talkmagic.co.uk

Not so much of a request and more of a suggestion. This place would be far easier to navigate if there were fewer forums. Is it really necessary to have five forums just for reviews? Why not have them all together in one? There are also some locked ones near the top with just a few posts each. Also the secret forums could easily be set hidden. I've always found the easiest forums to navigate are those with very few different sections. When you have so many it's difficult knowing where posts should go.

if you think this is bad... check out the magiccafe.com site!

Not all that long ago there was only one review forum, but then people said that they wanted the reviews broken down like they are now.

I think things work quite nicely as they are at the moment but I do see your point and wouldn't really want to see many more forums than we've got now.

Java wrote:This place would be far easier to navigate if there were fewer forums. Is it really necessary to have five forums just for reviews? Why not have them all together in one? There are also some locked ones near the top with just a few posts each. Also the secret forums could easily be set hidden. I've always found the easiest forums to navigate are those with very few different sections. When you have so many it's difficult knowing where posts should go.

All excellent points and ones which we bear in mind whenever requests for new forums or rooms are made. In essence, if something new is to be added then something old needs to be moved or 'lost' to keep TM as tidy as possible. The 5 rooms for Reviews are just an inheritance, the old 'Review' Section won't host any new topics, just comments added to existing Reviews and gradually those are being transferred to the appropriate one of the new three sections. Those new sections were in response to requests to have separate Reviews and make it easier to find posts or more specific areas of magic.

Certainly the restricted areas could be hidden, and in fact there are one or two areas which are already invisible in this manner. However if they all become invisible then few would know they exist and to a certain extent it's useful to show that there are things to aim for on TM. I agree that the 'Welcome' section could do with a bit of pruning and that'll be something for us to think about in the near future. At the moment we have no plans to add further rooms so TM is about as big as it's going to get for the time being.

Not fair!

I was going to suggest that the welcome, who's who and rules were put into one, titled "Talk Magic Rules, Information and Welcome.

Didn't do it in case people thought it was related to my recent post, which it isn't. I even had points about the fact there are new sections, in Reviews, Mentalism and Sin Bin, then Java comes along and suggests it before me.

Not fair!

I think the Secrets sections are GOOD to be displayed. It has more sections than many and may encourage people to post quality posts.

As I understand it, the review forums are a work in progress, in that all the reviews in the main forum are in the process of being moved across to their respective sub-forums (books, media or tricks). However, because our mods are real people with real lives outside of TM, this is going to be a lengthy process - there are well over a thousand reviews waiting to be moved. And let's face it, it's not the most rivetting of jobs! I add reviews to the appropriate index as and when they are transferred across.

As far as the rest of TM is concerned, I'm quite happy with the overall size of the forums. I think it serves most interests and don't really see a need for more forums.

I once wandered over to the Cafe and got lost for a whole week....

I for one feel that for the amount of reviews on TM, it does make sense for the different headings.

After asking a question about whether the old review section would be moved to the relevant sections, I was advised to take a look.

There is enough there to give someone a breakdown very quickly if they tried to sort through that lot!

you could technically bin all welcomes after a month...

As a step in that direction, the Trading Area is pruned on the basis that posts over 3 months will be removed so if the items are still current the thread needs to be re-posted. Once we see that items have successfully traded, we tend to remove that thread as well. Not sure if we could/should do the same with intros but it's a thought.......

I quite like having peoples' old intros there. I quite often use them, if someone who I don't really know all that well asks me a question I'll take a look at their intro to find a little about them first.

Most of what I was going to say, has already been said;
Whos Who to be moved in with Rules and Welcome.
Reviews are best split up.
Restricted areas to be hidden. (Though I do understand why the are shown, thanks to Mandrake.)

So there is no point bringing them into detail.

But do we really need a Trading Post forum? Is this for people that just want to trade rather than sell an item? If so, why can't they post it in the For Sale forum and just put that its trade only?

Lady of Mystery just reminded me. I suppose I better post in the introductions now that I am posting rather than lurking.

Trading Post was just the title we used to host the rules, regs and other stuff which wasn't actual trading. The word was chosen specifically because we had a situation a few years ago where a newcomer questioned the TM policy of not selling/buying Videos, DVDs, books and other instructional only stuff on the basis that he didn't want any money, he just wanted to 'swap' or 'trade' those sort of items. The policy applies whether money changes hands or not but we had to amend the rules to make it clearer about 'trading' and 'swapping'. There's definitely some need for tidying up and for removing some duplication. It'll be an ongoing process but we'll get there - cheers!