talkmagic.co.uk

many forums split cards, coins, props and mentalism into different sections. Is there any reason why this is not done here? i generally find having a category to check more useful then just having to hope the right people see my post. by this i mean if you need help or ideas on a card routine it would be easier for people to find in a card section.

what do u think?

The Search Function will find the various types if you look for them. The main problem is that the more sub catagories there are, the more cluttered the forum becomes and the more difficult it is to navigate, features relating to cards may also be relevant to coins and how about routines which use cards, coins, and billets etc - it would be very difficult to decide which section those would belong to. Also, we aready have a section purely for Mentalists.

I'm not sure it will add clutter it might streamline navigation.

There is a mentalist area on here how about different areas for different styles of magic bizarre magic area, childrens entertainer area... etc etc... ok perhaps not as many as The Magic Cafe but some more?

It's been suggested before but the problem is in categorising things. To one person it's close up, to another it's parlour and to a third it's ideal for a children's show. The Mentalists Only Area here isn't just to categorise, it's to reserve an area for less restricted development and discussion on all matters mentalist in the same way the the Magicians Only Area is for development and discussion on all types of magic.

The original idea here was to reduce the categories to make it easier to navigate from the front page and the Search Function is still the best way to get to specifics. Having more categories would only make it more difficult to see what's on offer.

I find that I'd be less likely to find random threads if the categories are split up. If they were split up I'd probably only regularly check a couple (I have no active interest in cards, childrens magic, etc) but I might come across a thread I might be able to help in if it's posted in Miscellaneous

Bizarre magic fans now have their own UK forum. Perhaps they didn't think they were going to have their own thread on here so went their own way.

We often go through spells without having much in the vay of true magical posts so diluting it even further with sub categories isn't the way to go in my opinion.

You could call it diluting it or by acknowledging the diversity of styles within magic might actually invigorate the forum. Either that or they'll defect to the Cafe....

Forums are a balancing act.

From what I can tell, this forum has a healthy amount of forums for it's average amount of live topics. I think they are right not to categorise further.

The other problem is that if you add too many sub-categories, some of those categories will be barely used and will only be added for the sake of completeness and fairness. That lack of demand dictates that they are not needed.

Adding sub-categories wont invigorate the forum. Forums need to evolve as demand increases enough to make new categories viable. Empty or rarely used categories will put people off and can make the whole forum look more stagnant. Adding new categories wont offer any sort of revolutionary advertising that will suddenly make people join in quantity (except for a small amount of people who will find those categories as keywords on search engines).

I think that the balance of forums is good on this board. There are some that are ridiculously Byzantine in comparison, which makes them quite hard to navigate. And given that one green-themed place doesn't allow searches more frequently than every minute or so, this makes it very hard. We're very lucky that TM's search is not restricted like that.

I certainly don't think that more forums is the way to go, I like it the way it is. Different places do things differently, that's the beauty of variety that we can choose which we like best.