Joyful Train Sub-Forum

[Guest ___]

I'll probably hear about this in the admin forum for polling it, but oh well.

[Densha]

Why not a simple sticky as I suggested? (well sorta suggested)

 

On the other hand my attempts at creating dedicated topics for company developments did only last for a while though, in the end everyone starts posting them in the enormous vault that is the "Japan Rail, news and announcements" forum section.

So it may be a good idea to create such a sub-forum but then we also should try to organize it as a whole because now it's one big mess.

[cteno4]

Then we need a painted train sub forum!

 

Jeff

[JR 500系]

Ditto to both Densha and Jeff's suggestions! A sub-forum for joyful trains and painted trains can also act as a data base for the beautiful trains around ~ Now they're scattered all around the forum and it is kinda hard to find them, like some bits around here and there.

 

Would love this if it's not too much work.

 

I can contribute some very limited to my knowledge data for building it up~   :)

[disturbman]

On the other hand my attempts at creating dedicated topics for company developments did only last for a while though, in the end everyone starts posting them in the enormous vault that is the "Japan Rail, news and announcements" forum section.

I know. I tried also to have consolidated threads for retirements and new models but nobody ever bothered to actually used them; posting new informations in new threads as they popped along.

[Densha]

Okay. So everyone wants a better organized forum right? Shall I suggest some categories and how they should be organized?

For certain things stickies are better, but for others subforums may be more convenient.

I'll make an outline of my thoughts asap.

[Martijn Meerts]

Sounds like Densha is volunteering himself for a moderator job :)

[E6系]

Hello,

 

Please allow me to share my observations on JNS.

 

This forum has a very low patronage.  A sticky might be useful, but there are forums that don't receive a post for weeks at a time.  If you are concerned about things being posted "everywhere", then why make "everywhere" bigger?

[disturbman]

Hahaha. I actually agree with E6. The forum is vast but the patronage quite low. We should try a couple of pinned threads like: "Joyfull trains", "Shinkansen news",

[Guest ___]

Personally, I do no like stickies. What one person may find of interest may not be suitable for everyone. It does not take long before the entire first page of posts in a forum are nothing but stickies. I've sen it before on boards both larger and smaller than this one.

 

Stickies are great for forum announcements, but as so far as posts for general discussion, I see little need for it, especially given by the fact that there are not many users on here to begin with.

 

My personal take is that we do not need sub-forums for special liveries, or joyful trains, and that we have more than enough forums and sub-forums now. And, that had our numbers of active members get much higher, would be spending a lot more time moving threads to the proper forum/sub-forum more often as we have some overlap.

 

Again, this is just my take having been a mod on here for the past five years.

[disturbman]

Totally agreed. I was actually looking into how to diminishing the number of sub-forums; but it is difficult. Maybe the OT forums could be merged a bit together but we do cater for a lot of different interests.

[Densha]

Edit: got rid of all my ramblings and made it simpler. Forget everything that was written in this post before.

 

Because we already got about 20 new topics in the prototype announcements subforum (for example) just in July I think something should be done to put things together where they belong. Yes, just making a topic and throwing stuff in there is fun but I personally really favour that I can get at least a bit of an overview. Short-term is fun, but in the long-term I really like being able to see the development.

 

You might think it will be an enormous task for mods to move every new post in the correct topic, but when I created this topic everyone followed: http://www.jnsforum.com/community/topic/7559-jr-east-rolling-stock-announcements/ Until it went somewhere down the page and was not visible anymore that is. Stickies are a fairly simple method to organize stuff, it's at least something. But I am still of the opinion that just a few more subforums to specify things can be convenient.

 

My suggestion for 'Japan Rail: news and announcements' (subforums are italic):

• JR Group ('Rolling stock' and 'Infrastructure' stickies for the every JR company or just one simple sticky per company)
• Private operators, metros and trams (one sticky per company)
• Heritage railways (ditto)

The other option is to just go for stickies in the already existing announcement subforum which defeats the purpose of separate topics for every single happening. But yeah, then you get an enormous list of stickies.

 

I'm just not sure where to put things that are not news or announcements nor pictures or videos. What about splitting 'news and announcements' from everything else? That means you rename the current 'Japan Rail, news and announcements' subforum into 'Japan Rail: information and discussion' or something and you only feature real news in the 'news and announcements' subforum, which you can still discuss about of course.

