Early last year we reorganized the forums, and tried a different approach to categorizing the discussions we have here. A forum for dragons, a forum for religion, or a forum for <whatever subject> hardly worked out cause the subjects were sometimes fuzzy, would be a mix of many subjects, and threads more often than not went off topic.
I realized one thing that stayed in common in our discussion: the style of discussion. It was either cooled and cooperative, or heated and aggressive. Thus, the Cooled and Heated threads were born! And it turned out remarkably well :)
So, since then I've kinda been trying to look at WHY people are posting rather than WHAT they are posting. And perhaps categorize the forums by why. Here's some trends that I've noticed:
Introductions/meetings: People post to introduce themselves or meet other people.
Silliness - Doesn't happen a lot here as we got rid of the off-topic forum (but talk is around about bringing it back), but sometimes it's nice just to play word games or be silly.
Chit-chat - Sometimes people get bored and just wanna chat about whatever. Nothing particular in mind. Random events or what have you.
Questions, polls, surveys - a lot of people come here just for advice, and nearly everyone here has wanted answers from others at some point in time.
Mannered discussion - cooled discusion. Wanna have a conversation about something but don't wanna start a flame war. Sometimes it's good to have a sensible moderator to keep the hostilities down.
Unmoderated discussion - Sometimes its good to just discuss things as your, without worrying about rules.
Reinforcement / hugs - we all have shitty days, and sometimes we just need a hug.
Adult - sometimes we need a bit more than a hug :)
Sharing and advertising - People make things and wanna show them off / get opinions. Sometimes they didn't make it but still want others opinions. Or maybe they're just being nice and letting the rest of us know what you stumbled upon :)
Site stuff - stuff involving the site specifically, like this thread.
Activities - We can work on things together!
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Topic: Thread categorization (Read 690 times)
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