Suppressing Forum Topics

[chris_s]

Five pages of discussion on “people having fun is making me scroll more”?

[Emm]

Agreed with the overall desire to filter some of the BAFS stuff out, although I understand it may not be possible for tech reasons. I think stating the desire is important though, because perhaps in future years it may lead to a solution even if one isn’t apparent now.

My main concern is some people like me use this forum as a check for safety, construction, and other issues related to biking that we may not be aware of otherwise. There is no other solid, timely repository of issues pertaining to biking in the whole DC region that I’m aware of. Thanks to this forum I’ve known about flooding, downed trees, ice sheets on trails, dangerous potholes, and other really helpful information I wouldn’t have otherwise known in advance. My biking is limited now due to an injured hip so it’s less of an issue personally at the moment, but I have noticed I’ve missed a few relevant threads about infrastructure or other topics-of-interest that I would have wanted to know about because the BAFS threads have drowned them out.

[dkel]

@Emm 132337 wrote:

My main concern is some people like me use this forum as a check for safety, construction, and other issues related to biking that we may not be aware of otherwise. There is no other solid, timely repository of issues pertaining to biking in the whole DC region that I’m aware of. Thanks to this forum I’ve known about flooding, downed trees, ice sheets on trails, dangerous potholes, and other really helpful information I wouldn’t have otherwise known in advance. My biking is limited now due to an injured hip so it’s less of an issue personally at the moment, but I have noticed I’ve missed a few relevant threads about infrastructure or other topics-of-interest that I would have wanted to know about because the BAFS threads have drowned them out.

For the most important threads, you can create a subscription; then you can go into your profile and see threads you have subscribed to—without the noise. This wouldn’t do to show you the whole forum minus a few threads, but it would work to show you a few threads minus the rest of the forum.

[Vicegrip]

There might be another side to the “Too much traffic” coin. I would venture a guess that this forum is visited most often by a somewhat small number of people that already have some vested interest in the machinations of commuting and cycling in the wash DC area. Freezing Saddles causes not just an increased number of threads the regulars need to scroll past but also an increase in new people scrolling down the non freezing saddles threads.

The increase in activity on the forum just might be increasing the diffusion of the information and interest that looks to me to be the original intent of the forum. No disrespect intended to those bothered by the more active posts page intended.

[jabberwocky]

@chris_s 132334 wrote:

Five pages of discussion on “people having fun is making me scroll more”?

Right, that’s exactly what people are saying. :rolleyes:

[rcannon100]

@Emm 132337 wrote:

My main concern is some people like me use this forum as a check for safety, construction, and other issues related to biking that we may not be aware of otherwise.

Through the forum you can subscribe to threads. You can have notifications of those threads sent to you. (I’ve never done it – dont know how well it works). Its easier to identify the treads you DO care about, and follow them (aka Whitelist) – than it is to play whack a mole, suppressing threads every time we come up with our next bright shiney object (aka Blacklist).

The forum trail condition thread is broad brush by month, instead of by trail. We debated it and decided we liked it by trail (we can debate it again). Consider the concept of a WOD/Arlington Segment thread, that can be subscribed to, that you get notifications from any time there is a post. hmmmmmm

Alternatively, you can use other social media to track conditions. There is for instance a FB Group for the CCT. https://www.facebook.com/groups/capitalcrescenttrail/ And of course you can use all the FB tools for notifications.

Another option is to use twitter. #bikedc is an active hashtag. You can configure an application like tweetdeck to follow a particular hashtag and provide you notifications.

[lordofthemark]

So what people are saying is that with so much traffic, we either need a way to segregate it better, or we need as individuals to find ways to navigate it better. That’s what I am hearing.

[ShawnoftheDread]

@rcannon100 132344 wrote:

The forum trail condition thread is broad brush by month, instead of by trail. We debated it and decided we liked it by trail (we can debate it again).

Is that the royal we? I don’t recall that “we” decided that at all.

