@Al Truscott , could you review the spreadsheet to make sure that we are on the same wavelength before @Coach Patrick goes ahead with the move?
Also, should we look at a way to add tags to the posts as part of the move? In other words, if something was in clubhouse, put the tag clubhouse on it? This would only work if it can be automated in some way.
@Al Truscott: I like flat too. Where would you put Race Reports?
It seems like they end up getting included (sometimes) with race plans. Sometimes with Race Execution, sometimes with ... Almost seems like we need one obvious place where race reports would be filed so that they are not spread around.
Could also address some of this with standards for how races are tagged. Could have some "official" tags in addition to the myriad tags that get created so that, for example, if you search for the tag "RaceReport" you find all the race reports regardless of where they are filed.
@Al Truscott The more that I look at this, the more I think that it should be Training or General Training rather than Long Distance Triathlon.
I think that you had it right the first time!
• Training (Maybe it needs a better name?) includes: Swim, bike, run, gear, nutrition, medical, power, pace. Should each of these have a separate sub-category, or all be lumped together? This question applies to most other categories, and may be answered differently for each.
I like your Official Tags idea, @Rich Stanbaugh. Are you thinking of a list of starter tags so that when people type in r-u-n in the gags field, running pops up? Or are you thinking forum "moderators" add tags to posts, at least for a while, to get the ball rolling?
For the first question (announcements at top if Forums was a Dashboard page) "I would say your best bet would be to make a Category for Announcements that you place at the top of all the categories. You can then just write all the announcements and put them there along with pinned posts."
We could do that ^above^ and then move the updates somewhere else if needed (or just "unpin" them).
Second question for a "preview"... I took a quick look through all the addons and didn't find anything that will allow the first X number of of words in a discussion. I am going to dig and ask around a bit more!
@Janyne Kizer - with respect to 'official tags,' I was thinking that tags are generally better than nested directories provided that there is some ordering behind them. They become challenging when spelling/punctuation/space usage causes a proliferation of similar tags (Race Plan vs RacePlan).
If there was group of 'controlled' tags and users were required to 'choose 1 or more from the following list of tags, it could greatly add to our ability to search the forums in an organized way. For example, nearly all files on my Mac are in a single directory and are tagged for searching. The only files that I break into separate files are media files, workout files, etc. I do not differentiate between spreadsheets, presentations, PDFs, documents... all these I find with a search.
Yeah, I'm old, but I'm slow...train, eat, nap, train, clean up mess after storm, Norma-Tec, THEN get to the forums. So, @Janyne Kizer & @Coach Patrick , I reviewed the spreadsheet linked above, and agree with the flat structure and the sub-categories within the Big Six. Also, that plug in which allows a hover to show 220 characters of a text would be a good addition, IMO.
I'll repost here the Major categories and the sub-topics I think should go in each. The spreadsheet misses some of these, as they don't have their own category now:
• Long Distance Triathlon (Maybe it needs a better name?) includes: Any and everything relation to preparing for a 70.3 or IM Swim, bike, run, gear, nutrition, medical, power, pace.
• Race Strategy and Execution: Race reports, race selection, race planning, race data analysis. Race plans and reports GO HERE, not in the race threads, for broadest possible coverage.
• Races: all those threads Brenda just created for each of the individual races.
• Wide World of EN-Durance: Ultra-running, Running (5K >> Marathon), Bike Racing/events, Short course triathlon, Aquabike, Aquathon, Duathlon, UltraMan, other Epic events, Camps, Boomers, Women. (This runs a risk of partially overlapping with Training, but "we can't let the perfect be the enemy of the good")
• Community: Club House, Trial members, Q&A Central, Admin, Challenges, Classifieds, WSM, Sponsors, Podcast/Coach Talks etc.
• Coach Threads
..........
• First category Training vs Long Distance Tri? I think there is confusion potential either way we go. EG, if it's "Training", and someone wants to talk about Ultra Running gear or nutrition, where does that go? IMO, it should go in the Wide World category, in an ultra-focussed thread. OTOH, if it's "Long Distance Triathlon", it might not be so obvious that things like bike choices go there. But I'll stick to my guns about calling it as LDT, for the reasons I mentioned earlier: "This is probably the primary reason that better than 95% of people join up with Endurance Nation. If you've got a question or observation about any aspect for preparing for LDT, it goes here. The OutSeason is specifically designed to help prepare for LD training, so those threads would go here, IMO." Long distance tri, the training for and execution of on race day, are the twin Core Competencies of EN, and should get highlighted.
