# The #1 problem of this forum



## r0ach

Is that the main selection page is far too cluttered with useless forums. Things need to be consolidated drastically. Example: Instead of one forum for graphics cards, there's one for Nvidia, one for AMD, and one for "General" graphics cards (seriously?). And then there's even two subsections of "drivers" and "cooling" for both AMD and Nvidia giving you a grand total of SEVEN different forums for graphics cards. It's insane.

People don't use the forums because there's not enough humans that exist to populate them all with posts because there's too many. This is why the sites only actual forum of any use are mostly ones like the mouse forum. Because whoever made the decision to structure the forum like this didn't know enough about mice to ruin that section by creating 50 different mouse forums - one for Logitech, one for Razer, one for Steelseries, etc, and then 10 different subforums for each brand.

The amount of forum sections needs to be like 1/10th of what it is now. It's so God damned cluttered that the only people who actually do use the site just stick to a single forum section or two at most and never venture to another because it would take 15 minutes just to read the titles of them all, then once they click on one of those lesser used forums, they would notice the last post is 15 days ago and instantly leave because there's not enough people on the planet to post in so many sub-sections.

Even if you insist on keeping so many useless sections, an immediate improvement would be for the main forum page to be organized in a tree branch mode and set to non-expanded tree by default. This would make it so the entire forum was viewable on a single page instead of needing to scroll through EIGHT, YES EIGHT F'ING pages (I just counted them) to view them all.


----------



## adamkatt

I agree with too many sub forums. It worked years ago but theres not enough users to warrant it anymore.


----------



## r0ach

It doesn't even matter how many people use the site, it's too cluttered and inefficient regardless. The first step is like I said, to redo the main forum page into tree branches with each branch non-expanded by default. Example: The following sections would probably all go under a single, non-expanded branch called "Site Meta" or something, then when you click expand, all these forums nobody has any interest in pop out:










The goal is to make the main forum selection screen visible in a single page instead of currently taking EIGHT pages. Then after turning the main page into a tree branch mode, subsections can be consolidated or deleted.


----------



## braincracking

They added this do:









WHY?!?


----------



## r0ach

The main forum selection screen takes eight pages to scroll through, so nobody would even notice any new forum section they add like "Halloween forum". It's like scrolling through the entire Wikipedia article for World War II.


----------



## KSIMP88

Yeah it's definitely not what I subscribed to in 05


----------



## Nikado7

Its not the layout or number of forums I hate, its that theres no longer a dropdown menu of them. Before this latest big change you could click on the top button and a drop down of the forum list would pop up and I could click For Sale section. Now.....takes forever to scroll to the bottom and the site seems a lot slower to load. I like the dark mode, but the unread/read topic icon headers are too close in color. Surely they could make the unread icons blue or something. If I had to pick I'd pick the new version.. but a drop down "quick select" would be a great addition.


----------



## luisxd

adamkatt said:


> I agree with too many sub forums. It worked years ago but there's not enough users to warrant it anymore.


You're right, years ago this forums were the only place people could discuss about computer hardware but since facebook groups were introduced a lot of casual users moved over there.


----------



## D3LTA KING

KSIMP88 said:


> Yeah it's definitely not what I subscribed to in 05


I bet you must have seen a great deal in change  over the years


----------



## xtremefunky

I agree 100%. First when I came into this Forum and wanted to ask something I was like: 
Dafuq, which is the right sub, and do I find it? Maybe I oversee it. 

This is really rediculous. I would appriciate, if there will be a change.


----------



## Avacado

D3LTA KING said:


> I bet you must have seen a great deal in change  over the years


10 replies in less than a minute would be frequent.


----------



## D3LTA KING

Avacado said:


> 10 replies in less than a minute would be frequent.




Interesting


----------



## Dogzilla07

r0ach said:


> Is that the main selection page is far too cluttered with useless forums. Things need to be consolidated drastically. Example: Instead of one forum for graphics cards, there's one for Nvidia, one for AMD, and one for "General" graphics cards (seriously?).
> The amount of forum sections needs to be like 1/10th of what it is now.


Completely disagree with you here. While some consolidation after careful consideration is not a bad idea, to just blanket state 1/10th reduction is horrible. There's nothing worse than websites which group completely distinct subjects in one big pile where u need 15min to figure out what post if you're a newcomer, ...

Having a small number of topics within a section is never a bad thing, it's always good, makes it easier to find stuff, figure out stuff, and overall a better choice.


----------



## Zero4549

The categories were perfectly fine when OCN was still OCN. Having any fewer when this place was actually getting traffic would have been a horrible mess. The problem with this forum is that it has been repeatedly passed on to ever increasing incompetent and dispassionate leadership until everyone but that one guy who thinks his mouse is a boat has abandoned ship.


----------



## speed_demon

KSIMP88 said:


> Yeah it's definitely not what I subscribed to in 05


I was gonna say "same" but I came along a little bit later than you. Lol. 

Definitely have seen some huge changes since 06 though. Looking back at the site's archive via the wayback machine almost nothing is the same as it was back then.


