Soooo, how about that forum reorganization?

I keep clicking on the wrong forums...

 

<geo contemplates this as a plausible explanation for how an otherwise apparently sane individual ended up with 10k+ posts in the console forums. . . .>

 

You think he's otherwise "apparently sane"?!?!?

Dude, did I ever tell you about what he and his Uncle Jack did to this horse once?

 

Well, it is the internet after all. "apparently sane" is a fairly broad metric on the internet. . .

 

Hey hey hey, there is one happier horse on this planet because of me and uncle Jack!

 

It's been three or four weeks now and... I'm still not used to the new organisation... I still look for the General Forum at the top, before realising that it's here at the bottom...

And the HDTV forum is too hidden i think. Also, now that we have a "purchase decisions" forum, it's confusing because people will post "Which tv should i get" in the HDTV forum, and others will do that in the "purchase decisions" one...

But maybe it's just me.

Can't we just go back to what we used to be... When birds were singing, violins playing... and everyone was happy...

 

I have to agree with lb, (I wonder how much influence my little voice carries though!?).

There were a lot of forum's I'd visit, (but not post in), that I have a lot more trouble navigating through. In theory a structure as organised as this should be beneficial but for me at least it hasn't been.

 

A suggestion

This seems appropriate for this to be posted in this thread instead of starting a new one.

IMHO I think 3DHW&T and 3DA&C are somewhat related and as a consequence get mixed up unintentionally by thread-starters.

I believe "3D Technology" falls into the same category as "3D Architecture & Coding", while "3D Hardware" probably falls in the same category as the existing "3D Boards, Reviews & Drivers".

Many, many times I have witnessed threads in the 3DHW&T where the discussion really isn't about "3D technology" but solely about "3D hardware" with no correlation between the two. I believe "hardware" belongs in "3D Boards, Reviews & Drivers", speculations or not permitted.

IOW I think, for this site, there should be a clear distinction (and therefore separate and distinctive forums) between "3D Hardware" and "3D Technology".

 

Well i still don't know why the Display Devices, Monitors, & HDTV and the Video Technology & HTPC are sub-forum of the 3D Boards, Reviews, & Drivers which is For Discussion of current 3D graphics boards, drivers and support.

I vote for a stand-alone Video/HDTV/whatever forum, with a Purchase Decisions sub-forum.

 

Because we should change the forum description from what it was. Our bad for not having gotten around to it yet.

There was NO legal place to discuss HDTVs before, other than GD. It would sneak into the Video & HTPC forum and a blind eye would carefully be turned to its presence, but it wasn't supposed to be there. Monitors and other displays were down in the PC Hardware forum, and we felt that too was not optimum. So was Video and HTPC; it wasn't in the gpu forums it was in the PC forums.

We wanted to bring anything having to do directly with the generation or display of pixels into the center of the site's. . .err. . sights. That was the thinking on moving Video & HTPC, moving displays and monitors, and saying "Hell yes, we FREAKIN' LOVE HDTV's, bring it on!".

What I really hear you saying is "I hate sub-forums, please do away with them". Well, thanks for the feedback, but we haven't decided to do that.

 

Out of interest - what are the benefits of sub-forums? It's not immediately obvious to me.

 

Primarily screen real estate. They take up much less room on the main forum page, which means more forums get presented "at a glance, and above the fold" at typical monitor resolutions. There are 5 sub-forums in the top two sections. Breaking them all out would push Embedded 3D Forums off the monitor without a page down on even larger monitors like my 1920x1200. Today, even a 1280x1024 resolution will show both Embedded 3D Forums without paging down.

Probably sub-forums should only be used for relatively low volume forums, however, and that was our thinking on those we made as new sub-forums. Tho I'd note that Console Tech and Console Games are NOT "low volume", and have been successful sub-forums for quite some time. There was some discussion of whether GPGPU should be a forum or sub-forum based on those criteria, as it is clearly still low volume, but we decided to be forward-looking on that one and our belief is that volume will pick up there as more solutions are offered and more applications take advantage of them. Still, if we turn out to be wrong about that over the next year, that decision may very well get revisited. We also drew a line at no more than two sub-forums per forum, as we felt more than two would be too cluttered.

 

Oh, btw, sadly someone reported this post, so we'll have to ban you for a month. . .

Btw, l-b, you're a major Console forum guy. . .why don't you complain about Console Tech and Console Games being sub-forii? Can you help us understand the difference between why it's acceptable in Console, but not elsewhere? And, no, your personal muscle memory is probably not going to be a convincing argument.

 

I think if there had been a "ban for an hour" option I would have tried it

 

hey i like it, the lay out, and I know i dont want a forum designed by LB

 

Heheheh u evil!! (for all those reading these pages, i reported my own post to make sure the powers-that-be actually read it!)

In the console forum it works because it's all about consoles, and generally it just works.

It's different with the HDTV forum. It's under "3D Drivers and stuff"! That's just wrong. And well, i think the HDTV or "home theatre" or whatever else concerning monitors and general geeky audio/video equipment should have its own forum because more people would use it. Certainly it shouldn't be under "3D drivers"... Heck, if GPGPU has its own forum, Audio/Video Geekiness should too! WE are a geeky forum afterall, i'm sure lots of people will appreciate.

 

I think it likely that a few renamings and re-describings are in-train incorporating some of that feedback, but we're going to be stubborn about the sub-forums a bit longer at least. We really like having the entire core mission of the site, in our view, visible right there on one page without having to go hunt, particularly for new visitors.

 

Subforums are good. Having the HDTV forum as a subforum of 3D Drivers, in the GPU section, is not good.

 

Ahem.

 

You should be a politician!