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Sub-categorization

Murray Hamhandler

16:05 / 06.04.02

This may be a radical idea, maybe something that should have been proposed BEFORE the recent changes, but would it be in any way possible to sub-categorize threads w/in the different forums on the board? If for no other reason than to ease navigation. I'm noticing, for instance, w/in Comics, there are numerous threads about, say, New X-Men. If there were some way to put all of these similar threads under their own sub-heading, I think that would be pretty cool. But that may just be too much work. I don't know. What do you think?
Arthur Sudnam, II

Goodness Gracious Meme

21:33 / 06.04.02

don't know about the techie side of it, but it sounds like unneccessary extra work to me, possibly especialy right now while the 'new' board is still settlingdown. This would presumably require lots of forums to be created and deleted at regular intervals.

Perhaps instead when people are posting about something - eg X-men - that forms the subject of several threads, they can x-reference with links to the other threads if they think there's likely to be confusion/it'd be useful to do so. (that'd be that intextuality thing we keep hearing about, wouldn't it?

)

Tom Coates

08:48 / 07.04.02

I was actually thinking about something very similar this morning... Or to be more precise I was trying to work out how we could generate 'sub-fora' that could be reabsorbed into the larger fora as necessary... So you could have a nanotechnology panel within the Laboratory or an X-men panel within Comics...

The other thought I had was maybe one could develop a kind of branching taxonomy which pulled threads in by keywords and then split fora in half when they reached a certain level of posting...

I don't know about the technical aspects of either of these - although I suspect the former would be by far the easiest...

Murray Hamhandler

17:50 / 07.04.02

All of this 'sub-forumization' could be done after the fact, insofar as new threads were concerned. A thread goes up, the moderators decide whether it warrants inclusion w/in a pre-existing sub-forum, and the thread is either moved into a sub-forum or left in the forum at large. Not only would it ease navigation through topics of interest, it might also potentially reinvigorate interest in related threads that had died a while back. Not to mention the fact that it would be far easier to figure out if a thread already exists on a given subject before someone starts a duplicate thread.
Arthur Sudnam, II

Tom Coates

21:45 / 07.04.02

I'm uncomfortable with the idea of making every new thread that starts on the board categorisable by moderators. It seems to me that it might escalate into quite a fiddly, innaccurate and time-consuming process after a while... Particularly if we couldnt' work out a good typology beforehand...

But I'll think about it...

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

21:50 / 07.04.02

Sounds like a good idea in PRINCIPLE, but possibly a little fiddly in PRACTISE... is there some medium whereby threads could be separated... or would that just lead to overcomplication, not least by the reader- "Fuck! It was in Music before... where the fuck's it gone now?"

Steve Block

05:34 / 08.04.02

Would the insertion of a keyword in the Topic header help? Like Hype or so on? That would allow some level of sub categorisation, and allow a facility to ignore threads as well as ignoring posters. Not sure the idea is workable though, but just a thought.

What - fark-style?

Yeah, I guess, as long as it didn't have to look awful like that? That looked far too cluttered. I guess any move along this line will add another layer to the board at some level.

Morlock - groupie for hire

11:34 / 08.04.02

Doesn't the search functionality cover most of this? Assuming people use the Abstracts, of course. I've not used search yet, but if it can search individual fora you can get any set of threads you want. Without lots of fiddly categorisation.

Murray Hamhandler

14:20 / 08.04.02

I'm all for the 'links w/in threads to other, similar threads' thing, if nothing else. Then it wouldn't be much of an issue outside of who was willing to do the work. Which I would be, it goes w/out saying. That would be the least earth-shattering change of the ones provided, I suppose.
Arthur Sudnam, II

Steve Block

16:44 / 08.04.02

Yeah, I'd go for the links to other threads gig.

cusm

17:55 / 08.04.02

I've seen this done on another board, and it works well. The interface is to add a "new category" button in addition to the "new topic" button. Then, the display is separated with a frame at the top listing categories, and general topics continue below as normal.

It works well for high traffic sites that want to make past topics more accessible, though it is harder to quickly page through topics as you have multiple folders to click through now. It might work well here, but it'll take some major redesigning to implement it.

grant

21:27 / 08.04.02

I thought about this before the change, and thought maybe "flags" would be a good way to do it - that way, rather than different branches on a topic tree, you'd be able to select a certain flag to look at all at once.

Murray Hamhandler

02:03 / 09.04.02

Hmm...I wonder how big of a deal it would be to create some sort of a template for this? I'm thinking, like, between the topic heading and the list of moderators, some space for related links. I'm looking at the code for the page and I, with minimal HTML experience, could plug those links in there w/no trouble whatsoever. But I don't have the access to do something like that and I doubt that the big cheeses would want to be bothered w/it all of the time. So if a template could be created for the moderators, I don't see where it would be that big of a disruption. Maybe it would, though. I don't know anything about the intricacies of the board, so I could be talking out of my ass here.
Arthur Sudnam, II

The Return Of Rothkoid

12:19 / 09.04.02

I think the problem's not with the HTML code per se, though - it'd be with creating the scripting necessary to make the whole shebang work. While Cal is indeed a 133t h4x0r, it's probably a bit much work straight away, innit? And, as has been suggested, is probably going to necessitate the equivalent of re-importing everything again to facilitate the change.

Then again, I ain't a backend coder. So I could be talking out of my backend.

But, regardless of what happens, there'd need to be some kind of voting on how the divisions would be made - which could take a looooong time...

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