This Forum is cluttered.

[s528]

Please not to turn this into some heated debates, but there are way too many sub-forums that can be consolidated. One quick example is FDA regulations, Legislation, law and enews, would be much easier on the eye to just put into one forum. Otherwise you can make a sub-forum for every flavor.

With that said, thanks for making it happen.

 

[DreamWithin]

Many forums have already been archived and consolidated over the last couple years, but new ones have also been added (a smaller number, though). Re-organization/consolidation is a topic that does come up once in a while and I'm sure there will be some more down the road . . . as you can probably see, it won't be a small task ;-)

 

[Rickajho]

Considering how large this place is, how many topics are covered here, and it running around 2.5 million posts there is only so much that will keep that organized to any given persons satisfaction.

 

[s528]

Yea I noticed my posts are on page 3 in one hour and that is indeed some heavy traffic.

 

[classwife]

There are currently 3371 users online.
Threads
497,743
Posts
13,291,633

Members
219,177


And it's a huge forum

 

[luke213]

My biggest complaint if I'm honest is the way threads drift. A thread starts on topic then before long it's a gab fest and the relevant info is lost to the clutter rather than organized by thread topic. I'm not knocking the community element but it's tough to research a topic with the way it's moderated and setup. That said this group of people is a mix of tech savvy and not so some of the common forum function seems to be often misunderstood as well.

Either way overall I'm happy with the site but I do get tired of reading 50 pages of howdy to find what I'm trying to find.

Take care

Luke

Sent from my XT875 using Tapatalk

 

[olderthandirt]

luke you are so completely right on the mark with your observation of thread drift.

It can be immensely annoying when trying to find specific answers to specific questions.

But....

When the overall feel of the community here is taken into account it's just a fact of ECF life that has to be accepted.
The only way to change "thread drift" would be to bring in waaaay to much moderation. And we dern sure don't want that?

Annoying sure, but we do have fun while at it! (-;

ETA: FWIW, I've found any answer I may be after is usually in the first 30 or so posts. If not I either start reading another thread in my search for truth or just join in with the howdies (-:

 

[icemanistheking]

My biggest complaint if I'm honest is the way threads drift. A thread starts on topic then before long it's a gab fest and the relevant info is lost to the clutter rather than organized by thread topic. I'm not knocking the community element but it's tough to research a topic with the way it's moderated and setup. That said this group of people is a mix of tech savvy and not so some of the common forum function seems to be often misunderstood as well.

Either way overall I'm happy with the site but I do get tired of reading 50 pages of howdy to find what I'm trying to find.

Take care

Luke

Sent from my XT875 using Tapatalk

You also gotta remember that once you have been in the game for a while, you still enjoy coming to the forums and talking to people, but it gets old talking about nothing but mods and vaping sometimes. I understand the frustration when you are trying to find answers to questions, but you should be able to refine your search to pretty much only show what you need (for example, show all posts containing the word "####"). I think threads derailing into conversation is indicative of an active community.

 

[icemanistheking]

Considering how large this place is, how many topics are covered here, and it running around 2.5 million posts there is only so much that will keep that organized to any given persons satisfaction.

Getting rid of subforums that haven't been posted in for years is a good start >_>

 

[luke213]

Well it's just part of how a forum is, it doesn't always take heavy handed moderation to keep things on track but it does depend. I've been a admin and mod for several forums over the years and one I'm on allot these days has the least moderation but the best organization. But it does depend allot on the group of users their interest and the topic at hand. I'd say the off topic section is where those threads should live but that's my 2 cents and worth what you paid for it

Usually I don't have much of an issue finding things I can narrow it down via a Google search of the domain with wildcards and phrases but when I'm on Tapatalk I'm stuck with the search there which isn't nearly as good it will get me a thread but not a post which makes it much slower to track information.

Again just an opinion from a frequent user of forums.

Take care

Luke

Sent from my XT875 using Tapatalk

 

[s528]

Well I didn't think my post would get this much constructive feedback and feared it would veer a different direction which says a lot about the type of folks here, glad we can have this discussion without upsetting anyone. At the least some of the concerns can be looked into, if nothing else comes out of it.

 

[s528]

Under the supplier section you have 80 sub-forums one for each supplier on the front page, these can all go into one folder and from there one can choose the supplier of choice, no reason to put 80 sub-forums on the first page and this is without touching other topics, huge mess in my own opinion and can be easily fixed simply by putting into one folder named suppliers and from there everything remains the same, without consolidation, but again no need to flash 80+ suppliers on the front page. Fixing the supplier section alone will have a great impact on the over all lay out and a much better user interface in terms of forums and lay outs. I think there are 150 sub-forums on the first page, no need.

 

[tiburonfirst]

hmmm, not so sure the vendors would approve their fees are, after all, the main source of funds to keep this forum running, i'm pretty sure.
now if the majority of members would become supporting members it would be a different story!

 

[retired1]

Doesn't matter what we do to organize and pretty things up, there will always be some who think there are too many forums and it's too hard to navigate.

We do have some plans for this, but it's not going to happen overnight. Nor are we going to take our suppliers and shove them to an out of the way corner. That just will not happen.

 

[s528]

I spoke too soon.

Partner, I seen site feedback so I gave site feedback. That's great your looking into something, as most users will wiz by all these vendors to reach their target forum, missing everything in site. Or, they will never go down that far to being with unless wanting to post.

When making that folder suggestion my intent was not to shove them somewhere and had no idea financial interests played a role in this layout, Ive been to many large scale forums with paid vendors that max out at 30 sub forums, so seeing a page with a 150 sub forums is not the norm.

 

[retired1]

ECF has more like 400+ forums off the home page. Yes, we're huge.

