The number of sub-forums here annoys me

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I'm not saying it would make me leave the site but I don't think it's a good idea to have so many separate sub-forums.

It is annoying when I post something in one of the sub-forums people don't look at as much and therefore get less replies. In an offline social situation topics aren't filtered so much and I think it means people are open to discuss more.

By having sub-forums categorising everything I think it creates a mindset in people where they pick and choose what they want to talk about and may miss on things that would be interesting or beneficial to them based on assumptions they have about what they are or are not wanting to read about or discuss.

Anyone agree?

my solution: just post everything in "random discussion".

But this isn't offline, this is online.
While a certain quantity of sub forums can seem overwhelming, it would be overwhelming the other direction to have many genres of topic jumbled together in the same pot of stew. And either way, we know there are a number of people here who can get overwhelmed quickly by apparent disorder.

As a sort of comparison, I'm in a garden scale model train forum which has 30 subforums, http://largescalecentral.com/forums; a model rocket forum which has 34 subforums http://www.rocketryforum.com/index.php; and a card modeling forum which has 46 sub forums, http://www.papermodelers.com/forum/
And while those numbers sound high at first, upon looking at the topics, yes, there are that many different factors involved in doing the thing.

And people have probably been doing that since before there were electrical utilities. I think a case can be made that that is the basic nature of humans.

I don't agree with you but what's annoying is that people don't really much respect the structure so it's kinda chaotic here. I think people only need to take a little more care about where they post what. And also it's a good idea to check if a similar thread exists before posting a new one. Categories are there for a reason, to make things easier. For instance, I don't think this post fits very well under the category of General Autism Discussion. (Not trying to be offending.)

Honestly, that's likely true of where this topic best fits,

[i've moved it there, then.]


this seems to be the average amount of subforums a site like this has, but i am
not on other forums much so i'm not to be quoted.

i don't really have a problem with the current selection, but i think certain user's ideas of an "elderly forum" or a forum for dedicated religious/metaphysics discussion has some weight to it. especially in the latter case, religious or philosophical discussion can get drowned out with the sheer amount of political threads.

if we go too far one way, there will be a lot of overlap with the topics. go another way and the individual forums would be very loosely defined and maybe chaotic, like another user said.

i think it is just a fact of life that some topics are going to get more attention than others, regardless of what "category" it's posted in. i guess this is true offline as well.


nothing i say here is an official WP viewpoint, by the way.

Folks are always demanding to ADD a subforum to WP. "Lets have one for religious folks so they wont get beat up on by the militant atheists", or "a subforum for the elderly"(that from someone who didnt notice that there already is that called "adult living". So the original poster of this thread, and all of those folks who want to add more subforums should be locked up together in a cage, and allow to duke it out! Lol!

I just mark that one read, apart from a quick scan of post titles to see if something jumps out.

i'm not moderating that

about the "elderly forum", i think the user who suggested that saw the "in depth adult life" forum as inadequate. it was my understanding that while the "adult autism" forum is for young adults, the "in depth" forum is for those in the later 30s or middle age, and it did not meet the needs of those who are older still.

i can see where that is coming from, but i doubt that is how those two forums are "aimed". i'm not sure what is preventing those kinds of discussions from existing in either subforums (aside from, perhaps the prevalence of sex threads in "adult autism") but i expect some disagreement.

my view is, that if there has not been an "elderly forum" created after nearly 13 years, there's most likely a good reason for that. i just don't know what that reason would be...

What country are you from?

Even for native English speakers at first glance its confusing to see both an "adult autism" subforum, and a "indepth adult life" subforum.

But native speakers soon catch on that the "adult" in "adult autism" is like the "adult" in "adult movie". Its a euphemism for "obscene". So we native speakers catch on that thats the forum were you can freely talk about booze, drugs, and especially about sex. That forum is not for any age subset of adults, its just for anyone over 17 who needs to discuss stuff that mom and dad wouldnt approve of.

Likewise native speakers catch on that the "adult" in "indepth adult life" is like the word "mature": a euphemism for "old" (though you're right that that subforum is used more for middle aged issues than by the extremely old, but very few folks in their 80's have autism spectrum disorder diagnosis).

I laughed out loud once when I read a post in the "adult autism" forum by an understandably confused nonnative English speaker who had to ask if "adult"...."means 'sex'". We had to explain to the guy that yes in some contexts the word "adult" is a code word for "sexually explicit" in American English.