Would you like to see these awesome new forum features? [Corrected version]

Would you like to see these awesome new forum features?

  • Separate forums for 9-ball, 8-ball, Other Pool Games

    Votes: 15 37.5%

  • TV + Internet listings

    Votes: 25 62.5%

  • Practice Drill Repository

    Votes: 29 72.5%
  • Total voters
    40
Blackball75

Blackball75

Blackball75
Silver Member
Hi Guys,

I've been thinking about ways to make these awesome forums even better.

I came up with:

a) Have a general forum called e.g. "Cuesports: General" that caters for issues relating to all/most/many/several cuesports.

Then have a separate forum each for:

1) 8-ball

2) 9-ball

3) Other Pool Games
(= 14:1, rotation, 10-ball, one-pocket etc. When making a new thread, the poster should start the title by stating to which pool game variant the thread refers, e.g. "10-ball: How to break well".).

This would certainly aid in posting and general forum clarity.
There are separate forums for Snooker, Carom, 14:1 - why not for 8-ball and 9-ball, the two most played cuesports!!


b) Listing of TV broadcasts of billiards events/games and live Internet streaming broadcasts.

(This information can be taken from, for example:
http://www.billiardsdigest.com/calendar/calendar_tv.php; http://www.insidepoolmag.com/tv-schedule; http://8balltv.cuesport.tv/; http://www.viewtv.co.uk/cuesporttv; several FOX Sports channels have also been showing billiards recently).

This section could also include new billiards videos on YouTube as they appear.

Forum members would no longer need to surf around several sites to find TV + Live listings; they would all be conveniently collected here!

This new section should be a Sticky!


c) Practice Drills Repository. This would be awesome.

Something similar already exists here:

http://pool.bz/training-practice-videos/

(You have to be a site member to view them). Each practice drill consists of a YouTube video, a CueTable billiards diagram (http://pool.bz/CueTable.php), and explanatory text (in some cases).

We could make such a repository ourselves, except ours would be bigger and better :) All members could share their own practice drills, as well as present those they have found online or in books.

The sequence of information for each posted drill could be:

i) Brief, succinct title (What is the drill testing? What is the difficulty level?)
ii) YouTube video (optional)
iii) CueTable billiards diagram showing starting position and possibly cue-ball/object ball movement
iv) Explanatory text

It should be possible to print out the billiards diagrams (incl. text). Then members can make up their own customized practice drill anthologies, later having them spiral-bound (at FedEx Office) to lay flat for use at the table. Can you say USEFUL??

This new section should be a Sticky!

Please VOTE above for these new features!!

With enough votes, the Administrators may grant us them :)
 
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None of the above. What I want to see changed is the reps. I want to be able to accumulate a hundred and fifty zillion reps and earn a T-shirt.
 
All of the options sound good but I voted for a Practice Drill Repository. Searching for drills is in fact what first led me to this forum. In my short time here I have received a lot of help from friendly and generous members. It would be great if all of the drills were in one area and possibly categorized by difficulty or skill level. :thumbup:
 
how about a button that would let you make a tread that you were interested in stay at the top of your main forum page, using cookies some how maybe?
 
Just so I'm not being totally downer on this... there are some features I've seen in other forums that I would love to see on this one:

1. "Show new replies to my posts" button. Very useful... on forums that support it I click this every time I start a new session and then if I have time left I start fishing through unread threads.

2. Working search. This may be beyond the admin's control and will have to wait for the guys at Vbulletin to fix it. As of now, the search gives more relevant results if you log out than if you are logged in. That's just dumb.

3. Chatbox on the side. Some might find this distracting so maybe there should be a way to disable it, but it's nice to get into little random conversations as you're going through posts. You can discuss the threads or maybe take interesting bits from your chatbox conversation and put them into threads. The forums where I've seen this were much smaller though, dunno how a chatbox would work with thousands of people visiting.

4. Consolidate some of the extra forums and prune inactive ones. For example we don't need cue reviews under both cues and reviews. And I'd love it if ask-the-pros were a single forum where my question might be answered by any (or multiple) pros. I'm not fussy, I'll take advice from any of them.

5. Ignore thread option. If a particular thread is raging on and on and you just don't want to keep seeing it, you can set it to ignore and the thread just doesn't show up (hint: 15 let's-all-fight-about-the-apa threads). This was a feature in usenet readers but I have no idea if vbulletin supports it.
 
I agree that we dont really need more game forums as we need management tools to highlight forums we like or ignore forums we dont. The subscription to forums are an option I have seen on other boards that seem to work a lot better than this one. Maybe the size of the board has something to do with it. Dont know. Not an expert at this stuff. Search engine needs some work. A more advanced search engine version would be nice too. Just clicking on a thread to have it at the top would be nice with cookies....good ideas for all though.
 
I don't want to appear as the Devils advocate, nor do I wish to cause controversy. All of the suggestions have merit and would be welcomed I'm sure. The point that raised my hackles was the ....lets take a vote...option. I would have rather read......lets make these suggestions to Mike.....and see what he has to say. By asking for a vote.....in my mind you imply that if popular opinion is ignored by the forum owners.....less than desireable results may accrue. IMHO this is the best run pool related forum available, I honestly think the current admin does a wonderful job and I think most share these views.....Asking for improvements and waiting for a reasonable response may also reveal information about why they are not viable on this site. Maybe I'm seeing this all wrong....but this calling for a vote seems to be a vieled threat.
 
One of the reasons you're not seeing full participation in the vote is you're still not including the "don't change anything" option. Some people genuinely don't like some of these changes and want it to stay as-is, so they're just not voting in the poll. That's why there are like 250+ views but only 35 voters. It's not because the other 200 guys are too lazy to click.

I think my post explaining the mindset got erased when the thread changed. You probably saw it but to recap:

1) we don't separate 8 and 9 ball into different forums because most readers play both. Every day, thousands of people would have to make extra clicks visit two separate forums when they'd rather just have one-stop-shopping. Less popular games get their own forum because otherwise it'd be difficult to find info specific to those games. But it's not difficult to find info specific to 8b or 9b in the main pool forum.

2. We already have this.

3. As you stated, something similar already exists. We have a good relationship with cuetable.com/pool.bz. We don't need to reinvent their wheel. We're not in competition with them and they're not going anywhere. The amount of work to duplicate their efforts would be enormous.

...someone in the other thread suggested you settle in a bit before pressuring the admins to make major changes to the forum. Take that to heart. You've only been here a month. Spend a little time getting to know the forums and the rest of the site, and you'll see it's pretty easy to find all of the stuff you're petitioning for. This is very much a case of "if it ain't broke..."
 
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