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"Best of" Forum?

Posted: Sat Nov 02, 2013 6:39 pm
by Saturnalia
Posting this in the "suggestion box" :)

I think that, as the board has gotten large, and has been active for years, it is time to start a best-of forum. It is a place to move threads that have, for the most part, run their course, but could continue to be relevant or historically significant. It provides for a fairly easy search, since entries are limited to just the best.

An example of one:
http://www.therailwire.net/forum/index.php?board=36.0

For an example of where this would be handy, say I want to find the CSX Pre-YN2 paint list. I know where it is, but is now buried by several years of forum progression. One could search, but it is somewhat time-consuming. You also have to know more about what you are looking for. Newer users may not know about this thread, for example.

Also, if one is looking for some good reading, they might look to this section and dive into the threads found there.

As with the Railwire example, we could "nominate" threads for the section. Then Mods or Admin move them to said forum, as they might mis-placed threads elsewhere.

I have a list of such threads myself I keep around as a PM to myself, to get us started if we want to go that direction.

To answer a few questions:
Why?
- to ease in finding the best threads on the site.

Why not just use the search feature?
- it isn't just about searching for long-dead threads. It is also a collection for the interested, who might not know about the thread otherwise.

Thoughts?

Re: "Best of" Forum?

Posted: Sat Nov 02, 2013 8:22 pm
by Y@
No

Re: "Best of" Forum?

Posted: Sat Nov 02, 2013 10:59 pm
by Saturnalia
Y@ wrote:No
Why not?

Re: "Best of" Forum?

Posted: Sun Nov 03, 2013 1:15 pm
by Toppysager
It could work potentially. Howeve, how would we nominate them?

Re: "Best of" Forum?

Posted: Sun Nov 03, 2013 5:06 pm
by trnwatcher
I use the "View Active Forums" at the top of the Board Index as a "best of". It shows you the the most recent active topics by posting date. It doesn't show you closed topics, or topics no one is posting to. For those I just search for them. You can also use the Subscribe to Topic and the Bookmark at the bottom of each topic. I use these for topics that I may want to see every post on, or ones that I want to refer back to in the future. Let's use the tools available and not give the Admin work more on this site than he already has.

Re: "Best of" Forum?

Posted: Mon Nov 04, 2013 1:47 pm
by GreatLakesRailfan
trnwatcher wrote:I use the "View Active Forums" at the top of the Board Index as a "best of". It shows you the the most recent active topics by posting date. It doesn't show you closed topics, or topics no one is posting to. For those I just search for them. You can also use the Subscribe to Topic and the Bookmark at the bottom of each topic. I use these for topics that I may want to see every post on, or ones that I want to refer back to in the future.
I don't believe that's quite what MQT is looking for. My understanding is that he's looking for a list of inactive topics that were popular at one time, that don't qualify for the super long threads forum.

I think it's a good idea, but I don't like referring to it as "best of". Many of the threads that would be relevant over time are likely to be things already found in the Railfanning Information forum, or the Location specific forums (i.e. Michigan, Ohio, etc.). For example, somewhere you could see old, but still informative threads about where to go in Fostoria/Deshler, and also find stuff that was posted around the time Marquette started up, or what to see/where to go to see trains in northern Michigan. Kind of a gatherall place for threads that have good information, but that no one posts on anymore and are being buried by other threads.

Re: "Best of" Forum?

Posted: Mon Nov 04, 2013 2:03 pm
by Saturnalia
MKT_fan11 wrote: Kind of a gatherall place for threads that have good information, but that no one posts on anymore and are being buried by other threads.
I'll take a page from the Railwire:
I wanted to create a place where threads that have long-term to the modeling community could be archived, preserving them for easy future reference.

My goal is not to move active threads here, but ones that have seemed to run their course and shouldn't disappear into the digital abyss (much less be auto-pruned some day). We've left the threads unlocked, so we can continue to add to them to make them better, but my hope is that before something comes here, almost all that will be said on a topic has been.
http://www.therailwire.net/forum/index. ... ic=22495.0

That's the idea. And as for moving the threads, it isn't like there are a whole lot of them...after start-up, they'd come in as a trickle over time. The Railwire is comparable in size to this site, and only has two pages of threads. My personal reference list has less than two dozen URLs.

I brought the idea up because I have discovered so much stuff here through searches, and it is usually not what I was looking for in the first place. There are so many good threads here that have been buried by time, so much so in some cases they are buried in search results.

Re: "Best of" Forum?

Posted: Mon Nov 04, 2013 2:36 pm
by cbehr91
You would think board users would know how to use the search functions properly that way they don't get a bunch of erroneous results.

Re: "Best of" Forum?

Posted: Mon Nov 04, 2013 3:26 pm
by StupidFlee​t
cbehr91 wrote:You would think board users would know how to use the search functions properly that way they don't get a bunch of erroneous results.

+1

Re: "Best of" Forum?

Posted: Mon Nov 04, 2013 3:45 pm
by ~Z~
Honestly not a bad idea...will ponder it. In the meantime, here's a way to see the older popular threads:

ucp.php?i=prefs&mode=view

Change "Display topics ordering by:" to "Replies", Submit, then go to any of the forums, and it'll show you the most popular threads in order by number of replies.

Re: "Best of" Forum?

Posted: Mon Nov 04, 2013 6:23 pm
by AARR
Place it in Super Long Threads and let's get it going 8)