Requesting a New Forum Topic

[Brad Jones]

We get a lot of requests to create a new forum on a variety of topics. While it would be great to create forums on every topic imagineable, we've learned that some topics simply end up with no traffic and thus simply take up space.

Having said that, if you have an idea for a new forum, feel free to submit it. However, in almost all cases we will not create the forum unless there are a number of people who commit to posting in the forum on a regular basis. This will help to insure that the forum can succeed and not just take space.

To set a guideline, let me suggest the following:

If you want a new forum topic, then I suggest you post a new new thread in the feedback forum (this one) with a subject of "Who else will support a new forum on XXXX?" and then see if you can get five others to agree to help. If you get five others to agree to help support it and to post within it, then I will give serious consideration to creating the forum topic.

Having said that, the topic does need to be related to the topic of this site, topics such as coding, programming, or development in general. In some cases I might be willing to create a forum area with fewer people agree; however, those will be extreme exceptions to the general 'rule'.

Brad!

[Brad Jones]

Let me add....

Sometimes having a focused forum is not as good as using one of the broader forums. For example, the VC++ forum will always get more traffic than any of the subforums. As such, a forum on "VC++ Compiler Errors" might sound interesting, but questions on the topic might actually get better responses in the VC++ forums since there are a lot of people there.

Brad!

[JonnyPoet]

I'm basically not a fan or enthusiatic on creating very different forums.
a) What you have already mentioned is less traffic

b) sometime a question doesn't really fit to a very specific forum and a wider base is needed to get an answer,

c) Especially if you are in troubles you normally are in doubt about whats the real problem is. So which forum to choose if its to specific.

d) I cannot see any advantage of splitting more and more. If we have thoudsands of questions every week to a very specific topic like WF or WCF then and only then I would suggest to create a specific forum for that. Because:

e) I personally dislike to switch between lots of forums to look if there is something to be answered by me. Others obviously are similar to my behaviour or all forums would have lots of traffic. So the main point is point a)

f) In contradiction I would ask if we should not look at a forums statistic and if one goes smaller and smaller then re-integrate it in the original parent forum. so it gets more answers.