* Is it time to split the General Forum?

[tatewise]

Lorna, I don't see why the proposed subforums will be significantly better than the current forums at keeping those 'techie' importing postings away from newcomers.

We already have an Importing and Exporting forum in which all the 'techie' discussion for import problems should be kept out of the General Usage forum. So how does the proposed Importing from other products forum improve that much?

[LornaCraig]

My emphasis was on the fact that we should be stricter about directing or moving some posts to the Importing forum. Discussions about the first two categories of question I mentioned are sometimes carried out in the General Usage forum. Topics like lumped vs split sources, or converting from one to the other, or ‘tweaking’ source templates to reproduce the same footnotes as another product, are not questions important to a new user who is starting with FH as their first genealogy program. Obviously the lumped/split issues does have some general interest but a brand new user is likely to simply adopt the Essentials collection of templates and use them as intended by CP.

An example of the third category of questions I mentioned (ones which arise after the import has been done) is this one: Two different Death tags: TMG import issue? (21863) It was posted in the General Usage forum and you dealt with it there, but I would have moved it to Importing. Even the topic title indicates that it's an importing issue.

[tatewise]

I accept responsibility for the posting you mentioned which should have been moved and I can do that now.

So we seem to be agreeing that the new forum structure won't make much difference unless we enforce stricter rules for moving postings to their ideal forum.

[ColeValleyGirl]

I accept responsibility for the posting you mentioned which should have been moved and I can do that now.

So we seem to be agreeing that the new forum structure won't make much difference unless we enforce stricter rules for moving postings to their ideal forum.

Stating the obvious, surely, Mike?

[LornaCraig]

So we seem to be agreeing that the new forum structure won't make much difference unless we enforce stricter rules for moving postings to their ideal forum.

Yes, but with particular emphasis on moving posts to the Importing forum if they are unlikely to impinge on new or existing users who are not migrants from other software. There will inevitably be some topics which potentially fit into more than one forum (hence the difficulty in deciding how many sub-forums to have) but my feeling is that a disproportionately large number of the 'technical' discussions arise in connection with Importing.

I may be wrong. We won't know unless we try.

[MB@RE]

I'm happy enough to scroll through the Active Forum Topics on the Home Page. I wouldn't want to see that changed.

I just stop reading those items which I consider too technical.
No great problem.

[laz_gen]

A lot of the discussion in this thread seems to be about devising an approach where new FH users can find the help they need without necessarily having the product knowledge to correctly define their question using FH terminology. I am only a few years into my use of FH and can remember how daunting it was trying to accuratley describe my problem in FH terms.

Rather than expect newcomers to post their question to a General Forum section where the current list of "general" questions may still be too complicated for them, why not create a distinct "Newcomers" forum section where nobody should feel unsure about asking the most simple of questions.

[ColeValleyGirl]

why not create a distinct "Newcomers" forum section where nobody should feel unsure about asking the most simple of questions.

That ought to describe every forum section.

[laz_gen]

That ought to describe every forum section.

I agree the goal of the forum should be to make itself friendly and welcoming to new forum and new FH users but that may not be apparent from the outside, so to speak.

A sub-forum labelled as Newcomers would perhaps show that sentiment up front.

[mezentia]

I had no idea when I posted my original suggestion that it would spark such a lengthy and interetsing debate.