No; it clutters too much crap with very specific crap that doesn’t revolve around discussion directly.
Or in short; I don’t care about your reviews of philosophy works enough to give you an entire forum sub-section, and so far…you’re the only one asking.
Go get about 50+ people asking for the same thing and I could start to consider the idea.
At the moment; it’s only you that find this interesting to do, and as it’s been said; there are great resources on the internet for you to create a website for yourself to post that stuff.
We, however, are not in the personal website business.
We’re in the massive discussion business.
What you are asking for is simply too small for me to care about compared to how many people will care that it is there; yet it will add yet another deviating segment to our already very cluttered board.
You are the second one telling me to go create my own website. And in this same topic I am told to be rude. Perhaps you and the other staff member should consider your words before posting them. I am now reading that remarks as a ‘get lost’. Is that how it is ment?
You have constantly argued against the majority of the staff members, of which have taken time to explain why this will not happen, of which one of those is the owner.
So when I chime in this late in the game; I’m going to be extremely direct, not to be rude; to be clear.
I’m not telling you to build a website to “buzz off”.
I would like you to stay and chat around the board.
But in regards to this request; yes, I am telling you, “No; in short, it’s not in demand enough, or of interest enough for me to merit giving an entire sub-forum.”
That’s all there is to it; whether you like it or not; I would say there’s little chance you’ll see such a forum right now.
Arjen, the allegation of laziness is sort of absurd. We’re clearly putting in more effort into telling you why we won’t make the board than it would take to make the board, so the amount of effort required couldn’t be our primary motivator.
Look: compare this decision to any process of organizing anything.
-Filing cabinets are nice for organizing files, but if you have 7 folders, it is significantly less useful to store them throughout 26 drawers; the ‘cost’ of navigating the filing system would vastly outweigh the benefit of having the files organized to a high level of specificity.
-Folders in a computer hierarchy can be created ad infinitum; why not create a new folder for every document you store on your computer? Because the more folders you have, the more resources is takes to navigate the organizational structure, and the more likely that something misplaced will be lost for good.
-In a library, it is useful to have different collections stored in different areas. But if there were more areas than there were books, it would be useless. Even one section that contained only a few books would add more difficulty in finding the books a person was looking for than it would provide utility by adding more specificity.
This is a common problem in organization engineering: the utility of adding layers to an organizational structure is not linear. That is to say, there comes a point at which adding more precision will adversely affect overall usability. As I said, all your considerations are legitimate, but you are looking at this from the point of view of someone who would use the forum in question, not from the point of view of someone trying to design a usable site that will provide the most good to the most people who want to talk philosophy.
The forum you propose would likely be used by you alone, so for everyone who isn’t you it would provide nothing but inconvenience, small though it may be. The benefits, then, do not apply: there is no demand for the specificity you propose, so the forum would only add clutter for the vast majority of our users.
It was ment to rattle your cage a little. I know it was absurd.
True, but 2 or 3 drawers for 7 files would be more efficient than 1.
Actually I have designed and help design several sites. The reason why I am proposing this has the quality of the site in mind. The quantity of users of such subforums will increase over time, if the correct seperations are made and it will increase efficiency, quality and pleasure.
Perhaps this particular subforum would not be appropriate for ILP. I will create some mundane babble over this.
My preliminary findings indicate that the time to look through 7 files is significantly less than the time to look through 2 drawers of 3.5 files each. In a rough experiment, I made a good faith effort to simulate normal filing speed (verified by my coworker); switching from one drawer to the next took about 3.7 seconds. With all the files in the same drawer, I was able to easily see the label on each simultaneously, and to navigate them quickly.
Furthermore, according to Wikipedia, short-term memory holds 7 plus or minus 2 items; categorizing these files into two drawers would not make the mental breakdown significantly easier for most people
It is highly unlikely that you will save >3 seconds in filing time by splitting the 7 files between 2 drawers, let alone 3 drawers. The added complexity is likely to make filing more difficult and less efficient. My own experiences corroborate this result.
These findings suggest that you overestimate the potential gains from increased structural complexity. This agrees with the assertions that the members of Staff have been making in this thread.
I’ll check in on your Mundane Babble thread periodically to see what kind of response people have.
You have a good sense of huhor Carleas. However, you know as well as I that there are a lot more than 7 threads on any given topic. It just taces a good moderator to group them together.
Anyway, lets await the mundane babble for a while. I would appreciate the input of the staaf there as well btw.
