[cel4145]

I'm concerned that the addition of the New Members forum will decrease the assistance to new members. I know that I tend to notice requests for help because I'm also interested in reading other posts in the individual equipment forums. Now, not only do I have to go to a different subforum, but also a completely different forum area outside of the Equipment form if I want to help. I suspect that more experienced members may be less likely to visit that forum area. At the very least, I would think that making it the top sub forum in the Equipment forum area could help.

Moreover, what about non-new members? Do we go there, too? The naming convention is sort of misnomer if that is the intention.

However, if you guys did usability tests of both how new members look for help and how old members look to offer help, and I'm wrong, please ignore this post

 

[TMRaven]

Yeah, right now I get the feeling that it's doing more harm than good because it's not very active from the feedback standpoint.  Plenty of new topics, but all of them have 0-1 replies, and many of those replies are bumps.  I personally tended to browse through help topics on the full-sized subforum to help people out, but I havn't really found myself browsing the help subforum yet.  I have the full-sized headphone subforum bookmarked so that's a big part of it for me.
 
I think it's gonna have to be one of those things we eventually get used to, because ultimately I think the intro and help subforum is a good progression.

 

[cel4145]

Even if it does become more active, hard to predict what kind of long term effect it will have. Membership growth on the site likely comes from new members seeking recommendations and then staying around. This new forum setup segments them away from the regular equipment forums. Will it encourage them later on to join in the regular equipment forums more so than before and staying around to become more active members? It could make them feel less a part of the community. One way or the other, this could have a very significant impact on the community.