Hello everybody!
Quote GMTonyKosten: "So we will need to address the question 'how can we make it easier to find that information?'
Although I have been loathe to do this, I am beginning to think that we might need to increase the number of sections, mostly by further sub-dividing the current ones. It might also be possible to add tags, or use ECO codes, but implementing this would be problematic.
On a slightly technical note I would also like to move to a faster, more secure (and unfortunately more expensive!) server with more bandwidth." - End Quote
Tony, I guess the tags you've mentioned are something like key words!? If there isn't a software internal possibility to tag a thread with keywords, anybody starting a new thread might give one or two
reasonable key words in the thread's header (Stefan's suggestion about ECO codes has probably the same intention).
It would be in the "thread starter's" own interest to make the keywords as reasonable as possible, as that would increase the likelihood for that thread to be found and / or identified (and consequently commented).
The ECO code has the advantage that it is available to everybody who has internet access, but, as mentioned at different places, the whole system is dated. So another possibility were to use the taxonomy developed inside ChessPublishing - quite general ("1.d4 d5"), more detailed ("QGA"), or highly detailed ("QGA/2"). (Of course, as we don't want to exclude non-members from the forum, they would need a free access link somewhere to this taxonomy, which shouldn't take very long to develop (just copying it from the pdf-books.)
Concerning books, the key words might be author, title, maybe year of publication. Again: The better the key words are (spelling, completeness), the higher the likelihood of being found.
I don't know if there's a possibility to give different priority levels to threads. If there is, threads with a very specific topic (e.g. "QGA/2") could get a higher priority than more generall topics ("Kings Indian") and those a higher priority than totally generell topics (I like GabrielGale's wording, so Quote: "I don't know whether to play the Caro, Sicilian, Petroff, become a Catholic, or flagellate myself with a length of knotted rope. Which is best?" - End Quote)
- they might be higher in the list of threads, they might remain longer in the system (btw, after how many years will a thread be deleted?), they might be highlighted the one or the other way.
The priority status might be awarded by the moderators which shouldn't be too much work (according to my (limited)observation so far, there aren't very many new threads per day), and it would definitely be enough to do that once a day. The rules for them would be quite simple and no subject of discussion: Something like "QGA/2" would have priority A, "QGA" priority B, "1.d4 d5" priority C, no keyword at all priority D (or ZZZ). A combination of keywords might also lower the priority, e.g. "QGA/2, QGA3" would end up with priority B - a reason to select exactly one detailed key word.
To avoid the hijacking of "good" keywords, the moderators might be entitled to simply remove them from a thread, if they don't match the thread's content - no keyword at all, consequently priority D.
So the serious users of the forum would get a tool for improving it's self-organisation, whose results might also attract the "selctionistas'" (I cannot really believe that is their "official term"?) attention who might make better use of it by checking and maybe using some of the analysises provided in the forum.
If all that would work (well, maybe I'm sometimes a little naive concerning both technical possibilities und human behaviour

), the number of sections might remain the same, which might also decrease the need for a new server - (no new server --> no additional costs --> no horrible blinking adds

). Coming back to the quote from the beginning, I can't evaluate the security of the existing server, but I don't see a speed problem in the forum.
Best regards,
Zwischenzugzwang