Forum categories and sub-forums

[Bloomie]

Forum categories and sub-forums are still being ironed out. We started with core categories to kick off all the discussions that need to be happening right now.

If you have suggestions regarding new or existing categories, please post them in this thread.

 

[inTech]

One important forum is needed. The services section. So everyone will know what site accept BitcoinXT.

 

[Flame]

I agree, it'll be useful to have a list of services who openly support XT so that we can support them.

 

[Zangelbert Bingledack]

Since each additional category creates potential fragmentation and browsing burden, I'd take an organic approach where a new subdivisional category is created only when a threshold number of posts on that more specific topic arise in an existing category.

It's no fun to click through a bunch of sparsely populated sub-forums looking for interesting posts.

 

[Zangelbert Bingledack]

Is it possible to make the "New" mark appear next to a forum in the list of forums only when there are new posts in that forum since the last time the user looked at that forum? Right now I think it shows that mark as long as there are any unread posts at all in any thread in the forum, even if there are no *new* unread posts (messages) from that user's perspective.

Also, unrelatedly, I can't seem to get font effects like bold or italics to work in editing (on mobile, could be an Android quirk). Highlighting the text and tapping the italics button does nothing for me. Tapping the italics button then typing works, but it moves the cursor to the beginning of the editing window.

Great job with the forums, by the way, which is why I'm motivated to mention these small things.

 

[Bloomie]

The forum considers new everything that's unread by you. The exception is "New posts" under quick links, which only shows posts added since your last visit and unfortunately also uses the word "new," and that probably causes confusion. The only way around this is to mark everything as read (also under quick links) every time you're done reading the forum. All new content will have an indicator when you come back.

Just tested font effects on Android. The first time it didn't work, the second time it did. When you select the word you want to bold or italicize, make sure the selector doesn't just blink in the middle of the word but actually highlights the whole word from beginning to end, which should be accomplished by a long press. It could be buggy on Android, because it's working sporadically for me.

 

[Zangelbert Bingledack]

Thanks, the "mark read" function solves the problem for me.

Font effects still aren't working at all for me. Input is always pretty iffy on my phone so unless others complain about it I may be an outlier. I'll try updating my Android version first.

 

[jwinterm]

No altcoin subsection?

 

[Bloomie]

Not sure if there's demand right now, but we'll put it in place if people need it.

 

[Zangelbert Bingledack]

Another issue with subforums is, right now (and really up to now) most of the activity on the forum has been in the Economics and Policy section. What if a visitor/member decides that subforum sounds boring and never checks it? Or what if they are not interested in gold, do they never open the thread "Gold collapsing. Bitcoin UP."?

It might be useful to have some kind of "hot topics" indicator near the top of the top-level forums page that shows the top 5 threads by post/view count in the past 24 hours, or maybe a kind of "view active topics" link that takes the user to a simple ranking of all threads in the forum by recent activity.

Of course if there were fewer subforums this would be easier on the user automatically, since the active posts appear at the top of each subforum and the user can see the high page count as an indicator of activity. So this can be taken as, "The more you break the default view into subforums, the more an active topics ranking becomes helpful" for avoiding the situation where a user is missing out on the action in some obscurely titled or obscurely/misleadingly categorized thread. (Misleading categorization is an unavoidable consequence of the fact that discussions evolve and often proceed tangentially, since discussions flower as they broaden in scope, though sometimes it can be useful to break off the tangents into new threads.)

 

[Bloomie]

@Zangelbert Bingledack I agree. The Economics subforum was originally further down on the index page, but we temporarily moved it into "Trending" to give the 'Gold' thread a head start. Now that the Economics subforum has its regular readership, we can probably move it back.

You're also spot on about topics. Ideally, distinct topics should be discussed in separate, newly created threads. We sort of keep replying to the 'Gold' thread by inertia and because that's where the action's taking place, but it would be hugely beneficial for the forum if we created as many new threads as possible.

One benefit of having lots of different threads would be, as you mention, to encourage new members to participate and to give people who are intimidated by long threads something to read.

The other, equally important consideration, is that Google doesn't care much about multi-page threads because its algorithm is not capable of indexing them properly. When deciding whether to index a page in its search results, Google's spiders analyze the page's title (which on this forum is always "Thread Title - Bitcoin Forum"), metadata, and content, and then Google presents it to users whose search queries its considers relevant. This analysis is impossible for threads that span dozens of pages, so most of the posts beyond the first few pages are completely lost to search engine traffic, which of course is a darn shame because our discussions are of such high quality.

Our search engine traffic (and hence new member signups) would probably multiply by 10-20x if we posted more evenly throughout the forum.

 

[Zangelbert Bingledack]

Interesting. The considerations probably should be balanced with how that thread functions as a kind of general "keep up with the most important developments in all aspects of Bitcoin that are relevant to investors" headquarters. Splitting out each topic would take away that property, as it would no longer be a one-stop shop for that.

In any case, with the brain trust here, quality will beget readership and participation in the long run anyway.

 

[Blocktab]

It would be nice to have a forum under development for block chains. I'm here trying to understand all the things you can do with block chains. I thought I read at one point how mining groups were using block chains in some fashion for example.

 

[Bloomie]

The Cryptocurrency forum is now open.

 

[Bloomie]

Added the Iguana subforum under Development/Protocol.