I have noticed a handful of requests for new forums. I even requested one a while ago. However, upon further consideration, I think that what we're looking at here is a deeper, broader issue that indeed needs additional consideration.

MCO has many, many useful posts in a limited number of forums. The limited number of forums is helpful in its own way for simplicity and navigability, however, as others have also noted, it is cumbersome to effectively and efficiently "research" the entire board.

I think that, instead of creating more and more forums, [maybe] we should focus efforts on how to improve searchability of the forums, adding new forums only when absolutely necessary. The "snowball" illustration comes to mind. If we can figure out a way to increase searchability before the number of forums explodes, then it won't matter quite as much when a new forum is added. (To my way of thinking, anyhow.)

Anyone agree/disagree?

More importantly, does anyone have any good ideas on how to improve the searchability?

 

100%!

The beauty of a web-based forum is the opportunity to define searches - and have them executed efficiently.

I'm all for improving the search capabilities of MCO. Over to you, Mark!

 

I agree. I took me a while to figure out how to find the info I was searching for.
It would help if the search results took you directly to the posting and not to the entire page. Also if a topic expansion is needed it may be helpful if the FAQ was expanded first.

 

It would also be extremely nice to get all these picture oriented HOW-TOs in a different FEATURE all together. Not in Forums at all. Get all that good information in say PDF form so all can read and find easily.

 

Not getting to far into what changes and updates people are wanting to this web site and such, keep in mind this site was developed using Post Nuke which does have limitations to what it can do. There are several Mods for it and such, so it all depends.

Find more information on Post Nuke here:

http://www.postnuke.com

 

Searches, who needs searches? When you're online all the time you see all the posts!

 

I, for one, would love to see info gathered in a central location. A good example of this is the miata.net forum's "garage" section.

Like this!

I can never find the info I need using searches on miata.net, but can always find it in this garage section. REALLY helpful.

R

 

>>Not getting to far into what changes and updates people are wanting to this web site and such, keep in mind this site was developed using Post Nuke which does have limitations to what it can do. There are several Mods for it and such, so it all depends.
>>
>>Find more information on Post Nuke here:
>>
>>http://www.postnuke.com


Very helpful to know!! I'll be checking out Post Nuke very closely for other reasons, too.