The mods have been discussing some changes that we feel will be beneficial for the 2017 season. None of the changes are things which are "WE MUST DO THIS OR THE SITE WILL DIE" - think of these being presented more in the fashion of "These are things are we can tweak which we think could work".
Tweak 1: Collapse the MLB forum into the Red Sox forum.
MLB forum has pretty intermittent usage. Folks like the forum yet people don't always make it a part of their regular stop. By introducing MLB threads into the Red Sox forum our hope is that we can add some more life in there. The Red Sox forum is ALWAYS plagued by megathreads. This may be the season we try to do away with them in another way - by being more vibrant all-around. It will also force things off of the front page a little faster, which gives us lazy folks less reason to necro threads that are days old.
The average SoSH poster visits the site more than once a day, and a large amount are now viewing the site via the timeline/new posts features. Given that, the changes wouldn't be material to a growing number of our members.
The SoSH Main Forum can support about 15 new threads a day and about 40 "active" threads a day given how the typical sosher users the site (these numbers were computed using a very advanced algorithm - I pulled them out of my ass .... but I do have a gut feel for what subforums can support )
Hey, worst case and it's a huge success and we are "forced" to subforum things again. Not much downside.
Tweak 2: Previews and Recaps
This is where we think the community can be more free-form. Folks seem to respond well to these in other forums, and we've had these in the past with the Sox forum. We are thinking about also working with the .com (WHO ARE NOW ON GOOGLE NEWS) to do some crossover work between our two projects. They'll be increasing the frequency of their recaps (some really cool things in the works), and presumably adding the threads could be a part of the editorial workflow.
Feedback on this is definitely appreciated. My personal gut feel is that it's a good idea but it needs some more fleshing out.
.......
I think we should leave this at two tweaks for now -- lots of other stuff has been discussed, but don't want to leave these two items to be lost in the shuffle. But please please please make a proposal if you think of anything which would help. Also let's try to keep this as baseball-oriented as possible. We're a Sox site and it deserves the laser focus of the community for a few weeks
Tweak 1: Collapse the MLB forum into the Red Sox forum.
MLB forum has pretty intermittent usage. Folks like the forum yet people don't always make it a part of their regular stop. By introducing MLB threads into the Red Sox forum our hope is that we can add some more life in there. The Red Sox forum is ALWAYS plagued by megathreads. This may be the season we try to do away with them in another way - by being more vibrant all-around. It will also force things off of the front page a little faster, which gives us lazy folks less reason to necro threads that are days old.
The average SoSH poster visits the site more than once a day, and a large amount are now viewing the site via the timeline/new posts features. Given that, the changes wouldn't be material to a growing number of our members.
The SoSH Main Forum can support about 15 new threads a day and about 40 "active" threads a day given how the typical sosher users the site (these numbers were computed using a very advanced algorithm - I pulled them out of my ass .... but I do have a gut feel for what subforums can support )
Hey, worst case and it's a huge success and we are "forced" to subforum things again. Not much downside.
Tweak 2: Previews and Recaps
This is where we think the community can be more free-form. Folks seem to respond well to these in other forums, and we've had these in the past with the Sox forum. We are thinking about also working with the .com (WHO ARE NOW ON GOOGLE NEWS) to do some crossover work between our two projects. They'll be increasing the frequency of their recaps (some really cool things in the works), and presumably adding the threads could be a part of the editorial workflow.
Feedback on this is definitely appreciated. My personal gut feel is that it's a good idea but it needs some more fleshing out.
.......
I think we should leave this at two tweaks for now -- lots of other stuff has been discussed, but don't want to leave these two items to be lost in the shuffle. But please please please make a proposal if you think of anything which would help. Also let's try to keep this as baseball-oriented as possible. We're a Sox site and it deserves the laser focus of the community for a few weeks