Some moderation to move posts to correct categories

[SteveH]

It would be helpful if we had some mods on here who could move posts to the correct categories. For example, the Tutorials category is just full of questions instead of people (ie, Jen :) posting tutorials. I think the "How-to" part of the title may be confusing people... unless it is confusing me and the category is for asking "How to" do something.

It may be useful to have a general question category where people can ask basic questions. The way I see the categories now is:
- Announcements from Ning - used by Ning
- Popular Questions - used by Ning
- Best Practices and Lessons Learned - a place for experienced NCs to share things that make their network successful. I'm not sure how well this category works as most times an experienced NC will post in answer to a question as compared to just posting a best practice randomly.
- Tutorials and How-To - a place to for experienced NCs to post tutorials on how to do something.
- Critique My Network - obvious
- Designing a Ning Network - the description is a little confusing of "What are the best features, design and UI to use on a ning network?". It sounds like the category should be used by experienced NCs to describe how they design their Network and cool features that can be used (eg, through advanced CSS styling)
- Bugs and Issue - a place to confirm with other NCs that you are actually seeing a bug on the Ning network
- Product Ideas and Suggestions - the Ning wish list
- Improvements to Creators - place to make suggestions like this post :)
- Spam Reports - I have no idea what this is used for

To me, most of the categories sound like they are for experienced NCs to share ideas and not necessarily a place to ask questions. There does not seem to be one basic category of "Ask a Question - not sure how to do something? Ask other creators for help." And if you do a category like that, put it first so it is the default selection when someone uses the +Add a Discussion link from the main forum.

Just my opinion... and I'm a native English speaker so I can only imagine how hard it is for non-native speakers to understand what these categories mean.

Thanks,
Steve

[Janettee McCrary]

I would love to see LESS categories on here. I think you should change:

Announcements from Ning: Promote the footer below with the "From the Ning Blog" and delete this category. It's just a duplicate of anything ON the Ning blog.

Best Practices and Lessons Learned & Popular Questions: Use a pages to create a FAQS-like section with the best content (update it frequently), and delete these categories (after moving all the content).

Bugs and Issues & Spam Reports: Promote the "Report An Issue" link and delete these categories... People are really just using this section to complain and get other members riled up anyhow. I actually made a link to this "Report An Issue" area within the "Community Forum" discussion description (see the last category suggestion in this comment).

Critique My Network: I would keep this one, but perhaps change it to "Help Me Improve My Site", which is what it REALLY is.

Designing and Ning Network & Tutorials and How-To: Use the blog section for members to create How-To's, which members can then comment on with questions, and delete these categories (after moving all the content). It seems to be working well with my How-to blogs. As long as they use tags (for instance, how-to, design, header, navigation, footer, etc) it should work well. Either open this up to everyone or get someone to approve blogs more often.

Improvements To Creators & Product Ideas & Suggestions: I would combine this with Improvements to Creators, making it like the "Community Forum" I use, which has the following text in the description area... "Please place all posts concerning this network (introductions, questions, etc) here. If you want to suggest a feature to add to the site please post it here. If you have a problem with the site, please Report An Issue (with a link)." and then really push for people to tag their content (or have admin tag it as they respond to topics). If nothing else, it will shove home the need for them to push this on their own networks. If you have a "General Discussion" category and the "Help Me Improve My Site" category, hopefully people won't put too much stupid content in here.

Just my opinion. It takes me forever to go through all the different categories on here, which I like to look at several times a day so I don't sit here for hours responding to everything lol.

BTW I would be more than happy to help moderate content, although I wouldn't be able to do it full-time.

[Janettee McCrary]

Laura or other Ning admin... Have you seen this topic?

[Laura]

Lot to take in here, but I am reading it!

Thanks
Laura

[Janettee McCrary]

I"m glad you read it, even if you don't think it's feasible:) BTW it's hard re-reading this and seeing all the typos lol. In my defense I probably wrote this shortly after waking up. My husband has a night-time job and I try to keep up with him lol.

[Janettee McCrary]

So what did you think?