A suggestion on stuff that comes up a lot

[Absentminded]

I've been noticing what seem like quite a few "hair" and "Relationship" Threads lately...so...I got this idea from another site, why not just make 1 big thread for relationship related stuff, and maybe one for like...hm...what's the best way to put this..."Cosmetic" type stuff, like, hair, piercings, and that type of stuff? I just thought it may eliminate a lot of threads about the same topic...

[Z3ni]

Good idea :]

[SamAlex728]

Well, I like the basic idea, but 1 thread with so many topics is bound to get cluttered and confusing, and ultimately a giant headache. That being said, separate forums, sub-forums, whatever, seems more reasonable to me. But until the mods see a need for grouping, reorganizing, or whatever they see fit, not a lot is going to happen on the subject.... Just my two cents.

[Martin]

Sorry, I must have missed this the other day when you posted it.

They are interesting ideas, but I'm not entirely sure how suitable EC would be for grouping things together. I have never really been a fan of grouping topics together because of how difficult it can be for those who want to give advice on such topics. As SamAlex said, it can get very cluttered and very confusing on those threads. All you have to do is look at threads like Post Secret to see how muddled it can get at times when Advisors or other members want to offer support to Anon posters, and it's surrounded by other people with different problems. If we took that approach for numerous topics then it could ruin the flow of support that currently seems to work well here. If a thread has an individual topic then the OP can just go back and check it straightaway, and any member can access it easily and respond. When you start adding other posts to the mix then the percentage of posts not getting any responses is going to increase quite drastically as the threads become more popular, and that itself is something that should be kept to a minimum on here.

Also, threads like that are also difficult from a modding perspective. We create forums based on how popular certain topics are on the site, and it would be very difficult to do that if we lumped all the threads together. For example, we created the LGBT issues forum because there were quite a few appearing in Chit Chat on a weekly basis, and that allowed us to see that there was demand for one. If we had just created a LGBT issues thread then we wouldn't be able to see how true the actual demand is, and the clutter in that thread would make it 100 times more difficult to assess whether or not that topic is active enough to warrant a forum of its own.

I haven't really noticed cosmetics appearing all that often, but if that is the case then it could be looked into as part of a potentially new forum, but I think grouping them into one thread would be the wrong direction to go in. Whilst it's not something I would take mod action on to prevent, it is something that I wouldn't endorse and encourage.I like the idea of each issue/query being individual and unique rather than clumped together with other similar queries.