New Forum Layout

As the forums have grown, we have decided that we needed to do some reorganization of the forum layout or taxonomy in order to make it easier to navigate. Before we make these changes, I wanted to run the proposed taxonomy by everyone to get your opinions and suggestions. Below is an image of what the new taxonomy would look like. Notes about some of the changes are below the image.




Notes:

• I moved the In the News forum under the Announcement category. Previously the Announcement category was not a forum where members could post to. However, this forum (In the News) will remain open for posting.
• In the Projects category, I removed the following forums and put them under Community Discussions.
  • Current or Future Church Technologies
  • Development Help Wanted
  • Building to Building Communications (a sub-forum of the Current or Future Church Technologies)
  • Enterprise Change Management (a sub-forum of the Current or Future Church Technologies)
• In the Projects category, I created a new sub-forum called Church Web Sites and then I moved the LDS.ORG Web Site, and Technology Web Site forums under that. In addition, I will create a 3rd sub-forum called Other where we can discuss things like "Mormon.org", "josephsmith.net", etc.
• In the Projects category, I linked the forum MLS to a new sub-forum in a new forum category called Clerks and Stake Technology Specialists Support. See next bullet point. This link will make it so you can still find MLS in the Projects category but it will basically link you to the new home of the MLS forum.
• I created a new category with sub-forums called Clerks and Stake Technology Specialists Support. This new forum tree will be linked to from the new Stake Technology Specialists and ward clerk web site. We can expect to have many more users of the forum because of this new link. Within this new category will be the above shown taxonomy.
• In the Community Discussions forum I moved the Technical Recruiting forum underneath the Development Help Wanted forum. In addition, I put several smaller forums under the Current or Future Church Technologies forum.

Please let me know what you think. We are anxious to get this change made fairly soon so your prompt feedback will be critical.

Thanks for your continued support.

Tom

I don't see anything for STS for Audio/Visual including satellite support.

Also I don't see anything covering FHC computers. While this does have some connection to Genealogy as a whole, it is a specialized subset as they typically network the products, deal with LANDesk, and other things home users wouldn't do. End-user use of the products would go into the Genealogy section.

I'd also like to see a section on emergency communications - probably as part of the discussions area.

A couple of active, unofficial lists are ones for FHC Directors and for Indexers. A suitable sub-section for them may bring them "into the fold".

Also, when is something part of "Projects" and when is it a "Discussion"? For example, why is church websites under "Projects"? At this time we just talk about it and give feedback. Or does this mean...

Minor comment now, perhaps more to come...

I'd like to suggest Technical Recruiting be moved out of Development Help Wanted or reverse the roles as I see technical recruiting being broader than development help to any technical position at the Church... perhaps Technical could be the parent with several children (Development being one of them).

RussellHltn wrote:When is something part of "Projects" and when is it a "Discussion"? For example, why is church websites under "Projects"? At this time we just talk about it and give feedback. Or does this mean...

Perhaps the taxonomy is because internally those areas are projects for someone at the Church regardless of whether we as participants in the forum will ever contribute?

kgthunder wrote:Perhaps the taxonomy is because internally those areas are projects for someone at the Church regardless of whether we as participants in the forum will ever contribute?

Yes, that is how I interpreted it. In other words, everything in the category of Projects are programs that are externally facing that members can interface with. But I get your concern that it is not very clear. I'll give that some thought.

Tom

RussellHltn wrote:I don't see anything for STS for Audio/Visual including satellite support.

Also I don't see anything covering FHC computers. While this does have some connection to Genealogy as a whole, it is a specialized subset as they typically network the products, deal with LANDesk, and other things home users wouldn't do. End-user use of the products would go into the Genealogy section.

I'd also like to see a section on emergency communications - probably as part of the discussions area.

A couple of active, unofficial lists are ones for FHC Directors and for Indexers. A suitable sub-section for them may bring them "into the fold".

Also, when is something part of "Projects" and when is it a "Discussion"? For example, why is church websites under "Projects"? At this time we just talk about it and give feedback. Or does this mean...

Great feedback. Of course the "Clerks" section will expand with demand. I'll check with the membership department in charge of offering support and see if these categories make sense to add now.

Tom

I think this looks good. With this configuration you could separate clerks and stake tech specialists later if you wanted as discussed a threads previously.

tomw wrote:Great feedback. Of course the "Clerks" section will expand with demand. I'll check with the membership department in charge of offering support and see if these categories make sense to add now.

Except maybe for the last paragraph, none of the things I've mentioned fall under the membership department, or even clerk support. In some cases we're missing entire departments.

RussellHltn wrote: Also I don't see anything covering FHC computers. While this does have some connection to Genealogy as a whole, it is a specialized subset as they typically network the products, deal with LANDesk, and other things home users wouldn't do. End-user use of the products would go into the Genealogy section.

My stake has 3 Family Search Internet Only Centers with no support from the church after they issued unit numbers and a Pix firewall. I don't know it there are any other units under this heading "Family Search - Internet Only". I mention it only because with the death of Command AV login and password I have been looking for an antivirus solution for these centers. FHC support told me "Sorry" no help here with information or software for these 3 centers. The Global help desk told me to use the Unit Security Software on the MLS site. I would like to see this info as part of the FHC branch.