Finally, Tags. It would be great if there were an an Artificial Intelligent Bot which read every post and assigned a tag or tags. Barring that, we have to rely on the poster to do the work. Any way to make that more automatic/easier?
I'm still not loving the Long Distance Triathlon versus Wide World of EN-Durance.
From your description of the two categories, if I am training for an open marathon, I should post in Long Distance Tri but if I am training for an Oly, I should post in Wide World of ENdurance? That makes no sense to me.
I do agree that ultra running or Assault on Mount Mitchell or Everest base camp would all be in the Wide World of EN-Durance. I just think that all things triathlon should be in the tri training forum and that we should call it something tri-related. Tri Training. Tri Talk.
I also agree that it's messy. Where to we put marathons and half marathons? Do Grand Fondos go in the more general category or the Wide World of EN-Durance category? (Notice we never talk about marathon swimming, -- ha!)
Regarding tags, it would be nice to find a way to encourage people to tag and/or have "moderators" go behind and tag posts moving forward. Tags can help in the search for sure and also provide another way to navigate the forums.
Would hashtag support be at all beneficial? I think people are more natural with adding hashtags within their posts both here and in GroupMe. Would hashtags help with either search or navigation?
#1 We now have preview of the original thread in the forums...I think that replaces the "tool tip" piece...right?
#2 Tagging...I think having it open for now is okay, especially as an admin can CULL them and fix...so we could leave live for a bit and check in to see if we want to change them? Thoughts on that?
#3 Bulk Tagging is not possible. So this means if we take all of Forum A threads and move them into Forum B, we can't tag them as from Forum A unless we do it individually. That said, if we think tagging by subsection is important, we can (a) create those tags and (b) pay someone or manyones to add the tags manually before I move them over. Thoughts on this?
#4 Forum Consolidation
I love how clean it is. But I want to be clear that EN can't just be "Long Course Triathlon" as we are really fighting that stereotype to remain relevant (many of the newest members are "just" runners, for example). So if I was a Runner or a Cyclist...where would I go in this structure?
Long Distance Triathlon
Racing Strategy and Execution
Races
Wide World of EN-durance
Coach Threads
Community
What if the structure were something like this:
Announcements
Training Forum [Long Distance Triathlon]
Racing Forum [Racing Strategy and Execution]
Coaching Forum [Coaching Happens Here]
Community Forum [The catch all for all other things, needs a better name]
Races & Places [Destination Related Stuff like races, events, travel, etc]
Wide World of EN-durance [Removed, it starts to divide by sport]
And honestly, I think that Races and Places could be under Racing as well...Thoughts on this?
@Coach Patrick I'll also support your proposed headings. And, since I like six rather than seven headings, also go for folding races and places into the racing forum.
#2 Tagging...I think having it open for now is okay, especially as an admin can CULL them and fix...so we could leave live for a bit and check in to see if we want to change them? Thoughts on that?
I agree with this.
Maybe, in an attempt to maximize searchability and minimize admin cleanup, we could have "Tagging Guidelines" for the first post in a thread. The toughest part of the forums (for me) has always been searching. I always get way too many responses to be useful within my span of patience. Tags could really help that.
Always use an existing tag if it is out there
Always use a race if it is about a race, especially if it is a plan / report. We could pre-create the list of races so there are out there to choose from and there would be less cleanup for admins.
We could create a list of subcategories and ask folks to choose at least one: Ironman, Ultraman, Nutrition, Zwift, Marathon, WKO4, Stryd, ...
New Topic: multi-level indenting
Is there a way to make a list that is more than one level deep? Seems like we used to have access to the advanced editor, which I think supported this. Sometimes outlines are the most efficient way to organize a post, but I can only figure out how to make a single-level list...
