I see that alot. People sometimes forget that we dont know the locations of all these trails and mountains. State name should be a nobrainer for including in the Thread Title.Originally Posted by dirtwheels
As for the sticky idea. Its on the right track but you would end up with pages of stickies.
If the moderators are willing to Sub-Thread the Trip-Planning section. Then I would be more than willing to maintain it on a daily basis along with the others who were willing to chip in.
You'd only end up with pages of stickies if we broke the list down to each individual state. The regions list would only be about 6 or 7 stickies.
Everybody, I really love the idea of the regional subforums, but I've been down this road before. I just don't think its a viable option for a few reasons that I'm not really sure of, but am aware that they are real and stupendously unbending in their resolve.
IMHO, I think what might work better is to continue to use the trip planning subforums as they are now, but utilize the calendar as a link to these threads so that folks can see whats going on with a click here and a click there and go right to that discussion. And maybe regional calendars wouldn't be as much "spread" as the subforums?
A single google calendar could work, you could color code events by region. There are a lot of potential solutions. We just need something better than what currently exists.
The current system is not user friendly, searching for hangs in your state doesn't work because you can't search for 2 letter terms and people just as often don't list the state in the thread headers or the thread for that matter. Mod's could fix each threads header, but that is asking them to do an awful lot (way to much in my opinion).
None of the suggested solutions is perfect, they all have there problems, but I think most of them would improve the effectiveness and ease of use of the trip planning threads, and therefore increase attendance at these events.
Wouldn't a single sticky do the job? Just keep a single post listing the current hangs for each region with links to the thread about it? After each hang is over either remove it or add a "past hangs" section to that post and keep it updated only need one person to manage it with a subscription to threads in the trip planning section.
The problem with that, is we are directing people to other areas and asking them to use alternate sections and applications of the site other than the one that was put in place for the specific reason of trip planning. Most, if not all, people go to the Trip Planning Forum who want to participate in Group Events. The number of people who use the calendar to Plan trips and to monitor for trips being planned, decreases significantly.
Creating a User-Friendly atmosphere for various services that the site offers just makes sense IMHO. It encourages its use and in-turn encourage use of the site. And as a community grows so does everything else. I understand that I may be an undertaking for initial setup but I think it will be worth it in the end.
Hi from the EGL in Southern Ontario.
We've got a pretty active group in my area, from a core of about a dozen who like to regularly get together to canoe, hike or car camp once every three or four months, to at least a couple of dozen other hangers who follow the threads and try to come out occasionally. They're all a great bunch of folks and we always seems to have a fun time, no matter the weather and length of the portage.
The problem we had was that often the planning thread gets started fairly early and there's a flood of posts during planning, but then it quiets down for a while until a couple of weeks out when it picks up again. What wound up happening was that there were some people who didn't find out about our trips until fairly late in the process.
As mentioned earlier, on the most recent Valens Hang, while sitting around the campfire, we came up with what we thought was a great way to keep informed, a thread whose sole purpose is to list future events and trip reports. Nothing else. No comments, no feedback, no discussions, no banter; all that happens on the normal trip planning thread. Subscribe if you're interested, unsubscribe if you change your mind.
I think it'll work well for our group. How this translates to regional posts, I don't know, maybe just a simple split: US/Canadian: Eastern, Central, Western. Don't allow anyone to post anything but the planning thread/trip report name and url. Subscribe to the appropriate regions and there you go. Have a moderator occasionally purge the inevitable non-critical responses and you have a wonderful inventory of upcoming events. Personally I'd likely subscribe to the Eastern and Central threads, just to keep on top of what's being planned.
Edit: These planning only threads I mentioned wouldn't be seperate forum categories, just maybe sticky threads on the main planning forum. It would function more as an index than anything else. I don't really like the idea of regional forum groupings.
Last edited by Chard; 11-27-2012 at 13:11.
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I like your idea and agree that its not that much more work especially if you bring in a couple more mods- and there do seem to be volunteers. But from what Ive seen around here, good ideas are met with alot of suspicion.
It is a good discussion.
A question:
What are the mechanical limitations for the kind of sticky threads being discussed above?
What, exactly, is it that creates so much more work that this is undoable?
I would agree that sub fora would require the addition of more moderators, but the "subscribe if you want to know about them" threads do seem to be rather self sustaining.
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