More categories/forums?

[inbtwn]

something i've noticed with the yesterweb forum as opposed to other forums i've visited in the past is that the forum/category count is kind of small? we have two categories for internet talk and webweaving, which is fine imo, but there's only one forum for interests. compare this to the MelonLand Forum which has at least half a dozen interest-related forums. would it be possible to expand The Garden to several different types of interest/offline-related categories, such as games, movies, or music? you don't have to do this, i'm just thinking out loud here.

(also a board specifically devoted to forum games would be nice)

[RogerMexico]

We have a relatively small number of daily posts from a relatively small pool of users. I don’t think increasing the number of fora would do much outside of make the forum as a whole feel inactive when it isn’t.

I think if concurrent users/average daily posts increases it might be a good idea.

Personally, I like fewer fora.

[Starfia]

Good little poll to take. I'm no mod and have no say, but I'd say…

When creating subcategories which aren't abstract, there's that the problem of gauging which categories to create and what to do when they prove to have disproportionate weightednesses and outliers. And I don't think there's an overflow of new threads in need of management.

I think I agree with RogerMexico that only four (more abstract) categories makes the place feel more cozy and navigable, like a nice community building with only four rooms – each with a clear purpose – that collectively allow for just about any topic with no outliers.

[madness]

compare this to the MelonLand Forum

but melonland is a playground
and .this() is a teahouse
maybe they are both structures with walls and furniture
but designed for different purposes with different intentions

let's do a small analysis of what already exists. yeah the forum itself is pretty low traffic so we don't really have a problem with topic overcrowding that isn't better solved with searching

actually I just noticed that the garden subforum isn't used too often, and when it is used, the conversations and topics are generally always something that would be acceptable in the net café subforum because it seems that there's hardly any interest in discussing offline life without injecting onlineness into it. so I could even argue for reducing the amount of subforums we have

or even change the garden to be general purpose, so we'd have:
one place for general chat
one place for chat about the internet
one place for chat about internet projects
one place for sharing events and socials

edit: things have changed

[Sadness]

I agree that the forum is pretty low-traffic compared to others, so creating more spaces may make things seem very empty.

However, we noticed there was a little bit of an imbalance, with the majority of the posts being in Net Cafe, so we shored that up by shuffling some of the hardware/software-themed posts into what used to be Webweaving (now The Computer Lab) as well as some other changes. I made a post with all of the changes we made. Some of it was just organizational/aesthetic but hopefully these changes make for a more pleasant forum browsing experience!

[inbtwn]

This is AWESOME, Sadness!!! I love that you used emojis to make the forum names stand out. Thanks for the update!!

I understand not wanting to branch out too much because the forum isn't too active, which makes sense. I'm glad the forums themselves have a much clearer purpose that's more in line with how the users have been using them.