What Do You Want to See on LetsRun.com?

masters fattie wrote:

I like the low-key vibe of Let's Run for the most part a couple things do come to mind.

1 better organization on the homepage, ie. a today, this week, last week, archive setup...

2. more interviews similar to Steve S, that was fun and informative along with being both podcasted and transcripted

3. some sort of relevant content each week along with The Week That Was

4 RSS is nice but only really needed if there is consistent updates..

I agree mostly with this post. Adding a bunch of stuff that the other running sites (trackshark, flotrack, runnerville, etc) do already, and well, would detract from the letsrun vibe.

I agree with better organization of the letsrun original content (articles, interviews, editorials).

One of the best things about letsrun is the wealth of training info on the boards. I would like to see more interviews with coaches/athletes on their training. How they do things at the different phases of their training. Most athlete interviews are pretty standard: How is your training go? Are you hoping to make the team? How did the race go? We get plenty of that elsewhere. More nuts and bolts to how the upper level athletes train and their thinking.

The messageboard is fine with me. Maybe better moderation, not more, but more evenhanded.

To me, beside organizing some of your original content, a redesign would be a waste of time in comparison to more original content. It has a certain charm.

I think letsrun has a niche within the running world and also within the grassroots running sites. Don't change it too much.

What about a special sub-forum that links to really helpful thread topics, like the ongoing "Malmo, how to structure 100 mile weeks?" thread? Not to isolate those from the rest, as they should appear in the main forum as well, but just to make it easier to check the threads that are goldmines of information.

lots of coke products do better than original coke

that's why cherry coke, diet coke, diet coke with lime, and coke zero are all still around.

The notion that "if it ain't broke don't fix it" is how you fade away when something new comes along. No one is suggesting major changes to the message board format. Obviously he wouldn't deviate too far from the current state, but telling him not to make improvements at all is silly.

A better search engine. You can't search for "Geb", "El G", "VO2 max", "LT", or "10K".

Also, how do the results come up? It's not clear to me whether it's chronologically, by relevance...it can be hard to find things sometimes.

Nudity!!!!

macs are so emo wrote:

lots of coke products do better than original coke

Were you even born when they did this? Do you remember the immediate drop in sales and how long to took to recapture them?

I agree with the other suggestions about better search function for the message boards. It can't be that hard to allow a search for strings, for words in close proximity, for one word but not another, etc.

Also some way to add more weight to poster names. I like the credit idea someone suggested. Even simply a stat that says how long someone has been registered under this name and how many times they've posted.

Older guy wrote:

Were you even born when they did this? Do you remember the immediate drop in sales and how long to took to recapture them?

Do you know that Coke is the second most known word in the world behind OK?

If only wejo would come through on his long standing promise to improve the search function. Like how hard could that be?

Don't change anything else about the message board. Or do so at your peril.... ;-)

Lunk head,

I'm not talking about sales today, I'm talking about the reaction to the change,how it became a punchline and the market share they lost.

Here you go:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Coke

Better organization on the front page (maybe instead of having all the news semi-randomly put in any of the three columns, have a few major highlights at the top and then make separate front page sections for college, American, international, and miscellaneous running).

If a thread is already long, it should be locked with an explanation from a mod as the last post instead of deleted. I understand that every inappropriate post that gets deleted doesn't deserve a response, but a warning would be appreciated and most would probably fit into a standard template. Example: "This thread has been locked because there are multiple other threads about the same subject on the front page. Please move your discussion accordingly."

If subforums are desired, let there be two views, a subforum view and a complete post list view. That way the people who like to see everything can still do so, and the people who want to avoid certain types of posts can do so too. I think 3 subforums would be enough: pro running, personal training, and NRR.

it would be nice to be able to include pics in the threads. Also some videos would be nice. Maybe letsrun and flocast can join forcess?

How about a message board that does not crash?

For me I really like a message board that is organized into categories. While many laugh at RW, the organization there helps to navigate it. If you do not want to sift through politics, etc you can easily skip them.

I suggest the following categories

Non running related content

Race results talk

Training

There 3 categories.

Athlete interviews would be great especially podcasts. TheFinalSprint does a great job at this.

Easy upload of pics and videos. I'm redshirting this year due to my major and shooting all the races. Wejo, I notice you already have free courtesy photos on your home page from time to time. There's alot of us around the world that can supply you for additional free courtesy pictures.

1. "I'd love to see a split in the forums. Have two, Running Related and NRR. If we could have one place to go for our running stuff, and only running stuff, maybe some of the upper crust guys who have left might come back?" At least two sections (training, general running, NRR)

2. Mandatory registration required to post

3. Better search capabilities

4. Better home page

5. Ability to edit posts

6. Ability to put pics in thread (as long as registration is required, or that could get messy)

The above is in order of greatest importance to me.

Split the message board into running and non-running.

An edit function on the message board.

mandatory registration

personally i would rather there be a mandatory login to be able to post on the message boards, as i think alot of athletes are driven away as they get tired of hearing people trash talk other athletes (which is really easy to do when you dont say who you are) who are often great people and their friends.

at the same time, i don't think that this is something that would really be a possibility to consider doing, as the message boards would no longer flourish as they do.

it makes sense to me that there could be a division of the threads; not distinguishing from the running related and non running, but rather the creator of the thread could select between posters being able to post anonymously or having to sign in. after each thread is created, it could then be fed into the page where it belongs. this could help maintain the integrity of a thread created for more serious discussion, while still allowing people the freedom to have the fun they do posting anonymously on those threads which are not.

just thought i would throw that idea out there...