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What did you do with your Scrambler today?

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For a reference, there's a motorcycle forum I check. It's got a Midwest forum with a thread called Adventure in Ohio. It's currently at 4084 pages with 61,000+ posts. It's the only thread I routinely check on the site.

I like this thread. Informal, nothing too small to post, and I don't hesitate to ask if I see something I want to know about. Good luck!
 
Randyzzz said:
"That's what I wanted out of this thread, but it's too popular and people are clearly not doing that on the whole. I/we can't keep up trying to remind everyone every time."

It's popular because People like it! Exactly!

This gives a place for people to make a post if they don't want to make a full thread. Don't you think that if people wanted to make a separate thread they would do it? Do you think that by shutting down this thread there will be a lot of daily "goings on" that will never get posted? Those are the things that make this place more of a family than just another technical forum...
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LOL, yep, I know, sounds odd that I'm making the popularity comment. This is what I would call a "good problem" :D :crazy:

That part was great until I could see that it was hurting the fourm overall. This is turning into the forum equivalent of a listserv (anyone remember those? One of those was the root of this forum!) where there's just a torrent of info that's unsorted and unrelated and finding anything back in the flow is real tough.

And I actually have a strong feeling, and it's one that seemed confirmed by the comments people posted, that folks did not open tech threads or update their build threads because this one here was "easy". There's too many good examples right here recently that would appear to back me up on that I think.

Randyzzz said:
This thread is "Scrambler Facebook" for those who don't do Facebook.
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I think that sums up the bad just as much as it does defend the good. :shrug:


This is why I think the monthly thing is a good compromise, hopefully we don't lose the good parts and minimize the bad to make it easier to keep up with and find things in.
 
bigwalton said:
With the way the search works, if someone searched for threads that mentioned "carb cutting out" or some other phrase that would match your post, they'll get this monster thread and have no idea where in the hundreds of posts to look, they'd have to search by post, not by thread.
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Surely there is a way to exclude this thread from the search engine. Why not just do that and call it a day?
 
Spieg said:
Surely there is a way to exclude this thread from the search engine. Why not just do that and call it a day?
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That goes against my point, I want the good stuff returned in search, that's a huge part of my view of the thread. People are putting good tech only in here, exclude this thread (or the new monthly versions) and there's no finding it.
 
bigwalton said:
That goes against my point, I want the good stuff returned in search, that's a huge part of my view of the thread. People are putting good tech only in here, exclude this thread (or the new monthly versions) and there's no finding it.
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Well that’s where you lose me. As has been mentioned at least a few times, some people prefer reading and writing in a more informal thread like this one. If you’re concerned that it will make your search engine less effective, that is one thing and certainly there are ways to focus the search tool. But by removing this thread in an attempt to force people to use/create more specific/technical threads, you would be making this website less enjoyable for some (many?) members.
It reminds me of something my grandfather used to tell me all the time; “There are 2 kinds of people in the world. There are sprinters and there are packers. You can force a sprinter to carry a pack but they won’t like it. You can force a packer to run but they will never be very fast”.
It seems to me that the main reason people use a site like this is for their own pleasure. By forcing people to behave the way you would like, you will probably drive them away. The fact that some information will not be readily available in a search is unfortunately the way life is… (my grand father also used to say "Life is messy".
As a leader/administrator, it is important to recognize if you yourself are a packer or a sprinter (I suspect you are an organizer and like neatly formatted information). Once you know this, the real challenge to being a successful leader is to recognize the value of those who don’t think the same way you do, and then, make policy that still allows everyone to enjoy spending time here. Hopefully the monthly version you are starting will do that.
 
Spieg said:
Well that’s where you lose me. As has been mentioned at least a few times, some people prefer reading and writing in a more informal thread like this one. If you’re concerned that it will make your search engine less effective, that is one thing and certainly there are ways to focus the search tool. But by removing this thread in an attempt to force people to use/create more specific/technical threads, you would be making this website less enjoyable for some (many?) members.
It reminds me of something my grandfather used to tell me all the time; “There are 2 kinds of people in the world. There are sprinters and there are packers. You can force a sprinter to carry a pack but they won’t like it. You can force a packer to run but they will never be very fast”.
It seems to me that the main reason people use a site like this is for their own pleasure. By forcing people to behave the way you would like, you will probably drive them away. The fact that some information will not be readily available in a search is unfortunately the way life is… (my grand father also used to say "Life is messy".
As a leader/administrator, it is important to recognize if you yourself are a packer or a sprinter (I suspect you are an organizer and like neatly formatted information). Once you know this, the real challenge to being a successful leader is to recognize the value of those who don’t think the same way you do, and then, make policy that still allows everyone to enjoy spending time here. Hopefully the monthly version you are starting will do that.
Click to expand...

I can kind of see your points BUT as a person that has posted here instead of in my own thread (or both) for whatever topic I'm working on I hurt the very thing that drew me to this forum in the first place--easy place to search and either find the answer or easily be able to ask it. What I have realized from the past couple days conversations is that what Bigwalton and others are saying is true--what I might consider small and not thread worthy may be the thing that is keeping someone else on here up at night.

As for the informal nature of things--a separate thread and informality are not mutually exclusive. I don't know of a single thread on here that isn't "informal" cause that's just how we do things here.

Thanks for holding us all accountable Bigwalton--if we are going to talk about leadership then that's really the sign of a leader anyway--especially when people can't see that it's for the best.

Ok. Rounds complete. Group hug. :cheers:


 
I think we've fully covered it. Red just summed it up very nicely and I hope the (roughly) monthly version is the perfect compromise.

My most basic point is that this whole forum is informal in the same way that everyone's citing this one thread. I think newer folks are thinking too much about other forums out there, we are different. We've worked hard to make sure it stays that way :thumbsup: and this attempt at a compromise solution is one example.


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