[Poll] Vote: Would you like to see the Skaters subforum return?

[Grace]

For those who may not have known, we were trying a new format by having a Skaters subforum under "Skating Chat". This Skaters subforum would be organized by threads-organized-by-skaters name, where all posts related to Sasha would be posted under "Sasha Cohen", all posts related to Evan would be under "Evan Lysacek", and so on and so forth.

Here's another way of looking at it:
Skating Chat
--Skaters
---Sasha Cohen 1 2 3 4..end
---Shizuka Arakawa 1 2
---Evan Lysacek
---Kimmie Meissner 1 2

Any posts that is primarily Sasha would fall under "Sasha". Though it may not seem like it, but most of the posts would run fairly linearly, parallel to Sasha's life. If we used this, quoting would be the most useful tool, and now that we have multi-quote, it's even better.

Some cons: People who are reallly busy and have not been able to visit the forum for weeks wanting to catch up would have to sift through many pages. Also, people who visit everyday but only have five minutes to spare, who only see the "headline" post under Skating Chat use it as a measuring tool of whether or not they want to visit or read the thread, and again, don't have time or desire to sift through the pages.

Pros: People who only care about the latest to deal with say, Shizuka can just hit the last few pages of the discussion to see what's going on with Shizuka's life. Everything would be in one place in regards to Shizuka, so people who have some dead time can sift through all the pages about Shizuka.

Anyway, I just threw some possible negatives and positives out there. If people have more they want to say about the subject, please post them here. This poll will be closed 8 days from now, so please get your vote in before then.

[Lisa Seye]

Grace,
How about a combination of both. Use a subforum, but also have it so you can have different topic threads under each skater. We now have MK chat. Why not Sasha chat, Shizuka chat, or would this be too hard. This was there will be separate forums for each skater with separate topic threads under each skater. For those who want to visit topics based on title could have this and others who are busy could get what they want, and of course those who have time to go thru the topics could do so as they always have done in MK chat? Also those who get annoyed with too many topics in skaters chat could either choose to visit or not visit the Evan chat, Sasha chat etc. Am I making sense?

[mr pru]

Never claimed to be the sharpest tack in the box....but I can tell I will get kwanfused!

[JerryStopher]

Oh, wait ... I thought you meant a forum for people who skate. Ummmm... I take my vote back, change it to the other one.

[Heather]

Originally Posted by Lisa Seye

Grace,
How about a combination of both. Use a subforum, but also have it so you can have different topic threads under each skater. We now have MK chat. Why not Sasha chat, Shizuka chat, or would this be too hard.

Because this isn't a general skating board, it's a Michelle Kwan board.

The reason why this was brought up in the first place is because some complained that there were too many threads in skating chat about a certain skater, and that it was pushing down other threads. So this is one way to "solve" the issue. If posters don't like the one thread per skater solution, then we'll just go back to the way it's always been. However, at that point, I'd hope that there would be no more complaining about one skater overtaking Skating Chat because we tried another way, it didn't work, so just learn to ignore threads you don't want to read.

[Lisa Seye]

Heather,
Yeah, I know it is the Kween's board, lol. I would not want to be anywhere else. And, I agree about ignoring threads. Why bother opening them just to say "Why is this here?" Move on to the next thread. I liked the old way, but was just suggesting so maybe everyone would be satisfied. It did seem like once we did the subforums, that chat about those skaters slowed down which if that was what the complainers wanted then it was achieved.
I, on the other hand, kind of like it lively around here. And, don't we need lively?
Ok. So, now that you answered me about my suggestion, I am running off to vote now.
Are you an insomniac like me? LOL

[IceSkate98]

I voted no for a number of reasons. This is a message board dedicated to Michelle. The skating chat is for the purpose of discussing other skaters, and that's precisely what it's used for.

I understand about wanting sub-forums, but I was a member and a moderator of a general figure skating board. There were several sub-forums for different skaters. The problem was that eventually some of the sub-forums for certain skaters hardly had any posts in them. In the beginning, the board was popular. But eventually, people stopped posting in the sub-forums and now the board is dead because no one posts there at all.

[iloveskating]

It's not a huge deal to me, but I kind of liked it. I especially like the pic and links at the top of each thread. It was an easy way to check up on skaters periodically, without scrolling through a ton of threads.

