Looking for ideas on organizing the pen and ink review forums

[dannzeman]

The subject is pretty self explanatory. One way to do it is just to link to all the reviews in a sticky post in alphabetical order by brand and model. But if there are other ideas, I'd love to hear them.

[Jeph]

You could simply subdivide each of them into major brand and group subforums like the brand focus forum. That would make things easier to find and browse with only one initial session of admin tasks. With the sticky idea you end up doing a lot of work. There is always the search function.

[Jon Szanto]

I have to say that the very basic approach taken by the Index pages on FPN work very well: alphabetical, with inks sorted to within the brands. The only thing is that I believe it is true human labor, and one (or possibly more) people have the task of ongoing collation of any new reviews that come in. If there is a way to have a volunteer/mod take on the task, and maybe reward them in some way, it certainly becomes a very useful part of the site. I know I love that about the FPN ink section - deep set of reviews, and so easy to look up brand, then ink, and then choose from the number of reviews that are linked from there.

But then again, there may be other ways, too.

[Laura N]

I have to say that the very basic approach taken by the Index pages on FPN work very well: alphabetical, with inks sorted to within the brands. The only thing is that I believe it is true human labor, and one (or possibly more) people have the task of ongoing collation of any new reviews that come in. If there is a way to have a volunteer/mod take on the task, and maybe reward them in some way, it certainly becomes a very useful part of the site. I know I love that about the FPN ink section - deep set of reviews, and so easy to look up brand, then ink, and then choose from the number of reviews that are linked from there.

But then again, there may be other ways, too.

I agree with this. I like an alphabetical list with links at the beginning of the pen and ink review sections.

[trhall]

Any way to easily add tags to the items in the listing? Would be neat to be able to search by #flex #japanese #irongall

May be too much effort though.

[dannzeman]

Any way to easily add tags to the items in the listing? Would be neat to be able to search by #flex #japanese #irongall

May be too much effort though.
You can tag threads at the bottom of each thread. This has potential, but it would rely heavily on the community to properly tag review threads with an agreed upon set of tags.

[trhall]

You can tag threads at the bottom of each thread. This has potential, but it would rely heavily on the community to properly tag review threads with an agreed upon set of tags.

Good point. Maybe too much effort but it would be neat to see this in addition to the alphabetical index. I think that is the most efficient thing to do, though the tag approach as an additional method to find reviews would be great if possible.

[dannzeman]

You can tag threads at the bottom of each thread. This has potential, but it would rely heavily on the community to properly tag review threads with an agreed upon set of tags.

Good point. Maybe too much effort but it would be neat to see this in addition to the alphabetical index. I think that is the most efficient thing to do, though the tag approach as an additional method to find reviews would be great if possible.
I think using tags would actually be the way to go, but there's a limitation with vBulletin that I think will prevent it from working. If you click "Advanced Search" at the top of the page you can search by tags. Where the limitation comes in is that you can't use the boolean operator "AND". Ideally, you would be able to search for something like "visconti AND review" (without the quotes) and the search would return all posts tagged with both 'visconti' and 'review'. As it works currently, the search returns all posts that are tagged with either 'visconti' or 'review', which is considerably less helpful.

[jar]

What about compound tags; Ink-Brand-Color and Pen-Brand-Model? The the poster could tag using that format.

[Flounder]

As someone who is not au fait with all the different inks of different manufacturers, and all their names, it would be quite nice to browse by basic colour; blue, blue-black, blue-green etc. Like if I'm wanting to check for blue reviews I haven't heard of, wierdly opaque names like Diamine Schubert will still come up. So that's a vote for compound tags.

[jar]

After doing some thinking about this idea I would like to suggest an initial set of tags for consideration.

First for inks:

Ink-Brand: this would allow searches by maker.

Ink-Color_Family: I suggest a limited set of color families; black, brown, red, purple, green. Additional variations could be covered in the thread title.

Ink-Comparison: for reviews where two or more inks are compared.

Pen-Maker: Pretty self-explanatory. The model can be covered in thread titles.

Pen-Comparison: for reviews where two or more pens are compared.

I think those five tags would help find reviews.

[KrazyIvan]

I like the tag idea but I always forget to use them. I think I have tagged maybe 3 of my posts. Is there a way to make that a required field before posting? I mean just in the review section and just for the thread starter.

[inlovewithjournals]

I have to say that the very basic approach taken by the Index pages on FPN work very well: alphabetical, with inks sorted to within the brands. The only thing is that I believe it is true human labor, and one (or possibly more) people have the task of ongoing collation of any new reviews that come in. If there is a way to have a volunteer/mod take on the task, and maybe reward them in some way, it certainly becomes a very useful part of the site. I know I love that about the FPN ink section - deep set of reviews, and so easy to look up brand, then ink, and then choose from the number of reviews that are linked from there.

But then again, there may be other ways, too.

I like this idea, as I'm not very tag-savvy, but that's just me. If volunteers are needed for whatever is decided, count me in.

[dannzeman]

I like the tag idea but I always forget to use them. I think I have tagged maybe 3 of my posts. Is there a way to make that a required field before posting? I mean just in the review section and just for the thread starter.
I know there's a mod that requires a post to be tagged before it can be posted, but I'm not sure if it can be limited to certain forums. I'll look into it.

[caribbean_skye]

How does tagging work, can you only tag your own post (besides the moderator that is) or can anyone tag it? Hopefully that means you can use a couple of tags for each item.

If you need someone to help tag pls let me know.

[KrazyIvan]

I have gone back and started to tag my reviews. I have been able to add tags to other peoples posts as well.