New Forum Subjects

[admin]

We are expanding and need your suggestions for new forums.
Currently we have:
Beginning Woodworking, General Woodworking, Woodworking Tool Review and Community.

Please post your suggestions for new forum categories for example; Lathe Turning, Maintenance, Scroll Sawing etc.

[alancooke]

Please post your suggestions for new forum categories for example; Lathe Turning, Maintenance, Scroll Sawing etc.

Good Idea: I think 'Lathe Turning', 'Maintenenace/Alignment', 'Member Projects' (this would provide encouragement, inspiration, and instruction to members as they are are able to read about and view what others are doing), 'Jigs and Fixtures', 'Favorite Links' (members could post useful woodworking links they've come across so others could benefit as well)

These are a couple that come to mind immediately. I'll look forward to what others suggest!

[robg]

Let me be the dark voice of nay saying - expansion is good, but only if the forums are used. I think you should get some use out of a turning forum since a lot of people like it (although we don't see a ton of turning threads) and a maintenance forum in addition to the others you already have. A forum about jigs and other tools people make for the shop would probably get a lot of use.

But if you expand too quickly, the forums won't get used and having forums that never get posts might be worse than not having them.

[dusty]

I don't know how hard, or how demanding of computer time or space it would be but I would like to see a Maintenance/Lubrication Thread that was further subdivided into specific equipment i.e. bandsaw, power station, Shopsmith, etc., etc..

How about a section entitled "Welcome To My Shop" where users could post decriptions and photos of where they spend all of their woodworking time.

"Jigs You Can't Do Without"

"Why I Own a Router"

While you are at it, how about a campaign to get more (lots more) of the users to fill out their profiles. I'd even consider a picture of myself instead of my cats if others did the same. Maybe that's not a bargain?

The idea of expanding is fabulous.

[charlese]

Oh Boy!, Admin; You have opened Pandora's box.

We already have an impressive number of members to the Forum, but relatively few readers/writers. Any changes of additional forums needs to be done to address the needs of those who do not use this medium at present. At the same time you do not want to make it more difficult for present users to navigate through the posts.

The Present format seems to work pretty well. Maybe there are some threads that are mis-placed, but that is a minor problem. Perhaps additional forums on "Turning" and "Members' Projects" will get used to a considerable degree, but you have to be careful not to overload this thing with a long list of specifically defined forums.

You can have an additional Forum on "Maintenance", but if you break this down into sub-categories(eg. lubrication, headstock, bandsaw, jointer,etc.), there's trouble. I see at least two problems here. Many additional forums will present viewers with too many options to peruse on a regular basis. This would lead to a lesser number of viewers per post and therefore, fewer opportunities for members to address others' issues/problems. After all many of us are hobby/professional woodworkers! Not computer users!

Another couple of thoughts:
If you build quite a few more forums, a newbie or uninformed user would have a bigger problem knowing where to post his/her question/issue, resulting is more mis-placed threads and confusion leading to non posting.

Maintenance is a good subject for "those in the know" to write about, but how will one of our more bashful readers know he/she needs maintenance?

[admin]

Our idea was to let the forum ride for about a year then take a look at what kind of posts were being made then add additional topics as the demand for them increased.

We are at 1 year now, and we have:
Threads: 563
Posts: 4,699

With only 4 categories not only should we have new topics available, but once we have the new categories we can better organize the existing threads into each.

There are forums out there with 20-30 categories, which is NOT our objective. I only see a handful of topics being added and very carefully thought out in the process.

[dusty]

Oh Boy!, Admin; You have opened Pandora's box.

We already have an impressive number of members to the Forum, but relatively few readers/writers. Any changes of additional forums needs to be done to address the needs of those who do not use this medium at present. At the same time you do not want to make it more difficult for present users to navigate through the posts.


We can look to see how many members there are (members list) and we can scan the entries to see how many writers there are but

how do we know how many viewers (readers) there are.

I log on many times and see eight, ten, fifteen quests none of which post. Are these the same ten or fifteen "lookie lews" just nonjoiners or does the forum not offer something they are interested in.

[paul heller]

Are you organizing for organization sake, or do you really feel it will be more useful? Sometimes I think more "places to put things" might makes things neater but does not always make usage better. It might work OK in the shop, where you can see everything at a glance, but it seldom works in computers. My experience is that I can't find things with the computer when there are too many "places" where stuff has been put.

I'd say the existing forums work well enough. If there were thousands of threads I might feel differently.

My vote would be no, not yet.