Too many Forums

[robertk]

Hi Admins...

I think you have a bit too many forums for a successful board.

I belive it's better to limit the forums and let the topics decide what to discuss... Look at WR, they have one for VC, everyone looks at that one.. here we have to browse trough 10 forums with multiple topics... it's just too many. I rather have one forum to look in and a good search tool.

Just my 2 cents.

//Robert

[Gary Miyakawa]

RobertK,

I'm afraid I can't agree with you on this one. I spend quite a bit of time on Forums that are of technical nature (probably too much time, especially if you ask my wife ;) ). Right now, with this board having less that 20 members, small is fine, but once you get a couple hundred participants and 10-20 posts per day (I'm on one forum with 23K members and 100-200 posts per day) having just a few sections makes "looking" very hard. Especially when people post something like "It just doesn't work"... "It" could be almost anything. By creating sections, hopefully, they will post it in an appropriate section. Moving threads from one section to another is not hard but does take a bit time time.

If you want to look at all the "new" posts since you were on, please let me suggest you click on the label "View New Posts". This is a great feature that will show you only the new posts since the last time you were on the forums. That's the only way I look at most forums since I really don't want to search thru for "new" posts.

Enjoy the forums, this could really help all of us out in the VC world.

Gary Miyakawa

[George]

Well said Gary.

robertk, the reason I set it up with these many forums is exactly as Gary suggested. Ease of use. However I totally agree with you on the too many forums part. I've seen new startup forums try to come out with a board front page with over 30 topics! In fact I even posted nearly the exact same comment you did on this one.

So having that in mind I tried to keep the categories to a minimum as well hoping to grow them as you described. I could have gone a lot more in-depth with the categories, like brands, and a seperate forum for each network protocol etc. So your point is well taken and I think we have a pretty good starting balance of categories so far. I've already had great recommendations from Gary and plan to implement those as soon as we get a few more members who are as experienced and talented as he.

If you see anything else that you think I should fix, please don't hesitate to let us all know so we can all comment on it here. Welcome to the forums and thanks very much for your input. Keep it coming!

[tlsmith1000]

If it has a GOOD search facility, the number of boards won't matter as much. I haven't tried searching here yet so I won't comment, but a well designed search engine makes life good.