Forum Feedback Moving past the XYZ discussion thread

Renegade · Jul 11, 2014

Fellow members, we want to bring forth an important issue which impacts the search traffic to TE and in long term the viability of the forum. I am sure all of us want TE to do well and definitely not shut down.

Over time the trend has shifted to starting "XYZ discussion thread" on all kind of topics and items. We want the entire world of discussions to get pooled into one thread. Someone started a thread last week where he wanted it to serve as the best place in the world to discuss anything about any e-reader. How is that practical to consolidate in a thread? At the very least is should be about a specific e-reader and then too ideally about the specific question about that specific e-reader.

Bear in mind that forum threads show up in google result mostly because of the first post and the title of the thread. No search traffic -> No new members -> No fresh engagement -> No member interest -> No new content -> No search traffic. Its a death spiral which we do not want to enter and its best cured in time.

Example - http://www.techenclave.com/community/threads/bsnl-evdo-discussion-thread.112713/
Look at this thread. It has information about data cards. How to tweak the connection settings. How good is the connection in a particular city. And several such discussions about the EVDO connection. Discussion which are related only by the keyword 'BSNL EVDO'. Discussions which several of us on the forum will find useful and thousands on the search engine will too. Hardly anyone who comes to the thread would want to read each and every post to find out the posts he is looking for.

Now to find the content the best possible way is to look at the title of the thread and then the first post of the thread. So naturally google also gives it the most importance while showing results. So does the search system on TE. Its easier for everyone to find relevant content. Why do we want someone to read through tons of pages of EVDO rate plans if he wants to read about

Now that you understand the problem we are talking about, we expect two things from you to help us run TE better:

Please avoid starting threads which are generic in nature. But do start as many threads as are needed. Start a new thread if your question or discussion is not completely related to the first post of the thread.
Report such threads which are generic in nature. You can report a new thread or you can even report threads which are years old. We will then take up these threads and split them in logical new threads. If you are feeling even more generous then report specific posts which will be better served in a new thread.

This is, as you would agree, a cultural change more than anything so your involvement in helping us and educating each other will go a long way.

Onemufc · Jul 11, 2014

Good post.

Thanks for clearing this up.

However, I have multiple times searched for queries and they have got me to posts inside a huge thread. What could be the reason in that case?

mathrisk · Jul 11, 2014

Except the Game discussions forum/threads?

Renegade · Jul 11, 2014

While searching on TE it would not be as bad since there are not enough page titles competing for your search term. On google there would be hundreds and thousands of such titles from different sites. They will always get precedence over a post buried inside a long thread on TE.

Also on TE while you search for something the results show up as posts or threads. So you have the option to open each post individually which contains that word. You even have the option to search only within the thread.[DOUBLEPOST=1405060743][/DOUBLEPOST]

mathrisk said:
Except the Game discussions forum/threads?

Yes except those. They are perfect as they are since they are discussing gameplay. However if the discussion moves towards a driver or hardware or compatibility then a new thread is desirable.

cranky · Jul 11, 2014

Hi

This is a common feature for many forums, and is both a curse and a boon.

It is a curse because it is probably not possible to tag individual important posts that improve the search result ranking on Google for that particular term/hardware.

But it's also a boon because people who really need to know about a given subject will expend the needed effort (hopefully) and acquire knowledge they wouldn't have otherwise (again, hopefully).

I would think that it is probably more desirable to have a smaller number of more focused visits with longer page browse times, than dippy visitors. For example, there are people on DIYaudio.com who spend a few weeks reading one thread on one project before they begin. I know it's too much to ask of the goldfish-like attention span of the typical Indian youth (no offense to the real diligent guys) but maybe it isn't bad as you think it is.

Spoonfeeding never helped anybody, as is clear. As to the crawlers, maybe there's other SEO strategies you could think of implementing? Page headers? Tags? Would it be as simple as the section mod featuring one post/thread from that section, no matter its age, and feature it on the TE front page, forum home or even the top of the section itself, and refresh those once a week? As you know G searches regularly, and changes in content are indexed every time the bot visits old sites. This kind of a change would definitely be picked up.

kuduku · Jul 11, 2014

@Renegade very true and the example thread also needs to be cleaned up . Its very long and is really very difficult to find any useful information from it . Every new EVDO user posts his queries again which have been answered umpteen times .
all required info should be added to first post or relevant post links in first post

sabby · Jul 12, 2014

cranky said:
Hi

This is a common feature for many forums, and is both a curse and a boon.

It is a curse because it is probably not possible to tag individual important posts that improve the search result ranking on Google for that particular term/hardware.

