I always go to "recent topics" -- that's it!

I was the second poster who said the thing about wanting to ask sex questions sometimes--but fearing they would languish in the explicit forum, I just don't post them. Then I followed up by joking that this should be moved to feedback. I'm not really complaining--just whinge-ing, Because of course, Jeff has keep all these things in their pretty strict categories or it would be chaos and everyone would complain about that. So, large grain of salt here, for this thread.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think Jeff makes an effort to put threads in the correct forums to people can more easily search the forums. 00:13, name threads were all over the place and with all of them in Expectant Moms, which is IMO where they belong since those are the people choosing/discussing/otherwise wondering about names, people can easily search to see if a name has been discussed already. It also helps keep multiple threads from going on in different forums - there was a "What is your mortgage rate" question in Off-Topic today where there is at least one of these per week it seems in the Real Estate forum and there now have been some in the new Money forum. FWIW I always use Recent Topics so I will always see things that way, and I do report things that obviously have a more suitable forum.

No one, or at least most people do NOT use the search feature on this site but use google instead. I wanted to know about Language Star and even though I *knew* I would have much more answers if I put it on GP and just googled and asked on camps, extra activities thread - whatever... I got a few answers. Fine.

Then someone else posted on OT about the same topic LS or Hope school for an adopted chinese girl.. and it went on and on for 4 + pages on Ot.

You don't appear to be Jeff or Maria, so how on earth would you know what "no one" or "most people" do? Are you just assuming that everyone does the same things you do? I always look at Recent Topics first, and I do use the search function on the site, but I'm not self-centered enough to assume everyone else does the same.

Anonymous wrote:I use Recent Topics, so will see the thread/post no matter the forum. I like threads being moved to the correct forum; otherwise, nearly everything would be posted in Off-Topic.

+1

(I do love that this post got moved!! Ha!)

There are a number of issues to address here. I'll try to hit the highlights:

1) The suggestion that you don't want to post in a specific forum because it has low traffic is sort of a self-fulfilling prophesy. If everyone had that attitude, we would only have one forum;

2) Expecting more responses in one forum over another because that forum has more traffic is a gamble. If your post gets interest, that is probably true. But, your post also stands a higher risk of being quickly pushed to the second or third page and being buried because other posters are also posting in that forum in hope that their posts will get more responses;

3) Posters understandably view things from a very self-centric perspective. I have to look at the site with the interests of the users as a whole. What may not be understood is that sites like this have a larger number of readers than writers. More usage comes from those who simply are searching for information and may not post a single message. Having posts categorized by topic is much more convenient for them;

4) The forums with a lot of traffic also have a lot of snarky, rude, and trollish posters. Getting a large number of responses to your post is not always a good thing;

5) Forums develop personalities. If a poster is reading General Parenting and sees a large number of health-related topics, it is natural for the poster to assume that health-related topics are acceptable for the forum and post a health-related topic. This risks actual General Parenting topics being pushed into oblivion and being ignored. So, while you may view your message as a single message, I have to view it in a large context;

6) Everyone believes we should have separate forums. The debate is over where the lines are drawn (or do you all want the "nanny search" and "housekeeper available" posts in "General Parenting"?). Everyone will have their opinion over where the lines should be and I try to listen to as many opinions as possible. But, ultimately, Maria and I make the call based on our best judgements. It is unlikely that any other individual shares our views completely on this, but hopefully, most of us are in the same ballpark;

7) Regarding the explicit/non-explict topics. This is an added dimension. As most of you know, we get the vast majority of our revenue from Google Adsense (recently, we switched to Google Ad Exchange, but both services are similar). The terms of service for Adsense and Ad Exchange do not allow ads to be run on pages with explicit content. That is why the explicit forum has no advertisements. Google uses a spider that indexes content to determine if the TOS are violated and, if so, stops running ads. We cannot risk our primary source of income by allowing explicit posts in forums that are not configured for such content. If there is a consensus that these messages should not be moved to the explicit forum, I will be happy to delete them instead;

8) We don't live in a world of perfection. We will have disagreements over which forum is more appropriate for a message. Therefore, I try to be flexible. I frequently give the poster the benefit of the doubt even when my instincts suggest something different. We do not allow cross-posting, yet I will occasionally overlook cross-posting when it is obvious that a message is clearly suitable for multiple forums. I also will sometimes allow a message to run for a day or so in the wrong forum so that it can generate quick feedback to the original poster and then I'll move it.

9) Feedback on the website is always appreciated. However, such feedback should be posted in the forum titled "Website Feedback" rather than other forums which the provider of the feedback believes have more traffic. That is why this thread had been moved.