New 'Training' forum?

[Ric_]

There seems to be an increasing number of posts regarding training and I thought that it might be a good idea to have somewhere separate for these posts so that they don't clutter the other forums.

 

Just a thought so add you comments before I go ahead and make it anyway

[NetworkGeezer]

Yeah ... might as well.

The current Courses forum is just too ambigous

[ChrisH]

Is there anyway to have sub forums with this CMS were starting have a very long list .

[MkII]

Yup!

[edie209]

Sound like a good idea

[russdev]

This problem we had when we started we had loads of forums we rejiged and put some together and made it slightly smaller.

 

But list has grown again...

 

If look they already in sub sections..

 

Russ

[russdev]

ok how about we merge courses and books and manuals and have one called CPD that way get best of both world..

 

Russ

[john]

or we should all just get bigger monitors

[ChrisH]

I see what you mean now russ but they are all expanded by default thereby making them look like section headings.

[Norphy]

You have 38 boards at the moment which is extremely excessive considering the size of the community. Even HardOCP's forums, a community which has almost 70,000 users and more people logged into it at any one time than this one has members only has 31.

 

A lot of these boards can be combined. I suggest doing the following:

 

Merge the Windows, Vista and LNM boards into a single Microsoft board. Neither the Vista or the LNM boards appear to have adequate traffic to justify keeping them and all manner of other MS software is discussed in the Windows board.

 

Merge the MIS Systems, Educational Software, KS3 SATS and possibly the VLE forums into a generic Software forum.

 

Perhaps merge the Mac and Netware forums into an "Other OS" forum as they're not especially busy.

 

Perhaps get rid of the "How do you do it?" forum? Most of the posts in there could quite easily be contained in the generic OS forums or in the policy forums. I know the idea of the forum is to transfer useful stuff out of there into the Wiki but it doesn't seem to have happened.

 

Merge the coding and scripting board into one, broadly speaking they're fairly similar. Perhaps put Web Development in there too.

 

Recommend Suppliers and Bad Experiences should be merged into one board called "Suppliers". Quite often, people post asking for opinions on suppliers in the bad experiences or recommended suppliers which is unfair on the suppliers in question.

 

Links and Interweb things seem to be the same. Downloads could be put in there too.

 

Like I say, these are suggestions. Please don't think too harshly of me

[russdev]

right lnm will stay for now as reason we got lnm was due to us 'supporting' it so that will stay. I think ks3 sats will be renamed online testing when other tests come online so that probably should stay seperate as well as vle as hot topic once that dies down will combine them..

 

merging os might start os wars but might be an idea..

 

yes i think how do you do that should go....

 

Coding/scripting yes i agree conbine both of those..

 

yes put suppliers in one is good idea..

 

I agree links, interweb and downloads can be one as well..

 

What do people think??

[john]

I would leave VLE stuff on its own as when we all get our VLEs it may hot up more in my view. Vista will hot up come the new year when we all rush to update our boxes to vista, combine Mac and Netware though as they are quiet and maybe stuff nix in with it as well.

 

Suppliers is a good idea as it interweb/downloads. The edu software could do with re-naming to Software in general as I never know where to post things about say my adobe reader 8 post, as its not truely Edu software, but its not windows or a problem etc....

[contink]

Just a nugget of my own but the one thing that could really use a kick up the backside is more posting into the Wiki... ie: distillation of the useful stuff into reference material and not so much sprawling discussion covering the same ground.

 

Course, encouraging that is easier said than done but it's definitely one way to reduce the amount of forums..

[Norphy]

Granted, Vista will become a hot topic once it goes RTM but I don't think there is justification to have a seperate forum for it. It is just Windows after all. There aren't seperate boards for OSX and OS9, similarly there aren't seperate ones for SuSE, Redhat, Debian etc either. Can phpBB baords have child boards like Vbulletin, SMF and Invision do? Perhaps you could make the LNM forum a child of the Windows/Microsoft one?

 

I wasn't sure about merging the VLE board into another which is why I said "Perhaps"

 

In any case, as already acknowledged the front page of the forums is far too crowed. They really need trimming down.

[ChrisH]

Just a nugget of my own but the one thing that could really use a kick up the backside is more posting into the Wiki... ie: distillation of the useful stuff into reference material and not so much sprawling discussion covering the same ground.

 

Course, encouraging that is easier said than done but it's definitely one way to reduce the amount of forums..

 

We have tried encouraging more use of the wiki in the past but not many have contributed. The how do you do it forum was supposed to be temporary until the Wiki took off but as it hasnt it has stayed .

[ITWombat]

The problem is that the Wiki is a bit semi-detached. If there was more prominent link then it would get more use.

[pete]

Agree with most of the suggestions, apart from Software merging.

 

We have (roughly) 3 types of software in schools:

 

MIS systems

Curriculum software

Stuff you'd find anywhere.

 

I don't really see the benefit in having an "SIMS is broken -- help" post next to "BizarroEduSoftware isn't working", keeping them in separate categories makes sense from a signal / noise ratio if nothing else.

 

The increased traffic (pushing posts off the front page) in a combined software forum might reduce the amount of help offered.

 

# Forum descriptions - some need to be more concise (Learning Network Manager, Educational Software). We're all sysadmins and can rtfm - making lengthy info available as a sticky inside the particular forum should save us scrolling a bit?

 

What about dumping Netware?

[russdev]

lol

 

ohh yes wicki is detached but this watch space as wiki will become part of the collective i mean part of the main site...

 

Russ

[GrumbleDook]

I am Dyslexia of the 'Borg. Resistance if futile, your ass will be laminated.