As it’s easy to ignore a whole forum, i see no compelling reason to retire any of them. We don’t have tons of forums to wade thru
There’s no end of people telling us how to manipulate the GUI to get something resembling a usable site.
How about we make the site usable from the ground up?
Have the forums organized by their main feature.
Add forums for popular subjects, retire forums that have outlived their usefulness.
The current organization only makes sense if you consider the process of how we got there: as a result it is a hot mess.
QZ needs to go and we need a DJT forum (have been needing one for a while) Folding the discussion of his antics into other forums made sense while he held office, now, not so much.
In the current setup DJT is too much in everybody’s face. Biggest subject in the pit, in politics (and some of those belong in MPIMS) it is all Trump, all the time.
A dedicated forum would give more oxygen to the rest.
It might be useful to have a trump tag (or maybe we already have one) but a whole forum just for trump seems silly.
I disagree strongly.
Another pandemic will come, probably sooner than anyone suspects.
Trump, on the other hand, won’t be around too much longer. In the news or among the living. He’s pretty old and not nearly as healthy as his sycophant doctors insist he is.
In volume it would make sense.
(The large Trump threads combined are bigger than some forums)
So trying to understand how the QZ in waiting is going to work going forward …
It definitely should not be an any infectious disease space, or even every new flu variant, or every mention of a new bird flu possibility. At some point of … worry? numbers of threads? when the WHO calls it a pandemic? something? in a particular epidemic posters are told to start posting there?
Covid is becoming a seasonal forever not novel disease … do all Covid threads still and forevermore belong there, as a special disease forever? Pretty much not seen because few bother opening that forum?
In any case I think a dedicated Trump forum is a completely horrible idea. Worse yet if our track record is not having any exit strategy on putatively temporary topical fora.
I grant your last point: the current organization is the result of a long series of historical “accidents”.
Where we totally part company is that everything about all aspects of human society is simply the result of a long series of historical “accidents”. The value of stability in arrangements is large; the practical outcome of something that continuously morphs to “todays best arrangement” is simply bewildering.
Lastly, the whole and entire point of the many personalizable features of Discourse is that there is no one idea of an “optimally useable site”. Your ideas are frankly wacky and get no support from the rest of the community. Doing it your way would vastly reduce the usability of SDMB for most users. That way lies disappointment and anger for most of us.
But you can totally implement your ideas for you. Because Discourse, unlike vBulletin, provides you the tools to make it look the way you want it to look. Refusing to use any of the personalization tools you’ve been given then complaining that things aren’t to your liking is … shortsighted and unbecoming.
Eh, “i just caught a cold and feel lousy” belongs in MPSIMS. But i feel “how scary is mpox?” or “is there a resurgence of measles” are both perfectly reasonable topics for the quarantine zone. I think i used it for " what’s up with the new RSV vaccines? And it seems like a decent place to post about the likely winter surge, as well.
Many likely most of us will miss those threads then.
A separate forum for infectious disease issues seems like a very very very bad idea.
The point of separating Covid out was that it overwhelmed everything else and collectively “we” decided that segregating them was required, allowing it to be ignored if not wanting all Covid all the time. Putting everything contagious in quarantine isolates them from broad viewership and discussion. Most of us currently avoid QZ like the plague!
RSV and measles threads are not best placed there.
Eh, i feel like a lot of people gave been overloaded on infectious disease discussion, and would just as soon not see any of those topics.
I can’t speak for most but I suspect there are many who don’t care to, or actively avoid, further Covid discussion that are still interested in other infectious disease subjects.
But yes if the intent is to have few suffer seeing threads related to infectious diseases, probably especially people who actually are most knowledgeable about them, then isolate them from view within QZ.
But if QZ is to stick around we should have a clear sense of what it is for going forward.
Honestly, I think we should make it read-only at this point.
We could always reverse it if the worst happens and another pandemic hits us.
But I’m pretty apathetic about it and don’t wish to start the conversation in the modloop about it.
This feels like a really minor bookkeeping item and remember, I’m the anal-retentive one that does most of the tagging.
Okay, as you’re the OP and want to open this up further, I’ll go along. But I still think you’re terribly wrong in the direction we go. As a small, older, and if anything, shrinking group, we should be consolidating. So entirely IMHO, this is what I’d do if I wanted to make it organized by main feature.
Site Feedback Merges into ATMB - a good half of all Feedback posts gets opened up there anyway, no need for the two.
FQ - does what it does, has nice strong rules, and while many can be answered by a google search, it is one of those great places to find obscure answers. Probably no need to change now that the title has been adjusted (and was a great idea).
Cecil’s Columns, Great Debates, and P&E merge - a lot of long haul posters have already mentioned that pulling P&E out of GD removed 90% of the content anyway, so that’s pretty easy. Cecil’s new columns if/when they return, tend to be on more series topics anyway (AI, Global Warming) and the commentary is normally pretty limited, so would work. Not married to it, could also fit into the next category.
Merge MPSIMS and IMHO - we’ve had threads that the overlap between the two is enough that it makes more sense to do so, as the differences tend to me matters of intent. The stricter rules on breaking news threads should be preserved. And again, based on some columns, Cecil’s new / previous work could be here. Lots are less earth-moving, and it’s a catchall anyway. Still, I have another exception to carve out and move to the next -
Quarantine moved to and merged into a NEW Category - Health and Medical - because the sheer number of IMHO posts we have about weird, funny, or terrifying medical conditions (again, as we all age) seem more out of place, and more likely to overwhelm our catchall category. So it moves all medical and related matters to one forum.
