Copied from a reply to another thread.
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For those few members that are "HIGHLY" active, who log into the forums several times a day, like yourself, you have invested sufficient time to stay on top of all the threads and all the posts.So my goal
But, as of this afternoon, we are on membership number 78,290. The overwhelming vast majority of SnoWest members never post anything on the site, nor do they devote the massive number of hours into the site that you do. Nevertheless, SnoWest needs to try and accommodate their needs as well as yours. They come to the sight, go looking for a specific bit of information, locate it or something close to it, read it and then depart.
So, am I making changes just for the sake of making changes because I have nothing better to do with my time? NO.
Am I trying to impress "The Powers That Be"? Those would be the same people that have, for the most part, ignored SnoWest Forums for the last 8 years. So no, I am not trying to impress them.
I "AM" trying to prepare SnoWest Forums for growth though. I am trying to get ready for what will likely be a massive wave of users coming in and participating for the very first time. And the reality is, for the average, casual user, the current system is a long long ways from User-Friendly when it comes to finding information.
What we have right now is a filing cabinet with four drawers.
Ski-Doo
Yamaha
Artic Cat
Polaris.
And those drawers are CHOKE FULL of files.
They are not organized, not categorized, not separated.
They are all simply tossed into that draw in a completely haphazard and random manner.
Surely you can agree that there MUST be a better way to store all these threads on SnoWest.
I see two possible extremes.
On the one end, we 1 single drawer labeled Snowmobiles, and EVERYTHING is in it.
On the opposite end, you have an endless number of drawers and cabinets with an infinite level of categorization that would be ponderously burdensome.
In the Ski-Doo forum I made an attempt at moving 2 steps from one extreme. I introduced "minor" categorization based on Major Models that Ski-Doo has released over the recent years. So we have gone from a single drawer with all things Ski-Doo tossed in it, to the same drawer with a few File Folders to hold all the same information.
Is my "test" solution perfect?
Not a chance, I know better, and it's the reason I am trying this on only ONE forum right now.
The user feedback that I have received via Private Message has all been positive. Much of the feedback I have received with Post Replied has been either Mixed or Negative. But the overall volume has been ABSOLUTELY TINY!
More than anything else, I really would like to hear back from more users.
There IS a better solution out there. And if enough people join in and participate, that best-case solution will manifest itself in due course.
