Editorials and other articles?

[Solly Mack]

This discussion thread was locked by EarlG (a host of the DU4 Bug Reports forum).

To be retired? Have I somehow overlooked the whereabouts of the forum?

Thanks!

Solly

[EarlG]

1. Ah, yes

So -- to be clear, and I really should put this in the "Important things to know about DU4" thread, the list of Retired forums is essentially just all placeholders at the moment.

Over the years, and particularly in the early years, DU was fine with "forum creep" -- basically any time someone requested a new group, we'd just grant it. But over the years this has led to quite a few forums which are essentially dead at this point, along with a number of others which seem redundant. So once DU4 is launched, I plan to do a reassessment of the smaller forums.

Side note: We call the smaller forums "groups" on DU3. On DU4 I just want to call them all forums, but the former groups will still work the exact same way, (They'll have their own Hosts, and Statements of Purpose, etc. -- none of that will change. I'm just going to call them forums instead of groups.)

Anyway, the idea is to retire some of the truly dead forums, and perhaps merge other ones together. For example, do we need a not-so-busy Sports forum, a not-so-busy Football forum, a not-so-busy Baseball forum, a not-so-busy Basketball forum, etc. etc. etc. when we could just have a single much-busier Sports forum? I think perhaps not. So a fair amount of the way I've been thinking about DU4 is to do with streamlining things. That's why there are only six categories for the smaller forums now, instead of the two dozen or so that exist on DU3, for example.

As it happens, if we do end up consolidating forums like this, I do have some future ideas for how to organize topics within those forums -- but I haven't even talked about that with Elad yet (I don't want to give him a heart attack while he's still finishing DU4).

Anyway, long story short -- on DU4 I've dumped a lot of forums into the Retired section which may or may not ultimately end up being retired. I was just trying to "clear the decks" as it were in preparation for deciding what to do next with them.

But to answer the original question -- there are a couple of Main forums that I plan to retire too. The new Latest Videos page makes the Videos & Multimedia forum completely unnecessary, since it provides a one-stop location for all the videos on DU. And I'm not sure if Editorials & Other Articles really serves a useful purpose any more -- it just provides another location to sort of "dilute" subjects which could better be located elsewhere. So yes, I'm currently planning to retired Editorials.

[Solly Mack]

2. It's as if a dam burst. :)

Been expecting that question, haven't you?

I can understand the need to consolidate forums/group as well as retire others/clear redundancies.

Could post editorials in General Discussion, for example. Since editorials reflect opinions on current events/news, which is what comments/replies/original posts in GD basically do as well.

Forum Hosts will have to adjust, as to not lock threads when that happens for being in the wrong forum.

The Lounge, of course, would not be a good place for political editorials (except maybe political satire?), but as editorials can deal with various subject matter, the list of forums is large enough on DU4 to accommodate the relevant subjects.

Anyway...

Thanks!

Solly

[EarlG]

3. Heh

Yes that was quite a lot of over-explaining

With regard to the Editorials forum, I tend to think of it like this: if I have an editorial about, say climate change, I have a few options. I could post it in GD, where it will get a lot of eyeballs in a short space of time, or I could post it in Environment & Energy, where it won't get as many views, but it will be open for discussion longer, and the replies will be from people who are specifically interested in that particular topic, so it should get a more in-depth discussion. OR, I could post it in Editorials & Other Articles -- a top-level forum, where... it won't get as many views as it would in GD, and it won't result in a more in-depth discussion by people who are specifically interested in the topic.

At this stage in DU's life, that seems like an unnecessary option to give people -- it just makes it less clear about where the best place to post might be, and it makes it easier to miss out on interesting topical articles because they might not be in the place you expect them to be. The Editorials forum (and Videos forum) definitely had their place in DU history, but I feel like these days they're just not very essential (especially Videos & Multimedia, now we have the new Latest Videos page).

This shouldn't require much adjustment by the Hosts. Editorials and opinion pieces have always been welcome in GD, and these days if someone posts an opinion piece in LBN, the Hosts will typically invite them to repost in GD when locking, not Editorials & Other Articles.