Close the General Discussions Forum

[2012-1822]

Anyone else think it would be easier to just close the General Discussions forum rather than play roulette to see which threads get moved and who gets yelled at? (No I don't have a recent infraction over the topic, yet, as of this posting anyway.)

[mlee]

If we didn't have General there would be so many sub-forums to put stuff in it would be even worse.

Truthfully, warnings only go out when it's pretty blaintant and pretty obvoius they never even looked. When a person with 5k posts starts a thread about High School Football in the General forums they will probably get one.

If it's a newb they usually get a PM explaining what to do, but that can get very time consuming.

No one will get a warning for at least trying. Some even note that they weren't sure where to put something. Kudos for trying.

Moving threads is the single most labor intensive item and none of us like to do it, but it keeps things organized. Please help where ever you can and use the report button when you see one out of place. The sooner we get to it the less folks complain when somethind does require moving.

[mlee]

Thread moved to Site Related questions/suggestions...

[Overflow]

No.. Horrible idea.

[The Stig]

Originally Posted by mlee

Thread moved to Site Related questions/suggestions...

Lol

[tramtwo]

Haha

Sent from my DROID RAZR using Tapatalk

[FenwickHockey65]

I'm just gonna say this, and with all due respect...

I spend the vast majority of my time at GMI moving threads. In fact it's even worse over there because general members can't post in news forums. They post news articles they find in a suggestion box that we move into the appropriate section.

Yeah it sucks, yes it's time consuming, but it comes with the job. You're always going to have folks who don't understand where threads are supposed to go. That's just a forum for you.

Oh and one more thing: yes we all know reposts are annoying, but sometimes people genuinely don't notice or didn't find an existing thread when they searched. I don't think they should be chastised for that, especially when they're contributing a ton to the site and don't have a history of reposting.

[Overflow]

Especially when the search function on here is less than satisfactory.

As a moderator on another forum, I agree with Fen. If cleaning up the forum is apparently wasting the staff's time, then what are they suppose to be doing?

Trust me, I know it's annoying to move threads but some of the staff needs to look at it from the members point of view.

[TAG UR IT]

Again, not everyone gets a warning or a slap on the wrist. Most just get moved. Like Mike said, blatantly obvious threads started in the general section when they are obviously about something in particular and when the members been here long enough to know better...those get moved and the member gets a warning.

Hey...I have a wheel question. Let me post it in the general section. Seriously? We have a wheel and tire forum specifically for that. But the member wants the thread to be seen and replied to by more people and at a faster pace....so they post it in the general. This happens all the time.

We move TONS of threads per day. Yep. Comes with the job. Then there's two warnings given out of 50...and they go and complain....and guess what, they've been here for a year, have 4k posts, have a previous warning for doing the same thing....etc etc. Are we the ones complaining? No. We are doing our job and are trying to get others to realize a wheel thread belongs in the wheels section.

And the search function works rather well, actually....if you know how to use it. But it won't work as well if you are searching for a wheel question in the wheel forum when the wheel thread you are looking for is in the general section...

[mlee]

Originally Posted by Overflow

Especially when the search function on here is less than satisfactory.

As a moderator on another forum, I agree with Fen. If cleaning up the forum is apparently wasting the staff's time, then what are they suppose to be doing?

Trust me, I know it's annoying to move threads but some of the staff needs to look at it from the members point of view.

You made me go back and read what I posted. I never said anything about wasting our time. It's part of the job and it's the most labor intensive part. Just reminding folks to simply give it some thought when creating a new thread. That's all.

And we do look at it from the members point of view. It's easy to tell who really knows better and those who just need a little assistance. That's what we're here for.

[DGthe3]

Originally Posted by FenwickHockey65

Oh and one more thing: yes we all know reposts are annoying, but sometimes people genuinely don't notice or didn't find an existing thread when they searched. I don't think they should be chastised for that, especially when they're contributing a ton to the site and don't have a history of reposting.

For the most part, we (the staff) don't chastise people for reposts. The regular members are a different story, but thats the way it is on a forum. Most often we'll quietly merge the threads, or leave a simple note. I understand how hard it can be to find old threads with the v-bul search being what it is. It doesn't get any better when people use poor titles or misspell words or put something in the wrong section. If someone is searching for 6th Gen renders, they'd never find a thread titled 'new maro pix', tucked away in 5th gen general.

That said, I find that most reposts are in the wrong section while the original is where it should be (possibly because we've already moved the original).

Originally Posted by Overflow

Trust me, I know it's annoying to move threads but some of the staff needs to look at it from the members point of view.

It can be easy to forget that we were all regular members before becoming moderators. And as a regular member, I often found it annoying to see misplaced threads & reposts. There weren't a ton of them, but the site was a lot smaller back then.