Ok, reorganization is done...I haven't moved any threads per se, but I have created new categories and organized things underneath those categories as you can see here in this (admin) collapsed view:
Note I decided to keep races and places as "going / attending" is a big part of us being a healthy community. I am open to further discussion. So...next steps to consider/execute:
Confirm the subcategories all match the macro headers from ^above^. Let me know if good or if changes are needed.
Tell me whether or not you want to have tags manually added to sub categories before they are merged, could be yes / no / only this one, etc.
I will then move the individual threads around so the categories go from "nested" as they are now to "flat" as you see in the image ^above^.
We create a "how to tag" post and pin it in announcements.
I create a "welcome to the new forum" layout for the team video.
Not sure what this means? Update the spreadsheet? "Confirm the subcategories all match the macro headers from ^above^. Let me know if good or if changes are needed."
@Janyne Kizer I guess I just meant if you look at the spreadsheet and then compare it to what I did online, did I put all of those subcategories in the right places?
also...if “tags yes please” means tag the threads before I move them? If so...we’ll need to create those common tags, right?
Confirm the subcategories all match the macro headers from ^above^. Let me know if good or if changes are needed.
Tell me whether or not you want to have tags manually added to sub categories before they are merged, could be yes / no / only this one, etc.
I will then move the individual threads around so the categories go from "nested" as they are now to "flat" as you see in the image ^above^.
...OK, I looked at the "Categories" page in the Forums as it has been reconfigured today. The "Sub-categories" seem to be under the correct headings/categories. The one that confuses me a bit is Training Camps and Weekends - why place it in Races & Places, as opposed to either Training or Community? And, for that matter, why separate out "Races & Places" from "Racing Forum". I know, I know, I suggested having these two be separate, but giving the merging of "Wide World of EN-Durance" into several of the others (Training, Community, and Racing), why keep these two separate?
As to Tags, I don't really know what you are asking - do you mean each of the current sub-categories would get its own #hashtag? And then going forward, a tutorial is provided about how to tag posts - emphasizing that the FIRST post in any thread really should have a tag?
Yes, I do think that the posts should be tagged. Both @Scott Giljum and @scott dinhofer expressed the need for this. @Scott Giljum "was wondering if we could create a set of tags, hashtags, whatever, that if I know I just want to see what’s there on a certain topic, I can peruse without feeling totally overwhelmed. " and @scott dinhofer pointed out that people have a need to "browse by topics at time."
While we could just decide to tag moving forward, I think that would risk losing easy access to the good information that is already here.
I am asking if, before I move all the Nutrition Sub Forum posts into the General Discussion, if I should pay someone to login and edit every single post to include the tag "nutrition" in it.
I am torn, the search functionality works really well, so you should be able to find a mention of "skratch" whether it's a tag or not. But I guess I have a fair amount of anxiety about moving stuff and then having it be all blobbed up like a Zwift fondo and indiscernible. 😱
What do you think of that? ^^ Let me know and I can kick it off this weekend!
Part Two
I like the idea of Races and Places as separate as camps happen....not races...and folks go places all the time (Gabe in Paris) and we can talk about those places as destinations vs events...let's try it in the short term and we can re-evaluate!
If you are looking for tagging volunteers, I can help. If you have high confidence in the search function, that would make tagging more of a "nice to have" than a requirement and we can focus on making a concerted effort to tag every thread moving forward.
I have moved the Run Durability sub forum posts to General Discussions...and moved the All Things Plans and Sponsor Discounts into the Announcement forum...still searchable still good...onwards? Please czech...
Is it possible to make it so that the Official Coach Threads don't show up in recent? I don't love that they show up in search either but that bothers me less. (If other people want to these threads to be more visible, I hope they speak up!)
Also, when I go into the General Training forum, I am now seeing some Official Coach Threads and Micro threads -- maybe that is where the stuff showing up in recent is coming from?
Okay team, I pushed it out to the whole team via email just now. Here is my first stab at an explanation...I know we had some items about TAGS we wanted to discuss...any thoughts on how to modify my explanation?
@Janyne Kizer When you want to add a NEW tag that conflicts (fall running v running), you type the word you want and hit SPACE instead of comma. It will say nothing found...click in the body of the new post and it'll be confirmed!!! 👍
Comments
@Coach Patrick , I'm on it.
@Al Truscott , could you review the spreadsheet to make sure that we are on the same wavelength before @Coach Patrick goes ahead with the move?
