Stickey Wanted:

[Kattt]

I am a member of a couple of "Modern Forums" and I see some of the advantages. I prefer this format, with maybe a couple of changes. The simplicity and the lack of jumping, laughing, devil, crying little faces, the lack of green and red and yellow, the lack of huge fonts—-actually appeals to me.

[Cayenne Redmonk]

It would be nice to have a default subject, and a quoting mechanism.

there is something
to be said for knowing HTML

would you go tarping without knowing how to tie a knot ?

HTML tags are the knots of the internet.

We already have all the mechanisms we need to make this place an eyesore, or to communicate effectively.

–do we really want signatures ?

If you look real close you can tell who wrote the post from subtle clues like their name, and avatar.

[Ben F]

If you don't like green you probably shouldn't be on outdoors forum.. now if only I had an emoticon for winking.

[Kattt]

; )

[Jeremy and Angela]

Please, please don't go to a modern forum! I absolutely abhor most of the phpBB forum sites I run across. Sure, it starts out with the conveniences of quoting, stickies, and smileys, but before you know it you've got half-page signature blocks with animated smileys and 90% of the content on each page is an auto-quoted copy of the preceding post.

In my opinion, people who don't have the time to pick up the basic html tags are probably not going to take the time to do selective quoting. As to smileys; I think Cameron's smileys are in themselves a persuasive argument.

Plain text is nice; plain text is easily searchable, plain text is easily read, and plain text maximizes the time I can put to better use chasing the local kids off my lawn.

For reference:
<b>bold</b>
<i>italic</i>

Err… I just remembered this was originally only about stickies. Interesting idea if you navigate from the top of each forum, (which I don't). Perhaps a reference wiki might be more maintainable; most sticky threads I've seen run to dozens of pages which is somewhat self-defeating.

[Ken Thompson]

We had a Wiki that was underutilized. That was deleted without warning or the chance to retrieve information that was put there.

Thanks again for that RJ.

[Eric Blumensaadt]

Stickies are merely useful info that people can refer to…

BUT, if they are so abhorrent to some maybe we can just have a

LINKS PAGE with the info there. OK? Say a few general categories of links like GEAR and FOOD.

As for FONTS: Yes, fonts are definitely useful and should be a part of this site. Whaddya think site owners?? "We have the technology."

SMILEY FACES: "OK, OK, OK!" as Joe Pesche would say, I see that smiley faces are really unecessary and, maybe by many, unwanted. Just another way of expressing things but emoticons can be irritating to some folks.

[Jeremy and Angela]

What might work could be to revive the wiki, not as a separate area, but in the background such that each forum has a corresponding page, with a link in the right-hand menu area. E.g. threads in the food/hydration/nutrition forum get links added to the food page in the wiki.

This makes the pages easily accessible from every thread, so that they don't become a forgotten backwater. Ease of access is, I think, key to whether such areas get used. Hosting the pages in a wiki format makes them user-maintainable, so that it's not adding too much to the site owners' workload.

[Cayenne Redmonk]

Maybe a few static pages of links and a brief description, where content is largely added and managed via forms would easier to use than a wiki.

[Laurie Ann March]

I like it just the way it is. Simple and effective…. and having to add the tags keeps the issues with spamming links at bay.

Count me as another member who likes things just the way they are. The only change I would relish is being able to quote a message easily in my post but for the 2 seconds it takes to cut and paste, I can live without it.

[Author]

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