Hello again to the forums! Now, how about some board consolidation?

[Andrew Smith]

Congratulations to Jo and Dave on getting these forums back up and running.

ISTM that there's probably only enough discussion to support a small number of boards.

At most:

1 for supergrid [currently the HouseOfCommons mailing list]
1 for electricity supply and demand, and cross-cutting issues [currently the claverton-energy mailing list]
1 for transport [personaltransport mailing list]
1 for heat [heat mailing list]
1 for admin [this forum board right here]
1 for off-topic stuff

What do you think? Can we merge most of the existing web boards down into a handful, ASAP?

On the additional options - might be worth explaining to people on the mailing list, what the deal is with "thread subscription" (and, presumably, there are board subscriptions too) - it will help them make the transition from pure mailing-list use to hybrid email/web forum use.

Is there an email-> forum option, where people can send an email and it will get added to a thread on the forum?

And do you really want to give everyone the option of closing a thread after posting? Admins, yes, but everyone? Doesn't that risk "hit and run" point-scoring?

[Andrew Smith]

David Milborrow wrote:

This "short list" seems a bit too short, IMHO. I suggest:-

1 for supergrid [currently the HouseOfCommons mailing list]
1 for electricity supply and demand,

are merged into something like "mainstream electricity supply issues", and we add something like "renewable energy topics". Otherwise the second topic, as currently proposed, will get very full with ESI and RE issues.

I don't understand that. You think that the short list is too short, so you want to reduce it by one by merging two, and then increase it by one by splitting off renewable energy from "mainstream electricity", thus returning it to the same length?

One of the grandfathers of UK social networks and web forums, the manager of a site with many thousands of active posters and a million lurkers, told me that a board needs at least 50 active posters to sustain itself (and that such a board might have 500-1000 lurkers), so I really do think we need to limit the number of boards as much as possible.

Renewable energy is mainstream electricity supply. Splitting it off would be terribly counter-productive. And the House of Commons list was set up for subscribers interested in the Czisch presentations, so their focus is on the supergrid and related issues: HVDC; managing variability through intercontinental diversity; desert-sourced energy, etc.

[tramway]

I think that it is up to the members to say how many topics there are.
Renewable energy is not just about electricity.

Please keep the Off Subject board if the issues raised are off subject. Energy is involved in many things.

CJH

[JamieB]

I have to echo the consolidation request. There are currently 30 boards and that is too many. I would say you want to limit things to about 10 boards at most and leave it to the topics for the specifics.

Otherwise the users are spread too thinly and the stimulating discussions that are hoped for won't sprout. A particular thread might cover a range of topics and so could conceivably fit in a range of boards.

[JamieB]

Here's how 10 boards could look...

General
- General Chat
Supply
- Renewable & Cogeneration
- Nuclear
- Fossil
- T&D
- Storage
Demand
- Energy Efficiency
- Demand Management
Transport
- All Transport
Environment
- All Environment

Probably missed a bit though!

[Andrew Smith]

At the moment, all the discussion happens on the mailing lists. And there are so many of them, I've lost track. Anyway, please do join the main Claverton list, and any of the others that take your fancy. http://www.claverton-energy.com/news-subscriptions/join-the-mailing-lists

It should be possible to integrate a forum with a mailing list. Claverton uses Wordpress and Mailman, although these (almost entirely dormant) forums are vBulletin.

So I'm looking at integrating Wordpress (with buddypress), with Mailman, so that people read read the same discussions either via email or via forums.

[JamieB]

Yes i'm on a few of the lists but i confess i'm a bit overwhelmed by it and the threads often don't interlink very well. I just don't think it's a very good way to communicate unfortuantely - forums are much superior.

[clivehinchcliffe]

Hi All,

Lets get a move on and reduce the number of boards. I just had to reduce the number of mailing lists.

I hate the email so hard to keep track of what's is going on.

Lets reduce to the number suggested and see if there are to many posts in any board that then needs splitting.

If we can combine the forum with the email OK but then we get the maximum postings.

[brigdonnwr]

I'm new to this so I'm just working my way around it. But the format doesn't seem to be as user-friendly as other 'social networking' sites (such as ning) that I've used before. Are there any plans to change or do I just need to do my homework properly and get to grips with this layout?

Thanks

[tramway]

All talk and no action lets just get on with it. Will email and boards be intergrated?

Lets get started I have lots of items to post.