Too many questions and too many answers!?

[DeadlyGoldfish]

All,

I've spent a lot of time searching on the forums for answers to my questions, and usually find some good threads.

However, there doesn't appear to be much use made of sticky posts that cover general topics.

e.g. It would be nice to have posts that link lots of things together in a single post, so linking to "options for bottling", "how to calculate yeast amounts" etc.

The problem I find is that I spend ages reading post after post when it would be nice to read a single post giving all the options once the post(s) have "finished". Does that sound like a good idea. Happy to try and start one to see how it goes. General idea is to keep updating that single post with a definitive article and linking out to posts with greater info / discussion. The FAQs post would probably be the best place, but at present that area is very sparse.

I know in the brewing world there is never a simple answer and people prefer all sorts of different methods, that's part of the fun. It would just be nice to document the options in a single place as and when the information comes available.

Thoughts please...

[Jim]

Hi DG. This has been raised before, I've thought about it a lot. Unfortunately I haven't done much.

At one time it looked as though we were going to get a wiki so that members could record their own 'best practice' having discussed it amongst themselves, just like Wikipedia, but that hasn't happened due to us not having the time to set it up properly.

I think putting threads of related material all together would be too labour intensive - all us mods and admin have day jobs as well!

Maybe a method of tagging threads would help, but I don't know if it's possible on this forum. At the moment, all we can do is have a good forum structure (which I think we have, though it's always possible to improve) and to create stickies when we have a thread that merits it. We also have articles and tutorials on the main site (see the green buttons at the top right).

I'm open to any suggestions, but it's difficult to do this kind of thing, otherwise all forums would do it.

[boingy]

I think it's really difficult to do on an active forum such as this one. The search facility is quite useful but does tend to hit a zillion posts. The best solution would be a wiki but there would remain the problem of how it would be controlled/moderated/maintained. And I think it probably would need some form of moderation.

[Brotherton Lad]

I think the forum does an excellent job of providing the basics to get started. If people want to delve deeper, then there's a goldmine of infomation already here and plenty of members willing to help and answer questions. At the end of the day, though, it's a pastime and we all have different tastes, surely half the fun and satisfaction lies in experimentation and finding your own way.