zoogs
New member
Ref: http://www.huskerboard.com/index.php?/topic/44601-9-pinned-topics/page__view__getnewpost
After that post by 37, I started wondering how we could clean up the main board. And I eventually got to thinking we should move some things around. I haven't paid a whole lot of attention to Landlord's whole spiel on the reorganization thing, but these are just my thoughts.
To start:
I think we need an 'Announcements' forum and reserve the 'Announcements' feature for more major, board wide announcements that we want to immediately push out to every outlet. The motivation behind this was a lot of the pinned topics seem to be more of the announcement category, and having that in the main Husker football forum just clogs it up.
I pay attention to these forums sort of rarely, so that might be one consideration. However, if we have that as the first forum you see, and don't make announcements too frequently (more than several/week may be pushing it), it can be a good way to alert users to both Board News and things like the 2010 coaching event, without cluttering up Husker football talk.
I think that this can go either as the first forum listed in the first group of forums (called 'Husker Sports' right now), or in its own heading category.
Subforums: General consolidating?
I think subforums should be reserved for when there's plain and obvious utility (e.g, Plan-It Husker; A/V). Otherwise, all they do is partition discussion and make the user take more clicks (or less obvious clicks) to get to where they want. If the sub forum is a frequent topic of discussion, that's a big "Don't" IMO.
For instance, I think "All Other Husker Sports" should be one forum. I think that people talking Huskers have the mindset of either talking Husker football, or talking Husker non-football. Maybe if we were Kansas, we could have Basketball in its own forum. But looking at each subforum in "Other Husker Sports", the closest the most active of those forums gets is two orders of magnitude less discussion than "Husker Football." Combine all 'Other Husker Sports', and you're still 10x off. I just don't see the clutter that having those specific subforums avoids, or the organizational benefit they provide. If it's sort of nice just to have the different categories, that benefit is far outweighed by the blow to accessibility it causes.
Same for "More Sports." The Big 12/NCAA distinction in particular is a sort of fuzzy one considering the overlap, but I think everything can go into one here, again. "Other Football" could get its own forum - where other NCAA teams/ NFL teams can be discussed, because I think there's a fair sized relevancy gap between Husker football - other football - other sports.
New forum: Other Football?
This is about relevancy, too. News about UCLA football players being arrested is something that I feel shouldn't be a good 800 pixels of vertical space away from Husker football news.
I think having a "Other Football" forum addresses this issue. Any talk specific to another football team - be it another college or a NFL team - can go here. It makes a lot more sense than having "Big 12 football" in a separate forum from "NCAA football", but in the same forum as "Big 12 baseball." ANY college football talk outside of the Huskers is still relevant enough to get its own forum. And the discussion is not significant enough to draw a distinction between that and the NFL. We like to talk football here a lot, and it's either "Husker" or "not."
I also think that the less forums we have, the better. It makes everything much closer together, much easier to get to, and much easier to talk about. There's only so many forums one can devote their time to browsing. Having too many, especially when they are unnecessary, just means the topics that go into those forums don't get the views that they could and should be getting.
I'm not too sure where this forum should go, though. Should it be its own thing, or a subforum of 'Husker football'? I feel this and 'Husker football' are closely tied enough for that to maybe be the case. Other football discussion is clearly related to and subsidiary to Husker football discussion.
Rearranging
Going back to the last point about the 800 pixels between UCLA football and Husker football discussion...
I feel - and this is somewhat drawn from my own tendencies, so please correct me if you feel differently - that people come on here to (primarily) talk about a few things: Husker Football/football, Football Recruiting, Other Husker stuff, Other sports, and just lounge around with other users.
Those are five forums that belong together under one forum heading, just for accessibility purposes.
All the other forums that we have on here can be broadly categorized, IMO, as 'utility forums' - forums that fill some niche utility, and hence don't belong at the top of the page in the forum ordering.
A quick look: Plan-it Husker (organizing watch parties), A/V stuff (playing around with graphics and sigs and such), Contest Crib, Classifieds, etc.
