There are too many forums at the minute, many of them are nearly identical and only get one or two posts a day. It's a right bitch going through them all, especially when many of them could be consolidated into fewer forums whilst still having less activity than the most active ones.
You have England: All Clubs where posting is allowed (look at the bottom of the forum list) https://www.bigsoccer.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?s=&daysprune=&f=153 Then, there's England: Other Clubs. https://www.bigsoccer.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=1077 Maybe it's just me, but having both of those forums is a little redundant. Same thing in MLS: What's the point of posting in this list, when there's a forum called MLS:General That's my 2 cents. If it gets to be too much, just find the forums you want and subscribe to them. I remember a prior version of BS (around 2001) involved a forum jump where you could log in and see only subscribed forums. It'd be great to have that back. Essentially, after logging in, you wouldn't have to click "my" in order to see your forums. They'd already be at your forum jump. In order to see all forums, you'd click either of the links at the top of the screen.
Well, there's no need for that many International forums. So far there are: 1. World Cup General 2. World Cup News and Analysis 3. World Cup Group Play 4-11. Eight forums for each group 12. World Cup Fans/Travel 13. Fifa and Tournaments 14. The beautiful game 15. World rivalries Many of those are dead, I don't think there needs to be 13 forums for the World Cup and a couple more generic ones, one or two would probably be sufficient. In Europe there is a board for the UEFA Cup/CL, a board for each country, a board for each national team and a board for many teams within each country. A board for the CL/UEFA, and a single board for each country would suffice. England has a board for: 1. The England team 2. The Premiership 3. Cups 4. Other divisions 5. English clubs 6. Rivalries 7-26+. Boards for each Premiership club and some championship clubs Again there are several redundant boards that just clutter things up. Lower division teams like Forest don't even get their own boards on the BBC messageboards, let alone an American one! For the Americas, there are forums for each country, some with extra boards for the national team and leagues. On top of that, Concacaf has three extra forums, and Conmebol has another three. Asia has six forums. Most of these are practically dead. USA has forums for 1. Soccer in the USA 2. USA men 3. USA men news and analysis 4. USA men fans and travel 5. Youth national teams 6. MLS general 7. MLS news and analysis 8. MLS teams 9. MLS expansion 10-22. Forums for each team. 23. Yanks abroad 24. Open cup 25. USL 26. Amateur/college 27. MISL/Indoor 28. Youth 29. High school Does the USA really need that many forums? A lot of them seem to be practically the same thing with a different name. It seems they've tried to cover every possible thing someone could talk about and give it its own board. Youth/amateur could probably be consolidated, as well as the USMNT and MLS. Women's soccer has seven boards. That's very optimistic, and probably just dilutes the posts they do get to make it look more barren. There's there's a whole new section of niche forums like collectables, business, stats etc, and boards for players, coaches, refs which are probably OK. they don't seem to have been split into a million subsections like the rest of the site. Then there are another thousand or so NSR boards, then other sports, and several feedback forums. It makes navigating the site to look for the new posts an absolute nightmare.
He is right though. The old UK layout had to deal with a lot more leagues, cups, clubs and issues than both the US and Women's boards combined. It's layout was fine, compact and worked well. Contrast that to the new England section and the previous sections I mentioned and it's clear that they are bloated and only add additional clutter that could be further compacted. At least with the World Cup section, it doesn't clutter the main board. Although what is the real need in a general board, if we could just use the default FIFA World Cup 2006 one?
While not arguing specifically against the argument for consolidating, I have to wonder what you're doing that makes it seem so difficult to you. The great majority of users gravitate to a small number of favorite forums, which they then visit regularly. Hardly anybody screens the whole array looking for new posts on a regular basis. For one thing, that would involve looking at WR way too often for my taste. I think Huss's comment that the various subforums were created for different reasons is important. In many cases, the subforums were specifically requested by users who were, presumably, pleased once it was created. An arbitrary realignment from on high would likely cause a lot of hard feelings, given this history. At the very least, some staged procedure should be considered, like putting a stickied thread a the top of the targeted forums to warn the users who frequent it and elicit discussion/gauge resistance.
England looks to me to need the most tidying up right now. I'd suggest creating two subforums under "Englandremiership": "EPL: General" and "EPL: Clubs". Within "EPL: Clubs", there're about 10 teams with forums active enough to warrant their own sub-forum: ManUtd, Liverpool, Arsenal, Spurs, etc. Clubs with quite inactive forums: Birmingham, Aston Villa, etc, probably should have threads in the newly created "England: Other Clubs" subforum rather than have subforums of their own.
Dead, maybe not. I'm sure some of them will gain traffic as the WC draws nearer. But, do we really need several forums for the WC, when there's already forums for Italy, US, and US Fans & Travel? Personally, I think the WC section is overblown and just adds too much work for the mods, as well as "Where should I post this?" stuff. The group forums just seem to be redundant of the regular national team forums. Good ideas. I'd combine Youth with HS. Keep the rest of it as is. I also get the feeling that sometimes forum posting is turned on, when in reality, maybe it shouldn't. (Look at my previous post regarding England: Other Clubs and MLS: Teams). That might add to the confusion.
What about the bots? Do they really need forums, or could a whole other area be created for them, say bigsoccer.com/news ??
