Proposed Change to Comps Boards

MSE_Stephen

Hi Compers

We'd like to suggest a change to how the Comps boards are organised. But it's totally dependent on your feedback. So let us know what you think...

Currently, when you view the main Competitions Time board, you have to scroll past a long list of sub-board to get the competitions list. 

We can fix this by changing the Competitions Time section into a "Nested Category" - This would mean the "Competitions Time" you click on from the main forum index becomes a place that only holds sub-boards. With the existing Competitions Time main board becoming a sub-board in this section.

The screenshots below should clarify. 

We have been reluctant to use Nested Categories because it means the sub-boards no longer appear on the main forum index (though we can change the description text shown there to mention some of the great stuff in the category including mentioning the sub-boards).
And it might mean extra clicks to get to the board you want.

But Compers may feel it's worth the change to avoid scrolling past the subcategories on every pageload. 




When you click "Competitions Time" in the screenshot above, you are taken to a section listing all Competitions boards. With the current main board now a sub-board at the top.



So now you can see the competitions with no sub-categories to scroll past!



Please let us know what you think by replying to this thread.

mjm3346

I think the old version of the board only required scrolling past the "sub-boards" on the first page they didn't show from page 2 onwards of the competitions thread

MSE_Stephen

mjm3346 said:

I think the old version of the board only required scrolling past the "sub-boards" on the first page they didn't show from page 2 onwards of the competitions thread

Hi @mjm3346

We haven't made any changes. It looks like you do have to scroll on every page. But maybe that's just my current device

One-Eye

mjm3346 said:

I think the old version of the board only required scrolling past the "sub-boards" on the first page they didn't show from page 2 onwards of the competitions thread

mjm3346 is correct - sub-boards only appeared on page 1 in the pre-Vanilla days.

By coincidence, if the main "Competitions Time" board becomes a sub-forum, then I think that automatically the other sub-forums should no longer appear at the top of the page.

MSE_Stephen

My apologies. I misread the post. 

Yes in vBulletin days i believe the sub-boards didn't appear on every page.

One-Eye

I'm strongly in favour of it as I believe it will reduce the problem of less experienced users posting comps in the wrong place.

Some forums need to be renamed to help with this and reflect their current usage. My suggestions are:

1) "Competitions Time" (the main board) becomes "Normal Online Competitions" or "Standard Online Competitions" with sub-heading "Free competitions you enter online, by email or through social media"

2) "Regular Competitions" becomes "Lists and Indexes of Regular Competitions" with sub-heading "Regularly updated lists of magazine puzzles, daily entry comps etc."
(indexes is a valid plural in english - indices is only another option)

3) "Post, Phone & Text comps" sub-heading should say "Competitions with no free online entry. NEVER post a pay-to-enter competition costing more than £2.10"

4) "Advent competitions" sub-heading should say "Daily and Weekly multiple entry competitions that run only in the run-up to Christmas."

BootsMullery

I am regularly visiting one or other of the sub-boards while using the main board to enter comps. I find it quite handy to have the sub-boards readily available at the top of the page each time I want to visit one. Presumably, if this change was made, I would then need to "follow" the sub-boards and access them via the Followed Contents tab. From this point of view I see no real advantage to changing it. It is no real hardship to scroll a short way.

However, one advantage may be that new members would find their way around a little easier. It does happen that newbies click on Competitions time from the main index and then don't realise that the main board is underneath the one at the top. There have occasionally been posts by newbies on the Chat board asking where all the competitions are and sometimes even posting comps on the Regular board by mistake. This change MAY help in that regard.

My overall preference would be to leave it as it is and can't see any great advantage of changing it.

ETA: One-Eye hadn't posted when I started writing this post. My thoughts are as above but I have no strong feelings either way.

One-Eye

Queries and possible problems:

1) Can the order of the sub-forums in the Category List be set and fixed? I would say 1) "Competitions Time" 2) Post 3) Regular 4) Advent 5) Chat 6) IWIWIW 7) Game Over. I hope that the order in the mock-up above is just down to it being a mock-up.

2) The Category List mock-up has a red "create post" button. Again I hope this is due to it being a mock-up as where would a post go if you used this?

3) With the probability of not having the sub-forums at the top of every page, navigation from within a sub-forum back to the categories list (and then on to a different sub-forum) needs to be easy. I assume this would be using the "trail" (eg. Home› Competitions time› Regular competitions) at the top of the page, but could it also be added to the "Quick Links" on the RHS?

4) "SEARCH" - One of the most common uses of Search is to select "Competitions Time" and tick the "Search subcategories" box - so you can search everything in the comps section. If "Competitions Time" becomes a subcategory, we MUST have a way to search the whole comps section (without searching the whole forum). It would be massively annoying and time-wasting to have to do each subcategory in turn.

I_Love_comps

I like the sub boards at the top. I think it is easier for forum members to access the different categories this . 
We have advent comps coming up soon, which are very popular 

MSE_Stephen

@BootsMullery
One possibility might be to have an extra set of links to all comp boards in the sidepanel (but that's demoted to being underneath main content on narrower screens/mobile). 

@One-Eye
I'll look through your questions tomorrow.
One answer I can give now. The "Create New" button won't allow posts to be created in the main holding category. It would behave more like the "Create New" on the homepage - Making you select a category from a list since you can't post in the area you are currently in.

One-Eye

December is the busiest time of the year for compers, especially the first week. Please, Please, Please don't implement any changes then - wait until January which is one of the quietest times.