Some of you may recall The Bar forum that was rolled out back in March 2024 to address concerns that there were too many What beer are you drinking now? (WBAYDN), appreciation threads, and the like, dominating Beer Talk and pushing other discussions a page or two out of sight. In November 2024, we reverted everything being back in Beer Talk and The Bar got converted to an archive for previous WBAYDN posts. This was partially based on feedback that The Bar wasn't giving WBAYDN and New Beer Weekend enough attention, but looking back the numbers show no significant impact as these threads are typically driven by regulars. As of this post, 14 of 20 threads on the first page (8/20 on page two, 11/20 on page three, etc.) in Beer Talk are the above mentioned thread types and other conversations are once again being buried. Same issue that we had before, maybe worse, and we need to collectively acknowledge that these threads aren't of interest to everyone. And there's no doubt a reason why we're seeing less general discussion threads being created in Beer Talk right now. How can we improve the experience? Examples: Call out on homepage, like before, but expose it to visitors too (not logged in) Set it as a main forum, unlike before when it was a sub-forum under Beer Talk Send a general alert when New Beer Weekend starts Send a weekly alert to encourage people to visit The Bar Encourage more people to watch the forum/threads so they get alerts Increase the frequency of tasting threads, which could drive more people to The Bar Create a sidebar for The Bar that displays recent threads Looking forward to your feedback!
If you’re asking us, and based on your latest profile post, I’m inclined you’d like us to respond by « Yes ». I’m not worried about either WBAYDN or NBW which have their many regulars often both the same crowd at a few exceptions. However I’d love for more other beer discussion; on style, ABV, different regions (the international part of BA is eerily and sadly pretty much dead). Trying to balance things out, on a personal note I love partaking in some WBAYDN beer posting and banter, as much as I enjoy other more « serious » aspects of the site.
I'm up at 4:30am on a Sunday in Georgia. Body clock does not adjust to weekends anymore. So I'm noodling on this. A couple of thoughts. Under Beer Talk, have WBAYDN, NBW, Appreciation/Salute To, Tasting, and General Discussion threads. In the right sidebar, allow the member to "pin" their favorites to your Home page. The Home page would still show the popular trending topics under Join The Discussion and regulars could easily jump to their favorite sub-forums from the Home page. But as I write this, I realize I'm on my laptop web browser. I'm using my phone more often when on BA, so the challenge is phone interface layout. I'd like a way to quickly get to the sub-forums I use the most, which would include a Regional thread. Some of the Appreciation threads I can't find as easily and the Watched Forums and Watch Threads features is not that intuitive to me (or I'm probably just not as smart as most of the members!).
This isn't an option with our forum. I'd need to custom build not only the ability to pin, but unpinning and some form of automated maintenance based on actions that might impact the thread and the age of the thread. Unfortunately, probably not worth the effort. But the good news is that our upgraded forum will support bookmarking threads.
I don't know that the old "The Bar" threads need to be under the "Join the Discussion" banner but I do feel like they need to be on the homepage since they generate a lot of activity. For example, I drank a maibock yesterday, which is not something that I often do and right there on my homepage was the Bock Thread, so I posted it there and it generated some discussion about the attributes of the beer. I would not have sought out the Bock Thread to post there if it hadn't been on the homepage. Does the "Trending Beers" section need to occupy so much real estate on the homepage? Maybe that could be a top 3 or 5 with "The Bar" threads above them? Note: this is looking at a laptop where there are three columns on the homepage and would be very different on a mobile. Anyway, thanks for asking for and considering the community's input with regards to the website. We appreciate all the thought and effort that goes into this.
Yes, please bring back The Bar! It's so much easier finding what you want (whether beer socializing or beer talk threads) when everything isn't mixed. And I really like your suggestions that I pulled out above, especially making The Bar a full forum and making a side panel for its threads.
It’s your site and you can do what you want—but if you’re asking us to vote, I would vote yes. Just the other day I noticed how many threads on my home page were appreciation threads and the additional effort it took to weed through them to get to “topical” threads that I might want to read/post in—I generally go to the appreciation threads and the like only if I have something to contribute. I’m a casual and sporadic BA user (some would call me lazy), so if a new thread is not immediately visible on my home page, chances are I will never see it. You know that “More from the forums” link at the bottom of the home page? I doubt I’ve ever clicked on that. At the end of the day it’s your call and we will adapt, but as a general rule I’m an advocate of more structured organization of content/information as opposed to less.
I'm not sure if this response fits into the purpose of this thread, but I'll mention it anyway. There have been several mentions of 'home page' in the posts above, and I'm assuming it means the first screen that comes up after logging into the site. It sounds like it is used by some members as a starting point for their activity in the forums, but not by me. I've never gotten into the habit of using it, so any changes to that page as a result of this thread will likely fall on deaf ears. As long as I can continue to get around in the forums in the same way that I'm used to, any changes that you make, Todd, will be okay with me. So count me as neutral. I'll continue to use some of The Bar threads no matter how I need to access them.
The BA “home page” is just whatever you see on your screen when you visit BA when logged in under your username—for me I think it’s the most recent threads in Beer Talk plus Beer News and US: Northwest. You can customize your home page however you want, and you can see the content that populates your home page here (and presumably also here, but I’ve never used the “watch thread” feature). Maybe it depends on whether you visit BA mostly on your phone vs. computer, but it’s basically the only way I use the site. I almost never actively navigate to an area of the site using the menu.
Is it possible to block specific threads? Could that be a solution for people that don't want to see certain material? I did notice a downtick in traffic on the barleywine thread after the bar was implemented and an uptick after it went away.
Yeah, that's the page that I thought to be the home page. I guess I use it to get started each day when I first log in. I click on Forums on that Main Menu and stay there all day until I need something else. Then I click on the main menu to get to where I need to go. So the main menu on the home page is all that I ever use. I didn't know that page is customizable. Maybe I'll look into that and make it more usable. BTW, both hot links in your post go to the same spot. But I get your intent. Thanks.
I liked "The Bar" feature. A lot. I'd say it should absolutely be exposed to visitors (I swear I just saw that there were 235 members on line and 14,000+ visitors here, but now I can't find it), and it should be set as a Main Forum. I'm so-so on the General Alert feature to announce different "events" etc. IJS.
Would that be difficult to implement? The reason those sorts of threads take up a lot of space on the homepage is that they are popular. Do you want to hide the most popular content from new and casual users?
I think part of the reason the 'Topic' threads get shuffled around/lost is that many of them aren't very interesting. Also, once an opinion is voiced on a topic, what is left to say? For example, on the Mainpage right now (8:59 am Pacific) the 5th from top topic is Ratebeer, which, a week from now will be less interesting than the Battle of Waterloo. Next after that, is a thread with a whole 36 replies on Coors Light's name changing ad campaign. When there's stuff to talk about, we do. But clearly very few of us give enough of a shit to talk about Coors Light.
Very difficult. It would require building a custom forum add-on, which would need to be discarded once we upgrade our forums due to compatibility issues.
I loved The Bar and hope you bring it back. This notion is off to me, because, under The Bar system, WBAYDN and NBW were literally pinned at the top of the page every time someone visited. They were easier to find than now. It was the, IMO, superfluous and embarrassing “IPA Appreciation,” “Lager Appreciation,” “Stout is Life” threads that compete with WBAYDN and NBW that might have been harder to find.
On my phone the first link goes to Watched Forums and the second link goes to Unread Watched Threads. But I can’t know what you see on your end.
