I prefer the current all-in-one format as opposed to sub forums, having participated in both.
I'm not a PLC guy, I'm an instrument and process control guy, so those kinds of topics tend to take more effort to dig out in the sub forum format, and I tend to skip the specific brand forums.
With the all-in-one format, I just scan the titles and pick those seem to fit. (Side note, I NEVER even open the "Help me, please" type posts; the title's gotta have some clue as to what the topic is)
I do like Jesper's idea about a professional and non-professional forum split, for exactly the reasons he states.
Dan
I also prefer the current all-in-one format. A lot of topics don't fit neatly within a sub-forum. On the other forums, even though I might browse only a couple of sub-forums, I find it still takes longer to weed through less topics. Don't change a thing.
How about using more of the form real estate by putting the thread starter and date on the same line as the topic name:
Regarding Sub-forums, then the simplicity of the single forum as it is now is one of the great advantages with PLCTALK.
I COULD accept sub-forums, but only to split into professional and non-professional talk. I miss sometimes being able to post "It has been a bad day - I need a hug". Somehow I dont find it correct to post such things on the real forum.
Maybe an acceptable alternative to sub-forums could be tagging. Maybe even forced tagging according to predefined lists. Then you can search for the tags you want to see, or for the tags you want to exclude.
I also prefer the current all-in-one format. A lot of topics don't fit neatly within a sub-forum. On the other forums, even though I might browse only a couple of sub-forums, I find it still takes longer to weed through less topics. Don't change a thing.
I suggest that thread starters should be forced to select at least one tag. I see the tagging feature working well one some sites (where I think the tags are either fixed, or selected by moderators). On other sites where people can just type any text they find relevant, tagging is just annoying.There is tagging currently for the topic starter but not to a predefined list... I'm debating about keeping the tagging function as it's hardly used and very user dependent.
I suggest that thread starters should be forced to select at least one tag. I see the tagging feature working well one some sites (where I think the tags are either fixed, or selected by moderators). On other sites where people can just type any text they find relevant, tagging is just annoying.