Many suppliers, myself included, use our own forums to promote our products, which is fair enough as we pay for the privilege of having the forum. What I am suggesting might surprise you but I sincerely believe that it would improve the quality of ECF as a whole and would be more welcoming/friendly to newcomers or potential members. I usually click the 'Today's Posts' link to see the 'latest news', but what I so often find is that between 20% and 90% of the posts on each page are from the Suppliers' Forums. Although some of these are relevant, many are promotional posts - it's like opening your favourite magazine to find every page plastered with adverts. I have just done a countback of the last 10 pages and found that the average number of posts from suppliers on each page was 46.4%, incredible! Could we not have two 'Today's Posts' sections, one for members posts and one for those from Suppliers' Forums. There already seems to be a move toward structuring the forums along similar lines with more clearly defined areas for suppliers and I think having 'members' and 'suppliers' running in parallel would make for a more interesting and active area for the members. Visitors would be able to see both sides clearly and I'm sure it would tempt more people to post. I'm sure not all suppliers would agree as some blatantly use their forum to have posts on as many pages as possible, but the forum is about all of the members and as a supplier I would like to see us running in tandem. As a member I would love to click 'Today's Posts' and see just posts from members, if I want to see what suppliers are saying I can go to that section voluntarily.
Cheers.
John.
I have just previewed this post before sending and have seen one potential problem that would also need addressing. If suppliers had their own 'Today's Posts' section it could lead to a 'post war' with some suppliers posting every few minutes in order to keep their name visible on the front page. It's not an insurmountable problem, one solution would be to list 'Todays Threads' on the suppliers section with a limit on how many new threads a supplier can submit each day or how many will be displayed, maybe the 5 most recent?
Cheers.
John.
I have just previewed this post before sending and have seen one potential problem that would also need addressing. If suppliers had their own 'Today's Posts' section it could lead to a 'post war' with some suppliers posting every few minutes in order to keep their name visible on the front page. It's not an insurmountable problem, one solution would be to list 'Todays Threads' on the suppliers section with a limit on how many new threads a supplier can submit each day or how many will be displayed, maybe the 5 most recent?
