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Good post...

sub threads are what make rr such an impersonal place.
they will be it's downfall, and here as well, if adapted.
rotory has had em fer a week or two so far, and their post level has droped dramiticly

Thats what we need to hear from people on here, to make this forum a place worth coming to.
Thanks Mongo

I like the "New Pilot" idea, even if it is a fork off of the "Beginners" catagory. Maybe a "Heli Beginners" catagory along with the Heli catagory?

Personally, if I need to find a specific post or thread, I use the search feature. I don't have to worry about what forum it is in. It works well and that way the info is not fragmented by having it in separate forums.

Brian

this is pretty interesting and seems to mirror the sentiment the jet forum had expressed (they are real active too). Seems the topic is about almost as much as one wants to drill down to. So jets gets all jets but don't break into turbines, ducted fan, propjet, etc...for helis rather than break it down Raptor, Freya, etc...too much gets lost seems to be the feeling. You can search just the heli forum and show results as threads or posts even to find specifics but for the daily browsing it seems many want it all in one place so far.

I will work on putting a direct link in the discussion forums to the relevant swap forums and maybe use heli's to combine sale/wanted in some clever way as the test bed for combining swaps...geez...some late night programming ahead!!!

I like it all together too.

I hate it all together , I get tired of looking for the subject I want to read about through the countless lists. I love the RR format .

"sub threads are what make rr such an impersonal place.
they will be it's downfall, and here as well, if adapted.
rotory has had em fer a week or two so far, and their post level has droped dramiticly"

Impersonal?? When you go grocery shopping do you find it impersonal to have the product items in separate isles separated by type? Imagine all the items in real long isles with no product categories. How would you find a gal of milk?? When I come on this site how do I find a topic on gyro’s without using a search??

i have never needed the ability to look for a specific topic. forums are entertainment only and not a source of valuable information. so all i do is scan the current topics for some interesting topic, and have fun from there.
and, as i said in the other thread, i think subdivided forums, by mfgr, foster the us against them mentality that is already a bit too prevelant in this hobby.

the toughest call is to not have so many forums where it's broken down too much and either becomes more confusing or too hard to find info OR....too few where it's not broken down enough and there is information overload from lack of organization.

For an extreme example of the 2nd one imagine if this site had only one forum called "RC stuff" with all discussions in it...obviously not good or easy to use.

an example of too many would be taking helicopters and breaking it down into every make and model of helicopter that exists and than have seperate categories for building, 3d, beginners, engines, radios, gyros, etc...

Obviously we need to find the best balance in between where the majority of users can find what they want easily with as little confusion as possible...most users tend to complain of overcategorization from my experience rather than not enough as a general rule of thumb...

I myself think breaking helis down even more will be too much. But I can see why others may like it... Is it possable to give us both? You know... like frames/no frames. Give us a link on the forum page to give us a choice to either go to a breakdown of the posts or go to them all at once?

As I see it the main breakdown from "rc stuff" is good enough... anymore and you start loosing the idea of a forum to communicate and use it more to only GET info... like a search engine. And with the grocery shopping think of it as helis being dairy, if it was broken up any more you'de loose intrest in the cheese (beginers) and go strait for the milk (3D Experts). Poor little Johny Swiss who's only been flying 1 month will never find out why his boom got struck.


Gives the people who try to go around and help others a harder time IMHO.

There are hardly enough postings here to justify heli sub-forums.



RR has too many categories, so I just use the 'START HERE" and I can see all the postings since last time I looked.



In a few places, I think RCU already has too many sub-forums. Finely detailed sub-forums may help those who have a narrow focus and come here for answers, but the few who regularly provide fully informed answers will have to search harder for the questions.



It'll soon become apparent where the regular answer givers hang out and everyone will go there to ask questions.

Added:

I see I should have read a bit more thoroughly first. I seem to have said the same thing as the previous posting from RS2K. His/Hers was expressed more eloquently than mine, as well. Still, one has to express opinions to get counted.

Quote:

Impersonal?? When you go grocery shopping do you find it impersonal to have the product items in separate isles separated by type? Imagine all the items in real long isles with no product categories. How would you find a gal of milk?? When I come on this site how do I find a topic on gyro’s without using a search??

The grocery store doesn't have an aisle for each type of cereal. You still have to go to the cereal aisle and search for the brand that you want. When you got to the gyro's sub-forum you would still have to perform a search to find what you are looking for eg: "turning off heading hold".

I've found that the search is a better tool when you have a specific question, and would continue to use it even if there are sub-forums. The sub-forums would soon fill up with a lot of information, forcing you to perform a seach before posting a question anyway, as someone may have just asked the same question a couple of weeks ago, which may now be several pages down the forum. If you don't perform a search before posting a new question, you may be wasting a lot of people's time by asking them to continually answer the same question.

Quite often the thread changes topic part way through and contain a lot of good information later in the thread, if you don't perform a search you won't find this info.

Also, we may loose access to a lot of very good knowledge. For example, say there is a sub-forum on electric heli's, and a newbie has a question on setting the pitch. If he posts the question in the electric sub-forum a lot of very knowledgeable people on RCU may never read his question because they don't have any interest in electrics. If the thread is cross-posted it will eat of more space on the server, and most likely have to be moved to the proper forum, which will be more work for the moderators.

If sub-forums are created would you be able to do a search and have it include all sub-forums, so that a user could still search under helicopters regardless of the sub-forum?

I vote for keeping it with one heli forum. I think we will get a lot better exchange of information this way.

Dean