[rcannon100]

@ShawnoftheDread 132350 wrote:

Is that the royal we? I don’t recall that “we” decided that at all.

Oh god know. By “we” I mean Cyndi. I believe I nobly suggested that the thread be transitioned to trail specific from month specific – and I was told in no uncertain terms that the mob preferred month specific. I conceded to the mob.

[Steve O]

@jrenaut 132311 wrote:

Let me explain PHP to the non-developers. Imagine you are a carpenter, and you have to use PHP. A close analogy would be if, every third nail, your hammer suddenly but temporarily turned into a banana. Every 15th nail, another nail you thought you were finished with spontaneously caught fire.

Or this:
[ATTACH=CONFIG]10484[/ATTACH]

[Steve O]

I’m much more of a big-picture type. So for me I ask not “can we tweak this slightly to make it better for me?” but things like:

What is the purpose of the forum?
Who are the people we are trying to reach?
What is the best way to reach them?
How can we enhance the experience of all users, regardless of technical expertise?
Is the forum serving their needs?
How can we best expand the reach of the forum to serve more people? And keep them involved?
Can we use this forum to take over the world?

Stuff like that.

Then use the answers to those big questions to redesign/re-create it in a fabulous new way.

Personally, I believe as long as this forum exists on this platform, the best we can hope for are tiny, incremental improvements that make it better for some users while making it worse for others.

All that said, do not take these remarks as lack of gratitude for its existence nor for the resources and work put into it by BikeArlington. I do appreciate it. And there may not be the resources or capability to take on the larger challenges dictated by answering the above questions. I get that. However, I hope that at some point in the future this forum format will be replaced by something new, easier, more powerful, more accessible, and world conquering.

[rcannon100]

@Steve O 132368 wrote:

However, I hope that at some point in the future this forum format will be replaced by something new, easier, more powerful, more accessible, and world conquering.

Sooooooooo…… Facebook???

[jabberwocky]

Bikearlington is fine, as a site. The only change I would make is that 20 subforums is far too many (if I were forum god, I’d reduce that to 5 or so). That would make the “new posts” less functionally necessary to keep track of whats happening. But aside from that its clean and simple and does the job. Forums don’t need to be flashy, they just need to work and make finding info and participating as easy as possible.

The FS thing has been getting worse year by year though. The vast majority of the problem is that each team for whatever reason needs their own thread. As the contest has grown, so has the number of threads. In early years it was much less a problem because it was almost entirely contained in a few threads (rather than the current 30 or whatever). Last year was bordering on problematic and this year is getting silly. As much as people want to make it sound like “hurr durr I don’t like scrolling”, website interface is rather important. Almost all the recent activity being FS social stuff would be very off putting if I came here as a new person looking for commuting or advocacy info and discussion.

[chris_s]

@Steve O 132368 wrote:

However, I hope that at some point in the future this forum format will be replaced by something new, easier, more powerful, more accessible, and world conquering.

I’m fond of http://www.discourse.org/

[vvill]

@jabberwocky 132371 wrote:

Bikearlington is fine, as a site. The only change I would make is that 20 subforums is far too many (if I were forum god, I’d reduce that to 5 or so). That would make the “new posts” less functionally necessary to keep track of whats happening. But aside from that its clean and simple and does the job. Forums don’t need to be flashy, they just need to work and make finding info and participating as easy as possible.

I tend to agree that there’s an excessive number of subforums. I end up just looking in the ones that I have an interest in. General Discussion, Bikes & Equipment, and sometimes Commuters and Trail Conditions I guess, and at this time of year, FS. I don’t use the New Posts thing so I guess it doesn’t bother me.

As for threads per team, I’m a bit surprised there’s as few threads as there are so far. One per team seems a bare minimum to organize 20 groups of 13 potential strangers. It could surely be organized better, through emails or whatever but it’s a friendly competition that all started from regulars here, so I can’t really see it moving off the forum.

vBulletin is definitely getting older and clunkier, but it’s proven pretty useful over time. Shame that there’s no default option to implement something like this.

[Author]

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