Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I can agree with these forums because of the fact that they make searching easier... but i typically frequent the chondro forum, rat snake, corn snake, general snakes, and caging and habitat forums. i know it will make it easier for searching purposes, but i really think this is going to cut down on the number of replies people get who post in these forums. for example... i frequent those 5 forums. now the snake forums now have 4-6 sub forums, making this close to 30 forums! I'll tell you right now i don't have time to view all these forums seeing who needs help. I really feel that a lot of people are going to be the same way.

People won't get the help they need, so they'll double or triple post in other sub forums or in the main forum again. This will just increase traffic on the website - meaning more bandwidth needed (more money more ads, etc...) then it will be more storage on the servers hard drive. one or two threads double/triple posted wont hurt... but i presume thats why theres a limit to 3 forums the same thread can go on - due to server space and bandwidth.

I agree the sub forums are good for searching, as I have said. It would be pretty stupid to physically copy the thread over into the main forum, so my suggestion would be to create a shortcut to all the threads in the sub forums into the main forums. That way it will severly limit the number of multiple posts, as well as getting people the help they need.

A complaint the admins could make to me is that each shortcut takes about 3 KB of space. Having one shortcut per thread and one per each reply could be a huge amount of space taken up - even more than the afformentioned multiple posting. So my solution to that would be one of two options. Either just create a shortcut to the post in the subforum with a little box next to it which says if there are any new replies that the person has not read yet (simple cookie); or get rid of the subforums altogether, but create a better search engine. How would one go about doing that you may ask? At the bottom of the text entry box when creating a new thread there could be a couple check boxes. These could say the sub forums. Then when someone is searching, he or she would click that and it would bring up every thread, just as if there was an actual sub-forum.

Just my thoughts on the new system. I'd apprecaite to hear what the pet hobbyist admins have to say to this.

-Chris
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-Chris

The reason mainstream thought is thought of as a stream is because it's so shallow. -George Carlin

A fool doesn't learn. A smart man learns from his mistakes. A wise man learns from the mistakes of others. Which one are you?

My Website
N. American Rat/Corn snake care sheet I wrote
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Current snakes:
0.1 Licorice Stick Black Rat (Lola)
1.0 Black Rat (Frankie)
0.1 Texas Bairdi (Rosa)
0.1 Blue Beauty (Brunhilde)
1.0 Green Tree Python (Monty)

>> for example... i frequent those 5 forums. now the snake forums now have 4-6 sub forums, making this close to 30 forums! I'll tell you right now i don't have time to view all these forums seeing who needs help. I really feel that a lot of people are going to be the same way.
>>

I am responsible for all forums on kingsnake.com (among other things). My position here on this site essentially just got 70% more difficult as of yesterday with over 80 new forums being added and there are more to come so that percentage factor will continue to rise. There are now 209 forums that I have to keep track of and monitor and *hope* to one day find a dedicated moderator for to have them help people by answering questions, etc. This does not take into account the forums that exist on kingsnake.ca (26 forums), kingsnake.co.uk (32 forums), exotichobbyist.com (32 forums) and insecthobbyist.com (27 forums) that I am also responsible for - between those 4 sites: 117 forums.

If we were playing cards, my 325 + forums beats out your 30. LOL

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>>People won't get the help they need, so they'll double or triple post in other sub forums or in the main forum again. This will just increase traffic on the website - meaning more bandwidth needed (more money more ads, etc...) then it will be more storage on the servers hard drive. one or two threads double/triple posted wont hurt... but i presume thats why theres a limit to 3 forums the same thread can go on - due to server space and bandwidth.

The max limit is actually 4 posts when it comes to cross-posting between forums.

Moderators are here to help people as best they can, but there are not enough of us to be everywhere and able to keep up with every thread and/or post. Most forums don't have the luxury of an assigned moderator and trying to match moderators to subjects they are familar with is not an easy task.

In general, the number of forums or subforums is not going to change the basic problem that has always been around on any website that has forums/boards: people will either help each other out or they won't.

A general forum is all well and good, but there comes a time when things need to be broken down into more.

Take this example using boas:

People on the general boa forum do at times grumble and complain about questions not getting answered on whatever topic because everyone else is doing nothing but posting thread after thread after thread of bci or bcc photographs...random photo spree. What if someone had posted a dumeril boa question and it gets lost among the deluge of photos and never answered? (& yes this does happen there often enough and on other forums too!) That person, especially a new individual, is probably going to feel left out or not welcomed there at all - now they have the added option to try the dumeril boa forum for assistance if the general boa forum doesn't pan out. We are not forcing dumeril boa people to use only the dumeril boa forum anymore than we have forced the anaconda or rainbow boa people or any of the other boa types to stay in their individual forums when we gave them their own forums some time back. The general boa forum is still the same general boa forum that is open to discussion on any type of boa species. It's up to the people to decide where they wish to go. People complained many months ago that dividing up the 'boas' like I did was going to 'ruin' the boa forum - it didn't. The general boa forum is the same as it's always been just with less fighting and there are more people who are happy because they have alternative boa forums to go to if they find themselves crowded out in the general forum.

Those individuals who WANT to discuss specific topics and don't wish to wade through a forum of pretty much everything else don't have to - they have a place they can specifically go to if they choose to. Folks that find they don't like using subforums are not being forced to use them either - they have the option to stay away from them and stick to the main parent forum.

The subforum stuff is still being worked on...there are things that still haven't been fixed/added yet like navigation bars between the subforum and the parent forum. Give it time.
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PHWyvern

>>for example... i frequent those 5 forums. now the snake forums now have 4-6 sub forums, making this close to 30 forums! I'll tell you right now i don't have time to view all these forums seeing who needs help.

BTW... I am curious - what method do you use when you 'read' your forums? Do you go to each forum individually from the main page and manually look down the list for threads with new posts? I have always found that to be pretty time consuming especially on a busy forum or if you want to play on several forums.

When I check forums for obvious tos violations (some posts just scream out at you lol), I prefer to use the "Today's Post" link from the main KS forum page... I can search two entire catagories (like all snakes or all lizards) at one time and/or up to 5 individual forums... all covering a specific time frame.

This search brings up a list of all the forums in those catagories and/or individual forums selected and shows a list of any new threads or already existing threads which had new responses made to them within that time frame specified.

Mostly I just search for new stuff since the last time (or the 2nd to last time) I logged into the forums. I can also search further back in time if I want to as well.

From the results page, if I click a thread listed, a new window pops up that shows you the thread. I look for any new post(s) in that thread, read them if they look interesting to me and close the window when done. I go back to the search results page and look for the next thread on the list I want to check out. This all works best if you have your user preferences checked to 'show all replies' as that will show the entire thread structure at the bottom of any message no matter where in that particular thread you are...then you can just hop around wherever within it to read the new stuff..no backspacing needed. A little golden colored arrow shows you where in the thread structure you happen to be.

This is by far the easiest way to bulk search the forums for new threads/posts. But there are times when I still like to go to a specific forum and manually look at stuff from that page.

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PHWyvern