Tuli wrote:I feel like the Fridge and Hobbies and Interests could be the same forum, really. Makes more sense merging them than putting it all in General Discussion, imo.
A few threads in H&I would best be moved to the fridge, but the majority belong best in GenDis.
cmsellers wrote:Dr. Ambiguous wrote: It seems to average about 2-3 threads being used a month a month (most necros)
That's kind of the point, Ambi. It lets us say "Oh hey, somebody started a thread about that!" if we're new to TCS or haven't been on in awhile. It's basically a place to post a couple of posts about your feelings on an topic, and get other people's feelings too.
Not really, H&I is pretty broad, and I don't feel it's very well-defined to begin with, but it's for people to basically talk about things they like, which is incredibly broad. Most new people will go post in GenDis for starters, Introduce Yourself thread, a lot of times pics, and maybe a few of the currently active threads. Returning users tend to do the latter portion of that. Aside from that, people tend to go post in a thread relevant to their interests. When we get a mass influx from Cracked, that sub-forum lights up. People that like music tend to start in the music forum, people that like movies go to that sub-forum, etc.
cmsellers wrote:The Fridge, meanwhile, is for specific people to share their work, or for multiple people to share work on the theme. In the first category Tess has a paintings thread, Gash has a photography thread, Maple has a jewelry thread. And in most cases the people sharing stuff, their posts make up the majority of the thread. In the second category, you have threads like the "draw TCS members" thread.
Or at least that's how I see it.
In neither case though, is there all that much reason for the back-and-forth we see in many of the other forums, so Tuli's suggestion makes more sense than dumping Hobbies and Interests into General Discussion.
The Fridge is for people to share their work, and given the nature of that, it makes sense why those threads tend to be dominated by one user, which is fine. Like you said, that doesn't lend itself to as much back-and-forth, but the forum's goal isn't to house threads that have little back and forth, that's just a result of the nature of it. The Fridge sees a significant amount more activity than H&I does. Like I said earlier, I think a select few H&I threads would be best moved to The Fridge, and the rest to GenDis.
Matthew Notch wrote:I'm just being silly anyway, Ambi. Although I did want to make mention of one thing...
Dr. Ambiguous wrote:I think it'd be better off it we got rid of it entirely and just moved the posts t GenDis, as I don't feel it gets enough posts to warrant existing....
Cordslash wrote:The 'Hobbies and interests' sub-subforum seems to be a bit neglected where it nestles under the Fridge....
Now you might say it doesn't get enough posts to warrant that, but maybe the reason for that is that people often forget it exists. Lots of people want to see pics of other people's dogs/cats/roses/Constantine cosplay etc. We just usually don't know it exists.
Though to be fair it is a rather broad topic, so that may also have something to do with it. I never did understand why we had it as a subsubforum in the first place, to be honest.
I highly doubt that that would result in any sort of significant long-term boost to activity. Maybe initially it'd see a small boost as people are reminded of it, but then after that I expect it to die back down to how it is. Remember when people were asking for a food forum? Right after that we saw a bunch of food threads, and posts in those threads. That lasted less than a month before food related threads/posts dwindled significantly (and it wasn't even high enough to justify a forum in the first place). I expect making it a full sub-forum instead of sub-sub-forum would have a similar effect, though at probably at even less of a level.
And then look at the threads, it's a hodgepodge of threads that don't really belong together, some don't really even belong in there at all. We have threads for books that could go in the books forum, music threads that could go in the music forum, etc. Arguably, some of those could belong better in GenDis, but some of them have no real argument for H&I. Sure, some of them you can say ""I play guitar as a hobby," but again, we have GenDis, and H&I seems kinda like GenDis Jr then, and totally unnecessary.
Roughly half the threads in H&I are food related, which can sometimes count as a hobby and/or interest, but half of those are more GenDis type threads centered on food. You all already know my thoughts on a food forum in and of itself, but when H&I is sustained largely on threads of that type, why would we bother with having it at all? Half of the non-food threads don't really belong in there at all, you're left with only a handful of threads that even make sense in H&I.
I figure you're probably thinking that I'm being grumpy again, and maybe I am. I read your post and gave H&I another look, just in case I was wrong. And the more I look at it, the more reasons I find that make me think we should nuke it. Those last two paragraphs? Most of that was from taking a closer look at the forum. Sure, some of it's what I've been saying for awhile now, but I digress.
One thing I will agree with you on, is that it makes no damn sense for H&I to be a sub of the Fridge.
Not because I think it deserves it's own forum, but because The Fridge is advertised as "A place to hang your fingerpaints, blue ribbons and the things you've created," ie: a place to show off things you've made. Where-as H&I is advertised as "What do you do with your free time?" This makes most things in H&I not make sense in The Fridge, and a sub-forum should serve a more specialized purpose of it's parent forum's purpose. (Though yes, a few threads make sense in both, such as a thread about a hobby where you create something, say cosplay outfits).
Now you might be saying, if we move those threads to GenDis, they might get buried under other threads and people won't be able to find them as easily. Thing is, they'll get buried if people don't care enough to keep posting in them. Threads people don't care about enough to keep alive shift to the bottom, and if interest renews, people can always necro them. If people are neglecting them because the sub-forum is buried, then it's not any different. So it's a question of does making it it's own major sub-forum increase activity in it? Possibly, but I highly doubt it. Most likely it'll remain a largely dead sub-forum, and people will once again neglect the threads, just as they are now. If people want to keep them in easy reach for self-reference, then we have forum bookmarks, bookmarks on our browsers, and a searchbar on the site, so we still don't need the forum.
A more general point, my opinion on what and how many sub-forums we have should be based on demand. We're a small site with a small userbase. Right now we have less than 1,000 total users, and probably have about 100 regulars each week, at most. (I'd need Carp to get me numbers to have a definitive answer on the second one). As such, we don't need a vast swathe of forums, or very many particularly specific ones. We have a Cracked forum because we came from Cracked, and as such there's a high demand to talk about Cracked here. So that forum sees fairly regular activity. For music on the other hand, we only need a general music forum. We don't need a metal sub-sub-forum, as we don't have nearly the demand for it. (And let's face it, you know I'd be 90% of the posts in that forum too). Same with any other sub-genre. If we had substantially more activity in the music forum, then maybe we could justify having some sub-forums for genres that see a lot of attention. But we don't, and probably never will. If we were a large site with maybe 50,000 members or something, maybe that'd be a different story. It's why we have one, sometimes two, threads about a movie, where-as a site like IMDb has a sub-forum for every movie on their site: they have the membership and activity to justify it. (Although I don't recommend reading their forums, it's utter drek).