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The general suggestion of trying to simplify the forum count was made here but I thought I might want to make a more direct thread about it so it doesn't just stay buried in an otherwise unrelated topic. I wasn't sure where to post this, but I suppose this would be the best place. Essentially, there's a lot of subforums (over 50!) and I question how many of these we actually need, either due to crossover between forums or some forums simply seeing very little activity.
Here are a few forums that have barely any activity at all:
Naturalism: Although there was a recent post here, there were 2 years beforehand with no posts whatsoever; and the recent post was only a note on how completely dead the forum was.
Applied Protology: Nearly a year without a new post.
Wicca and Neo-Pagan Religions: More than two years without a new post.
I don't see much purpose in keeping these forums if no one ever posts in them, and there's not really anything in them that couldn't easily go into other forums on the site. Anything in Applied Protology can go into Natural Science, and the Wicca and Neo-Pagan Religions can just go into World Religions.
There are some other areas where combining forums into one might be a good idea, such as combining some or even all of the World Religion subforums into Comparative Religion. These aren't really dead like the above forums, but I'm not sure if we need quite as many as there are.
Additionally, I'm not sure why Christianity 201 and Ecclesiology 201 are separate forums. They seem to basically be the same thing. The descriptions indicate that Christianity 201 is for historical discussion whereas Ecclesiology might be for more current discussions, but in practice there's really no distinction between them that I see, so perhaps they should be combined into just one forum. I'd also suggest combining Theology 201 with them, but that admittedly is "Theist only" rather than "Christian only". However, examining the forum topics, in practice there doesn't seem to be a real distinction between it and Christianity/Ecclesiology so perhaps the slightly different requirement for posting is irrelevant at this point.
There are probably some other redundant subforums that could be combined (there seem to be several "for fun" forums, for example, that seem like they could be put into one), but those are the obvious ones I noted.
Finally, as long as I'm making suggestions regarding a restructure of the forums, I might as well mention that while the quippy descriptions for some of the forums can be amusing, they can easily leave someone confused as to what the topic of the forum actually is.
Here are a few forums that have barely any activity at all:
Naturalism: Although there was a recent post here, there were 2 years beforehand with no posts whatsoever; and the recent post was only a note on how completely dead the forum was.
Applied Protology: Nearly a year without a new post.
Wicca and Neo-Pagan Religions: More than two years without a new post.
I don't see much purpose in keeping these forums if no one ever posts in them, and there's not really anything in them that couldn't easily go into other forums on the site. Anything in Applied Protology can go into Natural Science, and the Wicca and Neo-Pagan Religions can just go into World Religions.
There are some other areas where combining forums into one might be a good idea, such as combining some or even all of the World Religion subforums into Comparative Religion. These aren't really dead like the above forums, but I'm not sure if we need quite as many as there are.
Additionally, I'm not sure why Christianity 201 and Ecclesiology 201 are separate forums. They seem to basically be the same thing. The descriptions indicate that Christianity 201 is for historical discussion whereas Ecclesiology might be for more current discussions, but in practice there's really no distinction between them that I see, so perhaps they should be combined into just one forum. I'd also suggest combining Theology 201 with them, but that admittedly is "Theist only" rather than "Christian only". However, examining the forum topics, in practice there doesn't seem to be a real distinction between it and Christianity/Ecclesiology so perhaps the slightly different requirement for posting is irrelevant at this point.
There are probably some other redundant subforums that could be combined (there seem to be several "for fun" forums, for example, that seem like they could be put into one), but those are the obvious ones I noted.
Finally, as long as I'm making suggestions regarding a restructure of the forums, I might as well mention that while the quippy descriptions for some of the forums can be amusing, they can easily leave someone confused as to what the topic of the forum actually is.
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