It was easy to click on the Skaters Foum and quickly when was the last post in your favorite skaters thread.(How long does one click take?) There is a little check mark next to the thread that lets you go to the last unread post. This isn't perfect, because it actually counts posts from the last time you visited MKF, not necessarily from you last read that specific thread.

Another thought, can the threads in the Skaters Forum be set up so that BY DEFAULT the most recent post is first? That way people wouldn't have to scroll through the whole thread. I believe this can be done in a user's CP, but then it would affect ALL threads, which I don't like. But it could be useful in an ongoing thread like Skaters Chat if it could be set up as a forum default.

Also, are the thread subscriptions working? (I have tried them a few times & couldn't get it to work here.) Then someone could subscribe to the threads they are interested and receive an email whenever there is a new post, so they don't have to go to the time consuming trouble of clicking on "Skaters" to find out.

I think we all need to remember that it is a privilege to have MKF available. We need to work with what the mods make available and learn to use the features of the forum. I don't think it is the mods responsibility to continually re-format the forum in an attempt to cater to every person's desire. We will all never have the same preferences on how things are set up, because we are all different people. I appreciate all they do to make the forum easy and fun to use. It gets a little exasperating to hear people complain about wanting a thread for this, a forum for that, a flag for something else, then when it is done, either they don't liek the way it was done or other people complain the change.

[synnabun]

Originally Posted by iloveskating

Another thought, can the threads in the Skaters Forum be set up so that BY DEFAULT the most recent post is first? That way people wouldn't have to scroll through the whole thread. I believe this can be done in a user's CP, but then it would affect ALL threads, which I don't like. But it could be useful in an ongoing thread like Skaters Chat if it could be set up as a forum default.

Also, are the thread subscriptions working? (I have tried them a few times & couldn't get it to work here.) Then someone could subscribe to the threads they are interested and receive an email whenever there is a new post, so they don't have to go to the time consuming trouble of clicking on "Skaters" to find out.

The problem with having the posts within a thread listed from newest to oldest is that you'd have to read sort of backwards to catch up. (Ex: using the post reply button instead of quick reply... look at the posts, they're in reverse order. I find that very confusing if I don't know what was said previously!) HOWEVER! You can do this yourself. Click on UserCP, then click on "Edit Options". The category you are speaking of is the third one titled "Thread Display Options". The subsection within that is called "Thread Display Mode" and you'll want to click on the drop down menu. The options you can choose from are as follows:

Linear Mode (Oldest First) - In this mode, posts are displayed chronologically from oldest to newest. Posts are shown in a flat mode so that many posts can be viewed simultaneously.
Linear Mode (Newest First) - This is the same as the above mode, except that posts are ordered in an opposite way (newest first).
Threaded Mode - In this mode, a tree is shown along with every post. This tree allows you to see the relationship each post has to others, in terms of who responded to whom. Only one post is shown at a time.
Hybrid Mode - This mode is a mixture of the linear and threaded modes. The post tree is displayed like in the threaded mode, but multiple posts are displayed simultaneously like in the linear modes.

Thread subscriptions definitely work! Just do the reverse of what I wrote in this thread in forum feedback: http://www.mkforum.net/forum/showthread.php?t=14855 You can either get an update to EVERY thread you've replied to through the "edit options" link *within the second subsection titled "Messaging and Notification"* in your control panel... OR you can click on the "thread tools" menu at the first post of the thread and click on "subscribe to this thread". From there you veryify what notification type you want (no email notification, instant notification by email, daily updates by email (they go out after midnight... watch out if you're subscribed to lots of posts... you'll get an email for each one!) and weekly updates by email. I hope this helps!

[GoldenMichelle]

I'm surprised at how close the vote is. What is going to happen if its 50/50?

[Lisa Seye]

The thought I have is we have 175 views of this thread and only 39 votes: I hope that those who this does matter to have voted. If you don't vote, don't complain about the results later.

[GoldenMichelle]

well, I'm sure some of the people that have voted have viewed the thread more than once. I've opened it at least 6 times myself.

[iloveskating]

I find that very confusing if I don't know what was said previously!) HOWEVER! You can do this yourself.

