What helmet should I buy? -> Equipment
Should I wear a helmet whilst riding? -> Riding.
What tyres for mud – Equipment
What tyres for Scotland? – Riding.
Excellent. And who will decide these rules? Will there be some kind of chart we can refer to so we know which category our thread belongs in?
What if I ask about buying a helmet and the first reply is “you don’t need a helmet, they are just for kids with soft heads”?
That’s a borderline example
If you think threads radically changing topic and direction is a “borderline example” then you haven’t been here very long.
bottom line is it doesn’t matter really, what matters is the big fat obvious topics go in their big fat obvious sub-forums.
If the topic is big fat and obvious then it will showup on search.
Now, it is a hindrance, and makes the site feel amateurish and annoying to use
You find it annoying just starting threads in Bike Forum instead of carefully selecting a sub-category based on some arbitrary set of rules? Weird.
Looking at your profile, the three(!) threads you have started since you joined have all been answered pretty well, so what’s the issue?
Most of the internet seems to manage.
I’ve seen “Most of the Internet” – it’s shit.
Older users are bound to think that everything is perfect, and resist change. That doesn’t make them right.
Why listen to folk who have been loyal to the cause for years when there are young upstarts full of fanciful ideas of how they can “improve” things before they flit away somewhere else? 😉
Okay, if you want change from an “older user” then here is my suggestion to resolve your sub-topics problem:
Encourage the tags to be used properly. Forums stay as big melting pots, but could then have views (created by the user) filtered to show/hide threads with certain tags set. Same with search.
Thus the thorny multi-topic helmet debate example could be tagged #equipment #riding #helmets and it would show up on any view that shows one of those tags.