Also, should we look at a way to add tags to the posts as part of the move? In other words, if something was in clubhouse, put the tag clubhouse on it? This would only work if it can be automated in some way.
@Al Truscott: I like flat too. Where would you put Race Reports?
It seems like they end up getting included (sometimes) with race plans. Sometimes with Race Execution, sometimes with ... Almost seems like we need one obvious place where race reports would be filed so that they are not spread around.
Could also address some of this with standards for how races are tagged. Could have some "official" tags in addition to the myriad tags that get created so that, for example, if you search for the tag "RaceReport" you find all the race reports regardless of where they are filed.
@Al Truscott The more that I look at this, the more I think that it should be Training or General Training rather than Long Distance Triathlon.
I think that you had it right the first time!
• Training (Maybe it needs a better name?) includes: Swim, bike, run, gear, nutrition, medical, power, pace. Should each of these have a separate sub-category, or all be lumped together? This question applies to most other categories, and may be answered differently for each.
@Al Truscott and others, please review the spreadsheet before we pass it along to @Coach Patrick .
Thanks!
Janyne
I like your Official Tags idea, @Rich Stanbaugh. Are you thinking of a list of starter tags so that when people type in r-u-n in the gags field, running pops up? Or are you thinking forum "moderators" add tags to posts, at least for a while, to get the ball rolling?
Update from the Forum Tech Team....
For the first question (announcements at top if Forums was a Dashboard page) "I would say your best bet would be to make a Category for Announcements that you place at the top of all the categories. You can then just write all the announcements and put them there along with pinned posts."
We could do that ^above^ and then move the updates somewhere else if needed (or just "unpin" them).
Second question for a "preview"... I took a quick look through all the addons and didn't find anything that will allow the first X number of of words in a discussion. I am going to dig and ask around a bit more!
@Janyne Kizer - with respect to 'official tags,' I was thinking that tags are generally better than nested directories provided that there is some ordering behind them. They become challenging when spelling/punctuation/space usage causes a proliferation of similar tags (Race Plan vs RacePlan).
If there was group of 'controlled' tags and users were required to 'choose 1 or more from the following list of tags, it could greatly add to our ability to search the forums in an organized way. For example, nearly all files on my Mac are in a single directory and are tagged for searching. The only files that I break into separate files are media files, workout files, etc. I do not differentiate between spreadsheets, presentations, PDFs, documents... all these I find with a search.
Gotcha. I think that's a decision that we have to make. Should everyone be able to create tags ? If the answer is no, not everyone should be able to create tags, then I think @Coach Patrick can turn that off https://docs.vanillaforums.com/help/addons/tagging/
An Announcements group with pin/unpin sounds good, provided that you think that it will be noticeable enough.
Regarding the Preview -- would this one do the trick do you think?
https://open.vanillaforums.com/addon/discussiontooltip-plugin
or
or
https://open.vanillaforums.com/addon/inboxpanel-plugin
Yeah, I'm old, but I'm slow...train, eat, nap, train, clean up mess after storm, Norma-Tec, THEN get to the forums. So, @Janyne Kizer & @Coach Patrick , I reviewed the spreadsheet linked above, and agree with the flat structure and the sub-categories within the Big Six. Also, that plug in which allows a hover to show 220 characters of a text would be a good addition, IMO.
I'll repost here the Major categories and the sub-topics I think should go in each. The spreadsheet misses some of these, as they don't have their own category now:
• Long Distance Triathlon (Maybe it needs a better name?) includes: Any and everything relation to preparing for a 70.3 or IM Swim, bike, run, gear, nutrition, medical, power, pace.
• Race Strategy and Execution: Race reports, race selection, race planning, race data analysis. Race plans and reports GO HERE, not in the race threads, for broadest possible coverage.
• Races: all those threads Brenda just created for each of the individual races.
• Wide World of EN-Durance: Ultra-running, Running (5K >> Marathon), Bike Racing/events, Short course triathlon, Aquabike, Aquathon, Duathlon, UltraMan, other Epic events, Camps, Boomers, Women. (This runs a risk of partially overlapping with Training, but "we can't let the perfect be the enemy of the good")
• Community: Club House, Trial members, Q&A Central, Admin, Challenges, Classifieds, WSM, Sponsors, Podcast/Coach Talks etc.
