General Discussions vs. Technical Discussions a worthwhile distinction?

[Tom F2 2.4 Find all posts View Profile Close Tom F2]

I neither like nor understand the distinction between "General" topics and "Technical" topics. Sure, pistons are more technical than interior colors, but the distinction falls apart more than it helps me to look for things. The separation of the two seems to be a holdover from that other website. Why not abolish the distinction, here and now?

[JP aka LiveFromNY Find all posts View Profile Close JP]

It's a good question, Tom, and I see your point. But there are good technical reasons to have more forums rather than less having to do with user engagement and how Google indexes and ranks our site. Simply put, (VERY simply put) threads/topics are recognized by Google as being important based on their ability to engage members so that they continue to appear on the first pages of a forum. And having more forums gives more threads the opportunity to rank higher leading to better search engine rankings and more traffic. In addition, threads on the first page of a forum section receive significantly more traffic than threads deeper in the forums which means increased interaction and more members posting. That's why you see successful forums splitting their discussion topics as much as they do. The old hang has 30 main forums. Pelican, serving a wider customer base, has 68. We're currently at 12 main forums with 14 sub-forums so we did try to consolidate as much as we could. Hope this helps.

[Tom F2 2.4 Find all posts View Profile Close Tom F2]

I didn't know that. But you could still have more specific forum titles and maybe several more forums.

[JP aka LiveFromNY Find all posts View Profile Close JP]

I didn't know that. But you could still have more specific forum titles and maybe several more forums.

Eventually we may. Depends on how Google reacts to our site. We'll see.