Dying Forums or just slow?

Yeah in 2017 the general trend of declining comments in the forums, due to people using social media instead, has continued. We had around 11,000 comments last year compared with around 18,000 in 2016.

The plan is for us to get rid of the current forum structure and instead replace them with a new content type called "discussions", where all discussions will be browsable in one place, like the recent posts tracker.

This will happen with the upgrade, which we have been working on over the past few months, and we hope will go live at some point in 2018.

If any users want to help us with this they can support us on patreon: https://patreon.com/libcom

It sounds like it will function the same as the current "recent posts" tracker, except it will only track discussions taking place under library/blog pieces, since there won't be a separate forum.

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It sounds like it will function the same as the current "recent posts" tracker, except it will only track discussions taking place under library/blog pieces, since there won't be a separate forum.

So is it definitely the case that users couldn't start a new 'discussion' without posting a library item or blog?

Dannny

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It sounds like it will function the same as the current "recent posts" tracker, except it will only track discussions taking place under library/blog pieces, since there won't be a separate forum.

So is it definitely the case that users couldn't start a new 'discussion' without posting a library item or blog?

This isn't 100% decided yet and it's something that doesn't have to happen at exactly the same time as the upgrade necessarily (whereas retaining the /forums page and similar absolutely does unless we do work then undo it again).

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It sounds like it will function the same as the current "recent posts" tracker, except it will only track discussions taking place under library/blog pieces, since there won't be a separate forum.

And news too I imagine. If this is the case then starting a thread would just require making a blog post instead of a forum post, and a new announcements category could even be created.
It would eliminate browsing, I don't browse any more because I use the tracker, but I think that new posters do, having to get approved to a blog would be another hurdle for new posters (not that there are too many of them).

I suppose the last dregs of the social aspect of libcom would go with it, but from what is openly posted on the forums there doesn't seem to be too much of it.

Dannny

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It sounds like it will function the same as the current "recent posts" tracker, except it will only track discussions taking place under library/blog pieces, since there won't be a separate forum.

So is it definitely the case that users couldn't start a new 'discussion' without posting a library item or blog?

hey, no don't worry.

What we mean is there will not be a forum structure like now, so there will not be separate forums for organise/general/history/whatever, as these distinctions don't may make much sense and lots of the sub forums are effectively dead. All discussions will be in a single section called "discussions". Users will be free to start discussions, as they can start forum threads now.

A big thing we want to do in terms of news/blogs etc is make them easier to navigate and browse using tags, regions etc

Spikymike

Still on Forums - Should there still not be a separate 'Forum' or other place on the libcom 'front page' (Will that still be there anyway similar to now?) to make announcements of upcomming meetings, conferences, demos etc?

the front page will probably be quite similar on desktop, but different on mobile phones (basically half of all of our traffic is on mobile phones now, up from basically zero in 2010)

so people will probably be able to post announcements etc in the discussions section

Spikymike

Will those announcements under the new set-up then rapidly disappear after short space of time and not be obvious to anyone viewing more than a week later?

in the same way that they do now, yes, as threads which are not commented on move down the tracker.

At the moment now people could technically see more of them by looking at forums/announcements, however almost nobody actually does that – nearly everyone uses the tracker. For example in the last week the tracker has been viewed over 5000 times, whereas the announcements forum index has been viewed 56 times

Spikymike

OK still trying to get my head around all of this. Going back to Steven's comment No9 above on 'discussions'. He says we 'regulars' can still start our own discussions on the new thread (not just with library or blogs as suspected earlier) Is this agreed by all the admins?

Technically we haven't really agreed anything unanimously on the redesign because we are not yet at that stage with it.

Next when I dip in to the libcom facebook page everything is items selected by the admins (and I can see some justification for prioritising some of these) but if the changes relate to increased mobile device usage should that not mean that us 'ordinary' users be able to start new discussions of our own directly on facebook, presuming we register facebook accounts or will such discussion items automatically come up on facebook? Given that even for my age I'm not very IT clued up compared to others maybe I'm just missing something here?

Our FB page is nothing to do with the redesign, our FB page is purely for promoting our new, and some of our featured old content, we don't plan any changes in how we use our FB page.

I'm waiting for the forums getting the proper coup de grace since these days they seem to be top heavy with dogpiles by the self-righteous and the right-on.

Spikymike

Sorry to harp on about this but connecting Steven's post no9 and my post no12 here does the ''separate discussions section' proposed mean that there is then also a 'separate library section' meaning that posting up books or long texts that belong in the library mean that the other section will not be clogged up with the latest library listings as happens now?
And PS: will there be a separate 'latest library additions' list?

not sure exactly what you mean. Already we have separate Latest feeds, so we will probably mirror that.

Recent posts shows the most recent of all posts, if you just want discussions click "Forum", and then that will remove library et cetera articles

I’m not really getting this either. I’ve only ever used the ‘Recent Posts’ list to view forum material and clicked ‘Submit Content’ when I’ve wanted to start a thread. So Steven, in as simple terms as possible can you explain what the operational differences are likely to be for myself? Thanks.

How will this work for older discussions? ( I assume no-one is going to go back and systematically tag them. )

Can all posts be tagged or just first posts?

Will all users be able to add tags later or just admins? (for current discussions that change or evolve as well as for old discussions that are found with a search.

Are we going to have a tag cloud or something? I hate them but I am not sure of a better way to open up the tags for browsing. I can see having tag links on posts, but will it just be for first pages or more?

Also how are the articles under tags organised? because I have never been able to work it out. I think having a mix of most recent, most viwed and a few random ones could be good.

Would making a libcom mobile app ever be on the table?