Groups suggestions

1. Perhaps there should be a minimum limit to the characaters in a post. Plenty of forums do it and it might help the chatter problem thats going on right now.

2. RULES and moderation! Seriously, this place is going to pot.

3. Maybe a complete revamp would be nice, I know Tom said something about switching to a more traditional forum set-up a while ago, but a more individual layout can be a good thing, if it is handled properly. Currently the layout isn't great, especially on the main page as the Groups list is way too long.

4. Ability to delete posts.

5. Report button in topics and posts, also for Groups as there are a lot of repeats and spam out there.

Feel free to add your own. I'll add more if I think of them later.

Maybe flood control would be nice? Even a few seconds?

I say 2 is the most important.

Ahh, I remember one I forgot now.

6. Auto-merge on very recent posts. Say, within a day?

This is a layout I am considering

Sweet.

brilliant

I don't like the colours :P

The colours are a little random placed together. Maybe a little more of a matching pallet would go down well with some nice borders between? :P

yeah. black text on dark blue and dark purple? ya want us to go blind, Tom? :)

You are right I will change the purple to pink

yes, let's go all pink on this site. I'm tired of this faded blue look. pink 'n' green. It will remind me of my kid's Dora t-shirt. :)

I just have to say ewwww. Not to the layout of the groups section, I think that looks good, it's the pink I have a problem with. If it's not the right shade of pink it can turn out ghastly, but that's just my opinion.

I'm also extra senstive to certain colours so there's a pretty good chance no matter what colours you choose I'll probably have a problem with it, unless they are muted (strong colours hurt). Such a fussy bugger ;)

Oh and I don't know if this would help you or not, you might already know about it, but it's a site to help with colour schemes www.hypergurl.com/colormatch.php it might help.

Black and white may prove to be too strong a contrast and be sore on the eyes. A good colour scheme can be the deciding factor on whether a person decides to investigate the site further or not. ;)

True.

guys, i really doubt those are the colours he'll use. its just colors of his layout schematic drawing.

just wanted to make sure people understood that. :)

Well, I'm not really that good at website design, or picking colors, so I'm kinda just a yesman. lol.

If I had it my way, Listal would be all red and black! LOL.

The most important change is to put My Groups at the top of the page. I hate having to scroll down to get to what I actually want to read (i.e., this group).

Maybe also having a dropdown link to My Groups under the Groups tab as with the My Stuff menu would be nice.

That's true, Voxy, but he has a point. I think my groups should be at the top.

The slow decent of the Groups into an eternal flame war has begun. There is just way too much hostility flying about now with no intervention. If nothing is done soon then it'll just keep going until that is the only thing out there (believe it or not there are still a couple of recent threads intact).

Tom, am I right in guessing you haven't handled a forum before? I think you need to up it on your list of priorities because I thought you wanted the site to have a good "social side" to it? Right now that is pretty much going to pot.

I'm adding more recommendations here:

A new section for general chatter and the ability to "ignore" a thread if you don't want it appearing on the main Groups page (the new posts bit).

The FAQ should actually be linked to somewhere.

My main concern is still rules and cleaning up or splitting threads where it has become over run with spam or a side conversation. Also the merging of threads would be nice as I fear we haven't seen the last of the useless Naruto chatter threads. Merging of Groups would also be nice because Fruits Basket and Naruto don't need whole groups for one thread whilst there is a Manga and Comics (or Anime Fans) group. (And on that note "mountain dew pepsi, etc" should not be a Group in its own right, that one topic should be placed in the Food & Cooking group.)

The forum here could really be so much better...

I have run or co run a number of forums in the past, I just generally have a more liberal attitude on what's allowed.

Anyway I do think as traffic is picking up a little bit it's time for more organisation, I will implement the layout I have posted before soon.

Official forums : More stict rules on allowed content
User created groups : Less strict rules
Random chat group (part of official forums) : Less strict rules

The official groups will initially be :

General discussion : General discussions not relating to movies/games/music/tv/books
Random chat : Less serious discussion about anything
Movies
TV
Music
Games
Books
Site feedback


Im not sure about the idea of merging groups as it goes against the idea of user created groups, eventually the groups creator will be able to moderate the group and make the group private.


I want to merge the FAQ into one page and link to it as part of a help section at the bottom of the page (e.g. next to 'About listal')

I don't think that will solve anything. People like Minni and Ino will continue to run around, creating threads every 4 seconds. This will give them MORE freedom.

How about making all user created groups private?

Also how about some kind of filter on what appears on the home page - maybe only stuff from groups which have mods and fairly strict rules.

Currently the home pages has the following threads:

*New group threads
*Fat Loss Secrets - Fat Burning Diet - Burn the Fat Feed the
*The truth about BFFM revealed...
*PIEEEEEEEEEEEEE!
*Too many donuts
*hiiiiiiiiiii
*heyy..
*Some cool tags & lists for Movies
*Suggestion: GoTo Item after Adding
*nameless group

Most of these don't inspire me to click on them and could give the impression that listal is full of pointless chat and spammers - which isn't going to encourage people to sign up.

The groups were originally private (at least didn't show up on the main page) but were pretty dead because no one is going to click on 100 groups to see if there are any active conversations.

I don't think that will solve anything. People like Minni and Ino will continue to run around, creating threads every 4 seconds. This will give them MORE freedom.

These threads will be restricted to user groups or the random chat group, threads like this posted in other areas will be moved.

"The groups were originally private (at least didn't show up on the main page) but were pretty dead because no one is going to click on 100 groups to see if there are any active conversations"

Perhaps, being able to search groups by keyword, rather than needing to scroll through them, would help with that? Off the top of my head, I can't remember if we can do this - so ignore me if it has been done.



As for the boards themselves, I don't think all that much needs to be done with them. I think the biggest improvement would be to close off user-created groups, as that would stop me seeing many of the inane threads in the main list. Others have called for some sort of moderation, but I'm not so sure that would work out (many forums I've been on that have been moderated have often been fairly arbitary, and caused many arguments over the moderation itself. It is, I think, a difficult thing to get right), or that it's really needed. I don't see any real malevolence in the threads, just annoyance at some of the more inane, pointless threads - a problem which would be reduced by closing off the user-created groups. Of course, these things often seem worse than they really are, if you're 'in the thick of it', but some of the forums I've been on would put the general irritation in some of our threads in perspective!

I do think a minimum character limit would be helpful, as it'll cut out the pointless "OK!" posts (of which there are quite a few, that I've noticed).

Tom, please make it stop:

www.listal.com/groups/search/?query=naruto
www.listal.com/groups/search/?query=naryto

It wouldn't be as bad if it were all in the one Group, but right now it is just making a complete mess of other groups.

*bangs head off wall*

This is why I'd like to see the user-created groups closed off. I've been seeing quite a few threads which I'm simply not interested in, and would prefer not to. It isn't necessarily the threads themselves I object to - everyone likes different things, and shouldn't be forced not to post about them just because some others don't like those things - but the fact I have to keep seeing them listed, when I have no interest in them. This would largely be solved by closing off the user-created groups, I feel. Of course, there are other threads, which are just inane and pointless, too. I'd like not to be able to see those too - so perhaps an 'ignore' button for each thread, to hide the crap you don't want to see?