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Why more than one sub-forum?
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<P mce_keep="true">[quote user="markpierce"] <P>Ninety-five percent of the posts on trains.com is in the "general" category. So why bother having the other several categories that have very minimal activity? It just makes more work to "bounce" among the several categories.. </P> <P>Mark</P> <P>[/quote]</P> <P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3>Generally, I find a problem with subdivided forums.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>On one hand, they make sense in an organizational way, but the more you sub-divide them, the less exposure they get; and it is the exposure that stimulates participation.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>So if I have a nuts and bolts question about locomotives, for example, the organizational aspect of the forum would suggest I ask it in the <I><U>Locomotives</U></I> forum.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>However, there is nothing to say I can’t ask it in the <I><U>General</U></I> forum.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>I conclude that everybody who would see it in the Locomotives forum would also see it in the General forum, but probably less that 10% of the people seeing it in the General forum would see it in the Locomotives forum.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>The conclusion is obvious; post it in the General forum.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>And then this obvious course of action further reduces the potential traffic in the Locomotives forum.</FONT></P><FONT size=3><FONT face="Times New Roman"> <?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" /><o:p></o:p></FONT></FONT> <P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><FONT size=3><FONT face="Times New Roman">Another issue related to this is the length of the first page of the General forum.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>There is not clear and logical end to any of these threads.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Often times a thread will seem to be exhausted and then it will suddenly veer off in an entirely new direction and begin plow fertile ground once again.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>And often what stimulates this revival is somebody seeing for the first time, a thread that has been in progress for quite a while.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>So the dynamics of discussion are related to exposure.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN></FONT></FONT></P> <P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA"></SPAN> </P> <P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA">I would guess that the exposure of the second page is far less than the first page, so once a thread falls off of page one, it is almost like a death sentence for loss of exposure.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>This is simply because a lot of people will log on and simply check the first page for what is new.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>They could just as well proceed to check page two, or even earlier pages, but I’ll bet most don’t do that most of the time.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>I don’t.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>It takes some effort to open page two just like it does to check the subdivided forums.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>And the reward for the effort is probably going to be less than the reward for opening page one.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>It would be interesting to know how many times per day the second page gets viewed compared to the number of times per day the first page gets viewed.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>I bring this up because it seems to me that this new forum format has far fewer (perhaps half as many) threads on page one than the old format did.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN></SPAN></P>
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