Copy machines are also part of the STS calling I think.

srweight wrote:My stake has 3 Family Search Internet Only Centers with no support from the church after they issued unit numbers and a Pix firewall. I don't know it there are any other units under this heading "Family Search - Internet Only". I mention it only because with the death of Command AV login and password I have been looking for an antivirus solution for these centers. FHC support told me "Sorry" no help here with information or software for these 3 centers. The Global help desk told me to use the Unit Security Software on the MLS site. I would like to see this info as part of the FHC branch.

Uhhhhhhh, that's strange. If they've been assigned a FHC Unit number, then I'd think they'd get FHC support. Support software wouldn't be from the MLS site but from http://remote.familysearch.org

srweight wrote:Copy machines are also part of the STS calling I think.

It could be. So far nobody has bothered to put that on my plate, so I don't think about it.

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

RussellHltn wrote: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.

That is because "Church Web Sites" is now a sub-category of "Projects" and hosts forums itself.

Tom

How's it different from "Current or Future Church Technologies"?

Oh and tom I have noticed the little computer was added to the list of icons under a person's name (in posts) which is suppose to have the person's IP but the only IP being reported is your gateway IP.

kgthunder wrote:How's it different from "Current or Future Church Technologies"?

I think it is because the Technology section deals with new techs that could be put in use with the church and does not deal with implementation, but the church website is to deal with directly those specific implementations of technology.

thedqs wrote:Oh and tom I have noticed the little computer was added to the list of icons under a person's name (in posts) which is suppose to have the person's IP but the only IP being reported is your gateway IP.

I don't see a little computer icon...

On some fourms it is disabled but here is your recent post in another thread.

I even moused over the icon so you can see the information.

thedqs wrote:I think it is because the Technology section deals with new techs that could be put in use with the church and does not deal with implementation, but the church website is to deal with directly those specific implementations of technology.

My question was why "Church Websites" has sub-forums and has NO icon, but "Current or Future Church Technologies" also has sub-forums but DOES have an icon?

It would be nice to post the image (or an easy-to-find link to it) of the site taxonomy somewhere on the Forum page for those of us who are visual learners. I think that it is a great way to show the way the Forums are divided, and can be considered a simple form for some to look at.

It would also be nice to have the header of "User CP, Projects, FAQ, etc.." posted also at the bottom of the pages. I find myself using the "New Posts" link frequently, and I always have to scroll back up to the top to access the refreshed "New Posts" after reading new ones.

opee wrote:It would be nice to post the image (or an easy-to-find link to it) of the site taxonomy somewhere on the Forum page for those of us who are visual learners. I think that it is a great way to show the way the Forums are divided, and can be considered a simple form for some to look at.

You mean like on the Forum homepage? I think that's a pretty good idea...

opee wrote:It would also be nice to have the header of "User CP, Projects, FAQ, etc.." posted also at the bottom of the pages. I find myself using the "New Posts" link frequently, and I always have to scroll back up to the top to access the refreshed "New Posts" after reading new ones.

It would be nice to have that toolbar both at the top and bottom. However, I do have a solution for you that I use. In my User Control Panel, I changed the option to reverse the sorting of posts (most recent at the top). So by the time I'm at the end of the thread, I'm back at the top ready to hit New Posts again.

mkmurray wrote:However, I do have a solution for you that I use. In my User Control Panel, I changed the option to reverse the sorting of posts (most recent at the top). So by the time I'm at the end of the thread, I'm back at the top ready to hit New Posts again.

Interesting I just hit the Home Key to get to the top again. But you might even have a scrolling menu bar that follows you as you scroll, though depending on how it is done, it could be more annoying then helpful.

thedqs wrote:On some fourms it is disabled but here is your recent post in another thread.

I even moused over the icon so you can see the information.

I believe that's only seen by moderators.

kgthunder wrote:How's it different from "Current or Future Church Technologies"?

It's different in that "Current or Future Church Technologies" acts as both a category AND a forum. There are posts inside of it as well as forums inside of it.

Tom

thedqs wrote:Oh and tom I have noticed the little computer was added to the list of icons under a person's name (in posts) which is suppose to have the person's IP but the only IP being reported is your gateway IP.

Only moderators could see it but I turned it off because I only get the IP address of our load balancers. It is meaningless.

Tom

opee wrote:It would be nice to post the image (or an easy-to-find link to it) of the site taxonomy somewhere on the Forum page for those of us who are visual learners. I think that it is a great way to show the way the Forums are divided, and can be considered a simple form for some to look at.

It would also be nice to have the header of "User CP, Projects, FAQ, etc.." posted also at the bottom of the pages. I find myself using the "New Posts" link frequently, and I always have to scroll back up to the top to access the refreshed "New Posts" after reading new ones.

Good suggestions. I don't have as much control where I put the header items but I can post a taxonomy in the forums. I'll add that to my task list.

Tom

kgthunder wrote:My question was why "Church Websites" has sub-forums and has NO icon, but "Current or Future Church Technologies" also has sub-forums but DOES have an icon?

"Church Websites" has only sub-forums. "Current or Future Church Technologies" is a forum with sub-forums.

It seems you have to watch those micro sub-forum icons to see if there's new posts in the sub-forum.

mkmurray wrote:You mean like on the Forum homepage? I think that's a pretty good idea...

It would be nice to have that toolbar both at the top and bottom. However, I do have a solution for you that I use. In my User Control Panel, I changed the option to reverse the sorting of posts (most recent at the top). So by the time I'm at the end of the thread, I'm back at the top ready to hit New Posts again.

Yes, the forum homepage would be a good location.

Thanks for the suggestion on the post sorting.