So here's what the final revised structure would look like. (Disregard the naming of the forum headers, didn't really know what to call them)
ANNOUNCEMENTS
-"Announcements"
HUSKERBOARD
-"Husker Football" ('other' football being its subforum for now - I didn't like the idea of having six forums up here, but that would be an alternative)
-"Recruiting"
-"Big Red Lounge"
-"Other Husker Sports"
-"Other Sports"
OTHER STUFF
-"Plan-It Husker"
-"A/V Tech Club"
-"Contest Crib"
-"Classifieds"
-"Daily Skin"
-"Woodshed"
-"Feedback"
Rumorville/Conference Expansion and Archives
I agree with AR: Conference Expansion can be shut down. The drama for us is over; we are in the Big 10. Any further discussion on conferences can appropriately go either in 'Husker football' (if it's relevant to Big 10 or Big 12) or football in general.
I also am not really sure why Rumorville is still around...nostalgia? It seems the users really like it, but to be honest I'm not really sure what threads should go there that wouldn't make more sense going somewhere else. It's a fond time to remember, Rumorville, and maybe it should be mothballed as it was before. Don't remember how that was done, but we could lock everything up in this and conference expansion and make them subforums in an "Archives" forum.
All the past recruiting cycles can go there too. Didn't we use to have a 2006 recruiting subforum? - what happened with that. In any case, the '07 and '08 ones have to go soon, as we're getting into '13 recruiting territory...I figure we can have maybe 6 at a time, as we do now. If we could have sub-sub forums, the recruiting archives should just be a subforum under 'Recruiting.'
Pinned topics
Back to the original (sort of) topic. I started thinking we needed an 'announcements' forum after looking through the pinned topics list under Husker Football. I think pruning down the pinned topics list as well as the subforums would help a lot in reducing the scrolling once you get to that forum. So just my 2cents here:
--Leave Pinned--
*2010 @ Huskerboard (Combining schedule & watchsites with schedule wallpaper post)
*Introduce yourself
* Nebraska Tradition (this is the kind of thread that will probably expire as a pinned topic after our first year of Big 10 play)
--Unpin and Move to 'Announcements'--
*Inside Word (2010 Season Spotlight Event - pinned there til it's over)
*Banner Contest (pinned there til it's over)
*Using the IGNORE function (pinned there)
*Holiday Bowl
*Huskerboard All Time Team
Sorry if that was a load to read. I would love to hear you guys' take on this though. It is the offseason after all, and as good a time as any to explore these kinds of options.
After that post by 37, I started wondering how we could clean up the main board. And I eventually got to thinking we should move some things around. I haven't paid a whole lot of attention to Landlord's whole spiel on the reorganization thing, but these are just my thoughts.
To start:
I think we need an 'Announcements' forum and reserve the 'Announcements' feature for more major, board wide announcements that we want to immediately push out to every outlet. The motivation behind this was a lot of the pinned topics seem to be more of the announcement category, and having that in the main Husker football forum just clogs it up.
I pay attention to these forums sort of rarely, so that might be one consideration. However, if we have that as the first forum you see, and don't make announcements too frequently (more than several/week may be pushing it), it can be a good way to alert users to both Board News and things like the 2010 coaching event, without cluttering up Husker football talk.
I think that this can go either as the first forum listed in the first group of forums (called 'Husker Sports' right now), or in its own heading category.
Subforums: General consolidating?
I think subforums should be reserved for when there's plain and obvious utility (e.g, Plan-It Husker; A/V). Otherwise, all they do is partition discussion and make the user take more clicks (or less obvious clicks) to get to where they want. If the sub forum is a frequent topic of discussion, that's a big "Don't" IMO.
For instance, I think "All Other Husker Sports" should be one forum. I think that people talking Huskers have the mindset of either talking Husker football, or talking Husker non-football. Maybe if we were Kansas, we could have Basketball in its own forum. But looking at each subforum in "Other Husker Sports", the closest the most active of those forums gets is two orders of magnitude less discussion than "Husker Football." Combine all 'Other Husker Sports', and you're still 10x off. I just don't see the clutter that having those specific subforums avoids, or the organizational benefit they provide. If it's sort of nice just to have the different categories, that benefit is far outweighed by the blow to accessibility it causes.
Same for "More Sports." The Big 12/NCAA distinction in particular is a sort of fuzzy one considering the overlap, but I think everything can go into one here, again. "Other Football" could get its own forum - where other NCAA teams/ NFL teams can be discussed, because I think there's a fair sized relevancy gap between Husker football - other football - other sports.
New forum: Other Football?
