How about forums based up the vehicle year and model?

[hmorse]

I spend a lot of time in the electronics section of the forums. I notice that even when looking at 2013 vehicle info there are posts from 2008. When I am looking at 2013 Outback Navigation issues for example, that's all I really want to see.

What about taking the various models, and having one "general" forum for each, yet all other forums for that model are done by year, yet remain searchable regardless of year?

Just a thought as this great forum continues to grow.

Thanks!

[AWDFTW]

In all honesty that is far too much clutter. The forums have been streamlined considerably, and the amount of thread moving the moderators still do for posts being in utterly the wrong place is...well, a good bit.

More forums and subforums will make this place even more frustrating to find what you are looking for.

[rockhopjohn]

We pick up what your putting down, but unfortunately, a forum/sub-forum organizational structure just doesn't work at that level of division. People can't even post things in the right place as it is, and we've found that added complexity doesn't help.

What we really need is a tagging system. So you could tag a thread for all of the different forums in which it has content, this would make it much easier to find what you need. Unfortunately, as mods we have zero control over any of that, and our malevolent overlords have no real interest in changing the current set up, since it won't produce any additional ad revenue.

[administrator]

Hey all,

I will look into getting a tagging system. Not sure if something something like this would be easy to implement, but I will definitely look into it.

Mo

[Se7enLC]

Originally Posted by hmorse

I spend a lot of time in the electronics section of the forums. I notice that even when looking at 2013 vehicle info there are posts from 2008. When I am looking at 2013 Outback Navigation issues for example, that's all I really want to see.

What about taking the various models, and having one "general" forum for each, yet all other forums for that model are done by year, yet remain searchable regardless of year?

Just a thought as this great forum continues to grow.

Thanks!

It seems like a double-edged sword. On the one hand, you want to pare things down as specific as you can - but on the other hand, you want to keep as many views as possible to get good helpful responses from the right people. If you have an issue with a 2012, you might still get useful information from somebody with a 2011 since it's the same generation.

I think the way this forum is set up is a pretty good compromise. There's a "General" category that is basically "anything Subaru" - any year. Then there are categories for each "generation" (of which the 2010-present "Gen4" is). For the most part, the 2010, 2011, 2012 and 2013 are the same, but there are some subtle differences , notably the navigation change in 2013 you mention. Posting in the Gen4 sub-forum is a good way to make sure you're targeting the right viewers, but it's not perfect. The best way is to make sure to always state the relevant information (like year) in your postings to make it clear to anyone reading.

Even when you say the year, AND post in the correct subforum, you'll still get some confused people, but that's just how it goes. I was recently posting about a Gen4 roof rack issue (in the Gen4 subforum), and somebody with a previous generation that had no idea about the Gen4 roof rack issues was trying to weigh in to help. They were probably just as confused as I was until we both realized that we had a different visual in mind of what the roof rack looks like!