

1 minute ago, houseofjob said:

I like @Gasmantle's line of thinking, as I usually miss the majority of what's on the Video thread, amidst the daily volume of forum posting traffic.

Thanks @houseofjob I'm sure there is lots of video footage hidden away in the video thread I'd love to watch but I can't really find it. If each new topic has it's own thread and title is problem solved.

[houseofjob]

1 minute ago, Gasmantle said:

Thanks @houseofjob I'm sure there is lots of video footage hidden away in the video thread I'd love to watch but I can't really find it. If each new topic has it's own thread and title is problem solved.

But to add to this, there are a lot of videos hidden in posts outside of the Video thread, which would be great to encompass in one general query.

[Gasmantle]

1 minute ago, houseofjob said:

But to add to this, there are a lot of videos hidden in posts outside of the Video thread, which would be great to encompass in one general query.

Maybe just create a whole new video section and have subsections like - rides, reviews, meet ups etc. Something similar to the section about wheel types divided into Gotway, Inmotion, Kingsong etc.

[meepmeepmayer]

A few days later, I think this idea is good.

Take the Video Thread and pin it to the top in a new Video subforum. People can post in the Video Thread like they do now, or they can make their own topic in the Video subforum and must also post the video and a link to the topic in the Video Thread if they do so.

This might be better for newbies to discover various videos about EUCs, and might reduce discussion in the Video Thread (which is distracting for people just trying to browse the videos posted there).

Edited September 5, 2019 by meepmeepmayer
clarification