 

[classwife]

Under the supplier section you have 80 sub-forums one for each supplier on the front page, these can all go into one folder and from there one can choose the supplier of choice, no reason to put 80 sub-forums on the first page and this is without touching other topics, huge mess in my own opinion and can be easily fixed simply by putting into one folder named suppliers and from there everything remains the same, without consolidation, but again no need to flash 80+ suppliers on the front page. Fixing the supplier section alone will have a great impact on the over all lay out and a much better user interface in terms of forums and lay outs. I think there are 150 sub-forums on the first page, no need.

lol...along with those 80 Forum Suppliers...
There are over 500 Registered Suppliers that are here :
E Cigarette Suppliers Forum

And they would love to all be listed on the front page


I think once you get used to the enormity of ECF and what it encompasses, you'll find it's pretty well organized




Did you know that you can collapse any of the forums ?
At the top of each one on the right is a ^
Using that will collapse it and you won't be bothered with it taking up space
Kind of a personal customization of how your front page looks.

 

[Robino1]

lol...along with those 80 Forum Suppliers...
There are over 500 Registered Suppliers that are here :
E Cigarette Suppliers Forum

And they would love to all be listed on the front page


I think once you get used to the enormity of ECF and what it encompasses, you'll find it's pretty well organized




Did you know that you can collapse any of the forums ?
At the top of each one on the right is a ^
Using that will collapse it and you won't be bothered with it taking up space
Kind of a personal customization of how your front page looks.

Huh? I didn't know that! Well I'll be.....


ETA Well that was fun! And here I was always scrolling to the bottom to look at the stats..... My finger was getting tired from rolling the wheel on the mouse

 

[rolygate]

There are about 30,000 posts a day, and so many hundreds of forums that nobody knows how many (the forum list in admin cp is the page that goes on for ever, you can try and count them up but you always fall asleep or lose count before you get to the end or the computer crashes). Cloudflare the giant global CDN cannot serve our content fast enough and gets huge (terrible, crippling) lags. We close 40 or 50 forums a year and archive some of them. We are just about to open a half dozen more.

Nobody knows the solution as it's only going to get bigger. Soon we will need guides and sherpas to help people find their way out. We've tried closing threads that don't see any action for 6 months, maybe it needs to be 3 days. We gave up asking people to try and stay on topic around 7 years ago, it didn't work - the best way to view this forum is a social forum where the first post is about some kind of vaping thing but after that it can be tennis, TV shows or the Nics game. Search doesn't work here unless you are after golf scores and suchlike.

[added] Someone mentioned the Movable Forums. These are forums that you find once and can never find again. They move around according to unknown parameters, it's a software feature, kind of like the easter egg thing in some apps. It's just part of the fun. Also there is the Random Permissions feature: this is where someone's forum access changes to make something impossible that was previously OK. There is no logic to it all, it's as if someone gave a 3-year-old admin access and they hit a few buttons. Clearing up after that is like clearing up after a party of 3yo's took over your house.

Just try and go with the flow otherwise you'll go mad like the first 4 forum managers did. One is in Berlin Hospital for the Mentally Deranged (don't ask), one took up long range trucking to avoid ever seeing the internet again, one disappeared without trace and is assumed to have jumped off a bridge, and one is in Broadmoor Institute for the Criminally Insane but escapes regularly by convincing people he is a psychologist - he is very plausible (as he is intimately acquainted with lunacy). You can meet him in London and chat before the van with a team of large men in white coats with syringes come to get him. He seems fairly normal considering.

Luckily I was crazy before I got here otherwise they'd be pumping me full of lithium down at the basket-weaving factory now. When they tell me the site has a 5-minute lag, we just got hacked, the front page is displaying arabic propaganda for some mad mullah, half the staff resigned, and we are changing over to phpBB3 next week, I just giggle, change channels and sink another Calvados.

C'est la vie baby!

 

[Robino1]

There are about 30,000 posts a day, and so many hundreds of forums that nobody knows how many (the forum list in admin cp is the page that goes on for ever, you can try and count them up but you always fall asleep or lose count before you get to the end or the computer crashes). Cloudflare the giant global CDN cannot serve our content fast enough and gets huge (terrible, crippling) lags. We close 40 or 50 forums a year and archive some of them. We are just about to open a half dozen more.

Nobody knows the solution as it's only going to get bigger. Soon we will need guides and sherpas to help people find their way out. We've tried closing threads that don't see any action for 6 months, maybe it needs to be 3 days. We gave up asking people to try and stay on topic around 7 years ago, it didn't work - the best way to view this forum is a social forum where the first post is about some kind of vaping thing but after that it can be tennis, TV shows or the Nics game. Search doesn't work here unless you are after golf scores and suchlike.

Just try and go with the flow otherwise you'll go mad like the first 4 forum managers did. One is in Berlin Hospital for the Mentally Deranged, one took up long range trucking to avoid ever seeing the internet again, one disappeared without trace and is assumed to have jumped off a bridge, and one is in Broadmoor Institute for the Criminally Insane but escapes regularly by convincing people he is a psychologist - he is very plausible (as he is intimately acquainted with lunacy). You can meet him in London and chat before the van with a team of large men in white coats with syringes come to get him. He seems fairly normal considering.

Luckily I was crazy before I got here otherwise they'd be pumping me full of lithium down at the basket-weaving factory now. When they tell me the site has a 5-minute lag, we just got hacked, the front page is displaying arabic propaganda for some mad mullah, half the staff resigned, and we are changing over to phpBB3 next week, I just giggle, change channels and sink another Calvados.

C'est la vie baby!

Please can we have a 'Love' button

This is priceless!