I agree it can be confusing, that's why I don't set my threads that way. But I thought it might be a possible solution for the Skaters sub-forum.

[Shiprock]

I voted 'no' because I go to skating chat just to look up new threads for current news on all skaters and I go to Michelle skating chat to check in on news on her. I usually just open most threads to read first posts for news links mainly, including Sasha threads with new journal updates. I just appreciate all new threads since it saves me time.

[IceSkate98]

Originally Posted by Lisa Seye

The thought I have is we have 175 views of this thread and only 39 votes: I hope that those who this does matter to have voted. If you don't vote, don't complain about the results later.

Absolutely. This poll's been open for a couple of days now, and there's only a 42 vote count so far.

[witchykitty]

I voted 'no' because I'm so busy with school and work that I don't have time so surf the extra forums to get the latest news, etc. on each skater.

[Jarrett]

No. Well that was simple.

[AZSkateFan]

The reason I voted "no" is because if there is only one thread related to each skater, then it's going to get awfully hard to discuss more than one aspect of that skater without getting confused.

I like the idea that it is going to cut down on the amount of "Sasha wrote a new journal" threads or "Sasha has new photos" threads but I don't want to have to go through all that junk to read when Sasha has a new program (or any skater for that matter).

[naganosilver98]

I love the idea of the sub-forum, it would make finding posts about individual skaters easier to find

~Cassie

[Jagerboy]

I can understand where there is too much talking about one skater and taking over the board, but I kinda like that as skater info is brought to the attention and you don't have to scroll through one long post.

Also, when you just have one thread, say on Sasha, what will happen if it gets nasty like it does so many times? Usually a thread gets closed, will the posts just be deleted so that thread continues on? Or does the entire post get locked and that is it? Sorry if I am not reading this right.

[taytay165]

I voted "I don't care". I originally liked the idea of the sub-forums, partly because I thought if people didn't want to know the latest "trivial" details about one or two skaters other than Michelle, they wouldn't be bothered by seeing the threads in skating chat. But, I also understand how it could be confusing/complicated if someone doesn't have time to sort through the whole long thread about Kimmie or Evan to find something that interestes them. So, in the long run, it really doesn't matter to me. I was fine with the fourm the way it was, and I'll be just as happy either way.

- tara

[UGG]

I voted don't care, because it is not that big of a deal to me. I do think though, that somehow we should be able to post multiple threads about a skater if we are going to keep the skater subforum, because one long thread about lots of different subjects might get kind of confusing.

The only skater who seems to get multiple threads is Sasha anyway, it really should not be that hard to just skip over a thread that you do not want to read, and go to page 2 if there are other posts that you want to read. JMO. Maybe we can have a sticky for her journals or something, I know many people did not like all of her journal threads.

But anway...if we keep the subforums, that is fine with me, if they go away, I don't care lol.

[Skatekwan6]

The reason I voted "no" is because if there is only one thread related to each skater, then it's going to get awfully hard to discuss more than one aspect of that skater without getting confused.

I agree. I feel the same about most of the threads that lump together a broad topic.

You should be able to post whatever you want to post in the "Skating Chat" section, as long as it is non-MK related skating chat. I never understood why people complained about "too many Sasha threads" in the first place. It's skating chat, as in other skaters. If people want to post about Sasha's journal, then that should be okay to put in skating chat. If you don't want to read them, don't open them

[skatesindreams]

I voted "no". As this is a forum devoted primarily to MK, it doesn't need to become more "skater-centric" than that. The "Skating Chat" division is sufficient.

Of course, I will continue to use whatever is decided upon.

[Sparks]

I don't think it is the mods responsibility to continually re-format the forum in an attempt to cater to every person's desire. We will all never have the same preferences on how things are set up, because we are all different people. I appreciate all they do to make the forum easy and fun to use. It gets a little exasperating to hear people complain about wanting a thread for this, a forum for that, a flag for something else, then when it is done, either they don't liek the way it was done or other people complain the change.

Very good point(s), iloveskating.
I voted 'I don't care'. I do get a wee bit weary with Skating Chat being mostly about SC, BUTT with SC not skating this year, I imagine Skating Chat will return to what it was meant to be...