Tech Forum

Actually, you touched on a good point. The STS deals with many different departments in the church (names may not be accurate):

Membership Services - MLS and administrative computers.
Family History Department - FHC Computers and products
Global Support - PIX box and Internet connectivity
Satellite Support - What the name says
Audio/Visual - PA systems, Hearing Impaired system, etc. (I think they are a different department)

Assuming that the forums are not strictly user-to-user support, the forums probably should be setup to reflect the different departments involved to simplify the departmental work load in keeping up with the forum.

These are all great suggestions. For now the only "departments" that are going to be moderating or hoping to give some support to the discussion threads are membership and the information and communications sections. The family history pieces would not be part of this original clerk sub section. This will be one of the first attempts to use clerks to support themselves within the bounds of a Church provided discussion forum. We'll adjust as we go.

For the number of suggested forums for the STS/Clerk section, might I suggest an "Everything else" forum.

Having lots of forums with 3 threads each will make it look like there isn't much activity and might discourage people from coming. Not to mention the clutter it creates. If we have a generic forum with lots of posts you get the natural opposite of the appearance (and actuality) of lots of activity.

When ever we see a given topic with a large number of threads we can create a forum for that topic, and move the associated threads over as well. Having a catch-all forum helps cover the bases for all those topics you haven't thought of, but that people would feel bad about posting in other forums.

Just my .02

As has been noted the one thing lacking from the proposed layout is a forum for issues about/for technology specialists. I would keep it within the clerks section (as STS are assistant clerks), whether the Local Unit PC and Printer Help could start as a more general Technology Help.

I look forward to this reorganisation.

barkeraj wrote:Having lots of forums with 3 threads each will make it look like there isn't much activity and might discourage people from coming. Not to mention the clutter it creates. If we have a generic forum with lots of posts you get the natural opposite of the appearance (and actuality) of lots of activity.

I agree. However, we do have a datapoint out there. There is an unofficial clerk's list and it's only advertised by word of mouth. Last month it had 183 emails and that's not a busy month. With an official forum and some announcement that it exists, I see no reason why it would be any less. I think what I've proposed is in the middle. We might not hit the volume the makes it work right away, but with some kind of announcement though the proper channels, I'm sure we'll see it soon.

The new forums look great and are a lot easier to navigate from the perspective of a casual forum browser and from a moderator perspective easier to find a place if topics cross boundaries.

I think it looks great. Good work!

I noticed that "Church Web Sites" doesn't have an icon. It makes it easy to over look new posts in that area. I do see a micro icon for the individual sections. And that icon changes color, but it's still easy to miss.

glad to see the change.lets see how this works