DIY Project section?

dickibobboy · 30 August 2018 at 7:51AM

Been thinking about this for a while. I often visit over another forum that has this sub-forum but it’s mainly focussed on AV / Cinema builds.

If the DIY section had a sub-forum where members could post threads about their DIY progress with pictures other members could get ideas, ask questions etc.. A big thread could maybe manage it but could get messy with lots of different members posting their own pictures.

A suggestion what does anyone think?

Former_MSE_Andrea · 30 August 2018 at 10:15AM

Hi dickibobboy

It's a great idea for a series of threads.

We're very happy for everyone to do that in the In My Home board itself, no need for a new board.

Please do start it off!

Thanks for the suggestion!

spadoosh · 30 August 2018 at 10:26AM

I saw your post in the thread and thought it was a brilliant idea.

I think its deserving of its own forum. Quite simply because they wont get lost.

Im pretty sure you wont see the thread you commented in again until the OP updates. So you end up with a thread being active for few hours a day at most.

Lets say someone did a garden project and put it in the greenfingered forum. Loads of pictures, details, instruction etc. It would be hours before the copious amounts of threads on the neighbours overgrowing hedges pushed it into the abyss never to be seen again.

My understanding of this site is to help people learn and save money. What better way than a dedicated forum to projects, eco projects, cooking, soap making, DIY, preserving, theres loads. The knowledge is on the forum you can see from the posts but the desire to share will be limited by the fact that recognition will be somewhat limited by there not being a place to display them.

I think its completely worthy of its own forum.

Im a keen gardener and could share plenty of gardening projects ive undertaken, pretty pictures, instructions and discussion. Not much point though because ill put all the effort in to get a few likes and the post to get lost in among generic questions in a few days.

Former_MSE_Andrea · 30 August 2018 at 10:59AM

Thanks for the thoughts spadoosh

I understand that. I'd have considered the threads like the Debt free and mortgage free diaries, though, where other forum members can subscribe to the thread for updates and the original poster comes back regularly to give updates, which would bump the thread back up.

I'm a gardener and also doing up our 1930s house (very slowly - mainly supporting the other half with cups of coffee). I'd be very interested in following other peoples' projects as they progress

spadoosh · 30 August 2018 at 11:31AM

You cant subscribe to something you dont know is there.

The debt free diaries has a specific forum, so you can find the ones you like and then subscribe. If someone put up a shed building tutorial i need to be there within a day or so of it being posted or hope that the search function is working well and that the OP uses terminology i would search for. If not ive got little chance of coming across it in the 3000+ pages of the 'in my home' section or would it be in the 'greenfingered' section?

Its not just updates its actually seeing the post in the first place. You know where to look for diaries, where do i look for jam making? Is it in old school or food? Soap making, is it in health and beauty, OS, in my home? Someones off grid solar project, in my home, green & ethical?

Theyre also the type of threads that dont ask questions, just someone proudly displaying their work. Which inspires others. So not the type of threads that generate lots of discussion which will keep them near the top in the relevant boards. Youll get 20 threads complaining about the neighbours hedge for every project thread and they generate more discussion as its Q&A so it just pushes them further down.

I do think there is merit in giving it its own section. Obviously im unaware of cost implications or the difficulty of implementing it.

VoucherMan · 31 August 2018 at 6:50PM

dickibobboy wrote: »

If the DIY section had a sub-forum where members could post threads about their DIY progress with pictures other members could get ideas, ask questions etc..

A suggestion what does anyone think?

Great idea.

spadoosh wrote: »

You cant subscribe to something you dont know is there.

Theyre also the type of threads that dont ask questions, just someone proudly displaying their work. So not the type of threads that generate lots of discussion which will keep them near the top in the relevant boards.

I do think there is merit in giving it its own section. Obviously im unaware of cost implications or the difficulty of implementing it.

I'm all for having more sub-forums. A simple way of keeping things tidy. As spadoosh says, it would help prevent such topics getting lost amongst the general DIY help queries.

Admittedly there are other dedicated forums out there for decorating, such as Houzz that I recently joined, but that doesn't (that I'm aware of) have a budget section, which could be great for MSE, and if it became popular and brought in more members as word spread, then surely that could only be good news for the powers that be.

It would also be beneficial to the DIY forum regulars as it would keep the topics out of site, making it easier to browse through all the help requests.

As for cost, I don't think there would be one, at least not financial. Most of the forums I've helped on use phpBB rather than vBulletin, but I expect much of the functionality is quite similar. Creating a new forum would take less time than responding to a forum post. It could probably even be outsourced to a board guide if the appropriate ACP privileges were set, but that would probably take longer than creating the forums.
I'm guessing the biggest difficulty would be agreeing where any new sub-forums should go. It depends if someone (MSE Andrea?) already has overall control, or if it has to go back to the boardroom for discussion. We've already got suggestions for 2 forums, one for DIY projects and another for gardening ones, but if the idea were taken seriously, maybe asking members where they think a separate section would be useful. Get it all done in one go.

MSE_Andrea wrote: »

I'm a gardener and also doing up our 1930s house (very slowly - mainly supporting the other half with cups of coffee). I'd be very interested in following other peoples' projects as they progress

While at the same time either looking at other people's gardens, or sharing your own progress (in the dedicated gardening design forum)?;)

Another possibility for the DIY projects, in the absence of a separate forum, would be a sticky at the top of the DIY forum where people could post links to their 'DIY topics', so the sticky thread would in effect be an index.

Even better (in my humble opinion), use the existing DIY sticky and add links to these (yet to be created) index posts. You could have one for each room of the house instead of one big index, and apart from adding links to the sticky, would make no extra work for anyone at MSE. Those wanting to add a link to their 'kitchen renovation project' for example would just find the 'kitchen' topic link from the sticky, and post a link to their project topic at the end of it (along with details of what they're thinking of doing, so I can decide whether or not it's likely to be of interest to me;))

I plug on the MSE newsletter would probably get a good response too.

Former_MSE_Andrea · 3 September 2018 at 1:18PM

VoucherMan wrote: »

Another possibility for the DIY projects, in the absence of a separate forum, would be a sticky at the top of the DIY forum where people could post links to their 'DIY topics', so the sticky thread would in effect be an index.

Even better (in my humble opinion), use the existing DIY sticky and add links to these (yet to be created) index posts. You could have one for each room of the house instead of one big index, and apart from adding links to the sticky, would make no extra work for anyone at MSE. Those wanting to add a link to their 'kitchen renovation project' for example would just find the 'kitchen' topic link from the sticky, and post a link to their project topic at the end of it (along with details of what they're thinking of doing, so I can decide whether or not it's likely to be of interest to me;))

I plug on the MSE newsletter would probably get a good response too.

We can't create more sub-forums at the moment but may be able to in time.

Please do create an index - it's a perfect example of how this could be done - see the Old Style board for past examples :T

Fire_Fox · 30 January 2019 at 6:13AM

Over on the 'In my Home (includes DIY)' forum there is a discussion on the merits of bringingthe 'Is This Quote Fair?' content onto the main DIY forum to increase readership and responses.

If that went ahead, would it be possible to rename and repurpose the sub-board for DIY project diaries?

I don't know how I landed on this thread, I wasn't even on MSE!

DIY Project section?

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