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ConcernedMum
Posts: 93
Joined: Mon Mar 05, 2007 1:58 pm
Location: Ireland

Index

Postby ConcernedMum » Mon Dec 15, 2008 7:31 am

Hello all
This board has been incredibly valuable to me. I imagine it will continue to be for those who become involved with the SES or who send their kids to their schools who have those little doubts around the fringes of their minds about things they may see or hear. Or for families of those who become involved. It is widely linked to as well.

I was thinking if you were coming to the board for the first time, it would be a bit difficult to find out what you need to know especially as the later topics, which are on the first page, are quite diverse in their subject matter.

I know there's been indexing done at different stages by some people but I'm wondering about creating an index that would appear at the top as a stickie, if thats the word (i'm reaching the edges of my limited IT knowledge).

If a group could get together, we could come up with 10 or so headings and then divide the pages up between us to look through them and index them under those headings. Its too much for one person to do but a group could do it in no time.

I should probably be asking the moderators if this is possible????
I'd love to do it because I think its important to have an easy path to this information.

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bonsai
Posts: 322
Joined: Sun Feb 12, 2006 12:08 am
Location: London

Re: Index

Postby bonsai » Tue Dec 16, 2008 1:56 pm

There certainly would be plenty of opportunity for restructuring this site to make it more managable. I do kind of agree.

With these forums you can split it up into sections. The old WATD forum had separate sections for SES and Scientology. We could try and break down the SES bit into some logical sections if Daffy is agreeable.

Sections that spring to my mind are:
News
General SES discussions
St James & Other Day School Discussion
References & Links
Other cult issues
Off topic discussions

The difficulty with the splitting it down is that so many of the issues and experiences are intertwined. You also generally need quite strong moderation policies to keep things in the right places. It is certainly quite possible to move threads from one forum to another.

I wonder what Daffy thinks on this given he is the administrator of this site.

Bonsai

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Free Thinker
Posts: 325
Joined: Wed Jan 12, 2005 4:05 am
Location: USA

Re: Index

Postby Free Thinker » Wed Dec 17, 2008 3:53 am

I agree and I'd be happy to help if I can.

Bonsai - by "news" did you mean press? Or news as in, "guess what guys - This week SES started to let people wear whatever the hell they want and they just elected an openly gay man to be the new leader of St. James"! (haha)

Daffy
Moderator
Posts: 333
Joined: Sat Oct 30, 2004 3:32 am

Re: Index

Postby Daffy » Wed Dec 17, 2008 5:57 am

I'm open to these suggestions - please keep them coming.

The only structure I used was to copy over the single SES-related forum from the old WATD site. In choosing the domain name 'ses-forums.org' (rather than the singular 'ses-forum.org') I thought there might be more than one forum in the future.

If new forums are created, moving existing threads to the appropriate place is simple as the moderation tools allow threads to be bulk-moved.

As Bonsai points out, the difficult bit would be to decide where 'mixed' threads should go. It is possible to have a thread located in forum X and for a 'shadow topic' to remain in Forum Y (i.e a grey thread title that takes you to the new location). So effectively it can look like it is in both forums.

I would want to keep the number of forums to a minimum as too many categories without obvious hard boundaries between them tends to confuse/frustrate people. Also one or two of the forums Bonsai suggests were on the old WATD site and no-one ever used them. If someone wants to try and categorise a sample of a 20-30 threads that might indicate how difficult such a task would be (remembering there are over 400 existing threads).

With regard to the suggestion of the creation of an index, one was created by Tom Grubb here: viewtopic.php?p=8611 but it is an index of abuse rather than a general site index. Also all the links point to WATD rather than the equivalent threads on this site (I expect I could find a way of fixing this but it might take a while). I think a general site index would be a time-consuming document to create and maintain, though I'm not trying to stop anyone if they want to try.

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bonsai
Posts: 322
Joined: Sun Feb 12, 2006 12:08 am
Location: London

Re: Index

Postby bonsai » Wed Dec 17, 2008 11:10 am

Free Thinker wrote:...they just elected an openly gay man to be the new leader of St. James"! (haha)


Now that would be news.

I can confirm that it is snowing in hell.

Bonsai

Free
Posts: 127
Joined: Wed Oct 19, 2005 9:30 pm

Postby Free » Wed Dec 17, 2008 1:45 pm

<delete>
Last edited by Free on Wed Oct 05, 2011 10:42 pm, edited 2 times in total.

Daffy
Moderator
Posts: 333
Joined: Sat Oct 30, 2004 3:32 am

Re: Index

Postby Daffy » Wed Dec 17, 2008 11:12 pm

In my first message after transferring the board (viewtopic.php?p=9103#p9103) I mentioned I was going to set up a separate section on this website where users will be able to place reference material. I didn't get round to finishing it but there's obviously a demand for it so I will try to do so this weekend. It's in the format of a blog, so any authorised user would be able to post material, and then others would be able to post comments on it, which the author can then take account of in editing the material.

I'll post here when I've finished setting it up and you can let me know what you think. It is very flexible with regard to content, format etc.

Daffy
Moderator
Posts: 333
Joined: Sat Oct 30, 2004 3:32 am

Re: Index

Postby Daffy » Mon Dec 22, 2008 11:48 am

OK, further to my last post I've set up a demo reference site at http://reference.ses-forums.org. At the moment I've added only two articles, both of which I've borrowed from the excellent existing reference site on the SES and its schools, http://www.stjamesinquiry.org.

Any registered user would be able to upload material to the reference site themselves (once I manually approve them: the forum and reference site databases are different).

As I say, it's just a demo site to see what you think of the format. I'll admit to being not yet entirely happy with the layout, but that's configurable over time, and on the positive side its look and feel are quite similar to that of the forum. Anyone who wants to try adding material is welcome to do so - just send me a PM so I can add you as a user with the appropriate posting rights. Equally anyone who wants to suggest a different approach is welcome to do so.

ConcernedMum
Posts: 93
Joined: Mon Mar 05, 2007 1:58 pm
Location: Ireland

Re: Index

Postby ConcernedMum » Tue Dec 23, 2008 7:46 am

Cool, thanks Daffy and everyone who responded.
I'll take a good look over the Christmas holiday. I've an essay due in early January so after that, I could do some sorting.

Just to like to wish everyone a peaceful and joyful holiday as we celebrate the returning of the light!
CM


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