----------



## os2wiz

r0ach said:


> Is that the main selection page is far too cluttered with useless forums. Things need to be consolidated drastically. Example: Instead of one forum for graphics cards, there's one for Nvidia, one for AMD, and one for "General" graphics cards (seriously?). And then there's even two subsections of "drivers" and "cooling" for both AMD and Nvidia giving you a grand total of SEVEN different forums for graphics cards. It's insane.
> 
> People don't use the forums because there's not enough humans that exist to populate them all with posts because there's too many. This is why the sites only actual forum of any use are mostly ones like the mouse forum. Because whoever made the decision to structure the forum like this didn't know enough about mice to ruin that section by creating 50 different mouse forums - one for Logitech, one for Razer, one for Steelseries, etc, and then 10 different subforums for each brand.
> 
> The amount of forum sections needs to be like 1/10th of what it is now. It's so God damned cluttered that the only people who actually do use the site just stick to a single forum section or two at most and never venture to another because it would take 15 minutes just to read the titles of them all, then once they click on one of those lesser used forums, they would notice the last post is 15 days ago and instantly leave because there's not enough people on the planet to post in so many sub-sections.
> 
> Even if you insist on keeping so many useless sections, an immediate improvement would be for the main forum page to be organized in a tree branch mode and set to non-expanded tree by default. This would make it so the entire forum was viewable on a single page instead of needing to scroll through EIGHT, YES EIGHT F'ING pages (I just counted them) to view them all.


I suppose you would have one forum for motherboards as well. You are way out of whack on this issue. Each model of motherboard each model of graphics card often has its own unique problems due to design and manufacture issues. It is much faster to find your specific hardware and then see what other users report. Of course some issues are almost universal but I would hate to ahve to run through 500 messages to find the salient information. This site has always haad user run forums for specific hardware. I suggest you wise up or go elsewhere.


----------



## bwana

What we are seeing is the effect of corporate compartmentalizations on our thinking. That everyone is shoe horned into a cubby with strict hr rules is happening everywhere. Just go into the supermarket and look at potato chips. I remember a few brands and one flavor - potato. Now we have bbq, vinegar, cheddar, black pepper, jalapeño, etc. why is this necessary? So we don’t have to walk down the spice aisle?

forums should be defined by generic hardware, not brands. Branding is an invention of marketing and advertising for differentiation and psychological manipulation. This is oc.net dammit. We should be hardcore.


----------



## CptAsian

Nikado7 said:


> Its not the layout or number of forums I hate, its that theres no longer a dropdown menu of them. Before this latest big change you could click on the top button and a drop down of the forum list would pop up and I could click For Sale section. Now.....takes forever to scroll to the bottom and the site seems a lot slower to load. I like the dark mode, but the unread/read topic icon headers are too close in color. Surely they could make the unread icons blue or something. If I had to pick I'd pick the new version.. but a drop down "quick select" would be a great addition.


Fairly late reply I know, but this may be of some use to you. You can follow entire forums by going to a subforum ("Computer Cases" for example) and then following the forum. Now, all of your followed forums will appear in a group at the top of the full forum listing page, which to me is more convenient than the drop down setup, just as long as you're not following more than 8 or 10 subforums.


----------



## Odyn

bwana said:


> What we are seeing is the effect of corporate compartmentalizations on our thinking. That everyone is shoe horned into a cubby with strict hr rules is happening everywhere. Just go into the supermarket and look at potato chips. I remember a few brands and one flavor - potato. Now we have bbq, vinegar, cheddar, black pepper, jalapeño, etc. why is this necessary? So we don’t have to walk down the spice aisle?
> 
> forums should be defined by generic hardware, not brands. Branding is an invention of marketing and advertising for differentiation and psychological manipulation. This is oc.net dammit. We should be hardcore.


What? No. The shoehorning and HR rules are due to company liability and their need to shift the fault burden from employer to employee (IE - being complicit and part of the fault puts them at risk of monetary loss, whereas one bad employee can be targeted for punishment and they can be held liable legally). Don't grasp at straws where there are none. The availability of choice in the supermarket is a function of demand - if the product didn't sell they would stop making it. 

Sigh.


----------



## Shawnb99

bwana said:


> What we are seeing is the effect of corporate compartmentalizations on our thinking. That everyone is shoe horned into a cubby with strict hr rules is happening everywhere. Just go into the supermarket and look at potato chips. I remember a few brands and one flavor - potato. Now we have bbq, vinegar, cheddar, black pepper, jalapeño, etc. why is this necessary? So we don’t have to walk down the spice aisle?
> 
> forums should be defined by generic hardware, not brands. Branding is an invention of marketing and advertising for differentiation and psychological manipulation. This is oc.net dammit. We should be hardcore.


Not sure what hole in the ground you’ve been living in but we’ve had potato chip flavours for over 40 years. Lol 
That’s the biggest stretch I’ve ever heard, potato chip flavours due to HR


----------

