An observation about many of the technical forums and thread visibility.

The thing that strikes me is that if you go and visit the C/C++ forum you get (at time of writing) you see in the thread list precisely 5 threads. This is bad in itself. However THREE of those are stickies and one was MOVED to another forum! This holds true for many (most?) of the tech forums on VBF.

Go to 10 other top internet programming forums and you'll see that C/C++ are among the most active topics.

The reason for this is clear of course, the forum default view is threads from the last month... the forum software clearly isn't designed to show old and neglected forums in a good light. A newbie comes here to browse and spots that there has been practically zero traffic on a topic in the last month and they'll assume that their questions will never be answered because nobody frequents these pages.

I'm sure VBF is still generating a lot of hits and helps a few people every day. But it's obvious that there's nobody at the wheel.

My suggestion is to get one of your admins to alter the default views to show the last month's worth of threads (for popular forums that haven't died yet), and the last 100 threads no matter how old they are (for dead forums that get no new traffic like C/C++, C# etc...).

If people see many threads in the listings straight off the bat then they might be more likely to ask their questions here and thus we might claw back some traffic.

If a newbie comes to a site called VB Forums to look for advice on a C/C++ coding problem...isn't that a sign already?

I would expect that new people come here for VB questions, and all the rest is secondary.

I think this is a great suggestion. We want to make it easy for new comers to see the content and not have to search or so too much to figure out that this site is active and has valuable content.

What if the query could pull either last 1 months posts or 250 threads, whichever is larger. This way there will always be a few pages of content without taxing the server to retrieve a fixed set amount unnecessarily?

Nice suggestion, wossname (and RobDog's follow-up), and I think Shaggy is onto something here, too.

IMO, vbForums could cut at least half of its subformus and be better off for it. Why are all the non-VB languages broken out into individual forums? Why not just stick them all into a "Languages other than VB" category? Most of us develop in a variety of languages, and I'd be more inclined to look through one catch-all forum instead of eight separate ones. (Especially when some of the language subforums aren't languages at all, like jQuery!)

I find the current layout especially weird when subforums that actually make sense to separate - e.g. Games and Graphics, which are really quite different - are crammed into the same place. And then there are forums like "API", which seems like a very odd categorical distinction. Most API questions are already asked in the language-specific forums, where IMO they belong, since you can't really discuss an API without discussing the way you're interfacing with it.

Anyway, I bring this up because I personally am deterred from many subforums before I even enter them. For example, when the front page directory says "two threads, five posts" for the Mobile Development code bank, and the last post is a year old, why would I even enter in the first place?

I think the whole forum layout and structure could do with some housecleaning. Any subforum with less than a thousand threads might be a candidate for merging with other subforums. This would make the vbForums front page cleaner and faster, and also encourage people to actually enter various subforums instead of being scared off by their lack of activity.

My $0.02, thanks for listening. :)

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If a newbie comes to a site called VB Forums to look for advice on a C/C++ coding problem...isn't that a sign already?

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And

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IMO, vbForums could cut at least half of its subformus and be better off for it. Why are all the non-VB languages broken out into individual forums?

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I have brought up the issue before that we are a Visual Basic community yet we do not have a Visual Basic for Applications codebank forum, however I do know that some forums were recently added such as mobile and IOT so I'm not really sure what's going on with the forums and their categories.

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What if the query could pull either last 1 months posts or 250 threads, whichever is larger. This way there will always be a few pages of content without taxing the server to retrieve a fixed set amount unnecessarily?

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+1 for this suggestion.

I like where Tanner is going with his post. Cut down on the number of forums on the site and focus more on the VB aspect.

I am partial to the PHP forum because thats what i focus on so I would hate to see that go or be consolidated. But I think if new users see way too many forums to browse it might get intimating or confusing.

Maybe just consolidate the least active forums (minus IOT, i still like that one even though its pretty dead and it was my request lol) into one and create a "version" selector but for the consolidated forum.

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Originally Posted by Shaggy Hiker

If a newbie comes to a site called VB Forums to look for advice on a C/C++ coding problem...isn't that a sign already?

I would expect that new people come here for VB questions, and all the rest is secondary.

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I disagree, people have been coming to VBF for many different topics for many years. Just because the site has "VB" in it's name doesn't mean that they shouldn't diversify. BurgerKing sell fries and milkshakes after all.

In it's day the C/C++ forum was very busy and had some of the best programmers giving great advice on some ridiculously hard questions. It's hardly any surprise that web searches would bring C/C++ learners to VBF. Whether it's secondary or not, it's still valid.

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Originally Posted by dclamp

Cut down on the number of forums on the site and focus more on the VB aspect.

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And throw away a HUGE volume of high quality programming advice gained FOR FREE over 15+ years? What colour is the sky on your planet? :)

I'm sure Brad will take some of this into consideration. A lot of what you see now came from threads like this.

If more people SEARCHED for answers, sites like this would get even less traffic... Getting people to search once they get here is even tougher. Thinking that people would scroll through 250 posts looking for the possibility that they'll find something close to the answer they want is a pipe dream.

I did go a head and change the Default View Age from last month to last 75 days in the C and C++ section.

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Originally Posted by Tanner_H

... Most of us develop in a variety of languages, and I'd be more inclined to look through one catch-all forum instead of eight separate ones. (Especially when some of the language subforums aren't languages at all, like jQuery!)

