Re: Question for Admin5 and others about this Board
Wow, a lot of responses. I have some thoughts on them. First thanks to everyone for responding. There are a lot of different perspectives.<br /><br />For those who like things the way they are, let me say that I assume that most of the traffic will stay on the "motor breakdown" and "motor maintenance" subboards which will still be pretty general. If I didn't know why my motor didn't go, that's where I'd start. Posters on those boards may get steered elsewhere if their problem fits a particular category, or they might stay on that board. However, some posters will know or strongly suspect already they have a prop issue or an electrical problem. They can start on the right subboard and they will also find previous posts on that subject all in one place and easy to browse and research. This is important because right now there are so many different posts with redundant topics that it is hard to learn much from just browsing new posts, which used to be my preferred way of getting an education here. It is not much fun to browse the same questions over and over so, in the long term, who is going to do it? Will JB spend 2 hours a day forever?<br /><br />I like 12 footers idea on restating the new topics as questions to make it as easy as possible to know where to go with your question and to research it before you post. I suggest that the subject title should also list some keywords at the end of the question to steer people there. The more hints we give, the better it will work.<br /><br />I don't like the idea of just 2 or 3 new sub-boards because I think they there will be so much overlap between those topics that there will just be confusion and people will revert to a single board. If we do this at all I think the different subboards should have distinct subjects that people can easily and logically tell where to post, and also so the new subboards will be useful for research. I have tried but can't get the number down below about 10.<br /><br />I don't think a beefed up search function will reduce traffic much. Realistically, whether we like it or not, everyone can browse but many people don't search before they post, maybe because they don't know how or are not sure what to search for or just don't believe they will find that perfect old post where the exact symptoms of their exact motor are reproduced. We shouldn't bar them access to the board so let's organize the board better in the hopes they find the answer by browsing. <br /><br />I'm also not sure I agree with the idea of FAQs unless someone is going to volunteer to write them all. We probably all have books on outboard maintenance, but books (and FAQs) contain general info. The beauty of this site is that people help each other out on specific questions. It may be good to know from a FAQ that most oil injectors after 1990 are reliable, but it's better to post a question to this site and find out the one on my 96 Johnson 70 is not (if that were true -- is it true Clanton??). Maybe particularly good posts could be nominated for FAQs but I think that sorting the subboards by topic will go a long way towards making it easier to research problems just by browsing.<br /><br />So, with due respect to the other posters against the idea who contribute plenty here, I think some flexibility to new ideas is in order. If 10 new categories seems a bit much, consider that with less than that the categories tend to overlap so that posts will probably all end up on one board anyway to avoid confusion. Is it really going to be that difficult to jump from board to board?? It's only one more double click!<br /><br />I also think it is significant that 12 footer and JB are interested in the topics idea while a lot of others are not. JB confirmed he spent 2 hours reviewing posts yesterday. I kind of suspected that was the case for the heavy users. I don't know how long you can keep that up JB but I wonder about burnout. Maybe that's why Corm and some other former high volume posters don't post as much any more. I've also seen people come and go who post hundreds of messages in a short time and then move on. <br /><br />What I would like to see is this board be sustainable in the long term. I think we should try to avoid burnout of the people who make it work. One of the things that different subboards might produce is more people prepared to do the kind of legwork that JB does on a smaller scale for just one subboard. Maybe Schematic checking things on the "Electronics" board is enough so JB won't feel he has to go there every day. I thought of this whole thing because I started doing exactly that on the "Boating" board because I felt like checking posts on "engines and motors" was just scatter-gun for me as I couldn't possibly open them all. I also didn't like feeling guilty that I wasn't opening some posts where I might be able to help.<br /><br />Admin5, what do you think?
