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General discussion

Split up some of the larger forums?

Jan 14, 2005 9:57PM PST

Lee et al, please consider splitting up some of the larger forums - such as PC Applications, and perhaps also the Forum Feedback forum - into sub discussions.

Some forums have grown large enough that it's becom daunting to wade through them.

Discussion is locked

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In case you aren't aware
Jan 22, 2005 4:36AM PST

They reduced/combined the number of forums when they went to the new software, due to the limited daily action in some of them.

In actuallity the forums aren't crowded. If you look at the dates of the first post of a thread, the number of new questions per day is not really very great. What you see is a vast collection of previously asked and answered questions that can be accessed by using the search tool and then never even have to post a question. One of the prime purposes of this type of forum, help and a large data base of previous help.

Many of the users of the previous forum wish that they still had access to the myriad threads there. So actually saved much of the old forum stuff.

As for forum feedback, its intent certainly doesn't seem to warrant a vast amount of action. Many posts in it do not belong in that forum.

Of course this is my personal opinion.

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RE: In case you aren't aware
Jan 24, 2005 11:55PM PST

Thanks for the info. In general, I see/understand how the ability to find previously answered questions could be very useful.

However in some of the really broad forums (such as the example of PC applications), even if you do want to look back for the last 6 months for say, CD backup software, there is still _way_ too many posts about e-mail clients, house design software, MS Publisher, Audio file editors, etc. Simply not time effective to find what one is looking for.

Yes, the search facility helps quite a bit, but is very simple, and therefore somewhat limited in capability.

IMO the grouping of all PC application topics into one forum is just way too broad to be useful or time effective.

In my opinion, the two ideas are not mutually exclusive - one can still have more useful application categories (e-mail, word processing & DTP, sound & video apps, photo editing, backup, security apps, etc., and an 'other' category) and also maintain the history. The best of both worlds.

Just my $ .02 of course. I realize that I don't have to use CNET?s PC applications forum if I find it cumbersome (which I do unfortunately).

cheers,

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Actually we do have separate categories
Jan 25, 2005 12:23AM PST

for many of the items you mentioned...email is in Browsers usually, Photo Editing is in Digital, sound and video are generally in the Hardware or Multimedia areas, etc.

The problem lies mainly with members not looking at the whole Forums list to see where the appropriate place would be for their post and they go to the first one they spot or get to accidentally. Most of the Moderators just go ahead and answer the best they can in whatever forum they see the post in as we go through the ones we frequent most often. If the Moderator can't help because it's not in their expertise to do so, they will usually provide a link to the more appropriate Forum where they will get more qualified help and suggest they repost there.

We do the best we can with what we have....heheheheh

The Applications Forum was combined with the Utilities Forum with the new software as kind of a generic spot for things members couldn't find Forum specific areas to post in.

TONI