Please, please get rid of the bots. Nobody reads them. England club fora that can go in my opinion are: Leicester City Wolverhampton The others, I feel, are good to keep. I agree that there shouldn't be posting allowed under England: All Clubs. It's pointless - they can either take it to the new Other Clubs or the main Premiership board. Other than that, I don't feel the England board needs further tidying up. It is the 2nd most followed league for the posters on this board (behind MLS, of course) - why shouldn't it have a lot of fora?
Ipswich hasn't even got one thread in it anymore, so thats good to loose. Also can we please get rid of sunderland.
The problem with having millions of subforums is it makes it nearly impossible to follow as you have to go into every one looking for new posts. England could probably manage with: 1. Premiership 2. Lower divisions 3. Cups And America could manage with: 1. United States NT 2. MLS 3. Amateur Internationally, it would be easier with: 1. World Cup 2. Europe 3. South America 4. Concacaf 5. Africa 6. Asia/Oceania
Nope - the subfora are necessary. Otherwise things become too cluttered and are too difficult to find. And just because the WC fora aren't super-busy now doesn't mean they won't be in a few more months.
Subfora are OK, but does "England: Club Forums" need so many? Click on "SoccerBoards" and scroll down. Notice that while other parent forums have between 3 and 8 subfora (a reasonable number, IMHO), "England: All Clubs" has 23!! Why not make some of the less active subfora in "England: Club Forums" subfora (or threads) in "England: Other Clubs"? Take a look at MLS Expansion to see how you might want to do it: Parent Forum: MLS Subforum: MLS Expansion, Former & Stadiums Subforum: Specific Cities Subforums: Cleveland, Milwaukee, etc
Exactly. If anybody thinks new posts are hard to find now, wait till they start disappearing off the bottom of the page because of the crowding that'll result if subfora are eliminated. Or just disappearing entirely. Again, to a certain extent, the large number of subfora is not so much a product of an overarching plan or logic but something that emerged as a result of user activity, interests, and requests. The arbitrary removal of these subfora by way of imposing a unilateral aesthetic is more likely to reduce the overall activity than increase it. And I say this as someone who generally argues against subdividing fora (Books from Music, TV, and Motion Pictures; Religion from Politics, etc.). I still don't understand why, rather than arguing for changes this draconian, you don't simply take the time to get to know the site and frequent only those places you come to find most enjoyable, while making better use of the tools at your disposal (such as thread subscriptions) to do so. You wouldn't insist on a town entirely revamping itself to suit your preferences and relatively unformed familiarity one month after you moved in, would you?
These would make for excellent parent forums. Then within each of these forums you would have subforums, and if appropriate, subforums within the subforums. Take reference books, for instance. You rarely see books with 144 chapters and no further partitioning. Instead, the textbook might be broken into 3 Parts, with each Part containing 8 chapters, and each chapter containing 6 sections. Subforums within subforums is a good idea -- you guys in charge of England should use it!
I mod most of those forums. They're needed. Some are slower than others for the moment, but none are dead. Wait until the World Cup heats up and you'll understand why they all exist. I've suggested before that the USOC forum be merged with the Soccer in the USA forum. I don't think that tournament requires its own permanent board.
It's easier to go through a few pages of one forum than a single page in several subforum. Then every day you've only got one forum to browse, rather than several. Because then I might miss something interesting posted in one of the ten million subforums I don't frequent. The worst part is that most of the subforums are completely redundant, and the splits arbitrary.
On a board where you get several thousand posts on a regular day (lets not even think about what happens during the World Cup) most people can't even hope to sift through a tenth of the material posted here. To allow posters to quickly find items related to specific topics of interest, and prevent items getting lost due to massive thread turnover on boards, a large number of subforums is going to be inevitable and essential. With the number of posts during the tail end of the season, you would create havoc if you dumped all the MLS discussions into one board. Same with the Premiership boards. If you class active threads as ones less that a week old, you'd have literally dozens of (if not well over a hundred) pages of current material at once during peak times in some of the busier forums. Contrary to what you might think, the subdivisions are not at all arbitrary - they are in fact carefully thought-out, frequently reviewed for relevance and indeed have only been created in the first place because there was an overwhelmingly pressing need for them. I do think there is room for streamlining, but the massive overhaul you're proposing would create utter chaos. EDIT: Oh, I see you're new. Never mind, you'll see.
Hail, Caesar. He explains it better than I might have. He's right: reorganization along the scale you're suggesting would really upset people. For a current case in point, browse the threads in the Free for All forum and you'll see the reactions from the users of World Rivalries in response to their forum being moved, or in the Other NSR forum having been temporarily deleted. Granted, that particular subpopulation of BS users is among the most, uh, volatile we've got, but you'll get some idea of the high dudgeon that would follow the kind of overhaul you want. And again, people would be upset because to a certain extent the shape of this site follows established practice rather than some arbitrary logic, and when you muck around with that people feel it's Just Not Right. I genuinely enjoy BS and have happily paid the premium membership fees for just that reason. I spend far too much time here (or, rather, "here") and everyday find something amusing and intelligent posted by people I imagine I'd enjoy talking with over a beer. Plus, compared to other similar outfits, I think it's a well run site, and I generally think the moderators do a thankless job extremely well. Even taking all that into account, I have to say that your concern over missing something interesting because it was posted in a subforum you don't frequent is...unduly flattering, even to the excellent community of posters we have here at BS.