This is about relevancy, too. News about UCLA football players being arrested is something that I feel shouldn't be a good 800 pixels of vertical space away from Husker football news.
I think having a "Other Football" forum addresses this issue. Any talk specific to another football team - be it another college or a NFL team - can go here. It makes a lot more sense than having "Big 12 football" in a separate forum from "NCAA football", but in the same forum as "Big 12 baseball." ANY college football talk outside of the Huskers is still relevant enough to get its own forum. And the discussion is not significant enough to draw a distinction between that and the NFL. We like to talk football here a lot, and it's either "Husker" or "not."
I also think that the less forums we have, the better. It makes everything much closer together, much easier to get to, and much easier to talk about. There's only so many forums one can devote their time to browsing. Having too many, especially when they are unnecessary, just means the topics that go into those forums don't get the views that they could and should be getting.
I'm not too sure where this forum should go, though. Should it be its own thing, or a subforum of 'Husker football'? I feel this and 'Husker football' are closely tied enough for that to maybe be the case. Other football discussion is clearly related to and subsidiary to Husker football discussion.
Rearranging
Going back to the last point about the 800 pixels between UCLA football and Husker football discussion...
I feel - and this is somewhat drawn from my own tendencies, so please correct me if you feel differently - that people come on here to (primarily) talk about a few things: Husker Football/football, Football Recruiting, Other Husker stuff, Other sports, and just lounge around with other users.
Those are five forums that belong together under one forum heading, just for accessibility purposes.
All the other forums that we have on here can be broadly categorized, IMO, as 'utility forums' - forums that fill some niche utility, and hence don't belong at the top of the page in the forum ordering.
A quick look: Plan-it Husker (organizing watch parties), A/V stuff (playing around with graphics and sigs and such), Contest Crib, Classifieds, etc.
So here's what the final revised structure would look like. (Disregard the naming of the forum headers, didn't really know what to call them)
ANNOUNCEMENTS
-"Announcements"
HUSKERBOARD
-"Husker Football" ('other' football being its subforum for now - I didn't like the idea of having six forums up here, but that would be an alternative)
-"Recruiting"
-"Big Red Lounge"
-"Other Husker Sports"
-"Other Sports"
OTHER STUFF
-"Plan-It Husker"
-"A/V Tech Club"
-"Contest Crib"
-"Classifieds"
-"Daily Skin"
-"Woodshed"
-"Feedback"
Rumorville/Conference Expansion and Archives
I agree with AR: Conference Expansion can be shut down. The drama for us is over; we are in the Big 10. Any further discussion on conferences can appropriately go either in 'Husker football' (if it's relevant to Big 10 or Big 12) or football in general.
I also am not really sure why Rumorville is still around...nostalgia? It seems the users really like it, but to be honest I'm not really sure what threads should go there that wouldn't make more sense going somewhere else. It's a fond time to remember, Rumorville, and maybe it should be mothballed as it was before. Don't remember how that was done, but we could lock everything up in this and conference expansion and make them subforums in an "Archives" forum.
All the past recruiting cycles can go there too. Didn't we use to have a 2006 recruiting subforum? - what happened with that. In any case, the '07 and '08 ones have to go soon, as we're getting into '13 recruiting territory...I figure we can have maybe 6 at a time, as we do now. If we could have sub-sub forums, the recruiting archives should just be a subforum under 'Recruiting.'
Pinned topics
Back to the original (sort of) topic. I started thinking we needed an 'announcements' forum after looking through the pinned topics list under Husker Football. I think pruning down the pinned topics list as well as the subforums would help a lot in reducing the scrolling once you get to that forum. So just my 2cents here:
--Leave Pinned--
*2010 @ Huskerboard (Combining schedule & watchsites with schedule wallpaper post)
*Introduce yourself
* Nebraska Tradition (this is the kind of thread that will probably expire as a pinned topic after our first year of Big 10 play)
--Unpin and Move to 'Announcements'--
*Inside Word (2010 Season Spotlight Event - pinned there til it's over)
*Banner Contest (pinned there til it's over)
*Using the IGNORE function (pinned there)
*Holiday Bowl
*Huskerboard All Time Team
Sorry if that was a load to read. I would love to hear you guys' take on this though. It is the offseason after all, and as good a time as any to explore these kinds of options.
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