Regarding this matter I think that GTPlanet would benefit from making the forum tree structure more in-depth. Here is a wall of text that explains why:
It seems like a frequent phenomena that members of GTplanet creates new forum threads for topics that are already covered elsewhere. This has some consequenses:
1. It makes the forum wild as a jungle, the discussions fragmented and it makes certain topics difficult to follow. The forum becomes less of an organized meeting place for discussions and sharings of thoughts and ideas and more of a "find-an-interesting-thread-by-chance-place-to-be"
2. As the moderators are very well aware of the above, this practise means that they get a lot of work to do when they constantly have to lock and move threads around.
3. The members, whose threads are being moved around, or locked, are getting frustrated because of it. Not that they don't realise that it's important with a clean and tidy forum, but because they're not all having master's degrees in Library and Information Science and although the forum search tool is a good tool to use, it requires quite some skill to perform a good search.
Now, one problem I have identified is that the tree structure of the forum is very shallow. We have the main categories as a first level, quite a lot of second level sub-categories and only a few selected third level sub-categories. Below those levels the tree is dead, which means that each sub-category accumulates a a lot of threads. A LOT.
Let me give an example. Say that you are looking for a thread to discuss the damage modelling of the NASCARs. So you go to Forum/Gran Turismo 5. Now you have 6644 forum threads to browse through to find a good thread to discuss the NASCAR damage modelling.
So next you perform a forum thread search: nascar damage which returns 40 threads. In this case you are lucky enough to find the thread which you believe is the proper one: The damage system in GT5. This thread is probably where the moderators would like you to post your thoughts of anything related to damage.
The problem which now arise for you, however, is that the thread contains discussions of the damage in GT5 in a much too wide perspective. You consider for a brief moment to post your thoughts in the thread, but you soon realise that out of all the members active in the thread, only a few percent are interested specifically in the NASCAR perspective. If you were to post there, your post would soon be followed by plenty of others who are discussin something completely different and your post would within a short period of time be forgotten, buried under a thick layer of more recent posts, making it virtually impossible for the few percent of the members who are also interested in NASCAR damage to even see the post you made.
This is a direct result of the forum tree structure being too shallow. It has lead to the proper forum threads not being actual thread, but rather a substitute for categories that does not exist in the tree. Instead of having a structure for this specific area of, let's say Forum/Gran Turismo 5/Specific features/The damage system -> NASCAR Damage Thread -> My NASCAR Damage Post, which would let you navigate a lot more precise, the actual structure becomes Forum/Gran Turismo 5 -> The Damage system thread -> My NASCAR Damage Post.
To give an hypothetic example with numbers here, let's say that there are 1000 posts about the damage in GT5. Of these are 500 from a general point of view, 200 are comparisons with other games, 150 are questions and answers, 100 are discussing damage for WRC cars and 50 are discussing NASCAR damage.
Now, with the actual structure of today this would mean that all 1000 posts are collected under -> The damage system thread, making every 20th post related to NASCAR. That is a lot of posts to scroll trough, just to follow a discussion.
With the more in-depth tree structure in my example above, all of the different topics would be assorted to different threads in /The damage system, and the NASCAR specific topics would be collected the one specific NASCAR thread, giving 50 posts in that thread which makes:
1. The topic easy to find
2. The topic history easy to follow
It also has the benefits of:
1. Taking away a lot of the unnessecary work-load from the moderators
2. Resulting in less frustration from users when their threads are locked/moved about.
Now, how to actually design a tree structure to suit the size and diversity of GTplanet has to be investigated more thoroughly, but it's a job that I'm convinced will have to be done sooner or later. Or else the jungle will just keep growing, the work load will keep increasing and the frustrations will keep building up as the community grows.
