Expatriate forum at bottom of main menu

Hi El,

Unfortunately there's no simple solution to the ongoing problem of postings that should be to national forums being made to the global forums where they're not likely to be responded to. That was why the forum order was restructured in the first place.

While restructuring the order and moving the global forums to the bottom of the page certainly has resolved the problem of posting to the wrong forums, it has just created another problem; that being the lack of use of ALL of the global forums.

I have been deeply involved in this restructuring issue from the outset, made numerous very logical and helpful suggestions, that really went nowhere unfortunately.

Until such time as we have a main forum page that shows ALL of the forum CATEGORIES instead of the individual countries the problem will persist. It has always been my opinion that it is unnecessary to list each individual nation if you show geographical areas in the main page, and only show the country list once you click on the CATEGORY. Sadly that logic seems to have gone nowhere and we've got what we've got... half a fix.

Cheers,
James

I like them at the bottom.
When they were at the top, loads of people simply posted in them instead of looking for the right places, so piles of posts were lost in time or had to be moved.
The two are less popular than before, but they were popular for the wrong reasons.

I am with Fred on this one.

Thanks for your responses everyone.
I see the issue is more involved than I initially considered.

El_Jost wrote:

Thanks for your responses everyone.
I see the issue is more involved than I initially considered.

Ideas and thoughts are always a good idea - it provokes ideas and/or a review of a situation.

If both having them before and after the country sub-forums has certain disadvantages, we might try a middle way: Placing them side by side, as a section for "Global Discussions" and "Country Sub-Forums"! A short sentence explaining which topic belongs where could be added.

Leave them as they are and where they are. New members will then first get used to using the country forum section before exploring the sites at the bottom of the page.

I still can't understand why when they're already separated into geographical areas we absolutely need to show the name and flag icon for each of the national forums. Wouldn't it be a lot more logical to change the title from "Living in (geographical region)" to "European Forums, North American Forums, etc." and clicking on any one of those titles would open a drop-down window to show the various national forums in that region???

That way we could fit ALL of the forums onto a conventional computer monitor or other device without the necessity of scrolling down the page to find what's at the bottom. This was always the problem with the old layout when the global forums were at the top of the list. Members simply stopped at the very first thing they found that looked even remotely like it would serve their purposes and posted to the Expatriate Forum, Expat Cafe, etc., with country specific questions that should have gone into national forums instead. Now it's just the other way around and the global forums are all but dead.

I understand that the various forum pages are so long in order to provide maximum advertising space. I also understand that revenue is very important. That said, exactly how much advertising revenue would be lost by shortening the initial page to a size that would fit a conventional screen without scrolling, while leaving all the other forum pages their present length? Compare that loss of revenue with the confusion, problems and complexity that will potentially drive members away before they are even around long enough to understand all the benefits that EB has to offer them. Each member means money in the bank, each one who walks means a loss of money.

We tried a fix, that simply didn't work... what's the harm in admitting that it didn't? I was always taught that sometimes the ONLY sensible thing to do when you make a mistake is simply bite the bullet and say, "Oops I goofed," and then try something else.

We swapped one problem for another and that's all that was accomplished. What we need is a fix that will not just create another problem. The only way we will get ALL of the forums to be active is for ALL of the forums to be seen at the same time on a single screen. How can we do that with a complete list of hundreds of national forums being shown? We have drop-down windows for almost everything else on the blog, why not a drop-down for the forums in each geographical area?

Like the old saying goes... If you only do what you've always done, you'll only get what you've already got!!! Time to think outside the box and take a different approach to the problem.

beppi wrote:

If both having them before and after the country sub-forums has certain disadvantages, .

My brain is half working here, so I might well be spouting rubbish ..but how about....

Leave them where they are
Add links within each section - you click on 'Asia", find all the countries + the global forums.
Does Fred strike again, or am I talking rubbish?

Looks pretty good to me, and I'm a fussy old fart!!! 

A fussy old fart likes it, but how about the owners?
It might solve the problems.

James wrote:

I still can't understand why when they're already separated into geographical areas we absolutely need to show the name and flag icon for each of the national forums. Wouldn't it be a lot more logical to change the title from "Living in (geographical region)" to "European Forums, North American Forums, etc." and clicking on any one of those titles would open a drop-down window to show the various national forums in that region???

This is exactly what I get when I access the forum(s) on my mobile phone: A list of continents, clicking (or, rather, fingerprinting) on one opens the list of country forums within it. On the (bigger) computer screen at home, however, I see all country subforums immediately.

We'll have to wait and see Fred! Maybe you'll impress Julien as much as you impressed me.