What if we moved General Cycling to the top?
 

I think this is one of the friendliest and most helpful forums, and it's buried down here at the bottom of the page. What if we we were to move it further up the page?

Apparently this was done before and the General Cycling crowd was extremely unhappy about it.

Opinions?

Doesn't matter to me. I use New Posts shortcut. ;)

Yes, and move A&S to some crackpots forum.

I would say just leave it here where it's at,, let them, come looking for us,, IMHO

Like the bread and milk at the back of the store? While you're a it, how about adding a forum just for medical issues. Some forums start looking like Web MD and start getting dreary.

The forums on the top of the list get inundated with spam from bots.

They don't last long. We clear them as soon as we can.

strangely, General gets its share. I always wondered why that was seeing how far down the list it is, probably from bots. There are a batch of forums that rarely get any spam.

I really don't care, but there's some logic to leaving it where it is. In most cases specific categories are listed first, and the catchall "none of the above" is last.

Moving it higher might raise the number of posts, but many may be in less than the best place, and not reach the right people, such as C&V or mechanics forums. It may keep the mods hopping, classifying and moving stuff to the better places.

So, as I said, I don't mind, but the Mods might.

I think we're better served being the refugee camp just before Foo rather than moving up the list, after all most people are looking for one of those specialty forums for the most part.. we're just kinda generalized here.

I just scroll to the bottom and find it right away. pretty easy.

I read a limited number of the various forums, I scroll to the ones I want to read. Doesn't make any difference to me where it is.

If they want to read it they will come?

Aaron :)

Or maybe keep it alphabetical like the rest of the categories.

I was thinking about this yesterday! Personally, I would like it towards the top. I tend to review this forum first and then move on to the other more specific forums.

Well, what's near the top now? Advocacy and Safety, obviously that's your point, but isn't it possible that the more prominent position in the list encourages some of the more rash posting?

Were I you, I'd probably look at how often new users drift into A&S, post something controversial or unintentionally insulting and set off an argument. If your web page design drives fresh traffic to that section (and it does), then changing it might just shift that kind of thing to the General Cycling subforum instead, which (maybe) would defeat your purpose.

i never knew this was here untill 2 days ago

My guess is that the spammers utilize page ranking, probably with an API from one of the major search engines. Get the most bang from your spam that way.

It's bound to be scripted canned software that a monkey could use anyway. They aren't even sophisticated enough to scrape keywords from the target to camouflage the title, which should be child's play.

Nah. Spammers don't care if you respond at all. They just need to get their links posted as often as possible. It gets their (or employer's) higher on the search list. It's called Search Engine Optimization or just SEO.

Nermal you'd want your spam on pages with higher page rank because there'd be more traffic there, and more hits on your spam.

Links like that don't work for SEO any more, more likely to hurt than help in fact.

its not like you have to go down rickety stairs, into the basement and look for it on a shelf, in the dark..

Aren't these subforums supposed to be in alphabetical order? If so, this one should be after the Framebuilders forum.
http://www.bikeforums.net/bike-forums/

Where is here? You mean the page listing all the forums? I virtually never go there. I bookmark the individual forums that interest me and always use the bookmarks to get to them. I can arrange the bookmarks in in a folder and in my preferred order.

To me, It should logically be at the top.

Alphabetical is a logical order too.

New or lazy users would post more questions in General Cycling than in the appropriate more specific forums, and experienced users not wanting to separate the wheat from the chaff wouldn't read and answer them.

I'd bet this has something to do with equipment and training questions that have nothing to do with being large or old ending up in the Clydestales/Athenas and Fifty Plus forums.