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[eeticket]

This site has gone through several variations in its current two year old incarnation. The ultimate goal is to have a site that provides a broader sense of community in north western PA. On of the previous layouts included local news similar to what is on the main site at www.eeticket.com. My question to all of you is, would having likes to local news from the herald and/or other local papers be a wanted item or do you think it would get in the way of things?

Edit: cleaned up some really bad grammar.

[yinzer82]

I think the local news is what got us booted off of the Herald's website (and Hey Martha) in the first place.  We can always check out the Herald for the news and then maybe only the people with something constructive to say will come here.  In my opinion, it was too easy before for some people to just go off topic, and start bad-mouthing posters.  That's why I pretty much stopped posting near the end.

[eeticket]

I'm all ears when it comes to improvements, suggestions, ideas and so on. If they sound plausible and are with my technical reach I might give them a whirl.

Life is a series of endless paradigm shifts. I want this place to keep up and not go stagnant.

[Spicoli]

This site has gone through several variations in its current two year old incarnation. The ultimate goal is to have a site that provides a broader sense of community in north western PA. On of the previous layouts included local news similar to what is on the main site at www.eeticket.com. My question to all of you is, would having likes to local news from the herald and/or other local papers be a wanted item or do you think it would get in the way of things?

Edit: cleaned up some really bad grammar.

Links (or likes) to local news from the Herald would be good... but I guess you already have that.  Don't you?    

Maybe the problem is you're trying to cover too big of an area. 
There's too many counties, too many categories, too many sub-categories, and too many sub-sub-categories to choose from. 
If I'm going to start a topic, it will take me forever to click on everything to figure out where to properly post it.

And then there's the redundancy of having a Northwest PA category and also having various county categories that make up northwest PA.

Just my 2Cents.

[eeticket]

A valid point. The intention there was give every one a home base so to speak because of the geographical variations. So what's the best way to simplify this. I'd like to hear some input from everyone on this topic. If the paradigm is going to shift again, let's figure out what the new view will be.

I can do links or like as well.

[lifefeedsonlife]

I'll talk to anyone. anywhere 'bout just about anything. If I wanna get specific to an area - you got that covered.

[GROK]

I do like topics and discussions that hit me more locally (Such as happenings in Sharon specifically) so links to the Herald are good. Also, given my proclivities, is there a way to stratify my "show unread posts" so that Sharon and Shenango Valley concerned missives are prioritized (i.e. shown first)?

[Jayhawk]

There's too many counties, too many categories, too many sub-categories, and too many sub-sub-categories to choose from. 

I'll second that. Too busy, too much going on, you're trying to take on too much all at once.

Luckily, there's a way to show unread posts, which cuts through the clutter. Otherwise, there's less than a dozen posts a day but 50 or 60 categories and subcategories they could be in -- some of which have never had a post (such as some of the towns under a given county). For mercer county, simply a Shenango Valley and a non-SV category would do the job.

having so many subcategories is like a company's website list of available jobs where to search you have to enter desired company plant location, department, FT or PT, job category, etc. . Then you discover they only have 4 job postings of any kind, so a simple, flat list would have given you 100% of the information in 1 click.

just my $.02.

[Spicoli]

Jayhawk, we must be on the same wavelength.   Numerous times I've went to post something only to find you've posted the exact same thing I was thinking.

[eeticket]

Okay, let me kick this idea around and see what I can come up with. It seems that so far the catagorization reviews are mixed. So I'm leaning toward altering the presentation. That way the granularity is maintained but the view would be somewhat different and access would be more direct (geographically speaking)

Anyhow, let me kick this around and see what I can do. (this ain't gonna happen over night either so please don't set the bar too high too early)

[Spicoli]

This site has gone through several variations in its current two year old incarnation. The ultimate goal is to have a site that provides a broader sense of community in north western PA. On of the previous layouts included local news similar to what is on the main site at www.eeticket.com. My question to all of you is, would having likes to local news from the herald and/or other local papers be a wanted item or do you think it would get in the way of things?

Edit: cleaned up some really bad grammar.

Out of all of the Herald forum users only a handful have made it here.  With no Herald forum anymore, how are Shenango Valley people who don't know about your site supposed to find it?  Are you advertising it anywhere?  You could have the best website layout around but if nobody knows it exists, I don't see how this site can ever be very active, unfortunately.

[eeticket]

Advertising? I wish. This isn't a commercial enterprise. This whole site is the result of an old geek with a chip on his shoulder about how chni forums were implemented. (read featureless)

I need to go announce it a few places though. I don't know where the old posters all went. I can't imagine that they're trolling around other cnhi sites. After my first announcement there I was met with lots of red flags about privacy warnings about me trying to collect personal information and so on. I did respond, but once the flag gets tossed up in forum football the instant replay rarely overturns the results on a bad call.

I guess I'll have to rely on word of mouth and do some shameless self-promotion a few other places.

[CindyLouWho]

This is a great forum.  What can we do to help spread the word without raising these red flags and causing trouble?

[yinzer82]

I know Buhl Day is another month or so away.  Those of us who still get back home fairly frequently could mention it to some of our old friends (and new ones) while we're in town.  That way maybe we could explain the kind of forum that they're trying to promote here, and keep out some of the "pot-stirrers".  That, and maybe putting out the word on some of the social networking sites (Facebook?) that if anyone wants to catch up on local news (not the Herald variety), to take a look over here (I wouldn't broadcast that to everyone...probably just on an individual basis so every knucklehead and his brother doesn't drop by).

[Jayhawk]

This whole site is the result of an old geek with a chip on his shoulder about how chni forums were implemented. (read featureless)

Just curious what additional features back there that you thought would have been valuable. Other than personal messaging (and maybe spellcheck; did it have that?), i can't think of anything i else needed, and overall it was a simple, clean, uncluttered interface.

No offense intended, but if reading forum dialog is what people are loading the page for, at the top of a screen, EE devotes about 50% of the real estate to everything BUT that, squeezing the posts into the middle and making you scroll more to see it all. Ranking things of user importance, headlines and recent posts are of some value to me at the top of the page, but not a calendar, list of who's online, forum stats and some-what duplicated personal logon info across the top AND at the top left under User.

of the other forums i've frequented over the years, the ones i didn't like as much had too many subcategories for their own good (as we've already discussed). The ones i liked has a simple, simple interface with the latest 20 or 30 topics visible in maybe two screens worth of scrolling, newest to old. New posts since my last visit were flagged.

Some i kinda liked show a subject followed by an outline tree of subposts/dates -- although this can get unwieldy and deep, too.

i do occasionally like to look at things like stats and member lists, but links to that stuff belongs out of the way, not in prime space at the top of the page.

i keep getting back to clean, simple... let people get in, get the info they want. Compare a search home page like MSN or Yahoo to Google and decide which one really meets the visitor's true needs.

MSN and Yahoo have dancing graphics, complex columns of information and news and a search box somewhere in the midsts. Google loads instantly because it has 1 image and something like 47 words, and a big, honking search box in the middle.

Sometimes simplicity does a better job of communication.