Double Barrel Forum in the Armory?

[Mechstar]

Seeing Jordan's double barrel Ion in the SP/GOG forum reminded me that I have long thought there should be a meeting place for the double (or more!) barrel enthusiasts to congregate. The questions, build threads and awesome pictures are currently scattered across MCB mostly in the Palmers, Sheridan, CCI, and custom projects forums...but also in the SP/GOG, Automag, and other random places.

Shoot'm nice, and Shoot'm twice!

[DocsMachine]

Okay, I'm going to keep complaining about his: We need less subforums, not more.

Back in the heyday of discussion boards like this, yeah, we had tons of traffic, and splitting interests up helped things out.

But today? Board traffic is a tiny fraction of what it once was, so those splits hurt us more than it helps. We already have subforums that have only had a bare handful of posts in months. The newest post in the Carter section was five months ago. The VM section has only had three posts, total. Carter's Commandos hasn't had a fresh post in fourteen months. The Bob Long section hasn't had a fresh post yet this year.

Do we really need yet another section that'll see three posts in total and then gather cobwebs for the next year and a half?

I hate to say it, but we need to consolidate sections, not divide them into ever-smaller sections. As I mentioned in another thread, the Big Blowup would have been an ideal time for a rewrite. Model the gun-specific section off the BST section: Cheap, pump, electro, mechanical. That way, instead of forty-plus sections that each see an average of maybe half a dozen posts a year, there'd be four sections that might see an average of fifty-sixty each.

And that's important- traffic begets traffic. If I go to a section three or four times in a row and there's been no new posts any of those times, I tend to stop going there. If I go there and there's five or six new topics each time, I'll keep checking back to see what else has come up. The more I check, the more likely I am to participate.

Doc.

[MrKittyCatMeowFace]

Yeah, less sub forums, more people in the same areas starting and continuing more discussion. Not everyone uses the newest post feature so it would help.

[Rainmaker]

I just subscribe to any sub-forum that I'm interested in, so new posts pop up when they are posted.

[ChoSanJuan]

Same as Rainmaker. When I'm done trolling my interests, I move on to other areas that I don't sub to. Usually just the most recent posts link so I find stuff like this.

[Cunha]

I'm going to have to agree with doc that we roll back the sub forums quantities.

[Dusty Bottoms]

I totally agree with Doc. This place needs to streamline, not clutter up. We have a ton of subforums that are basically unnecessary now. The golden age of paintball forums is over, so lets trim the fat and make it a smaller, more tight nit forum for those of us who still actively come on here.

[ChoSanJuan]

OK, while I agree with less is more... How about those companies that straddle all kinds of models like Dragun? Conglomo cocker/stbb/timmy-esque/etc... markers?

[DocsMachine]

Forget individual makes. That's one of the things that basically killed PBN.

For a 'tech' section, as I said, make it like the for BST section: Pumps, mechanical, electro, and maybe "other".

When we had thousands and thousands of regulars, yeah, it was useful to 'slow things down' by separating the 'Mag guys from the 'Cocker guys from the Phantom guys, etc. But now that we have a few hundred- however many, it's a tiny fraction of what we used to have- individual sections stagnate. There's no one in them or no ones' talking about anything.

The 'general interest' sections get more traffic, because they ARE general. Not just one topic.

As I said, the ideal time to have done this would have been during the rebuild. I have no idea if it could be accomplished now, or how some of the regulars in certain sections would take it.

Doc.

[Pyrate Jim]

Well, the armory does have a viable place for other threads.
Maybe someone just start a thread for doubles?

I've got three, the GotYa Deuce, the Wintec double Thunderbolt, and a PPS Nasty Typhoon.