Build thread section

[BLiNK Motorsport]

Would be nice to see an area dedicated to these personally - It feels awkward having them in techie talk and would be easier to find in their own area; maybe split into different models?

[djm]

Excellent idea, gets my vote

[M444TTB]

The blog area does this nicely doesn't it?

[KugaWestie]

The blog area does this nicely doesn't it?

 

Personally I don't think it does, the blog area is not so nice to read and obtain member input from my experience of it

[Mark (smokey mow)]

Personally I don't think it does, the blog area is not so nice to read and obtain member input from my experience of it

I agree, the blogs section is a useful tool if you want to "archive" something for reference by others at a later date, such as with your heated mirrors upgrade etc.  But when building or upgrading, a thread on the boardroom will generate so much more invaluable feedback and input from the other members to help and assist.

[Dave Eastwood (Gadgetman) - Club Chairman]

The blog area does this nicely doesn't it?

 

No, no it doesn't. It's too one sided for my tastes. Whilst I know others can add comments, the blog style format throws them out of context. Whilst the blog style arrangement can make it tricky to follow progress in a linear fashion.

 

In addition, the area is just too infrequently used. Both by original authors and viewers. As a result, should a reader happen to spot a glaring mistake, for example, it's often going to be far too late to do anything about it, by the time it's commented on.

 

To me, one of the biggest advantages of having it in Tech Talk, where there is a high level of knowledgeable "traffic", is the "peer review" process that goes hand in hand with it. Entry by entry. Sometimes, the suggestions you get are of no use to you, but might help someone else reading it. Sometimes, it's such a great idea, you abandon what you had been doing and change. And sometimes, perhaps more often, a number of different suggestions will inspire us to come up with a brand new, even better way to achieve something.

 

My fear, is that most of this is lost in the blog format. Though I've tried to encourage the discussion process personally, in a couple of areas. Arduino boards, being one. It just doesn't happen. Yet the same topic raised in Tech Talk, inspired half a dozen people to have a go and has helped push our collective knowledge further.

 

I do agree though, build threads can get a bit lost in Tech Talk. Maybe sub-forums of Tech Talk might work. (In the same way we have Westfields and other vehicles under the main forum of vehicles for sale, but my only worry would be reducing foot fall through the build threads.

 

Experience tends to show that the more specialised you make individual sections on forums, the less traffic from members they will see.

[Dave Eastwood (Gadgetman) - Club Chairman]

I agree, the blogs section is a useful tool if you want to "archive" something for reference by others at a later date, such as with your heated mirrors upgrade etc.  But when building or upgrading, a thread on the boardroom will generate so much more invaluable feedback and input from the other members to help and assist.

 

Succinctly put. The Blogs area is a great place to put the "How to change a wheel bearing" type pictorial threads or as you say, the excellent mirror thread.

[Mark (smokey mow)]

Dave, I'm inclined to agree that the forum could become difficult to navigate if we were to introduce too many sub categories.

However to make build threads easier to find would there be any merit in adding a pinned post to the top of either Tech Talk or the Starting Line where we could have a list of links to build threads on the forum? Even better if they were grouped by car type under headings such as SDV’s, S2000, Modular, rebuilds and others etc, that way any build thread could be quickly and easily found without having to trawl through the search facility.

[Captain Colonial]

I do agree though, build threads can get a bit lost in Tech Talk. Maybe sub-forums of Tech Talk might work. (In the same way we have Westfields and other vehicles under the main forum of vehicles for sale, but my only worry would be reducing foot fall through the build threads.

 

Experience tends to show that the more specialised you make individual sections on forums, the less traffic from members they will see.

 

I can see all the sides of this discussion.  I'd be in favour of a sub-section for build threads rather than new section - it already takes long enough to scroll down the page - IF we also turned the IVA section into a Tech Talk sub-section, which seems logical to my twisted mind.  This would also shorten the page slightly.

 

If there were a Build Threads sub-section, as long as the thread names were clear enough (like Dave's current S2000 build thread), no further pinned list would be necessary - just search the sub-section.

 

The issue currently driving the moderation team scatty is when people wrongly start new threads in the FAQ sub-sections, which then has to be moved to Tech Talk.    Not sure how much clearer we can label that section to stop this!

 

It's a thorny one all right and no mistake, one we're unlikely to get overwhelming consent on from the overall masses.

[Rory's Dad]

Succinctly put. The Blogs area is a great place to put the "How to change a wheel bearing" type pictorial threads or as you say, the excellent mirror thread.

 

So what's a FAQ??  There is confusion here IMO.  Having a build thread would be logical,  I'm not really comfortable with the 'Start Line' either.  What was wrong with 'Newbies' (grumble, grumble).  Again it was clear about who was asking the question.

 

The improvement and updating of how the boardroom is arranged should always be near the top of the agenda IMO.

[Dave Eastwood (Gadgetman) - Club Chairman]

In reality, no one really knew what the old newbies was either, it ended up as a hopeless hodgepodge of technical questions and other random stuff. To simply move it but keep the name the same would have resulted in endless moving of technical stuff out into Tech Talk, which is really the best/most likely place to get an answer!

 

The typical newbie section question that illustrates the problem is when someone would actually post to ask if the question they wanted to ask was a basic one, and therefore a newbie question, or a more advance one, and therefore a Tech Talk question. That's just silly.

 

But back on the build threads section, though it would help generally too, is more use of tags. If for instance, everyone building Mazda SDV's tagged the thread "Mazda SDV Build Thread" then all would be searchable in that form. (Not that I hold a great deal of hope for getting everyone to use tags, but you never know!)

[M444TTB]

Nobody has convinced me otherwise on the blogs with the exception of use, which is non-existent. Very much a chicken & egg situation so unlikely to change.

The build threads in here are often very difficult to follow if they have been going some time. With the blog section you don't need to get stuck in to everyone else's posts if you don't want. A well written update usually gives a good summary of problem, suggested solutions and the outcome.

[M444TTB]

Further thought: the forum is so small that (with the rare exception of browsing the for sale section) the view new content is the only bit I use. I suspect many others are the same apart from using the search facility. So the forum / sub-forum the threads sits in is largely irrelevant bar use as an archive to browse.

[Captain Colonial]

When you say the forum is small, does that mean the font size?  Because there are a number of ways to make it larger.

[FILFAN]

Further thought: the forum is so small that (with the rare exception of browsing the for sale section) the view new content is the only bit I use. I suspect many others are the same apart from using the search facility. So the forum / sub-forum the threads sits in is largely irrelevant bar use as an archive to browse.

I agree with you there. I only use the view new content button. The only time i use the main forum page is to start a topic in the correct section