• Coach Threads
..........
• First category Training vs Long Distance Tri? I think there is confusion potential either way we go. EG, if it's "Training", and someone wants to talk about Ultra Running gear or nutrition, where does that go? IMO, it should go in the Wide World category, in an ultra-focussed thread. OTOH, if it's "Long Distance Triathlon", it might not be so obvious that things like bike choices go there. But I'll stick to my guns about calling it as LDT, for the reasons I mentioned earlier: "This is probably the primary reason that better than 95% of people join up with Endurance Nation. If you've got a question or observation about any aspect for preparing for LDT, it goes here. The OutSeason is specifically designed to help prepare for LD training, so those threads would go here, IMO." Long distance tri, the training for and execution of on race day, are the twin Core Competencies of EN, and should get highlighted.
Finally, Tags. It would be great if there were an an Artificial Intelligent Bot which read every post and assigned a tag or tags. Barring that, we have to rely on the poster to do the work. Any way to make that more automatic/easier?
I'm still not loving the Long Distance Triathlon versus Wide World of EN-Durance.
From your description of the two categories, if I am training for an open marathon, I should post in Long Distance Tri but if I am training for an Oly, I should post in Wide World of ENdurance? That makes no sense to me.
I do agree that ultra running or Assault on Mount Mitchell or Everest base camp would all be in the Wide World of EN-Durance. I just think that all things triathlon should be in the tri training forum and that we should call it something tri-related. Tri Training. Tri Talk.
I also agree that it's messy. Where to we put marathons and half marathons? Do Grand Fondos go in the more general category or the Wide World of EN-Durance category? (Notice we never talk about marathon swimming, -- ha!)
I also feel like it goes with the choose your own adventure aspect that is displayed at https://www.endurancenation.us/start/
Regarding tags, it would be nice to find a way to encourage people to tag and/or have "moderators" go behind and tag posts moving forward. Tags can help in the search for sure and also provide another way to navigate the forums.
Would hashtag support be at all beneficial? I think people are more natural with adding hashtags within their posts both here and in GroupMe. Would hashtags help with either search or navigation?
@Al Truscott @Janyne Kizer @Rich Stanbaugh
#1 We now have preview of the original thread in the forums...I think that replaces the "tool tip" piece...right?
#2 Tagging...I think having it open for now is okay, especially as an admin can CULL them and fix...so we could leave live for a bit and check in to see if we want to change them? Thoughts on that?
#3 Bulk Tagging is not possible. So this means if we take all of Forum A threads and move them into Forum B, we can't tag them as from Forum A unless we do it individually. That said, if we think tagging by subsection is important, we can (a) create those tags and (b) pay someone or manyones to add the tags manually before I move them over. Thoughts on this?
#4 Forum Consolidation
I love how clean it is. But I want to be clear that EN can't just be "Long Course Triathlon" as we are really fighting that stereotype to remain relevant (many of the newest members are "just" runners, for example). So if I was a Runner or a Cyclist...where would I go in this structure?
What if the structure were something like this:
And honestly, I think that Races and Places could be under Racing as well...Thoughts on this?
👍️
I like it!
@Coach Patrick I'll also support your proposed headings. And, since I like six rather than seven headings, also go for folding races and places into the racing forum.
"It's your world; we just live in it..."
@Al Truscott If I am reading things correctly, @Coach Patrick is proposing six headings (Coach, please correct me if I am wrong!)
Is everyone good with this?
#2 Tagging...I think having it open for now is okay, especially as an admin can CULL them and fix...so we could leave live for a bit and check in to see if we want to change them? Thoughts on that?
I agree with this.
Maybe, in an attempt to maximize searchability and minimize admin cleanup, we could have "Tagging Guidelines" for the first post in a thread. The toughest part of the forums (for me) has always been searching. I always get way too many responses to be useful within my span of patience. Tags could really help that.
New Topic: multi-level indenting
Is there a way to make a list that is more than one level deep? Seems like we used to have access to the advanced editor, which I think supported this. Sometimes outlines are the most efficient way to organize a post, but I can only figure out how to make a single-level list...
