huntingtonfamily.org

merging topics may be a good idea. i think we would want to start by merging related topics that have zero/few replies. merging lengthy discussion threads into one topic can become confusing.

right now i feel that fewer forums/sub-forums is best. it's cleaner and simpler. we don't have so much traffic that we need lots of forums/sub-forums. just better broader ongoing topics, in my opinion.

books seems to make sense as a forum because we have many topics about books. same with poetry, though not as much as books. not sure that we would have many "literature" topics not involving books or poetry. also not sure that we would have many topics under "performing arts" or "visual arts". those seems more like topics to me. i would think about having topics such as "movie reviews" and "paintings" which would cover most discussion about performing/visual arts.

"education" seems to me like a topic, not a forum. same with "health" and "food". "social/civic" seems a little nebulous and difficult to segregate from gospel/church, in my mind. to me it doesn't make sense to create a separate forum for gospel/church since most of our discussions touch on that. also i don't think "random/other" helps with organization.

those are my first impressions.

Yes, I agree with the merging strategy you described. I chatted with Lily about this and she mentioned an interest in starting with the low-hanging fruit (like "0/few replies" threads) and then re-assess. Personally, I probably would take an even stronger approach by "archiving" threads that are small, static (past events that will no longer see participation), etc. since the forum setting doesn't seem to be very good as a repository for content (ie, it's not as easy to find things in search, etc.)

I continue to find the idea of slightly expanded forums to be the most appealing approach. That would leave sub-forums as the way to address the books/poetry thing you describe (I definitely agree with everyone in that I'd never propose merging those into a single topic/thread). The sub-forum for books would allow as many threads as there are kinds of books, etc. Limiting ourselves to only two forums reduces the utility of the primary layer (in my opinion).

Education is probably a topic, yes. Health may be worthy of a sub-forum because it could include a variety of topics like mental health, sleep, exercise, medication, healthcare, nutrition, etc. I suppose it would be useful to see if those topics are ever discussed in depth? If not, then I agree that it could be consolidated into a general topic (same process could be applied to any similar consideration).

I see a distinction between church and gospel. While I think the gospel finds its way into just about everything we discuss, church policies, news, talks, ward dynamics, etc. seem to be their own thing.

Regardless, these are just a few of my thoughts. This isn't my site, though, so as always, I will support and participate in whatever is decided, even if it's leaving things as they are.

I haven't forgotten about this. I'm happy to start merging topics and threads so they can be ongoing, if I could be granted temporary access to doing so.

You have my blessing. May the force be with you Lily

I noticed that this web site has begun stripping spacing between quotes and surrounding paragraphs.

This is an example.

And here is the line after a quote. Notice the compression. This affects old posts as well. Did this come about with a new phpBB version?

Good point Steve. I have no idea why that is happening.