posted January 25, 2008 09:06 AM               

ORGANIZING THE FORUM
The reason for my accepting Moderator and Administrator responsibilities is to attempt to tidy up the ever-increasing booty of helpful information on this popular Forum so that we can find it.

This long-awaited project is a scary one for a few reasons, and I expect it will take months, part-time to get it ship-shape.

While learning the system, I've started to work chronologically from 2001 forward, trying not to do too much damage along the way.

ARCHIVING THREADS
It's difficult to decide where to placesubjects. Even the most specifically-titled threads could be filed in different places. So search at least 2 Archives to find what you're looking for. Example: "Stepping the mast on a Sandpiper" could be filed under "Spars", "Rigging", or "Sandpiper 565". For this one I chose "Sandpiper 565". To avoid clutter, I don't plan on cross-referencing. Hopefully, again, simplicity will be the essence of genius (apparently the small-boat sailor's motto ).

To learn more, I'll be checking in with Dave and probably also UBB Infopop for help as time and goodwill permit.

Also, mateys, it's your Forum; so feel free to offer ideas, especially for important Archiving Categories, and if you're familiar with UBB.threads. Now's a really good time to give shape to the library.

FIRST ARCHIVE EXERCISE?
And if you haven't yet found the hot 2004-5 MSD vs Porta-Potty thread , visit the "Archives" section, and look under "Gear & Equipment".

Cheers,

Stan
S565 #1305 "Wind Chime"
CL 16 #1021 "Intermezzo"

posted January 25, 2008 11:52 AM               

For my part, let me say thanks for undertaking this monumental task. I'm sure the end result will be that we will all be able to find information more quickly and readily.

Back when I first logged on to the forum some years ago now, I was confused as to why the Sandpiper owners were posting in the "general" forum and not the "Sandpiper 565" specific forum. My initial confusion led me to miss several posts, and wonder why there were no timely responses to my inquiries from forum members.

To the point....would it be advantageous in the reorg that you are undertaking to place Sandpiper posts in the Sandpiper 565 specific forum? In the same vein, should we, as Sandpiper owners, alter our current practice of posting in the "general" forum, in favour of posting in the Sandpiper specific forum?

posted January 25, 2008 02:27 PM            

One General forum sure is handy if a CL sailor just wants to check for new posts. We really don't have that much traffic. And the search function is fairly robust.

I liked it better when there was just the single forum.

posted January 25, 2008 08:31 PM               

Archives: one problem is, as you have discovered, that forum postings do not always fit into a nice tree structured hierarchy. A system where you can tag each thread with multiple keywords is much more flexible. I don't know if this BBS allows for keyword tagging, but if it does then it might be worth considering.

Don.

posted January 27, 2008 09:54 AM               

DonT, I can't find anything about keyword tagging in our BB.

As DonT is pointing out, there are limitations to the Archive Section. And I'm finding other limitations as well.

Our beloved bb is a UBB.threads, version 5.45b copyrighted in 2000.

ARCHIVE LIMITATIONS
In the Archives section, only 40 Archives are possible. Once a thread is placed in an Archive, say number 00015, it can't be moved around; it can't be put back into an active Forum, only deleted. This dictates the name of that Archive. It also means that adding new Archives cannot be alphabetized.

BB UPGRADE
UBB.threads has been sold. The new owner wants $99 for the upgrade, depending on the version, $149 for install, and $50 per half-hour for consulting.

FORUM VERSATILITY
Our 5.45b version offers us greater versatility in the Forum section. Forums can be added, changed, edited, deleted, kept open for replies, closed, and alphabetized using a numbering field. They also can be placed under Categories.

A man I talked with advised against trying to split and merge threads, because it can throw another area off. So I personally need to learn not to change topics in mid-thread, as it were.

WIDER READERSHIP
Our BB is becoming more popular all the time; we have no fewer that 2888 registered users as of this morning, a number that is increasing daily.

ORGANIZATION OPTIONS
My present understanding would indicate some options for us.
1. Single-Forum & Archives.
- homey feel, check all threads easily;
- limited number Archives, some new ones unalphabetized; eventually an over-loaded "Miscellaneous" Archive.
- leave perhaps 1-2-3 pages of current threads - use "search" function.

2. Multi-Forum
- Keep present "general" Forum top-most;
- have list of alphabetized Forums underneath, with above-mentioned capabilites to be the prime oranizational tool;
- this option can have Categories as a further means to organize;
- Archive the oldest, and perhaps edited threads.

3. Multi-Forum, and no "general" Forum, & Archives

PERSONAL CHOICE
Option #2. While potentially losing some of the homey flavour, we can dress up the "General" Forum in the "description " underneath the Forum Title to be a kind of meeting place - for starting any topic, and general topics or other topics that starters don't know where to place elsewhere.

Also, readers who want to go immediately to their topic of interest can do that.

