Wednesday, February 6, 2002
Forum Changes
Posted by Jason Dunn in "UPDATE" @ 12:58 PM
I've seen the votes & comments on the site taxonomy (categories), and I really appreciate the discussion and feedback you're all giving. One thing I've always strived for on this site is involving readers in the decision making process. Ultimately, this site is for YOU.
When we transitioned to a full discussion forum, we were gaining a lot of benefits. With some clever PHP programming courtesy of Chris Edwards, we'll be able to do the things I've always wanted to do. But I don't want to compromise what has made this site successful - and I saw that happening when we had the front-page categories open for posting to everyone. I think there's a lot of reference value in having "official" Thoughts posts separate from free-form community discussion, and when we allowed anyone to post to those front-page topic forums, I didn't like where it was headed.
To address the comment of "There are too many forums, I don't know where to look for new stuff!", I have two responses:
1) Check the front page as always. Fundamentally, nothing on the site has changed in this aspect. Our team of people will continue to post updates to the opening page. If you want to read or make a comment, you click on the same link. The opening page will have the past three days of content on it.
2) If you want to get involved in the public forums and keep up, look in the upper right corner when you log in - there's a link that says "view posts since your last visit". It's a great feature because it lets you see new posts across the entire board, including the front page posts, comments. etc.
When we transitioned to a full discussion forum, we were gaining a lot of benefits. With some clever PHP programming courtesy of Chris Edwards, we'll be able to do the things I've always wanted to do. But I don't want to compromise what has made this site successful - and I saw that happening when we had the front-page categories open for posting to everyone. I think there's a lot of reference value in having "official" Thoughts posts separate from free-form community discussion, and when we allowed anyone to post to those front-page topic forums, I didn't like where it was headed.
To address the comment of "There are too many forums, I don't know where to look for new stuff!", I have two responses:
1) Check the front page as always. Fundamentally, nothing on the site has changed in this aspect. Our team of people will continue to post updates to the opening page. If you want to read or make a comment, you click on the same link. The opening page will have the past three days of content on it.
2) If you want to get involved in the public forums and keep up, look in the upper right corner when you log in - there's a link that says "view posts since your last visit". It's a great feature because it lets you see new posts across the entire board, including the front page posts, comments. etc.
