As you are most likely noticing right now, we've decided to reorganize a large part of the forums, in order to improve clarity and better divide the forum along centers of interests. Overall, we also hope to have evened out the traffic distribution between the different forums a little bit better, with a few key exceptions.
These primarily are the Video, HDTV and GPGPU forums. So if we moved them more on top of the list and divided them as such, it's simply because we think they've got a lot of potential to increase in size in the coming months, and that we want to make sure to favor their growth as much as we can. As for the forums that have been moved down the list as a result of this restructuration, please do keep in mind that the total number of forums is actually down (and very slightly up including subforums), so that they're very much visible to anyone interested by these topics anyway!
As for Embedded 3D being moved up and General Discussion being moved down, this is mostly a result of console discussions representing more than a third of our forum visitors, something we cannot deny and can only hope to grow further (although, if anything, our tolerance for jerks is only going to go down as a consequence!). We still believe the General Discussion forum is a place for our posters to talk about the things on their mind, and as such, it feels more appropriate not to make it look like one of the most important parts of the site to new visitors - once they'll fit in, they're likely to be visiting it anyway, no matter where it is on the list!
Finally, three forums are quitting us today, but four new ones also arrived. The Developer Forum and the Beta Beyond3D Articles forum have been merged with 3D Tech, while Hardware and Software Talk have been merged together, as a consequence of the addition of a "Purchase Decisions" section which is likely to "steal" part of their traffic. The Video forum has a new child too, the Display Devices, Monitors and HDTV Forum, which we hope to develop further as the industry's focus shifts more and more towards these topics. Finally, we added a "Beginner's Questions" subforum to the 3D Technology & Hardware forum, in order to help newly registered users fit in, or to let anyone else ask their daily, weekly, or monthly stupid questions they wouldn't dare asking anywhere else!
Overall, one of the most controversial changes is the addition of more subforums, and the transformation of small forums into subforums. Some people don't like subforums, and we understand that. We are considering some forum mods to try to improve that situation slightly soon, but nothing is set in stone yet, and we are interested in your feedback on this subject, and any other topic related to the reorganization, or anything else, of course! We'd like you to try getting used to it for at least a few days before judging it too negatively.
Anyway, hopefully most will agree this is an overall improvement, and that it will benefit us all in the coming months, during which we hope to grow the sites and forums tremendously - at least, that's the goal! So stay tuned...
Uttar & The Beyond3D Team
These primarily are the Video, HDTV and GPGPU forums. So if we moved them more on top of the list and divided them as such, it's simply because we think they've got a lot of potential to increase in size in the coming months, and that we want to make sure to favor their growth as much as we can. As for the forums that have been moved down the list as a result of this restructuration, please do keep in mind that the total number of forums is actually down (and very slightly up including subforums), so that they're very much visible to anyone interested by these topics anyway!
As for Embedded 3D being moved up and General Discussion being moved down, this is mostly a result of console discussions representing more than a third of our forum visitors, something we cannot deny and can only hope to grow further (although, if anything, our tolerance for jerks is only going to go down as a consequence!). We still believe the General Discussion forum is a place for our posters to talk about the things on their mind, and as such, it feels more appropriate not to make it look like one of the most important parts of the site to new visitors - once they'll fit in, they're likely to be visiting it anyway, no matter where it is on the list!
Finally, three forums are quitting us today, but four new ones also arrived. The Developer Forum and the Beta Beyond3D Articles forum have been merged with 3D Tech, while Hardware and Software Talk have been merged together, as a consequence of the addition of a "Purchase Decisions" section which is likely to "steal" part of their traffic. The Video forum has a new child too, the Display Devices, Monitors and HDTV Forum, which we hope to develop further as the industry's focus shifts more and more towards these topics. Finally, we added a "Beginner's Questions" subforum to the 3D Technology & Hardware forum, in order to help newly registered users fit in, or to let anyone else ask their daily, weekly, or monthly stupid questions they wouldn't dare asking anywhere else!
Overall, one of the most controversial changes is the addition of more subforums, and the transformation of small forums into subforums. Some people don't like subforums, and we understand that. We are considering some forum mods to try to improve that situation slightly soon, but nothing is set in stone yet, and we are interested in your feedback on this subject, and any other topic related to the reorganization, or anything else, of course! We'd like you to try getting used to it for at least a few days before judging it too negatively.
Anyway, hopefully most will agree this is an overall improvement, and that it will benefit us all in the coming months, during which we hope to grow the sites and forums tremendously - at least, that's the goal! So stay tuned...
Uttar & The Beyond3D Team
