Hi all
I am the webmaster of
www.chessworld.net which has reasonably active forums. I would like to offer my insights - take them or leave them.
1) Too many forums perhaps?! Sometimes too many forums can be a bad thing - it's like lots of different pigeon holes or rooms to check. Perhaps the "Latest posts independent of forum" must be highlighted more- and in big text?! The overhead of seeing the latest posts in each individual forum is like hard work - like asking someone to open the door of 50 different rooms.
Also is there another way to group the openings - e.g. by pawn structure?!
Some of the most popular forums as far as Servers go, are just labelled "Chess" and have a mix of all chess subjects under the sun. The equivalent here would be highlighting the "Latest posts" a bit more. Maybe:-
Latest posts (all)
Latest posts in Open positions
Latest posts in Closed positions
Latest posts in Semi-open positions
Latest posts by GM's
etc
The RSS is a good innovation, but still does not give me a comfortable context
2) Posting "off-topic" becomes very easy to do - I did this in my last post, and was discouraged with the reply that it was in the wrong thread. The energy I used in posting seemed to be not appreciated. Okay, my points may have been rubbish but still.
3) I can't find where on earth I posted to anyway - I know I posted to the Nimzo indian forum about a Rest of World game position in the Queens Indian, but where was my more general post made?! This might be a side effect of too many forums. Perhaps a "My posts" would be good. Chessgames.com which has kind of forums has a thing where it shows any games which your comment had replies. This is really handy. I don't know where I posted my last post to.
I hope these points may help these forums here.
Best wishes
Tryfon