Poll: Should we have a News Forum? Please vote!

[maartendas]

As moderators we are currently discussing whether we should have a News Forum. We would like to know what you all think about it. It's important to know the opinion of the members not just the moderators. So, please vote and if you can, explain your choice.
I have decided to let the poll run for 3 weeks, this should hopefully give everyone a chance to vote.

To make voting a little easier, and to let you all know the different viewpoints among the moderators, here are the pro's and con's we discussed.

PRO'S:

When a guest arrives which doesn't know the forum he will start to read in 'news' and then go to the other topics/forums. Even for a new registered members, when he/she goes into the forum all forums are marked red (unread) so where he/she will start? At 'news'.
With the openess of the forum and with the new structure we found in the time from 20.06.11 (the first thread in 'news') up to 13.08.11 34 new members.

Sure, we could start to 'stick' or 'announce' important threads but then we have some sticky here some others there - I don't think that this is really user friendly.

We have also a lot of functions on the forum likes 'View unanswered posts • View unread posts • View new posts • View active topics' . With all this stuff it is very easy to find also moved threads.

CON'S:

The problem with News is that once a topic is not new anymore it will have to be moved to where it is appropriate: Concerts, Video/Photos. etc. So when you're used to going to News to read a certain topic and it's gone, it will create confusion. Ofcourse you will be able to find it, but having to search for it in the first place is not ideal.

When something new occurs, a concert announce, a CD announce or whatever, then the new topic can be created directly by the poster inside the correct Forum, Concerts, CDs, and so.

So, please let us know what you think. We appreciate your vote and opinion!

[JimmyRiddle]

I would have a news thread, but I'm not sure about archiving the 'Tour' threads to the chat area, because although you search for them, it would be nice to have a part of the forum just for 'Libera tours'. i.e. past, present and future.

[fan_de_LoK]

I'm not convicted that a "News" section is needed.

- When a news occur, we can create directly the new topic in the corresponding section (Concert, CD, Video, etc).
- When a very huge topic is moved from "News" to elsewhere, this create trouble, people no longer see what they were looking to, and have to search for it. It's not efficient and not friendly.
- The "News" section is at time used by people to create topics although they are not really news.
- When a topic is removed from "News", are the links to this topic still usable from external blogs or sites ?


By the way the remove of the "USA Tour" topic is a perfect example of the trouble : the topic was much too quckly removed, without any warning, and put in the "Chat" section were it will be drawn in not time !
The right place of that topic is obvioulsy in the "Concerts" section, were it would have been created directly and never have needed to be moved, if we did not had the useless "News" section. The simpler the better.

[Yorkie]

Keep it and stop moving threads please unless they were started in the wrong place in the beginning.

[Lauren]

Could I suggest you put the US 2011 Tour thread in the Concert section? The other tours are already there as well. But just continue to have separate threads within the Concert section for concert reviews only. This will continue to make reviews easy to find.

[john45]

The more forum categories we have, the more they will overlap - and the greater will be the temptation (among both the "splitters" and the "lumpers" ) to move threads between them. I agree with both Yorkie and FDL (who reached the same conclusion for different reasons) that moving threads is what needs to be avoided.

[Jenn]

I agree with FDL completely. While it is "pretty" to have a forum with lots of subforums for different categories of threads, it gets to be a pain to look through them all. I'm all for just dumping the News forum and having people post news in the appropriate forum, whether it be CDs, Concerts, etc.

What Blizzard does for the World of Warcraft forums is post a sticky in the general forums (perhaps Chat for us) with links to various important threads in other forums. So an announcement about an upcoming Patch (concert) would actually be in the Patch Notes (concerts) section, but a sticky with a link to the appropriate thread would be in the most highly viewed forum. Stickies are maintained regularly so once they are no longer relevant (or new) they can just be removed completely, leaving the original thread intact in its original location. I hope that makes sense. It's been a longgggg day at work today! This idea would of course require a moderator to create a new sticky to crosslink the "news" threads but such a thing can certainly be done after any user has posted the initial thread.

Perhaps another way to make the forums as a whole accessible and easy to navigate for guests would be a Welcome thread that briefly explains what kind of topic goes where and maybe even provides a sort of "lexicon" of links to important topics.

Okay so I rambled quite a lot, sorry - I like organizing things...what can I say?!

[TullyBascombe]

If you were to wait until a month after an event in the "news" had passed before moving the thread I suspect there would be no problem. Most of these topics do eventually peter out once the event has passed. Alternately you could start an "old news" section to move them to.