Segmented = Fragmented?
Just wondering ..........
Would a Segmented Forum cause us to become ........uh, Segmented?
Wood Magazine recently shut down a bunch of its tool specific forums because the topics were so focused that they became a cyber wasteland. Their rationale for having sub-forums was due to the extremely high volume of traffic that they have on their main forums. I see the volume of traffic here as just barely enough to sustain this forum. First time visitors will be unlikely to post questions for help on a site where they don't see much opportunity for getting much feedback. I think that the way to attract new participants is to have a reasonably active discussion forum and branch into sub forums if the need arises and I think that the primary reason for doing so should be related to the volume of postings and not by having subject areas that are so tightly focused that they rarely see any visitors. If this were the first time that I visited this site and if I were confronted with a large number of sub-forums to browse, I would not be likely to search through all of them. More than likely, I would look at one or two and if they looked like death warmed over, I would write this off as not a good place to post questions or come back to read things that have been posted.
I post this with some misgivings because I don't want to sidetrack things and start a flame war. This is just me expressing my true feelings and perhaps being too brutally honest -- I don't have any ill will towards any ideas that others have about the direction that the discussion forums take, but I am giving my thoughts for what they are worth (maybe $.02, at the most). I also would like to see this forum grow to the point that sub-forums become a necessity due to the high volume of postings, and as an incidental result, interest in woodturning benefits and the AAW benefits by attracting new members.
Bill