Wow, there's so many subforums, necessary?

marcosdjcm

I had no idea MSE had 50+ categories and sub forums.

Annoyingly I was looking for a "green purchases" type section but I didn't find one. I think that's a more important subforum than "Oih do I want to buy it, talk me out of it" etc

pogofish

So what did you make of the Green and Ethical Subforum?

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/forumdisplay.php?f=100

Former_MSE_Andrea

Hi!

It's always good to hear feedback. Which ones would you get rid of?

dunstonh

MSE_Andrea wrote: »

Hi!

It's always good to hear feedback. Which ones would you get rid of?

Raised it before but nothing changed. However, the auto-enrolment sub forum under pensions is a waste of time. Barely any of the regulars on the main pension section check it and you see responses to the few posts people do make in that section to tell them to post in the main pensions section so the people that can answer see the post.

It has had one new thread in nearly 1 month and the first response told the person to post in the main section. https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/5372319 Which they have now done.

marcosdjcm

pogofish wrote: »

So what did you make of the Green and Ethical Subforum?

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/forumdisplay.php?f=100

I didn't get around to using it but have done now. Will see how it goes with responses.

But you can see it's not busy enough as the post at the bottom of page 1 is over a week old.

So when a forum is that slow, it doesn't need sub-categorisation.

Former_MSE_Andrea

dunstonh wrote: »

Raised it before but nothing changed. However, the auto-enrolment sub forum under pensions is a waste of time. Barely any of the regulars on the main pension section check it and you see responses to the few posts people do make in that section to tell them to post in the main pensions section so the people that can answer see the post.

It has had one new thread in nearly 1 month and the first response told the person to post in the main section. https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/5372319 Which they have now done.

Thanks dunstonh.

We're going to be looking into which boards are being used and which not over the next few weeks and months so that's really useful feedback.

tryhard_2

It might be useful to amend the savings and investments forum to have a separate sub forum for cash savings (to include savings accounts and cash ISAs) and a separate one for Stocks and shares ISA and investment into funds.
It would make it a lot easier for those who are looking specifically for investment advice/information.
Thanks in advance

Former_MSE_Andrea

Thanks tryhard, we'll add that to the feedback.

dunstonh

I am not sure splitting the savings and investments forum further is a good thing. The current ISA forum doesnt get a lot of traffic. It picked up recently with they help to buy ISA but in general it probably doesnt deserve to exist in the first place.

Admittedly, there is logic in removing the ISA forum and having a cash savings forum and an investment forum. However, the savings and investments forum isnt overloaded with new threads daily and many posters dont understand the difference between saving and investing.

I wouldnt bother looking in the cash savings section if there was one. Yet I and others often do pick up on threads in the savings and investment section that started out as someone wanting to talk about cash but not realising what they were doing was risk based and that they should also consider risk based investments (taking income from cash savings can actually be quite high risk and in some cases riskier than some risk based investments). If you dont have your investors contributing to the cash savings threads then you lose discussions.

You do sometimes get the same thing asked in the main savings and investment section and duplicated in the ISA section.

Personally, i would drop the ISA sub forum and have just the savings and investments section as most (if not all) regulars check both. You see plenty of ISA questions in the main section and some people post the same question in both creating unnecessary duplication. Plus, the section is not too busy that it really requires a split.

PasturesNew

marcosdjcm wrote: »

So when a forum is that slow, it doesn't need sub-categorisation.

It keeps the green nutters out of the other forums though.... so, slow, but does the job