But it's also a boon because people who really need to know about a given subject will expend the needed effort (hopefully) and acquire knowledge they wouldn't have otherwise (again, hopefully).

I would think that it is probably more desirable to have a smaller number of more focused visits with longer page browse times, than dippy visitors. For example, there are people on DIYaudio.com who spend a few weeks reading one thread on one project before they begin. I know it's too much to ask of the goldfish-like attention span of the typical Indian youth (no offense to the real diligent guys) but maybe it isn't bad as you think it is.

Spoonfeeding never helped anybody, as is clear. As to the crawlers, maybe there's other SEO strategies you could think of implementing? Page headers? Tags? Would it be as simple as the section mod featuring one post/thread from that section, no matter its age, and feature it on the TE front page, forum home or even the top of the section itself, and refresh those once a week? As you know G searches regularly, and changes in content are indexed every time the bot visits old sites. This kind of a change would definitely be picked up.

May be we can list all the threads on similar topic along the thread the user is viewing ? Additionally, users can bookmark them (via a check box, TE specific - something like wishlist with a particular topic as name) for later reading. @Renegade is something like this possible ?

Crazy_Eddy · Jul 12, 2014

^ A "Similar Threads" box shows up at the bottom of the page, although in some cases it doesn't appear to be accurate. For the second part, would "watch thread" serve a slightly similar purpose?

cranky said:
But it's also a boon because people who really need to know about a given subject will expend the needed effort (hopefully) and acquire knowledge they wouldn't have otherwise (again, hopefully).

I would think that it is probably more desirable to have a smaller number of more focused visits with longer page browse times, than dippy visitors. For example, there are people on DIYaudio.com who spend a few weeks reading one thread on one project before they begin. I know it's too much to ask of the goldfish-like attention span of the typical Indian youth (no offense to the real diligent guys) but maybe it isn't bad as you think it is.

Unfortunately everyone who finds such discussion threads - even if they are existing members just joining in the fray - do not look at these threads as a treasure-trove of information but look at it as a meeting place for experts on the subject. And when you see a bunch of smart people congregating together, the first instinct is to ask a question.

Renegade · Jul 12, 2014

cranky said:
Spoonfeeding never helped anybody, as is clear. As to the crawlers, maybe there's other SEO strategies you could think of implementing? Page headers? Tags? Would it be as simple as the section mod featuring one post/thread from that section, no matter its age, and feature it on the TE front page, forum home or even the top of the section itself, and refresh those once a week? As you know G searches regularly, and changes in content are indexed every time the bot visits old sites. This kind of a change would definitely be picked up.

I get your point but I also agree to your goldfish analogy. I myself am somewhere between the goldfish and diligent stage. A diligent person would go through all threads on the topic, no? Doesn't have to be in a single thread.

Featuring content is not really needed as we anyway submit a sitemap to google so everything gets indexed. After the recent algorithm changes at google, I am afraid there is nothing more left to be done expect putting forth quality content, categorizing it properly and then ensuring it gets (natural) backlinks from other websites. And its the content on an individual page and links to that individual page that determine how high will that page show up on a google search. There must be other parameters too but they are not openly known outside google.

Renegade · Jul 12, 2014

sabby said:
May be we can list all the threads on similar topic along the thread the user is viewing ? Additionally, users can bookmark them (via a check box, TE specific - something like wishlist with a particular topic as name) for later reading. @Renegade is something like this possible ?

Similar threads anyway show up at the end of the current thread.

As for bookmarks. We can implement a feature to bookmark a post or a thread if it is in large demand coz it will be a cost to TE.

Renegade · Jul 12, 2014

Crazy_Eddy said:
^ A "Similar Threads" box shows up at the bottom of the page, although in some cases it doesn't appear to be accurate. For the second part, would "watch thread" serve a slightly similar purpose?

Unfortunately everyone who finds such discussion threads - even if they are existing members just joining in the fray - do not look at these threads as a treasure-trove of information but look at it as a meeting place for experts on the subject. And when you see a bunch of smart people congregating together, the first instinct is to ask a question.

I think a watched thread serves the purpose to a lesser extent since you would want to watch all threads you reply in but still want to keep certain threads closer via bookmark. Having said that I would not want to introduce a feature on TE which does not have at least a 100 takers.

Yes thats the problem with long threads. People come and they just start off from scratch. Looking at their posts you can say that they have not read the past 45 pages. And in some cases even if they have, they still want to confirm.

logistopath · Jul 13, 2014

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Forum Feedback Moving past the XYZ discussion thread

Renegade

Onemufc

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mathrisk

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Renegade

cranky

kuduku

sabby

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Crazy_Eddy

Renegade

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logistopath

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