We've got a ton of forums. Or fora, but let's just stick with forums. Many of them are rarely used.

In conjunction with some site refreshing and updates, I want to explore simplifying the forum design here. Input welcome.

Honestly, I'm just planting the seed here and then am going to walk away from this thread a bit. I know, typical. I'll come back to it in a few weeks and try to process any ideas that are presented here. This is nothing we're going to rush into this week, but something that will be done this spring in conjunction with a few other updates.

It might be easiest to talk in terms of green field design, as in what forums would be most useful if we were putting our current membership and its dynamic into a brand new board.. Certainly there is plenty of good with what we've got now, but worrying about transition of everything can make an already tough job much tougher than it needs to be. If you want to speak about mapping current to future forums, have at it, but don't die on that hill. In the end, we will certainly preserve some forums, transition all threads, and still have it all in searchable archives.

The end state is a leaner, relevant forum structure that better serves an active discussion, without over-compartmentalization getting in the way.