I have noticed that there is a significant amount of “what do you think of this company” threads in practically all of the forums, and I personally think they can get in the way of threads containing useful information to the community as a whole.
Would it be feasible to have a subforum specifically so people can ask about peoples opinions on conditions at a particular company/depot etc?
Then within that all the threads on a specific company or depot can be tied together in one thread making it easier for people to see what the consensus is on the party in question?
I’d be more than happy to muck in and merge, split, moderate those topics in that subforum if manpower is an issue.
I hope the idea is given some thought as It should prove a useful resource for many members.
ROG:
would it be just as easy to use the search facility?
If only it was Rog!
Many people don’t have the foggiest about using the search, it really is only useful in PHPBB to “power users” who know how to properly construct search strings and filter out faux results.
For example, if someone wants to search for the agency “Driver Hire” and you put that into a PHPBB search it will come back with all posts containing those two words, which is actually a hell of a lot (I’ve just checked)
“Driver + Hire + Agency” is a little better but not foolproof.
Its not a stab at trucknet, its generally how forums are, I know Rikki is talking of moving to a full Commercial CMS soon which will be excellent and hopefully a lot better, but it still relies on people knowing how to use it, or learning how to use it, and more importantly being WILLING to use it.
I think the majority would much rather post a new topic and get an answer, than search.
However that is only my opinion and it was only a suggestion!
Scarab:
I think the majority would much rather post a new topic and get an answer, than search.
That is the whole point of a forum. You can get real time feedback. Ok i know we can sometimes refer someone back to a recent thread its not fool proof. I can use a search facility fully, not everyone can or wants to or needs to. They can get real time answers from real time people who are on here at the time.
For example a thread concerning Driver Hire a year ago might not yield much usefull information, or it may do. One thing is for sure though, if you ask a question about them now we will have newer members with some more input.
People on usenet do that a lot tell everyone to google [it] and then bemoan how it is dying !! I would imagine many of us are happy to answer the same questions, if not a look at the subject can always avert a member to browsing the post if its old hat !!
As long as it’s not about the digi card or WTD I’ll happily chip in, but 95% of the forum posts on here are about the former and they all ask the same thing and get the same answers .
I don’t know why Neil, Dave, ROG or that ‘tachograph’ geezer don’t just put a FAQ together and make it a STICKY. They could have saved themselves about 13 weeks in time from replying the same answers over and over again every time someone asks the question. It’s a non-debatable subject so a STICKY would be perfect.
