# Why only one main thread for the TT?



## pjmedlam (Jul 6, 2005)

I am a new TT owner but already enjoy reading this forum. However can I ask why is there only one main thread for TT discussion?

Coming from forums for other cars I own or have owned with sections divided into for example below, I wondered why there was only one TT section?

General
Problems
General Care and Maintenance/Servicing
Modifications - General
Modifications - Interior
Modifications - Exterior
Modifications - ICE
Modifications - Wheels, Tyres, Brakes & Exhausts
Modifications - Performance
Motorsport
Buying Advice
Insurance Advice

Am I the only person that finds that forum posts rapidly disappear onto superceded pages and cease to get contributions after only a couple of days? Perhaps if they were in sections they would stay current for longer and get more contributions and make information easier to find.

Thereâ€™s probably a really good reason I donâ€™t know anything about, but it just stuck me that there are many sub forums here but 8 are not directly related to the TT at all really.

What does everyone else think?


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## dj c225 (Nov 3, 2004)

I think its fine as it is.

If you have loads of subsections it would mean you would have to check out each section each time, very time consuming.

Also it would take a lot of moderating to make sure the correct posts are in the correct sections etc.

Bad idea in my opinion!


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## dommorton (Mar 9, 2005)

I find navigating this forum a lot better than others because it doesnt have sub sections :lol:

However I never seem to be able to find squat with the search feature :?


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## j600.com (Jun 30, 2005)

dommorton said:


> I find navigating this forum a lot better than others because it doesnt have sub sections :lol:
> 
> However I never seem to be able to find squat with the search feature :?


thats what i was gonna say, ive seen other forums with too many sub sections and its too much hard work to go thru them all. However I do think a seperate ice section could be useful.

One thing which i noticed was you either have the TT forum or the off topic forum. If i wanted info on sat nav, or ice etc for my tt then that isnt really a tt issue so in theory should go in the off topic forum, but i know that alot of people dont check the off topic forums (especially those only interested in TT stuff as it states "Want to talk about something non-TT related") and they think its just idle chit chat which is why i'd paste it in the general tt forum (which can annoy some members)

so yeh i think a seperate ice section would be good, as for wheels/interior/exterior etc then they are all gonna be specifically TT related so can just go in the general tt forum whereas ICE and SAT NAV etc could be for any car.


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## kmpowell (May 6, 2002)

The reason this forum is so popular and succesful is its simplicity to use and ease of navigation making it a close nit community. If you break it down into lots of boards you end up with too much diversification, lost navigation, topics with only 1 answer and a general feeling of isolation.

All IMHO of course


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## pjmedlam (Jul 6, 2005)

It was only a suggestion..... 

Of course many people have been using the forum the way it is for ages and are happy. Just as a new comer I noticed that going back 40-50 pages on the general TT forum you have newcomers asking the same question over and over again. Experienced people have to say the same thing again and again, get a bit bored and tell people to look in the archive which may put them off if they canâ€™t find stuff.

If there were perhaps a couple more sub-sections then threads would stay current longer, the information would be more accessible for newcomers who might be encouraged back more and the close nit community might grow even faster than it is at the moment. My past experience is that this can be most relevant to a 'problems' sub-forum as this is one of the main reasons newcommers search out forums.

I wouldnâ€™t advocate anywhere near as many sub-sections as my original comment, that was just an example from a forum with many more members than this one, only because there have been many more cars sold. Even if as j600.com suggested there was an extra forum for ICE (which tends to be a bit of a specialism) that would be great and would have helped me a great deal over the last couple of months (and saved me bothering Wak so much...sorry Wak).


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## j600.com (Jun 30, 2005)

there is a simple solution to this problem which would sort this out without having to change the structure of the forum. if the site owner (jae is it?) goes into his php control panel and into the settings he can change the number of posts that are on each page. at the moment it looks like its set to 20 which means u only get 20 topics on each page. this means u have to go to page 2, 3, 4, 5 and so on to older posts. this means u get more duplicate posts on page 2, 3, 4 as people tend to look at the first page and then enter a topic rather than go thru pages of results.

if he was to increase the number of posts on each page to say for example 50. then you would get 50 topics on page 1 which would mean you'd get less duplication as people dont have to scroll thru pages of posts they just scroll down the page. it would also make the forums easier to read and more user friendly.

its dead easy to change and would solve alot of problems with duplicate topics.


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## coupe-sport (May 7, 2002)

> its dead easy to change and would solve alot of problems with duplicate topics.


As would using the search function...


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## j600.com (Jun 30, 2005)

coupe-sport said:


> > its dead easy to change and would solve alot of problems with duplicate topics.
> 
> 
> As would using the search function...


but we both know most users dont use the search function (i stress "most" as i know some do) otherwise you wouldnt get all the duplicate posts. also the search function is far from perfect (its a phpBB issue not ********) and brings up varied results when u search for terms that have more than a single word.

increasing the number of posts per page isnt a solution to everything its just a way to help reduce duplicates and make the forum easier to use. it wont reduce old duplicates but deffo ones that are posted quite close to eachother.


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## saint (Dec 6, 2002)

pjmedlam said:


> I am a new TT owner but already enjoy reading this forum. However can I ask why is there only one main thread for TT discussion?
> 
> Coming from forums for other cars I own or have owned with sections divided into for example below, I wondered why there was only one TT section?
> 
> ...


Good idea and bad idea.

The ******** is nice and simple - plain interface - and easy to understand subforum headings. I really don't see a need to change them.

Eg: I am in the market to get a new set of wheels for ma mo'ta - where would I post a request for info? General or Modification Wheels? Hell I'll post in both 'cos I'm not sure replacement wheels is a mod or just general.

Why over complicate matters - why have so many mod subforums ?? Everything apart from Motorsport easily resides under TT-Main. If you ain't got a TT there are plenty of other options open.


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## pjmedlam (Jul 6, 2005)

Saint you're dead right, if you read down to my later comments you'll see that that the early list was just to get people discussing. Personally i just think it would be an improvement if there were a sub forum from TT related problems (very helpfull to hook new members) and maybe one for ICE.

J600 idea of increasing the posts per page is also excellent and is in line with the other forums i have contributed to in the past since 96 or so. I contributed to the MGF forum for years on the owners club site and they just a had a 'General Forum' and 'Technical Forum' which worked really well in the early years, but now stuff soon passes onto superceeded pages and the repeated posts and confusion occur.

It a shame this thread had to be moved on to 'Site News' but i understand why. Its just the thread is not 'site news' its 'site comment'. If i was a newcommer i wouldn't (and didn't) visit this subforum so we may not get any impressions from newcommers to this discussion, just comment from long time users who are used to it being as it is.

I'm an bridge design engineer so maybe i just like things too ordered...*grin*.


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