Either way, finding the latest posts is easy; simply scroll down and watch for the yellow light bulb and the date and time of last post.

Eventually, if the number of registered users continues to grow the way it has, we may want to consider sponsoring a new or upgraded bb.

In any case, it might be good to hold off a bit until everyone is satisfied with a course off action.

Please continue to debate the topic.

Yours in the simplicity of small-boat sailing,

posted January 27, 2008 12:12 PM               

CL user Forum
CL Buy and Sell
CL Photos
CL Faq's (How to)

Separate Buy/Sell is good and common on forums to easily narrow in on recent dated adds. Using Forum search will find 4 year old ads which are not useful -- hence need for a definite buy/sell forum.

The photo forum section is good as to not clog the main forum with large files.

Categorizing and moving postings is manually intensive and debatable in usefulness in that I would still tend to go to the top of the forum and do a keyword search (which is still fast).

I have seen people create very good FAQ's or articles based on collection of many forum inputs. These are usually taken on by a person with a specific interest wanting to help the community as a whole. You can see that in Uncle-Al's Wayfarer site (there is a guy with passion for the sport). When creating the FAQ though - do not remove any of the original posts - leave them there.

posted January 29, 2008 06:00 PM               

Celtic Kiss emailed me with his preference for the good old single-forum approach as well.

SPAM ALERT
While further exploring our bb software, I thought I'd check in on who these new registered users are. They're almost all spammers.

Moments ago, Dave, our Senior Administrator, gave me the go-ahead to (what is it, DonW, "give 'em 'ell"?) delete them, and then said to "ban them in the process." So if you notice a dramatic decline in the number of registered users in the next few days, you'll know why.

posted January 29, 2008 11:26 PM               

It takes a long time to read each member's profile, and record the spammer's email addy into our ban list. So for now I'm just checking each profile carefully and tonight have clicked the delete box for about 300, to get the numbers down as fast as possible.

In so doing, I have found 7 new real members from BC, ON, QC, and the US who registered this month and I'm sure we all would like to welcome them to our informative and friendly BB.

posted January 31, 2008 06:42 PM               

When Tailpiper's early-morning post didn't appear, and when the "CL User Forum" took so long to open, I called in Jeff, our 21yr-old.

He said, compared with the fast opening time of the smaller forums (CL 16, CL 14, etc), the slow speed of the main Forum was probably caused by the 14,000 more posts. Then he took a look at all the pictures!!! As Steve said above, the CL User Forum is clogged with large files.

Jeff also said that he didn't think that the spammers affected the speed of the forum; they just sit there and collect up.

So the sooner we make a collective decision on the number of forums to have, and reduce the size of our main forum, the better.

It looks as if we're going to go with the one main forum, and use the limited, more permanent Archives section to organize the material. I also agree with Steve, that we should probably have a separate Buy And Sell Forum

Are there any more opinions out there?

posted January 31, 2008 11:17 PM               

You can reduce the number of spammer forum signups if the forum has a "double-opt-in" sort of registration process.

This is the registration mechanism that works like so:

1) person completes registration form and submits.
2) system stores info, and automatically sends new registrant an email with a big fat cryptic link back to the forum that he/she has to click
3) when registrant clicks the big fat cryptic link, the forum software recognised the link and this confirms that user's email is indeed valid, increasing the likelihood that you have a legit registrant.

posted February 05, 2008 09:44 AM               

F.Y.I.

Could you ensure that after moving any messages or threads the seach program will have to be re-run to order to relink to these moved pages.

I am finding that the search engine is finding topics, but alot of articles the body of the message cannot be found.

posted February 05, 2008 10:04 AM               

Having that pull down list kind of hids the arkhives.

2) In arkhiving the under sandpiper 565 there are alot of Rendezvous pictures, shouldn't that go under the S565 Rendezvous
fourms. I know that they might be older in date but it a good section to beef up and to promote sandpiper get to-gether events, as there is not alot in there.

posted February 05, 2008 12:20 PM               

I will attempt to find and re-run the "search" feature. Right now I can't update the "index" because it says I'm a hacker. I emailed Dave a couple of days ago with a few issues like that. But managed to solve a few others so far.

FORUM vs. ARCHIVE
Several members want to return to the single forum format.

a) Under a single Forum and Archives set-up, the "Sandpiper Rendezvous" Forum, and the others, would be retired. Hence the use of Archives.

b) Since we are limited to 40 Archives, I have chosen topics for the Archives, the best I know how, and am rationing the Archives to one Archive per specific CL Sailboat model.

So in attempting to alleviate the pressure from the main Forum, I started placing threads with all those big pics into the one Sandpiper Archive.

posted February 05, 2008 02:38 PM               

I note that there is an upper limit to the reorg of the archives (40). Does this mean that we (I sorta mean YOU) will have to go through the rigorous task of reorganizing sometime in the not-too-distant future because of the limit?