Ip forum re-shuffle?

[sjleworthy]

Hi guys

On a daily bases I visit the forums first thing in the morning to often find well over 60-70% of the posts have been moved out into other forums because of being posted in the wrong place.

For a browser like myself this is sooooo irritating. All I see are 'moved' messages cluttering the boards.
I help run several forums myself, so of course I fully understand why this is happening and that general site maintenance needs to be carried out, but the ip forums are the worst for doing this.

So, what's the issue?

Posters are lazy or can't intuitively understand the forums layout? Both probably. So why not either amend the boards or the admin proceedures to suit? Surely if posters aren't intuitively on the ball that also goes for the people who just general read and brows? Is it really that important things are posted exactly in the correct place? I personally don't mind erroneous posting (there are exceptions of course), but i cant stand seeing the majority or the messages being 'moved'. It just looks petty and unessesary a lot of the time and a lot of the time i cant even see why posts are moved in the first place. does it really matter? And it's a pain in the ass for the moderator moving them and makes a mess of the boards.

Not having a go here I assure you, as I say, I'm in a similar position with the forums I run, I just wonder if there's another solution maybe?

 

[Tim SPRACKLEN]

I moved your post to another section because I thought it would receive better attention....

I'm the least experienced moderator here, but my 'mentors' told me that putting posts into the appropriate sections of the Forum was one of the duties of a mod. I'm surprised, though, that it's 60-70% of the posts. I probably move about a half dozen a day - and they're usually isolated posts.

Having said that, though, we have been introducing a whole new set of sub-Forums just over the last few days, so the problem might seem 'worse' just recently.

Tim

 

[sjleworthy]

Well take the iPad 2 forums at this point in time - on the current page 1 two thirds of the posts are moved.

I'm sorry, I didn't mean 60-70% of posts per forum are moved, just of the opening page.

I know the site admin/mods here do a great job, but maybe too great sometimes?

 

[sjleworthy]

I don't know if sub forums are the answer. From an Admin side it sounds better. More organised, looks better. No excuses for not knowing where you should post or getting confused.
But in reality? I think in my experience all that does is cause more work for the moderators. More erroneous posts from lazy or confused punters.

Perhaps the solutions should be opposite - lessen the forums?

I think a good suggestion for instance is to combine the ipad1 and 2 forums into a single forum. This'll save 90% of wrong postings and the ipad1 and 2 are so closely linked and so similar in the first place does the ipad2 warrant a fresh forum? The majority of ipad1 posts and ipad2 posts apply to each other anyway.
What happens when the ipad3, 4 and 5 etc etc are released? We'll be in a worse state than ever in the forums then when all have separate forums and no one knows where they should be.

Another one - I notice the re-direct messages; some disappear after 24 hours, some are permanent. Can't they all disappear after a day or 2 ? This would help clean things up.

I do sympathise with the site admin and mods as I too go through a similar forum clean up parade with some of the forums I moderate. It's awefully frustrating and boring.

You'll never solve the issue unfortunately, so what best solution to minimise it?

But whatever, the forum owners and admin and mods do a great job here anyway, keep up the good work !

 

[col.bris]

I understand where you are coming from I suggest to look at our sister forums to see what is happening there including the Android.net forum. No it is not easy the issue is most users do not understand forums and post where they think is the right place finding out it is in fact incorrect. I have been moderating this forum since the beginning and based on user response the forum and moderating is one of the best . As Tim stated he moves threads and so do other mods it is part of out job. The bottom line is it is impossible to satisfy all users world wide in this type of forum. We had issues with users from other countries so I set up sub forums to assist in keeping issues associated with say UK in the UK formoms Same with China...... In addition we have set up new iOS 5 subforms to cover iCloud etc
Regarding future iPads we will cover that when needed. Personally I don't believe it will be an issue.
We appreciate your comments.

 

[graywolf]

Android.net. Ah!

 

[col.bris]

Android.net. Ah!

Android.net plus droidforums.net Sister sites also owned by the group not to mention 7 other forums which are part of the group
The reason I mentioned it is because in droidforums.Net there are many forums to cover the different devices. Compared this forum this is easy to moderate. Iphoneforums is the same as here except a different layout and smaller user base