members requesting new sections

what do you do if a member requests that you add a new section?

a few of our members asked for one, and said they would post in it, but they only made one thread in it, and didnt bother posting in it again!

its been 6 days now, if it gets on to a week without it being posted in, i will delete it.

 

I've had this before. Generally I'd tell them to post their topics in an existing forum and then once there are enough to warrant a new category so they can all find the threads easier then you'll make one and shift them over to their new home category. Until then it doesn't look attractive to have forum categories with very few threads in them when it says on the home page the latest post was like weeks ago or something.

I worry when a category hasn't had action for a few days, a week max, then I start to try and get discussions going in them again any way I can. At least on forums that have activity. I have some forums that don't and I tend not to worry too much about it then.

I'd encourage them to post in it, or shift the thread to it's nearest suitable category and get rid of it.

 

3 other ways of dealing with things that need to be found, should have their own forum, but not enough activity to warrant it.

• -special name in title not normally used in threads. Some IPB mod people have things like (EN30) in the title. The trick of course is to make sure the special name is long enough to be found (possibly 4 characters for the mysql search)
• -prefixes if they are supported, but I find those ugly to look at
• -tags that are unique, assuming there is not an auto-tag modification in place that preclude that.

There may be other ideas. Each of us constantly agonizes over how many forums to have. In some cases it make sense regardless of amount of threads, but most of the time there needs to be a reason for it.

If people are asking for a special forum then I am assuming it would be so they could find things, is there another reason?

 

no, they asked for a section on a topic that hadnt really been talked about in the forum before, they said it was so they could talk about it, but they didnt, there is one thread, made after i made the section for them, with about 5 replies.

 

What Dan suggested is how we do it.

 

Id look at the content of that could be moved into and make sure there was about two-three threads a week on it and then add it, if there wasnt I would do what Dan said and encourage them to create such topics first before it may be created

 

This is by far the best way that I've seen someone handle a situation like this.

1) Members vote for a forum category via. a poll.
2) Forum category is created and members begin to post in it.
3) After 30 days the admin decides based on post count whether or not he/she should keep it.

 

the section is gone, and i put the thread in another section.

i said i might bring it back if there are enough threads about it in other sections

 

I thank them and take it under advisement. If it's needed now, I add it. If not, I keep it in my mind and, when its time has come, will add it. I don't like having too many sections (actually have over 20 in a new forum), so I keep it small as much as I can. Still some of their ideas are excellent and good to implement.

 

An alternative would be to enable social groups, if you have that ability. Social groups are available in VB and as a third party add-on in IPB. This way you keep your forum categories the way you want them to be while giving them an outlet to create new ones on their own.

If the topic is something that is widely discussed, that would signal a new category to be made. If a few members are asking for it and it's not something already popular, then I wouldn't create it.

I see you have already done away with it. I would have too. Sometimes members think a forum should have things that just don't/won't work. At least you tried, eh.

Good luck...