Cookaholics Bulletin Board

BB members,

The database engineer in me would like to "move" threads to their appropriate topics when they appear elsewhere. For example, I'd like to move the thread about "Whole Wheat Pasta" to "Healthful Food" and the thread on "$10 a Day" to "Weeknight Meals".

However, I'm worried that you folks might find this more disruptive than helpful. What do people think?

What?! Are you questioning my logic? j/k I don't mind. I actually considered "Weeknight", but my brain said, that I'd be posting the Saturday and Sunday menus, too. I guess that might be a tad too literal.

Sure, why not? Isn't everyone using the very handy View Active Topics link at the top of the page? That is very effective in getting to the recently posted threads and there is really no categorization by forum, only a list of the most recent posts in descending order.

I'd only ever use the forum categories when trying to figure out where to begin a new topic thread or if I was doing a search manually (scanning the forum names and looking at their contents). Actually I'm pretty sure a manual search would be MUCH less effective than using the search function here, haven't tried but I got that feeling...

I love this forum format. Thanks, Fuzzy, for putting this together and doing the behind the scenes stuff for admin.

Fuzzy, you are King of this world, so move at your discretion. And if we disagree, then as Emeril says, we can get our own bulletin boards.

Really, a benevolent dictator is not a bad thing.

eb

Lynn,

Oh, I think most of us have had enough of dictating. That's why we're on this board instead of the other one.

Sorry, I'm still in shock at being asked. I'll sip on a cabernet today and ponder - stand by.

P.S. I do think better organization is possible, I just need a 'McBeal Moment'!

What?! You don't like where I posted my "White Whole Wheat Pasta" thread?!

I belong to a couple of boards that do this, and as long as it's not happening a lot, I generally don't find it disruptive. My $.02.

Amy

I guess it doesn't matter to me. I click on view active topics to read. Everything you guys have to say is interesting to me.

trink.

Fuzzy, et. al. -
Too early for Cabernet, opted for Champagne - - -

From a cursory analysis I think this stew is getting out of hand and the future will bring many problems. Your organizational instincts are correct. For instance –

Every “Active Topic” under “Board Help” could easily fit under “General Information.” Similarly, “Board Help” is not really a “Community” item.

Interestingly, if one clicks on “Community” 25 “Active Topics” appear but the four sub-forums (Board Help, Meetups, Miscellaneous, and Blogroll) do not appear. However, if one clicks on “Cooking Questions” only the 8 sub-forums appear (cooking questions, Recipes, Baking, cookware & Bakeware, etc.) Having been a reference librarian, I would suggest that the organization under “Cooking Questions” is the correct path to follow. Frankly, the broad categories of Community, Cooking, and Cooking Publications do not need to be active links at all; they serve their purpose as Headers just by being in Bold.

If one proceeds from the Home Page to "Board Index" to "Miscellaneous" you will find 25 active topics of which 11 were included under the "Community" link. If one proceeds from the Home Page to "Blog Roll" there are 7 active topics of which 4 were under the "Community" link.

You may also want to consider eliminating threads that are time dated (New Year’s Eve meals, for example). Even reference librarians weed their collection!!

All of these things indicate that dissarray is sneaking in from the pantry. This brief analysis also explains to me why I could not find things that I knew were posted. It forced me to use less user friendly means to find them.

At the moment I don’t have time to analyze all categories and their thread contents but I do know that spending time now re-organizing will pay big dividends down the road. If you would like me to drill down on these, or some of these, please let me know – there is always more Champagne somewhere!

I have no strong feelings on how the threads are organized (do we possibly have too many categories). However, would prefer no threads are eliminated.

trink.