Gregg,
I don't know if you have any specific plans for all the former ride reports that have passed through the General board over the years. Here are my thoughts:
It's important that these reports stay permanently intact and accessible. Photo reports contributed by the community are possibly the most valuable asset to the site, IMO. We're lucky to have a camera-bearing army of riders. For any reports created "inline" but which link to off-site photos, consider copying the photos and re-linking to the RBR servers in case the off-site files disappear. But I think by far most people upload their photos to the RBR servers when making "inline" reports.
It'd be nice to have an index of all ride reports so one doesn't have to try and hunt them with the archive search tool. From this index, one should ideally have the option of opening the threads in linear ("view-all") mode or in threaded mode. As far as I'm aware, the search results on the current boards only allow opening in threaded mode, which I find irritating, especially for ride reports. High-quality, fully-off-site reports, such as Pierre's should definitely be linked from this index.
Alternatively, for future reports, one could argue in favor of a ride-report-specific forum. That might be OK in itself, but I don't think it is a good substitute for a dedicated admin-controlled index. The index, unlike a forum, would list all reports in a concise format, by order of original post date (or maybe sorted by the poster?), and would link to reports from both old and new forums.
I realize all of this would mean a fair amount of work for the site managers on top of all the switch-over load you're facing. Anyway, FWIW, I am liking the new forum system. Thanks for your good work!
I don't know if you have any specific plans for all the former ride reports that have passed through the General board over the years. Here are my thoughts:
It's important that these reports stay permanently intact and accessible. Photo reports contributed by the community are possibly the most valuable asset to the site, IMO. We're lucky to have a camera-bearing army of riders. For any reports created "inline" but which link to off-site photos, consider copying the photos and re-linking to the RBR servers in case the off-site files disappear. But I think by far most people upload their photos to the RBR servers when making "inline" reports.
It'd be nice to have an index of all ride reports so one doesn't have to try and hunt them with the archive search tool. From this index, one should ideally have the option of opening the threads in linear ("view-all") mode or in threaded mode. As far as I'm aware, the search results on the current boards only allow opening in threaded mode, which I find irritating, especially for ride reports. High-quality, fully-off-site reports, such as Pierre's should definitely be linked from this index.
Alternatively, for future reports, one could argue in favor of a ride-report-specific forum. That might be OK in itself, but I don't think it is a good substitute for a dedicated admin-controlled index. The index, unlike a forum, would list all reports in a concise format, by order of original post date (or maybe sorted by the poster?), and would link to reports from both old and new forums.
I realize all of this would mean a fair amount of work for the site managers on top of all the switch-over load you're facing. Anyway, FWIW, I am liking the new forum system. Thanks for your good work!
