The Bar is open!

My only thought about watching the forum is along the lines of what @KP7 mentioned, there will be extra alert “chaff” for threads users might not care about. I get occasional alerts for new threads or threads I don’t care so much about watching the Beyond Beer forum, but that forum is much less visited and I don’t mind it. I suspect The Bar will have more activity.

Of course they can watch individual threads (for example, the stout thread but not the smoke beer thread). That’s not too bad, because they live a year. WBAYDN and NBW are purposefully short term threads, and having to individually watch them each day/week would seem extra work.

However, there’s probably no need to watch WBAYDN, since it is posted to fairly regularly.

I also like the idea that has been floated of perhaps having a short list of The Bar threads (min of 5 could work and would likely have WBAYDN in it most of the time) in a separate section on the home page, if possible, maybe above Trending Beers.

Just some thoughts, no real complaints at this time

 

Unfortunately, I don't recall how I first got myself involved with the sordid NBW crowd. I would guess it was either that I saw it on the home page or that someone mentioned I should post reviews of the new beers I was mentioning elsewhere on this site.

 

I just skimmed the first page and agree with folks saying they want WBAYDN and NBW on the main Beer Talk page but all other “appreciation” threads that have moved to the Bar to stay there. @Todd, are you saying that is possible now, without also seeing all the appreciation threads that are now in the Bar? WBAYDN and NBW are new every day and week, respectively—so I don’t think there’s currently a way to get those to “stick” on a user’s home page without selecting the new thread each day and week (WBAYDN and NBW) and adding it to your watched threads. I think if I add the Bar to my watched forums so that I can continue to see WBAYDN and NBW I’ll just end up with all the appreciation threads also on my main page.

Maybe the Bar is where WBAYDN and NBW should go after they’ve been closed each day and week, respectively, but the “live” threads would be in the main Beer Talk forum. Does that make sense?

 

It would be strange (to say the least) to have the BA thread that most embodies a virtual bar to be excluded or treated as an exemption from the BA "bar" section.

WBAYDN is the best thread for creating visibility of "the bar"... and moving old and locked versions of that thread to "the bar" would only create the impression that that section is a dumping ground rather than an active space.

Separate from the discussion of whether or not the bar is a good approach, as long is that section exists in name, WBAYDN would logically need to live there.

 

Wow, I’m cracking myself up, so that’s why WBAYDN is still in my main page this whole watching forums thing is new to me until now; had no idea it actually put it back on homepage. If I read that I must have not understood, or because I did it right after Todd posted that, I just never saw a difference at all. Nice!

 

Hiding things is not a good way to have having people see them.

 

Funny how everyone has different ways of using this site. Everyone is complaining about the effect on the Home Page. But myself, if I want to go the Forum, 9 times out of 10 - I use the top navigation bar to get to the Forum page and then navigate to the sub-forum I want to check out. But I guess I am in the minority not really caring about the home page.

 

I very much agree. WBAYDN is the virtual bar. If you have a “The Bar” section of the site, WBAYDN (and NBW) need to be in there.

(The solution here is to put The Bar on the homepage. Ideally right above or in place of “Trending Beers,” or if that doesn’t work, then at least in the top-of-page navigation that you don’t need to click thru to find. I think “The Bar” is an enticing enough name that a lot of new users would click it if they actually ever see it.)

 

I agree with others who say that if there is a "Bar" section, WBAYDN should be under that section, but I always thought that WBAYDN would be the best thread to entice new users and should be right there staring you in the face when you enter this site. Even as the default first thread at the top of the others.

 

I echo @thebeers. I have no issue with consolidating these threads under The Bar but it should be easily accessible on the homepage.

 

The “Watch Forum” feature definitely works, so my concerns were unwarranted for those of us that jumped into this thread, @Todd - WBAYDN is at the top of my feed on the site.

 

So I stand corrected. I did the "watch forum" as well and WBAYDN shows up on the home page. I thought I'd be getting notifications from every Tom, Dick and Harry posting in every thread but that's not the case. It's almost like the site works like @Todd says it does! If you talked to Mrs. DavetotheB, you'd know I don't follow directions very well. This solves the problem for regular users. Not sure what the answer is for newer users and visitors to easily find lively threads like WBAYDN and NBW

 

Except the original problem was that regular users didn’t want all the appreciation threads mixed in with their other Beer Talk feed

#FirstWorldProblems

 

This is hard. I think I'll have another beer. Cheers!

 

If you select “watch forum” for the Bar, do all the appreciation threads then also populate your home page (like they did before)? I haven’t had time to look at how this works—but if the choice is to not be able to automatically see WBAYDN on my home page so that I also do not have all the appreciation threads on that same page, I don’t know that this is an improvement in terms of how I use BA. (I was one of those who voted to move the appreciation threads off the main Beer Talk page but I would not have wanted WBAYDN to go with them.)

You make a good point, given how the structure has now been revised—but when we were talking about this idea in the thread proposing it, I don’t recall talking about setting up something called “The Bar” and moving other threads over there as well. I’ll just have to see what options there are in the Bar to customize my home page view. Maybe it is already set up to work the way I’d like it to.

EDIT: I just set my home page to watch the Bar and the appreciation threads are back on my home page. So I guess we get either WBAYDN/NBW/appreciation threads on our home page, or none of them. So this change really doesn’t seem to address the “problem” raised in the thread/poll that started all this, as far as I can tell.

 

Love that “The Bar” link in the homepage navigation! Easy one click for me to access it now, and I’m guessing a lot of folks will see it there a lot more easily than through the regular Forums navigation.