Breaking the Message Board into Categories?

See here now wrote:

Its not the sub-categories that make Runner's World the haven for joggers, its the accompanying artciles on how to run slow.

If you keep the news feed focused on racing and national talents, you will attract posters who are interested in following these stories and discussing them.

Breaking the board into categories and updating the interface are improvements that will make Letsrun more user friendly. Choose whatever audience of users you want through other means. Right now the audience is a group of people that like running and racing, but really don't like progress, change and improvement. We talk about the glory days of that time 5 years ago breaking 15 in the 5K. Users reflect the content of the site.

Update the board and site.

Perhaps I am afraid of change. It could have something to do with the changes made to the RW forums in the past. I used to post regularly in the high school forum there and back then, there were serious runners, coaches, etc. on it. Yes, there was also the main board and a women's board, but the high school message board was part of a separate website,

. That site used to have race information, results, good training advice, etc. Then they got rid of it. I think they brought back a high school section of runnersworld.com, but it's not the same. It focuses on things like gear, motivation, and other jogger topics. When they removed/changed the highschoolrunner.com site, the forum began to change as well. They kept adding new features, including a very annoying post counter that said how many posts you have made. So of course people were posting random crap to get the highest post number. In conclusion, I don't want the same thing to happen to LetsRun.

highschoolrunner.com I remember:

RW high school section today:

randomness is good

categorizing probably not.

forced registration is a good idea

In my opinion, the absolute perfect webforum can be found at

http://forums.somethingawful.com

Mind you, there are lots of ads for unregistered people, and a lot of you will probably find some of the content there appalling, but the interface is damn near perfect.

If it's good enough for 100,000 registered users, it's good enough for letsrun. There are a few things that should be changed, like maybe disabling pictures, avatars, & signatures to keep in line with the fact that letsrun is incredibly quick to load and has no annoying frills.

I agree with keeping one main forum, no extra categories. If anything else, try to implement the tags system they use.

http://forums.somethingawful.com/forumdisplay.php?forumid=1

Instead of having tags like "Humor" "Serious" "News" etc. just have "HSchool" "College" "Elite" and so on.

Wow, that is amazing. If letsrun jumps the shark, I'm going there.

I think color coding will work the best. simple, yet definitive. It won't clutter the board, especially if the colors aren't too dark or bright. That way people who want to pay attention to the categorization can, but it won't be overwhelming and distracting.

Why can't google's search engine replace letsrun's?

like everyone is saying. keep it one bored. But also add a Hall of Fame for the great ones that come around once a month or two.

yeah

do not change it

i may frequent it less that way

never liked dystat when i was in hs

If it ain't broke, don't break it, K?

Please leave the board just as it is. It's very successful in its current format. Dailypeloton.com use to have a forum similar in style to letsrun.com, except much more thoroughly moderated. When they went to registration and categorization, the board went downhill quickly. The content suffered and now only about a dozen people post at all. If you go registered and categorized you will lose traffic and the humor will go away.

No,no,and no. Letsrun is cool because of the anarchy that is allowed on its message boards. Wejo, do not sacrifice the uniqueness of this site. Just get a really good search system as some have already suggested.

bad idea wrote: Don't break it up.

Yeah wejo, this fellow with nine Olympic golds from four Games agrees: "never break it up".

A) Main Board- Misc

1) Marathon & Road Running

2) Training, Injury, Running Advice

3) Results

4) HS Running

5) Indoor Track

6) Equipment

7) Cross Country

8) Outdoor Track

9) Collegiate Running

10) History

My two yen...

As some have said, have two: "Running" and "Non-Running."

runmad wrote:

My two yen...

As some have said, have two: "Running" and "Non-Running."

Totally agreed. That way you still get a good diversity of topics on the boards, but hopefully filter out a lot of the crap that just takes up space. Or, if you're bored, you can go have a look at all of the crap sitting out there in its own separate forum.

I am voting again...I really like the tags idea. You can either sort based on tags, or just look at the flat forum as it is. Seems to capture the best of both worlds.

Ok I'm coming up with the categories (you'll still see the main board but have subcategories you can go to if you want)

But here are some current threads. What categories would these go into (I think I will allow multiple categories) and will likely ad tags as well in the future.

bernard lagat vs. Me in a mile (he gets a 275meter lead)

If I don't wanna work and just train... - J

Peter Singer -- quotation and comment on front page

Malmo's Log -

wejo wrote:

Ok I'm coming up with the categories (you'll still see the main board but have subcategories you can go to if you want)

But here are some current threads. What categories would these go into (I think I will allow multiple categories) and will likely ad tags as well in the future.

bernard lagat vs. Me in a mile (he gets a 275meter lead)

If I don't wanna work and just train... - J

Peter Singer -- quotation and comment on front page

Malmo's Log -

Troll!

Kidding.

I still say 2 sections only: FullyRegistered, and FreeForAll. Discuss.

Will the main board still have all of the threads, including the ones in the subcategories?

my two liras, from previous paste, read ***:

Wejo,

have been reading this board/site relatively recently.

(I have been away on vacation for the clast couple of days so i've no idea what else is going on. Actually I even wanted to start a thread "what's been happening of notice? on vacation for a while... could be a feature for people who like letsrun but aren't fiendishly addicted... ANYWAY...)

*** Part of the board attraction is sifting through the trolling and finding the pearls. Sometimes, if you sift enough, the catch is quite plentiful. ***

But even a bad day of fishing can end-up being quite fun trolling wise.

The feeling is like the sort of back-and-forth during a group run. It's like people post here while their endorphines are still flowing. And agreed, sometimes the stuff written is borderline. The quality guys can always run ahead of the trolls if they feel like it. And you should still be able to figure out the really malicious types...

Still the best exercise is recognizing people not for their identity but for what they write. It's not that difficult to spot a fake, even a fake troll for that matter, and its great, damn great mind exercise... just the sort of corollary support activity a community of runners needs, to filter off post work-out excess endorphines...

Your board, i'll like it either way. How much can changing your board change you? Still if you moderate heavily with registration it will change. Your call.