Possible Forum Changes - Please read and reply

[Bob Hubbard]

I'm toying with some changes, would like some input from the members before I do anything.

Forum Drops

1- drop Capoeira forum - would be combined with general martial arts forum

2- drop Krav Maga forum - would be combined with general martial arts forum

3- drop Muay Thai forum - would be combined with general martial arts forum

4- Combine Kung Fu / Wushu / Gongfu / Wing Chun and Taijiquan / T'ai Chi Ch'u"an / Tai Chi into 1 forum for "Chinese Martial Arts"

5- Combine Websites and The Library into 1 forum "Reference Library"


New Features

1 - More smilies : I've got like 300 I could add, any preferences on what types, etc? I don't want to go all out and that, but figure maybe we max out in the 50's.

2- USENET hookin - be able to read/post to Rec.Martial-Arts thru MT.


I'd like everyone to give some feedback over the next few weeks.

Thank you.

:asian:

 

[arnisador]

Originally posted by Kaith Rustaz
Forum Drops

All these seem reasonable to me. They could be bifurcated again if need be. It's difficult to say whether the eventual membership will remain biased towards FMA or no. There are enough Tai Chi practitioners out there to poulate a group for it, but many of them will be doing it for health and may not consider themselves martial artists per se and so may not look to a board named MartialTalk. It's hard to say.

As for moderation (mentioned in another post), I would say no. The retro-moderation capability of the moderators is plenty.

More smilies

Let's not encourage Mr. Hartman any further.

USENET hookin - be able to read/post to Rec.Martial-Arts thru MT.

My experience with this sort of thing has been fairly negative. If you were to do this I would hope that it would be contained to a single RMA forum and not be activated for all fora on MartialTalk. (Perhaps this is what you meant--a service like Google's but only for RMA.) Even still, speaking as a newsgroup reader, systems such as this tend to produce too many posts from web users with no newsgroup netiquette experience that are all too often unwanted on the newsgroup.

Providing a read-only access would expose people to the newsgroup, which would be a service, yet would force those who wanted to participate to get over the technical hurdles of setting up a newsreader and finding the group. As one who appreciates USENET, I must say that I like this filtering mechanism, as unfriendly as that may sound.

 

[Cthulhu]

All the proposed changes look alright except one.

I have serious misgivings on having an RMA 'hookup' on this board. The amount of excrement one has to wade through to find a post of any real substance is daunting. Also, I think the board is going along mighty smoothly. Introducing an element as chaotic as RMA could be disruptive at best.

I also have a personal reason: after joining this board, I swore off RMA...hopefully for good. The quality level of these boards is astronomically higher than that of RMA (I can say that, I'm majoring in astronomy ). To me, any link to RMA would be a blight upon this board.

Ahem. So I've got strong feelings on the matter. Sue me! :boing2:

Cthulhu

 

[arnisador]

Originally posted by Cthulhu
I also have a personal reason: after joining this board, I swore off RMA...hopefully for good.

After rec.martial-arts.moderated, I swore off rec.martial-arts for a long time. I only came back for some of the recent use of the "datu" title discussions. I still am subscribed to it but I mark much read.

I fundamentally agree with you--it's a cesspool out there and we needn't feel ashamed about hiding out in here where it's quiet.

 

[Cthulhu]

RMA-moderated was a good idea, and at first, it seemed to be going well. Unfortunately, the amount of overall posts dropped off quite a bit compared to when it first started. RMA would have hundreds of posts daily, while RMA-moderated would have maybe a dozen or so.

I stayed away from USENET in general for quite some time. Not long before I signed on here, I installed Agent for the express purpose of wading back into the septic tank that is RMA. Good ol' Zeeberex seemed to be gone, or at least changed his nick, as well as some of the other old losers, but many many more have taken their places. I sincerely hope nobody reads the vast majority of the RMA messages and thinks that's what the general martial arts population is like. I saw a message from Kaith mentioning this MartialTalk, and I haven't looked back.

I don't think I'll ever go back to RMA, now. That way leads to the dark side.

Cthulhu
PS To be fair, back when I was posting to RMA fairly regularly, I did meet some mighty fine people. They seem to strayed away from RMA as well.

 

[DWright]

All the changes mentioned seem reasonable. As for smilies, I like seeing how others use them, but I don't use them myself.

I know nothing about RMA, but apparently I'm not missing much.

 

[Cthulhu]

Come on...use the smilies...everybody's doing it

Join us...it's bliiiiisssssss... :boing2: (somewhat vague 'Simpsons' reference)

Sorry, feelin' goofy.

Cthulhu

 

[Dronak]

The forum changes seem OK to me. If the forums are low traffic, they can be combined. As someone else noted, they can always be split back off again into separate forums if the traffic picks up later. My main interests are kung fu and tai chi and while there would probably be advantagesto leaving them separate, I'd be OK with having them combined into one big Chinese MA forum.

As for smileys, I could care less. Many times on boards like this, I only use what gets converted when I type them in. I rarely do the point and click thing to insert a specific one. If others want some more, that's OK, but you're right that we probably don't want like 300 total choices. That many might be cute for a little while, but sooner or later you'd end up trimming the list and cutting out the ones no one ever uses.

Usenet connection -- personally I come here because it is separate from the Usenet newsgroups. A lot of times I find it hard to find anything interesting in the Usenet groups. It's a bit easier here, so I kind of like keeping it separate.

 

[GouRonin]

Whatever floats yer boat man!
:shrug:

 

[Bob Hubbard]

I'm gonna stay mostly quiet on this thread for now...I want to let you folks give as much feedback as ya want without me sticking my nose in it and such.

So far, so good. Keep it coming though.

:asian:

 

[Bob Hubbard]

The following changes have been done:

Forum Changes Completed

1- Capoeira forum droped - combined with general martial arts forum

2- Krav Maga forum droped - combined with general martial arts forum

3- Combined Kung Fu / Wushu / Gongfu / Wing Chun and Taijiquan / T'ai Chi Ch'u"an / Tai Chi into 1 forum for "Chinese Martial Arts"

4- Separated the (FMA) Modern Arnis forum from the main FMA forum.

5- Rearanges several forum locations

6- Created specific MT support and news areas.


Changes Not Done Yet
1- drop Muay Thai forum - would be combined with general martial arts forum

2- Combine Websites and The Library into 1 forum "Reference Library"

3- More smilies : I've got like 300 I could add, any preferences on what types, etc? I don't want to go all out and that, but figure maybe we max out in the 50's.


Dropped from List / No longer on the "TODO" pile

2- USENET hookin - be able to read/post to Rec.Martial-Arts thru MT.


Please, keep the suggestions coming folks. ^_^

 

[GouRonin]

I say make the changes.

 

[Jay Bell]

Kaith,

Sounds great...er...except for the wreck.martial-arts bit

 

[Bob Hubbard]

We dropped the RMA idea....too much of a PITA.

 

[Bob Hubbard]

Minor Change:

Event/Seminar forum dropped. All existing topics were moved to the forums for the arts they were promoting. Please post future event notices in the forum they are primarilly of concern to, or to the General Forum if they concern several.

Thanks!

Kaith
:asian: