Soliciting Advice on Forum Setup

We have A Growing Forum (Status Update). I’ve been thinking about scalability concerns. As we grow, I expect this will be more important.

Perhaps a better category structure could help us manage growth. With more categories, you will have finer grain control over notifications. It will also be easier to focus in on the aspect of the conversation on which you are more interested.

What types of subcategories do you think we should consider and implement?

I like some of the new categories that you seem to have just created.

I’ll note that you botched the URL in your post above.

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I think a theology one would be and maybe a philosophy of science type one would be nice.

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Good idea. Let me think about it precisely. I’m a bit uncertain if we should keep the ID category too…

I’ve also made it so a few categories will randomly bump some topics to the top each day. That way we can keep going back to some of the more important content as makes sense.

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I was wondering if we might limit posting/comment access on some categories to more trusted members? Possibly differing rules too. We already have a form of this in your restricted discussion with Dr. Durston.

Let me think on that more too, confusing rules can be worse than no rules.

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This is possible. The only problem is that when we have scholarly guests come in, moderators have to be good about quickly them to groups so they are not frustrated. A possibility I’ve thought about:

  1. require level_1 or higher group in order to comment on office hours.
  2. Create a “scholars” sub-category in conversations that requires membership in a “scholars” group to participate in.

Does this make sense to people or not?

How about the other way around? Can we set a flag (Trust_Level=-1?) for troublesome people that would restrict them from posting in all categories but one?

Maybe we are saying the same thing.

Can we set level_1 on everything (except the doghouse) and level_2 for Office Hours/Scholars? I think this is just bumping all the normal levels up by one.

We would probably agree on are the “troublesome people”. But I think this proposal will look too much like public shaming, and might cause other problems.

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… too much like public shaming…

Point taken. Perhaps just keep them from posting in the more serious discussions then, with a broader level of inclusion.

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@moderators @swamidass

Is it my imagination… or has traffic slowed down somewhat since the Forum Setup was launched?

I know we have switched back (unless we have switched back from switching back) … but there seems to be either fewer postings… or the APPEARANCE of fewer postings…

Anybody have a theory ???

@Michael_Callen

That is an amazing data point…

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Hahahahaha…

There is a normal ebb and flow to forum activity.

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