Quote:


Aren’t ALL of these topics already being more than adequately covered by the Off Topic forum?




Bob - to your point, they are being covered, and quite well. What would make the site even more useful would be:

1.) encouraging and promoting increased activity in targeted areas of interest (both for PG, and for users - hence this thread)
--> to do this, the most useful thing would be creation of new, separate forum names that have 'meaningful, descriptive titles' - reflecting the topic and the fact that the company promotes and supports this area. These should be kept to a minimum to avoid cluttering the site, as others have suggested.

2.) smart tagging that allows users to easily locate all useful posts on a particular, narrow topic
--> for example, see the attached snapshot of the "Answer" section on makeuseof.com

http://www.makeuseof.com/answers/

Notice that on their view - which encompasses "all useful things found on the Internet" - a very broad area - they don't even separate things into forums. There is only one click that allows a user to view ALL QUESTIONS asked. But, each question has been edited by moderators to ensure it reflects the content and utility of the post. For example

Quote:

How can I add words or shortcuts to my Gmail dictionary?
Asked by: Dave Bakker in the Email category.
Tagged: dictionary, email, gmail, gmail tips
5
Answers
Not yet




Look at the tags given this question - 4 particular very narrow, smart tags that index what the question is about from MULTIPLE perspectives - if a user wants to learn more about any particular topic, they simply click the tag link. A user that asks a question may not even know what tags to place on their post, and whether they will be consistent with the existing sites tags - hence the need for moderators and carefully chosen tags.

This tagging would, I think, allow as many or as few additional forums, while still allowing the increased utility for finding previously posted information about narrow topics.