 

Completely on the other hand I do totally agree that there are not that many users active on the forum and that we already have a lot of subforums, but every other attempt at trying to organize things has failed so far. (Not meant offending to anyone of course!) Tags and the like didn't work and I don't think they ever will (I hate them as well) and attempts at creating special topics didn't either. One important thing is that it shouldn't appear or be strict, I'm sure everyone agrees that having fun is the most important thing here. And if you really need someone to help out, I am seriously available and would love to help. :D

Edited July 22, 2014 by Densha

[katoftw]

I dont think the forum is busy enough to make more sub forums. If I go into the JR news/announcement or pictures forums, only 3-5 are unread at any time.

 

Sure if the entire 20 threads on the first page were new or unread, then create another sub forum. But creating a new sub forum because we have had 5 new threads in 30 days about new joyful trains is just a overkill knee-jerk reaction.

[JR 500系]

HHmmm... Please allow me to share some insights as a newbie.  

 

There are quite a number of lost threads around that actually refer to the same thing. Having a sub-forum may be a good idea so that organisation gets easier. Agreed that having too much sticky is not advisable as it gets stickers all around, but having well organised sub-forums can actually help people find what they are looking for, and where to post new announcements appropriately.  

 

or example:

 

I have a piece of news recent regarding Enoden's new livery. I have the following options to post in:

 

1) Painted trains

2) Trams & Trolleys

3) Enoden sticky (as suggested by Densha san)

 

It's kinda hard for newbies like myself to know where to post exactly, and because i'm a very painted trains person i'm very inclined tp having a Joyful / Painted train sub-forum, so I can immediately post all new painted train news and stuff in the sub-forum instead of thinking where to post this. No doubt we can always use the 'view recent unread posts' function, but finding information gets a little tougher since the key words search usually generate quite a number of different possibilities and might not show up especially if it has been dormant for a while.  

 

Just my 2 cents.

 

*I'm also very inclined to vote to have a bus sub-forum but that's just me since the general interest is not high. The current thread is enough to cater for this.  :) 

[Densha]

I think that's exactly the reason why some people said they want less subforums. First of all maybe we should start with defining the subforums better. The Trams and Trolleys subforum for example is a big mess of Japanese and non-Japanese models and prototypes.

[miyakoji]

E6 is right, the number of users and posts per section don't seem to call for more sections.  Only Densha has mentioned tags, and unfortunately he wrote that he doesn't like them.  I think they're great, although the lack of a list of in-use tags is a major impediment to using them.  I tried to maintain such a list manually (http://www.jnsforum.com/community/topic/7030-using-tags/) but it wasn't really workable.

[miyakoji]

First of all maybe we should start with defining the subforums better.

 

I started to write out my idea for this, but really, I don't know if the forum needs to be reorganized.  Let's definitely not add any more subsections, but going to the trouble of merging sections might not be worth it either.  It's fine as it is.

[Densha]

It's not that I hate tags, but it just doesn't work because there's still such an enormous amount of topics without them as you've noticed. So I never even bothered using them because of that and forgot about them eventually.

 

Agreed, the less reorganizing the better. But I'm still not keen on how it's now with particularly the Japanese prototype section. Maybe there's an easier solution...

[katoftw]

 

but having well organised sub-forums can actually help people find what they are looking for, and where to post new announcements appropriately.  

 

or example:

 

I have a piece of news recent regarding Enoden's new livery. I have the following options to post in:

 

1) Painted trains

2) Trams & Trolleys

3) Enoden sticky (as suggested by Densha san)

I dont think it is that difficult to decide. you have mentioned news and announcements. So it should go in the news and announcement section.

 

If you have pictures, then drop it into the pictures sub forum 1 below.

 

dunno where the painted trains section is. the trams and trolleys section is in the modelling section, so it clearly doesnt fit there, unless you are talking about a actual new livery on a model.

 

sorry i'm not being critical of you post. but i fail to see why many are having issues with where to post. if its about a real life train/tram, then news/announcments and/or the picture sub forums.

 

if its about models, then put it in a appropriate model sub forum.

Edited July 23, 2014 by katoftw

[katoftw]

 

Agreed, the less reorganizing the better. But I'm still not keen on how it's now with particularly the Japanese prototype section. Maybe there's an easier solution...

I would merge the news/announcements sub forum and prototype/pictures/videos sub forums into one. they are essentially doing the same job. and are too closely related with their content posted.

