"Forum" for each item in the database?

tomalphin

I'm an avid user of the site, and have offered a bunch of constructive feedback along the way. Today I'd like to point out a potential feature which I think would significantly increase the site's value.

In some niche online communities like the incredibly rich boardgamegeek.com site, they not only have entries for each entry in their database, but each entry has it's own forum where people can post comments, discussions and answer questions.

Have you considered offering the same capability on Brickset? I would love to post a thread discussing the upcoming Trevi Fountain set, but the thread would get lost in the shuffle if it was only visible in the general forums.

This might allow a longer-running dialog about specific sets than is possible on the general-purpose forums.

thanks,
-tom

CCC

What if you want to compare one set to a previous version of the same subject, or talk about joining two sets together? You'd need to post it in both set forums.

graphite

^ So then you have a thread for each set, and each combination of sets for all possible sets =)

tomalphin

I think that is a valid scenario, but the more common case is that someone want's to discuss their experience building the set, a cool project or MOC they made based on the set, or people's attempt to build the model from the press photo without the instructions.

Matthew

I assume that you mean a similar concept to the talk page on Wikipedia? Or more like a comments function on the end of each page? Comments feature through Vanilla?

A couple of years ago there was an 'Info' section added for each set, intended for useful information that wouldn't automatically be populated to the database, however it was removed as it ended up becoming a victim of spam and inane comments.

One of the ways in which the forum (which it is important to emphasise runs on a different platform) is relatively free of spam is that there are many people reading each thread regularly and any issues are quickly pointed out. It seems unlikely that a page for every set would achieve the same status, and short of having every post moderated, I think a discussion page for each set would probably end up the same way as the info tab.

tomalphin

Would it be possible to achieve the best of both worlds? Could we augment the existing "forum" features to allow you to list one or more specific sets as metadata on the forum discussion.

The main site would scrape the forum database for this metadata, and show a view of all forum discussions related to that particular set. The main site can also offer a "new discussion" button, which pre-fills the metadata field with the set ID, so the post shows up both in an appropriate forum, and when users browse to this specific set.

Thoughts? Discuss...

CCC

I don't really see the problem with starting a thread for thoughts about popular sets just like any other thread, although if they are reviews they might as well be submitted as a review on the main site. If people want it, the thread will thrive. If not, it will die.

There is a problem with reseller talk about that particular set too, as that should not go on there, but in the selling section.