I’m of many minds if Thread Games and the Game Room should be merged, but that may because I already mute the Thread Games already. From what I see when I’m on a non-signed in system though, it’s a beloved part of the board that is limited to it’s own fans, while Cafe Society is already a another broad category that does a solid job despite the dissimilar elements.
The Pit - I have three (3!) possible options here! One, Status quo, no problem. Two Split into two categories, Rants about the World and Rants about Posters. I bring this up because often we have semi nuanced discussions about the world that are useful but far too charged for the new MPSIMS forum, without wanting to have the attack dog mentality of the PVP (Player vs Player, or Poster vs Poster) of some Pit interactions. The second category is explicitly for the above. Splitting it in such a way could help with one of the other ongoing ATMB complaints about the Pit - what constitutes trolling. The third is to eliminate the direct Pitting of other posters, but at the same time, loosening the restrictions on attacking the poster not the post in the other forums. At a minimum (and I’ve suggested this before) eliminate the whole accusation of lying as an attack. We’ve had soooo many threads on this, and personally I’d trash the rule, but hey, that’s up to the mods/admin. But getting rid of the Pit without something along those lines wouldn’t fly.
So my last forum would be new, and it would be Emerging World Events. Designed to be a more substantial type of breaking news, in the way many GD discussions are to the lower stakes ones in IMHO, and should be applied to more weighty matters. Of course, that’s still utterly subjective, and once again a catchall, but you could put things like Trump and the Ukraine invasion here. Since it would (ideally) have a bit tighter moderation, threads that require it that start elsewhere could be moved in, and light weight, or low stakes could be moved out.
Still, to be clear, this is just as subjective to my tastes and preferences as @The_Librarian’s is. It makes sense to me, as theirs do to them I presume, but it’s me asking the board to change to my tastes. And with so many conservative members of the board (not in the political sense) happy to leave things as they are, or make slow, measured changes, I don’t see either of us being able to find a compromise that won’t piss a large chunk off no matter what we do.
NOW if we were in one of the prior threads about making the board accessible to new members (if we made an effort to attract any) then it would be a much more urgent need. But I haven’t seen any threads about that recently, so probably moot.
In vBulletin, we didn’t have Site Feedback. Questions about moderation or board software all ended up in ATMB. Note that vBulletin was no longer being actively developed (at least not our old version).
Site Feedback came with the move to Discourse. Note that Discourse is being actively developed and maintained, and that Site Feedback is monitored by the Discourse staff. I have no idea how often they actually check it, but they do seem to check it at least from time to time. Combining the forums would make more work for the Discourse Devs since they would have to wade through questions that have nothing at all to do with the software to look for feedback about the Discourse software.
For that reason, it makes sense to keep Site Feedback and ATMB separate.
I wouldn’t merge Cecil’s Columns with anything.
Merging GD and P&E flat out ignores the reason P&E was split off in the first place.
Disagree. While there is some overlap, there is a lot that does not overlap. A pointless post about puppies just to share does not belong in IMHO and informally debating a topic without framing a formal debate about it does not belong in MPSIMS.
I’m not opposed to the idea of renaming the forum and placing the medical posts that currently go into IMHO into the renamed forum. I am concerned that there wouldn’t be enough traffic for the forum to thrive, though.
This idea again ignores the whole reason that they were split in the first place.
I like the idea – it’s the same broadening of focus that turned “Elections” into “Politics and Elections”. It would certainly get more traffic than if it was perceived to be strictly about COVID.
@engineer_comp_geek - I’m sorry, I didn’t intend my examples to be seriously discussed. It was more a response to @The_Librarian’s request that we reshuffle everything into categories that worked better for them. I was discussing how I would do it for me, myself and I, and expected to get a total of those 3 votes. 
But touching on your fully legitimate counterarguments. Merging GD and P&E back together has come up so many times, at least tangentially, that I felt it would make sense. Lots of posters point out that with IMHO taking the low stakes arguments, and P&E taking all the political ones, that GD has lost much activity and meaning. And since we’re not exactly growing, combining it again makes sense to the three of us above.
As for IMHO and MPSIMS, well, I think we’ll have to agree to disagree. I can and have made the distinction, but with the outliers of breaking news and medical/legal advice, the line is generally pretty blurry, and often one of intent. Again, for the three of us.
As for Heath and Medical, it’s not a perfect fix, but it preserves the intent of the prior QZ, and gives that specific class of IMHO threads (which in turn, often come from MPSIMS and FQ) a logically consistent space. It also provides a place for future large scale medical reports. Whether it be ebola, SARS outbreaks, Swine Flu Redux, or otherwise. I’m of the opinion (shared by many) that it’s going to be an ongoing concern, and repurposing what we have makes sense rather than seeing it spread across all of the other forums.
But again, the main point of my post is that re-organization of everything is an arbitrary exercise - what works and makes sense for me, does not make sense for others, nor take into account the organic growth that has historically taken place here.
You may want to informally survey the health professionals of the board.
I for one might click on a thread I happen to come upon that is health related in an area that I have knowledge, but I would be very unlikely to regularly visit a forum dedicated to it.
LOL, you and me both, but I post in Game Room constantly. Which shows how vastly different those categories are. One is a top category for me and the other I find boring.
An argument could be made that you can split off sports from the rest of the game room, since there are a lot of people into sports with no interest in video/card/board games, and vice versa. The Venn Diagram for those groups would probably show a lot of divergence. But I don’t know that it’s needed.
That has come up before. When we looked into it, there weren’t enough posts for the split forums to thrive. I haven’t checked lately, but I doubt that this has changed.
Which brings us back to my earlier point, that with our tight knit (or exclusive, or shrinking, or other descriptor) community it makes (to me) sense to combine forums rather than further subdivide them. More people visiting, seeing something they’re tangentially interested in, and posting.