Suggestions

Ironically, I just e-mailed a nearly identical suggestion to the webmaster yesterday.

IMHO, the problem is too many different forum groups. I am probably guilty of contributing to the problem by suggesting more groups a year or two ago, but I now realize what a problem they create.

To my knowledge, the only way to really "keep up" with the site is to visit each forum group (General, Markets, etc.) separately, and look at the topic list for what's new. I think most of us are unwilling to go through that many steps to make sure we haven't missed anything interesting. When the site was a little less popular, the recent comments and new topics boxes were adequate to keep an eye on what was new. But they are no long sufficient.

iTulip has a prominent "New Posts" button that displays a list of all the new comments - both new topics and new posts to existing topics - in ALL of their different forum groups. Perhaps something like that could be used here?

Erik

I'm really getting concerned about two trend I call Thread Creep and Digest Politics. Allow me to elaborate...

Thread Creep:

We have the daily digest for a reason - to consolidate all the news stories of interest. But many users have been creating a new forum thread every time they find an interesting article, rather than either submitting it for tomorrow's digest or posting a reply to today's digest (IMHO the appropriate places for such material).

There are some cases where this makes sense. If a user reasonably expects a news event to cause a substantive dialogue on the site - something like healthcare being passed, for example, a new thread is appropriate. But I think we need a posting guideline that says that the digest exists for a reason, and that all routine "here's an interesting story" posts should either be submitted for inclusion the next day or posted as a reply to the current day's digest.

Digest Politics:

Ironically, this comment is in almost opposite vein: I think we need to restrict the digest to news stories and clarifying or supplemental information.

Lately we've seen quite a few very long diatribes between site users with different political outlooks. To wit, the very long debate on the digest about the merits of healthcare.

I'm not suggesting these views are not appropriate to post on the site, but I think we need the digest to stay the digest: News stories, interesting videos, and links to other information of interest. If people want to express a personal opinion about healthcare or firearms or any other contentious issue, I think it should be someplace OTHER than the digest.

These are just my views; I hope they'll be considered as you review the site posting guidelines.

Erik

It is a minor issue, but even though small, it makes the Daily Digest pages a bit more easy to navigate. I would like to see the bullet point list on the very top to be not just plain text, but text with links to the real article. Why? Often I am interested in only a single one of the bullet point. I want to read the full article, but now it takes me time to scroll down, find the summary to click the link there. If the bullet list on the top would hae the links already (no extra space needed), it would save me the time to scroll down to find the summary of the bullet point I am interested in. It should be easy to do and in my opinion it would make these pages easier=faster to navigate.

Since it seems to me that becoming an expatriate is a possible route of action, I find the forums under "Market & Policies" useful.  However, Latin America, which is the smallest major player in world affairs, is left out.  May I suggest an additional forum there about LA and the rest of the world? 

TIA

I just want to thank you all for the suggestions and let you know that we are listening.  If others have suggestions, please feel free to post them.  We do not always have the resources to implement suggestions, and sometimes it makes sense in the scheme of things to wait to implement others.  But we are always interested in hearing what you think will make this site better.  Keep 'em coming.

Hi Amanda,

I have recently launched a new website  www.bleedingindebt.com  to educate the fraudulent actions of the banks in creating new money as debt. I have a video in this site that explains how the banks create this money http://www.bleedingindebt.com/video-the-creation-of-money.html 

This is the best video I have seen in explaing this subject. I highly recremend you add this video link directly to your site.

Kind Regards,

Andrew Webb