[disturbman]

Oh no. These two forums were specially created because it was impossible to find any kind of news among the oversupply of pictures and video links.



What I could propose is to remodel the platforms as follow:

Platform 1: Birth & Death of a Forum
- Welcome (both subforum merged)
- The Agora
---Forum Announcements
---Bug Reports

Platform 2: Model Railroading
- Japanese N Gauge
- Japanese Other Gauges
- Tram and Trolley
- Non-Japanese

 

Platform 3: Products and retailers
- New Releases
- Suppliers
--- Hobby Shops, where are they?

Platform 4: (The Dark Side of) Modeling
- The Train Doktor

- DCC, Electrical & Automation
--- Automation

- Tools

- Scenery

Platform 5: Layouts, Clubs & Projects
- Personal Projects
- Clubs
- Project Parties

Platform 6: Prototype
- Japan Rail, News & Announcements
- Japan Rail, Pictures & Videos
- Non-Japanese Rail

Platform 7: OT
- Travelling
--- Japan
--- The rest of the world
- Other Hobbies
- Off Topic

21 sub-forums (instead of 29 now), 7 platforms (instead of 8 now) and a bit more sub-sub forums by integrating the less active sub-forums to others.

Edited July 23, 2014 by disturbman

[katoftw]

Again more fluff than required. Those sub sub forums suggested would be so unused, they might as well not be there. IF you give too many options, and some a very close in content, then you have similar complaints as above. The rest looks good.

[E6系]

Hello Mr disturbman,

 

Please allow me to make two more suggestions to your list above:

 

Change "Tram and Trolley" to "Tram, Trolley and Bus".

 

Classified section is needed.

[disturbman]

E6, thanks for the suggestions. I also had thought of labeling "Tram and Trolley": "Tram, Trolley and Bus". Of course, the classifieds are staying, I simply decided not to include them in the discussion about possible changes.

Kato, perhaps, I see a couple of sub sub forums that needs to stay though. They are not there to attract postings but to have information readily at hand (and avoid some constant reposting of the same questions, again and again).


Here is the new layout proposal again, this time I indicated the sub sub forums that can go with *:
 

Platform 1: Birth & Death of a Forum
- Welcome (both sub forums merged)
- The Agora
---Forum Announcements*
---Bug Reports*

Platform 2: Model Railroading
- Japanese N Gauge
- Japanese Other Gauges
- Tram, Trolley & Bus
- Non-Japanese

 

Platform 3: Products and retailers
- New Releases
- Suppliers
--- Hobby Shops, where are they?

Platform 4: (The Dark Side of) Modeling
- The Train Doktor

- DCC, Electrical & Automation
--- Automation*

- Tools

- Scenery

Platform 5: Layouts, Clubs & Projects
- Personal Projects
- Clubs
- Project Parties

Platform 6: Prototype
- Japan Rail, News & Announcements
- Japan Rail, Pictures & Videos
- Non-Japanese Rail

Platform 7: OT
- Travelling
--- Japan*
--- The rest of the world*
- Other Hobbies
- Off Topic

Edited July 23, 2014 by disturbman

[Densha]

Disturbman,
 
Looks nice! Still you don't mention any plan for the Japan Rail, News & Announcements subforum.  I still really want to see this better organized because it's one of the largest and one the most interesting subforums we have.
 
A simpler way instead of making a subforum in subforum for JR; Other operators (including trams and the like); Heritage railways is making stickies in the announcements subforum. But as announcements are announcements I think just one sticky per company is needed and not topics about other railway discussions. Other discussions about railways belong in another place. That's why I vote for a separate 'general discussion about Japanese rail' and an 'announcements' subforum.
In my opinion the Pictures and video subforum should be organized in the same way as the announcements subforum.
 
(My opinion didn't really change compared to yesterday as you can see. ;) )
 
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
 
Considering another part of the forum... first Model Railroading: questions about scenery and Kato and Tomix track are often placed here, but doesn't that belong in the scenery subforum? Yeah I'm nagging a bit but that's me... nagging boy.
A special subforum for Automation is unneeded I think, it can just be placed in the DCC, Electrical & Automation subforum where it belongs. Just look how few topics it has now.
Also, shouldn't 'The Train Doktor' be spelled as 'doctor'? :P
 

Classified section is needed.

Second that.

Edited July 23, 2014 by Densha