One thing that might contribute to the frustration, at least mechanically, is the quite unusual nested forum structure we have on Zoochat. A large number of Monkeyworld threads (or Berlin threads or London threads or whatever) is fine when it's the Monkeyworld forum, but those threads also appear in the UK forum. It does make the latter format a bit unwieldy for people to use when there's a large number of threads about a specific zoo, and particularly when many of those threads might be of 'niche' interest. The same is true, though to a much lesser extent, in the format I use which is the 'recent posts' function. I do apologise for contributing to the derailing of the thread. My love of puns does tend to get me into trouble at times.
You do realise that you can filter the list of threads to focus on a specific zoo by using the drop-down list at the top of the page? ... you can also filter by clicking on any of the thread prefixes for a zoo to show only threads for that zoo: ... and then you get something like the following: The alternative would be to have literally 2,400+ different forum topics for each zoo - many of which will see very little traffic - plus general forum topics for each country, so something approaching 2,600 forum topics. That would make the forum very cumbersome to navigate to find threads you are interested in.
I’m sorry, Simon, if I’ve misinterpreted your tone but I don’t really understand what I’ve said to irritate you. You seem to have misinterpreted me - I understand quite well how to filter through the nested structure (which is quite clever - just unusual, as I said). I was only guessing at why many users express frustration with the ‘many small threads’ model of structuring discussion, and it was intended as an observation, not a complaint. I was certainly not suggesting 2600 separate forums. Edit: I wouldn’t have made my initial post if I knew you were going to spin it out into a separate thread. It doesn’t warrant standalone treatment.
Hi Sim - just as an aside - I've noticed I can only access the threads-by-zoo by clicking on an actual prefix in the list (which is fine if there's a recent post but otherwise a bit awkward!). Clicking on a zoo in the drop-down just gives a 'Page not found' error. I've noticed the prefix link goes straight to (e.g.) Chester Zoo Forums ...whereas the drop-down link seems to want to go to https://www.zoochat.com/community/forums/united-kingdom.38/forums/united-kingdom.38/?prefix_id=1096 ...with what looks like a duplication in the URL? Checked a couple of different countries and the same in each. Will have a play when I'm back on my home machine later to check different browsers.
The only thing that irritated me was the posts made by (multiple) people in the thread your post was split from - followed by how I explicitly said that the thread was not to be dragged off topic any further and then you did exactly that. However, any questions or comments about the structure of the site and if/how it might be improved are always worth exploring - which is why I split your post into a new thread rather than just deleting it as off topic. If there is an improvement that can be made - now is the time to be suggesting that since I'm about to start work on the site upgrade shortly. Having thought about it some more - the only real issue I can identify is that there is currently no option for filtering out threads which are about specific zoos to show only those threads which are country-level discussions rather than zoo-specific. We need a "none" option in the zoo prefix list. There is an outstanding suggestion with the software developers to add this functionality. If they haven't added it by the time I've started work on the rebuild I will look at adding something manually myself as a short term workaround. Otherwise, any suggestions on improvements to the structure are always appreciated. Of course it does - if there is a problem or even just the perception of a problem, we either need to educate people about things they may have missed - or identify whether we can improve things to remedy that issue or improve the usability.
Which browser and OS are you using? I do recall an issue a while back on IE which caused problems, but I thought I had fixed that.
