New community hub website Segway Central is now live!

[PaulDV]

Hi everybody,

I just wanted to let you all know that the new Segway community hub website Segway Central (http://www.segwaycentral.net) is now live and ready to accept any input that you would like to submit.

Entries will continue to be added to the directories on a dily basis (I have over 400 of them to key in :eek:) but I have also had some offers from a number of people to submit some blog articles n various subjects, so look out for those.

If you have something you would like posted on the site (including reviews or comments on dealerships or tour operators), feel free to do so, however you will need to register an account with the site first (it's FREE!).

There are sections for blogs under various categories, a glide routes listing for GPS tracks, classified ads and a stolen register with searchable database.

All entries are auto-fed to twitter (@segwaycentral if you would like to follow the site) and facebook (http://www.facebook.com/pages/Segway-Central/552653054749521 - not yet completely set up!).

Any questions or suggestions, feel free to ask/suggest here or via the email link on the website.

Regards,
Paul.

[Rolacoy]

This website has worked very well for me for the past two years. I am not much of a social media person so my question is what will this "Community Hub" ad to our already rich life?

[PaulDV]

Hi Rolacoy,

That's a very good question, and unfortunately, isn't one that I can answer for you as each of us has a different perspective on things and requires different things.

My main premise for putting together the site was simply to provide better access to information about Segways - something I found very lacking when I first went in search for it myself.

There is a wealth of information buried in forums such as this, and in my experience that is the very antithesis of what I was looking for: i.e. the information is, to all intents and purposes, "buried" under various posts and threads with the same subject matter often being duplicated across different threads. The information may be there, granted, but you just have to know how to dig for it and, unfortunately, many give up before they find what they're looking for.

Don't get me wrong: forums are a great place to congregate, chew the fat and exchange information at a certain point in time, but as a mineable source of information they suck.

So it's really just as I'd described: a hub; a stepping-off point if you will where, from the one central location, you can surf off to other Segway-related resources such as this forum.

At the end of the day, Segway Central is just another resource to be either used or ignored as people see fit. Some will use it, some won't, but although I hope you find it useful at some point, I don't see it as taking over from your forum time at all.

Regards,
Paul.

[KSagal]

Good luck with the site. I hope it works well for you, and provides you with what you want it to provide.

[Rolacoy]

Karl that has got to be your shortest post yet. But hey, everyone should follow their dream, that's how we get better products. Good luck Paul.

[eJM]

Don't get me wrong: forums are a great place to congregate, chew the fat and exchange information at a certain point in time, but as a mineable source of information they suck.
You apparently know very little about forums. I own a forum about flooring and work on another about hunting. Both are tops in their niche. They are filled with valuable information that is accessed by many thousands of visitors every day.

SOME forums may not harness the power they have available and the members might not be told how their participation can help. I belong to a number of webmaster and forum owner resource sites (most of them forums) and their support and educational information has been invaluable.

There are always going to be a misinformed bunch, including some forum owners, that think duplicated information is not a good thing. When someone asks questions, they tell them to search for it. When they can't get people to answer their questions and they do use the search feature, what they find is a lot of posts that tell people to search for the answers. On forums I work on, they ask questions, they get answers, even if we have to repeat the same information over and over in dozens of different discussions. When people come and use the search feature first, they find dozens of discussions that each are offering good information, some in ways that the visitor understands better than others. And search engines LOVE sites that have such a wealth of content like that.

There are many features and functions in all forum software. If they are used to the site's advantage, the staff are trained properly and people are told NOT to tell visitors to search first, then information is easy to find and members are happy that their time is important and entertaining. If you leave features unused and staff doesn't use the tools they have to manage the content they have, then those forums will be nothing more than what you described. There should be no blanket generalizations, like what you said. It's just not true of all forums.

When I see website developers say things like you did, I wonder what their agenda is. Everything your website has can be offered here - and some of it is. There are differences though and some people will find great value in one or the other, hopefully both.

As an aside, you might consider removing the CSS Valid and XHTML Valid links at the bottom. Your site isn't either. That's not a bad thing, but saying they are when they aren't leaves a bad taste in the mouth of those who understand the technology.

Jim

[PaulDV]

I agree with everything you said except one thing, which is where you emphasis the word SOME. Based on my experience I would amend that to most. I don't own or manage any forums myself, but I am a member of dozens of them, and although some of them do try to format the sub-forums and posts to make them a reference resource, they are very much in the minority.

Whe I made that comment I did so without any agenda; I just happen to believe that forums make bad databases. I consider myself to be very IT literate, and I think that if I have trouble locating up to date, accurate information in a forum without having to dig through a mass of purportedly relevant posts, then my assumption is that most people are quite probably experiencing the same frustrations. I could be wrong in that assumption, but that's where my comment was coming from.

Re the CSS and XHTML links: thanks for pointing those out. They were part of the template I've used and, to be honest, I hadn't really taken any notice of them until now. Now you mention it, I see there's also an out of date copyright text, so I'll get on to that. These are actually just links to the validation services and I see that the site does appear to be valid for the most part and that all errors or warnings are actually related to just one of the Joomla! extensions I've installed, so I'll report that back to the extension author and see if they can fix that.

[Gihgehls]

I don't agree with telling users to search up old posts, but I do believe in maintaining nice sticky threads with answers (or links to them) commonly asked questions. On some sites users are able to take an active role in "curating" their OP, making it a useful "front page" for a particular topic.

[Bob.Kerns]

I don't agree with telling users to search up old posts, but I do believe in maintaining nice sticky threads with answers (or links to them) commonly asked questions. On some sites users are able to take an active role in "curating" their OP, making it a useful "front page" for a particular topic.

Yes -- though even then, it's a matter of forcing the forum software into a role other than the one it was primarily designed for. There are better tools for such things, such as wikis. It's nice to have a selection of tools available, so you can choose the most suited.

As for searches, while I quite agree, it is worth noting that sometimes telling them to do a search is the *best* answer. If the topic has been well-covered, in depth, with good discussion, it may be better to refer them to all of that context.

Often it's good to suggest a specific search; it may also be necessary to tell them HOW to search (or that it's even possible).

But what you absolutely MUST AVOID, is suggesting that they should have searched before asking. That completely blows the interactive, conversational atmosphere you want to develop and maintain.

[Gihgehls]

I agree. It's funny though, that often questions can be typed word for word into Google instead of on a forum, and the first result is the exact thing they were looking for. It seems to me as silly as a sports fan coming to a forum to ask about the scores of last night's game. Numerous times on this very forum, I have copied the entire OP into Google, and the first result was what they needed.