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Created by Ken McLeod Apr 6, 2009 at 11:46am. Last updated by Ann Braun Aug 9.
Created by Ken McLeod Apr 26, 2008 at 8:29am. Last updated by Ann Braun Aug 21.
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© 2009 Created by Ken McLeod on Ning. Create Your Own Social Network
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Thank you for your clarifications, too.
The difference between Other Questions and Unclassified is that the questions filed under "Other" are ones that didn't seem to fit into any of the present categories, while "uncategorized" refers to questions that haven't been classified yet.
When someone starts a new discussion topic they will be able to select the category that they feel best fits their question. If people forget to do this, site administrators can go back and do the classification. As time goes on, adjustments to the classification may need to be made ( e.g. addition new categories, refinement/splitting of existing categories -- for example, it could make sense to split the Exploration of Texts category into three right now -- one for Longchenpa/30 Pieces of Advice; another for Milarepa's song on the Six Perfections; and a third for Langri Tangpa's 8 Verses of Mind training)
What do others think about the number of topics listed on the main page? Very few people contributed to the poll posing this question -- this was up for nearly 2 months. While few participated in the poll some people send feedback via messages suggesting that they found the main page very busy and asking for the amount of detail posted there to be reduced.
Putting a drop down panel under Forums to give the categories, unfortunately, is not possible. We could suggest this to the developers, bearing in mind that Ning is free and has been designed so that very little technical knowledge is necessary to create a site or serve as an administrator.
I'd call it a good start... I have just a few comments:
The notification sent around doesn't mention that once you click 'view all' under the Forum tab, the 'nests' still don't show all the available discussons and you have to click on 'view discussions' under each heading if you want to see everything that's under that heading.
What is the difference between 'other questions' and 'unclassified'? Surely items are in 'other questions' because they aren't classified under any of the existing headings?
Why does this mean that we now have only two forum headings on the main page? Remember that the main page is designed to attract new people to the ning and it looks pretty thin if there are only two forum discussions up. In fact there are at least three forums being contributed to on a daily basis at the moment. Why can't we have ten forum topics showing? Presumably those with the latest posts? e.g. new post on 'Podcasts etc.' from Valerie should show up.
Would it be possible to put a panel under Forums on the main page with just the headings of the different topics (e.g. 'Practice Questions', 'Exploring Texts', 'Sharing Experience' etc. with links to the Discussion Forum page so people exploring the site could see the variety of topics we discuss? Also so that anyone can jump directly to that heading rather than having to scroll through a couple of pages of other topics on the Forum page? (If you want to make it convenient, make it really convenient).
I like the idea, as I said I think it's a good start, but would appreciate some tweaking. In particular, restore some life to the Forum panel on the main page.
I've noticed that the events calendar is used quite regularly by people who want to let others know about both virtual and face-to-face events.
About chat--do you have any way of finding out how much it's actually used?
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