@Janyne Kizer @Al Truscott @Rich Stanbaugh @Jenn Edwards
Ok, reorganization is done...I haven't moved any threads per se, but I have created new categories and organized things underneath those categories as you can see here in this (admin) collapsed view:
Note I decided to keep races and places as "going / attending" is a big part of us being a healthy community. I am open to further discussion. So...next steps to consider/execute:
It's a thing of beauty!
Not sure what this means? Update the spreadsheet? "Confirm the subcategories all match the macro headers from ^above^. Let me know if good or if changes are needed."
Tags - yes please
@Janyne Kizer I guess I just meant if you look at the spreadsheet and then compare it to what I did online, did I put all of those subcategories in the right places?
also...if “tags yes please” means tag the threads before I move them? If so...we’ll need to create those common tags, right?
...OK, I looked at the "Categories" page in the Forums as it has been reconfigured today. The "Sub-categories" seem to be under the correct headings/categories. The one that confuses me a bit is Training Camps and Weekends - why place it in Races & Places, as opposed to either Training or Community? And, for that matter, why separate out "Races & Places" from "Racing Forum". I know, I know, I suggested having these two be separate, but giving the merging of "Wide World of EN-Durance" into several of the others (Training, Community, and Racing), why keep these two separate?
As to Tags, I don't really know what you are asking - do you mean each of the current sub-categories would get its own #hashtag? And then going forward, a tutorial is provided about how to tag posts - emphasizing that the FIRST post in any thread really should have a tag?
Yes, I do think that the posts should be tagged. Both @Scott Giljum and @scott dinhofer expressed the need for this. @Scott Giljum "was wondering if we could create a set of tags, hashtags, whatever, that if I know I just want to see what’s there on a certain topic, I can peruse without feeling totally overwhelmed. " and @scott dinhofer pointed out that people have a need to "browse by topics at time."
While we could just decide to tag moving forward, I think that would risk losing easy access to the good information that is already here.
A set of common tags would be awesome!
@Al Truscott @Janyne Kizer
Part One
I am asking if, before I move all the Nutrition Sub Forum posts into the General Discussion, if I should pay someone to login and edit every single post to include the tag "nutrition" in it.
I am torn, the search functionality works really well, so you should be able to find a mention of "skratch" whether it's a tag or not. But I guess I have a fair amount of anxiety about moving stuff and then having it be all blobbed up like a Zwift fondo and indiscernible. 😱
What do you think of that? ^^ Let me know and I can kick it off this weekend!
Part Two
I like the idea of Races and Places as separate as camps happen....not races...and folks go places all the time (Gabe in Paris) and we can talk about those places as destinations vs events...let's try it in the short term and we can re-evaluate!
~ Coach P
If you are looking for tagging volunteers, I can help. If you have high confidence in the search function, that would make tagging more of a "nice to have" than a requirement and we can focus on making a concerted effort to tag every thread moving forward.
1 - Only the first post in each thread needs to be tagged, no?
2 - Races and Places it is, then
I have moved the Run Durability sub forum posts to General Discussions...and moved the All Things Plans and Sponsor Discounts into the Announcement forum...still searchable still good...onwards? Please czech...
Is it possible to make it so that the Official Coach Threads don't show up in recent? I don't love that they show up in search either but that bothers me less. (If other people want to these threads to be more visible, I hope they speak up!)
Also, when I go into the General Training forum, I am now seeing some Official Coach Threads and Micro threads -- maybe that is where the stuff showing up in recent is coming from?
@Janyne Kizer Good catch...that was me moving some threads to the wrong area.
I have fixed that for the time being.
Also, I have toggled the forums to have up to 8 tags (vs 5) so we are continuing to improve. 👍
We are getting there!
Okay team, I pushed it out to the whole team via email just now. Here is my first stab at an explanation...I know we had some items about TAGS we wanted to discuss...any thoughts on how to modify my explanation?
@Al Truscott @Janyne Kizer @Rich Stanbaugh
Could we please have the following tags added:
Thanks!
@Janyne Kizer When you want to add a NEW tag that conflicts (fall running v running), you type the word you want and hit SPACE instead of comma. It will say nothing found...click in the body of the new post and it'll be confirmed!!! 👍