Lately I've been wondering if pulling in our extended categories helped all that much. Basically, I don't know if more or less is better at the current moment, or if the status qup is fine. That's where you come in. If you want, you can choose what forum categories we have, what they are called, and how many of them there are.

I want SM to be flexible, making new and taking back old forums based on true supply and demand of the membership. If the members decide when to expand or contract, it will be better for the forum overall.

I haven't decided. I'm all for democracy, but I like the way the forums are now. What I'm worried about is that new members will vote for things without thinking. On the Nation States United Nations, the vote is almost always YES for everything. They don't think about it, they just read and are convinced. It's kind of sad that things get repealed so easily. If the people actually thought about it and had a definitive perspective, then they wouldn't vote so blindly.

Edit: Maybe the Admins should get the members' approval before making any big decisions.

Status guo? Am I extrememly delusional or is it actually spelled that way?

@m15399: No, it's "status quo". ;)

On topic: I'd say the admins should listen to what the members say, but let the admins make the decisions based on what they think is best, not necessarily what the members vote for.

I voted to let the members choose, but by that I meant mainly that if a member notes that it might be better to have a little more categorization, we could add a new category or two. The main thing here is consistency. For example, I can't find the thread where Big Bee mentioned the new nozzle design after iSoaker moved threads around in his reorganization. That is a good example of where simplifying categories can actually make thing more complicated. So essentially, if a change is needed, make it slow so that people have time to adjust.

At Super Soaker Central, we have a lot of categories. There are two thoughts on the subject: one believes that less categories generates more activity by the assumption that it will make the forum appear more active than it really is, and the other believes that more categories create a broader and more organized discussion, generating discussion as well. I believe in the second thought.

I've read a lot about organizing forums. There are many many reasons why I choose to use more categories. One was a little study of mine - I viewed many "Big Boards" (i.e. message boards with over 500K posts from what I know) and tallied how many forums most had. Most Big Boards had well over 8 public forums if I remember correctly, in fact, checking right now on the Big Boards website reveals that the lowest number of public boards on the top 10 is 15. This suggests to me that more forum categories stimulate activity, though it could also suggest that more popular forums by their nature can support more forum categories.

The other reason I choose more forums was the SEO advantage offered - each category contributes a keyword at least. There is a reason why I changed the name from SSCentral to Super Soaker Central and starting using words such as water fight and water gun more often.

This whole subject is interesting, and I think I am going to make a basic study to see if there is any correlation between number of forums and total posts in Big Boards. ;)

I'm in between what I voted (let members decide) and let the status quo do it. I basically think that generally what the admin says and sets it to is good, but if a change is made and the majority really doesn't like the changes (i.e. too few categories, making things hard to find or so many categories members get bored looking for a category that's been posted in) then it should bechanged back.

I voted let the members decide. "Status quo" seemed like a sub-concious criticism towards option 2. Even if it was not intended that way, it just seemed like it. ;)

I am always in favour of many categories. Not just forums but also review websites( as one can see on my sites). That way people who are only interested in a certain area can quickly access what they are looking for. Also, I don't like searching 5 minutes for an old thread. At least with alot of sub-categories one can narrow the search abit.