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I never look through any of the forums.
I click on the "Settings" menu to see if any threads I've posted in (thus subscribed to) are listed and read those first.
Then I click on "New Posts", which will show what has changed in all the forums since I last logged on and that I haven't looked at already.
That gives the "one catch-all forum", and already ordered by latest post first, so seems pretty efficient to me. I never just trawl around except when originally getting familiar with the site.

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Originally Posted by Tanner_H

....Anyway, I bring this up because I personally am deterred from many subforums before I even enter them. For example, when the front page directory says "two threads, five posts" for the Mobile Development code bank, and the last post is a year old, why would I even enter in the first place?

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I'm wondering why you thing that is a bad thing? Why you would want the forum rigged so that you would be tricked into looking at post more than a year old because it was lumped together with other old threads in one combined forum.
We have enough people responding to really old posts as it is without trying to encourage it.:confused:

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Originally Posted by passel

I never look through any of the forums.
I click on the "Settings" menu to see if any threads I've posted in (thus subscribed to) are listed and read those first.
Then I click on "New Posts", which will show what has changed in all the forums since I last logged on and that I haven't looked at already.

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This only works once you're registered. :( I was thinking of new/unregistered ones.

(Also, those are *really* unintuitive places to look. Who thinks of going to "settings" to list a list of updated posts, and that tiny little "New Posts" link is barely noticeable!)

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Originally Posted by passel

I'm wondering why you thing that is a bad thing? Why you would want the forum rigged so that you would be tricked into looking at post more than a year old because it was lumped together with other old threads in one combined forum.
We have enough people responding to really old posts as it is without trying to encourage it.:confused:

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Sorry, all my comments should be prefaced with "if I'm a new user..."

If I'm a new user, here to ask a question about something like IoT, and the forum I want to use has < 100 threads and hasn't seen a new post in months, what are the odds of me getting an answer to my question? I'm more likely to head to StackOverflow.

But if there's a "General Programming" area that's bustling with activity, I'm much more likely to post my question there. Dedicated subforums with low traffic don't encourage this, IMO; busy general-purpose forums with high traffic do.

wossname's original suggestion was borne out of an observation that forum traffic is way down, so I think we're all brainstorming ways to make vbforums more appealing to new users. IMO, a front-page that shows a ton of dead forums with no recent posts is not a good way to lure new users in.

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Originally Posted by wossname

And throw away a HUGE volume of high quality programming advice gained FOR FREE over 15+ years? What colour is the sky on your planet?

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No one's talking about losing existing information... right? Just condensing it?

For example, if we merged jQuery into a generic "web programming" forum, all the current jQuery posts would be moved there, not deleted, I assume...?

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Originally Posted by wossname

BurgerKing sell fries and milkshakes after all.
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Those are just his vassals.

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Originally Posted by Steve R Jones

Thinking that people would scroll through 250 posts looking for the possibility that they'll find something close to the answer

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No, that is not what I meant. When someone loads up a forum site and sees 3 threads in the listing, they are going to go elsewhere immediately. Maybe not everyone but many people, because people are impatient (take the meme "tl;dr" that is giving people an excuse to be lazy).

What they won't do is consider how old VBF is and how many contributors there have been over the years. Consequently they will not appreciate the huge amount of information that the site is simply hiding from them because the default view still assumes a high thread turnover. The archive is an asset, show it off :)

"First impressions" and all that. If people can see straight away a large number of threads then they are more likely to try searching harder before they go elsewhere.

Just set all forums to "threads from 75 days" or whatever for a month as a trial and see if it makes a difference. There's nothing to lose.

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Originally Posted by Tanner_H

wossname's original suggestion was borne out of an observation that forum traffic is way down, so I think we're all brainstorming ways to make vbforums more appealing to new users. IMO, a front-page that shows a ton of dead forums with no recent posts is not a good way to lure new users in.

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Exactly.

I think that amalgamating several forums into one will simply dilute search results and be counter-productive.

I remember suggesting cutting down the number of sections years ago but the list has only grown since then.

I am not suggesting that we delete any old threads, simply consolidate them into a smaller amount of forums. All the content still exists, just not as spread out as it is. I just counted 62 forums. And thats not including sub-forums.

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Originally Posted by wossname

I think that amalgamating several forums into one will simply dilute search results and be counter-productive.

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Er... how?

Well, this is a bit off the original topic of removing the default age restriction (which I'm all in favour of) but VBF does need to evolve.

There are too many sections on the front page. It is overwhelming for new users and the divisions are not that helpful to regular users.

There are really only three main sections on this site: VB.NET, VB6, and Chit Chat. The rest are very low traffic. The problem with low traffic sections is that they do not attract frequent posters. The problem with not attracting frequent posters is a lack of high quality answers (or questions).

A balance needs to be struck between categorising threads and diluting traffic. The forum software supports methods of categorisation other than forum sections. For example, threads can have labels or tags, which are searchable.

Many of the sections can be removed or consolidated. For example, I think that the CodeBank sections are useful but should all be consolidated into one section (using sub-forums or tags to demarcate languages). I think the UtilityBank area is of little value (I would not come here to find a ready-made tool, as there are plenty of other websites for that).

Rename the site to Csharp-Android-SQLforums.com, put C# and C++ and DATA Development to the top of the forums send an email to everyone that this is the new site and that's about it.
Seriously, I think this might just work.
But in the good spirit of VB.netship I try to write everything I do in the company I work in VB (few exceptions aka hate MVC, if needed I would go PHP or classic ASP.NET for server, everything else in Javascript).