One of the things I'm trying to do with DU4 is to make the forums outside of the big "main" forums more noticeable. We have a lot of forums on DU, and a lot of them are underused. So part of the plan is to retire and/or consolidate some of the lesser used forums.

But I've also tried to find ways to put more of an emphasis on forums which aren't GD, LBN, or the Lounge.

There are now just five categories that all forums fit under (plus Help & Search, which is slightly different). They are: Issue Forums, Culture Forums, Alliance Forums, Region Forums, and Support Forums. The pages for those categories are now ordered by last thread instead of alphabetically, so you can see at a glance which forums have recent activity.

There are also new sections on the home page that put more of an emphasis on the categories, showing the most recent threads in each category and the forum they're in.

There is also a new "Forum Spotlight" section at the top-right of the Latest page which highlights an active smaller forum and changes every 24 hours (actually it might be 12 hours, I'll have to check).

My hope is that it will be easier to find and make use of active forums which aren't just the few "main" forums. My recommendation would be to post anything that you would have previously posted in Editorials in one of the other forums which is appropriate to its topic, and if you have topics that you are particularly interested in, subscribe to those forums.

(But I will also add that I'm quite open-minded about how this is all going to shake out, so while Editorials & Other Articles is currently on the list to be retired, we'll see how it goes.)

Editorials and Other Articles fills an important category. This is for outside written material that doesn't fit LBN, that one wants to post for Everyone, to get people's wisdom, feedback, and insight.

General Discussion doesn't fit, as that moves so quickly, and is not strictly for outside material.

Having to silo an article means it is by definition not for everyone.

I think of it as a newspaper. LBN is for the top of page one. Editorials and Other Articles is for interesting material that is on the bottom of page one, and the next few pages. It wouldn't fit to put those articles in other sections -- Sports, Style, Metro, etc.

I guess I'm of two minds on this. I appreciate the function of the forum. But on DU4 I've tried to feature the Topic Forums more and make it easier to find interesting stuff in those forums. I worry that the more "general" forums we have on DU, the more people have an incentive to stay away from the Topic Forums.

On DU4 there's no real reason why an OP in Editorials & Other Articles should get any more or less interest than an OP in a Topic Forum. No matter which forum you post it in, it goes onto the Latest Discussions page like everything else, and gets its chance to be seen there. If a post is of particular interest, DU4 has a new feature which kicks threads back up to the top of the Latest page when they get 25 replies (or 50, 75, etc.)

There are also additional features on DU4 which are designed to feature OPs from Topic Forums. On the Latest page there is the new "Forum Spotlight" section, and there are new sections on the home page for them as well.

But setting that aside, I do think that while it's really obvious where some OPs should go (for example, if an editorial is about the environment, or about health), for other topics it's not obvious enough. Say you have an editorial about Ron DeSantis's crappy poll numbers. If you don't want to post it in GD, is there an obvious Topic Forum for it? If not, that might suggest we should repurpose some Topic Forums in order to provide a better home for certain subjects.

FWIW, reorganizing the Topic Forums is the final part of the DU4 project and while I have ideas about it I'm definitely interested in getting input on what we should or shouldn't do when it comes to adding, changing, or retiring Topic Forums.

Are we chopped liver?

bewilderedly,
Bright

"On DU4 there's no real reason why an OP in Editorials & Other Articles should get any more or less interest than an OP in a Topic Forum."

Yes, but that's now the only place a thread in Editorials is going to get seen. The linked articles there are often longer than in GD, and I (and I suspect others) visit it less often, but when I know I've got time to read longer articles. So a place in the Latest Discussions list is only good for very recently-posted threads. Editorials have sticking power, while GD races by (miss a day, and you're doing a lot of searching, among a lot of duplicate or uninformative thread titles, to see if someone posted something good).

If Editorials is not in any Topic Forum at all, as at present, it's going to get less interest than those than have been placed in a topic. Pperhaps the same goes for Video & Multimedia, though I confess I never visit there to browse; but at least it has "Latest Videos" under "Navigate". Couldn't each of them be given a place in "Issue Forums"? I understand you don't want them in the left-hand column.

I probably should have put it in "Retired Forums" for now instead of leaving it in Issue Forums. The same goes for Video & Multimedia which is scheduled for retirement on DU4.

Simply put, I'm trying to encourage people to use the Topic Forums. Currently there's less of an incentive to post an op-ed in a Topic Forum when you can post it in Editorials which is listed as a "top-level" forum and therefore gets more views. I believe Editorials to be redundant with most of the forums on DU.

But, given that there's been some pushback to this plan, I'm open to changing my mind, and I'm definitely down to keep discussing this until we can come up with a good solution.

I still don't believe there will be any need for Video & Multimedia on DU4 (because of the new Latest Videos page). But I can see the value in having a place where you can browse through longer-form articles on any subject which stick around a bit longer than they would in GD, without having to hunt around each Topic Forums.

I'm just not sure that having a separate forum for it is necessary. But there may be other ways. Just out of interest, have you tried going to the Latest Discussions page and changing the "Category" in the filter bar to "Issue Forums"? I'm curious to know if that gives you anything close to what you are looking for. If not, I'd be interested to know what you think is missing.

And I've had to hunt for Retired Forums (by looking at my subscription to the moribund "World Forum&quot , but that's fair enough.

Yes, I guess using "Issue Forums" (and changing "Started within" to more than the default one day) might work - I'll see how that goes.

It’s categorized as an Issue Forum but it is not currently in the list of Issue Forums. If you go it on DU3 and change the url to say du4 instead of www, you’ll see the DU4 version of the forum. But you’re right, it’s not currently listed.

FWIW the categorization and final listing of forums on DU4 is not set in stone — that’s one of the last things to do before the full launch. So there’s plenty of time to figure this out. What you’re seeing now in the listings is not necessarily the way it’s going to end up. So yeah please feel free to keep giving me your input on this stuff.

E&OA is, IMO, a vital forum. One, it allows for longer articles and more specific situations, which are often overlooked elsewhere. Two, it allows important information to not get completely buried in GD. And, three, it usually attracts people who actually read the article and not just the title or synopsis, which leads to much better and, often, more in-depth conversations.

I hope you reconsider.

(As a side note, I am not liking the new video format because it crams ALL videos into one place, and, like the above, mixes in fun and frivolous with serious and it can prevent finding some of the more useful videos about recent events and news under a deluge of fun videos.)

You can use the filter bar at the top of the Latest Videos page to change the "Relevance" to "Political" and that will get rid of the frivolous stuff (no more videos from the Lounge, Pets, etc. etc.).

I post there a fair bit, too.

I'd really miss it if it were deprecated.

wistfully,
Bright