Have you guys noticed theres a home brewers forum on this site?

[John S.]

Haha I don't check the general section much as I'm mostly interested in home brewing... click over here to see that many people are posting about home brewing here in the 'general' section. It always used to be that this section was for general beer discussion (i.e. what good beers you've tried lately or what pubs are decent etc) and the home brew forum the place to discuss home brew... seemed like a simple enough distinction... perhaps we should try to meander over that way a little again? I just think that some people might be missing out on home brew info if they don't find it in the general section.

[Ralph]

Or you could just sort by "discussions" instead of categories and you would be able to see all the recent discussions that have been posted or replied to. People here generally are posting about brewing where ever they post...

[John S.]

Good point Ralph - thanks for the tip on sorting the threads

[Greig McGill]

While you *could* do that, I reckon John's not wrong. I've sent people to this site who are interested in beer, only to get the comment back that "oh, it's all just homebrewers, isn't it?" :)

Other sites tend to have moderators, but since Luke's way too busy to do that, and has just kind of given us a playground, I guess we've all been a bit slack.

So yeah, I guess I'm with John on this one! What does everyone else think?

[Pilgrim]

I'm with you Greig, let's keep the general discussions about commercial beer, locations, bars, beer news etc. in the General section and everything about Home Brew in the Homebrewers section. I read both because I'm interested in anything beer related but must admit it's got a bit untidy lately.

[Ralph]

We could try renaming the descriptors under each section a little to something like your description Pilgrim. Maybe that would help people decide where to put stuff?

Like : General Discussion :  Opinions, commercial beers, locations, bars, beer news etc.

I dont know if it will make much difference?

[Dave Rea]

Would suggest that like some sites Luke could be the master admin and then appoint a few people we know who could have "limited"  like a sub admin / webmaster to do things like general maintenance and approving new members etc.... 

Ralph I agree with either renaming them or having a really detailed sub description - that's what I was asked to do on the BeerTools site...  Meant that simply maintaining on a day to day basis was given to those who had the time and knowledge and the programmers got on with sorting out issues and improving the program....

All sites go through a period when one or two people can deal with everything but as soon as it grows everyone needs more help - like on specific subjects BeerTools has specific webmasters - eg those giving support aren't the same as those checking recipes...

It would make it easier manage and allow new people to manage and deal with those currently active....

Only my thoughts

[Dave Rea]

The other suggestion would to split the Homebrewers into areas such as equipment, Malts, Hops Yeasts, DIY and Recipes as an example... Like DIY could contain a thread on how to make a stirrer...

[John S.]

Theres a careful balance to be had between splitting up forums into sub forums versus keeping a critical mass of traffic in any one subforum. I don't think this site has quite enough traffic for forums as specific as that, but it would definitely be nice to see home brew talk focused in the home brew forum and general in the general area - nice and easy

[Dave Rea]

Once you have a systen place it is easy add to it or change it as need be - for example a person won't browse through the hundreds of topics on the site - it's not the number of people but how much data is there... Would speed up searches and be easier to maintain.

[John S.]

Yeah, I suppose you can think of forums having a couple of main uses. Firstly to discuss topics and get questions answered at the time that you need them. But secondly the old threads serve as an archive of info for future use by others. So having threads in more clearly defined sections would make them easier for others to find and prevent the same questions being asked repeatedly.

Hopefully the owners of this site see this thread and maybe have a think about a bit of a spring clean. The forum seems to be growing or at least steady in popularity, so its worth keeping things in good nick.

[Dene McDonald]

Maybe we could rename the "General" section to "General Beer Talk". I found this site by doing a search for "Home Brew Forum New Zealand" and it took me a while to realise it wasn't just a home brew forum.

[Robbo]

you mean there's beer that [i]isn't[/i] homebrew??