Are the macrumors forums hindered by its format?

[t0mat0]

Just a general thought - is the vBulletin style holding back the possibilities of macrumors, and it's forum members?

It seems that there is a large amount of collective knowledge. Could this be channelled in a productive way, beyond the current status quo?

I'm just wondering what, with a different software/way of doing things, MacRumors could do through it's forum members and viewers.

take for example some of the larger subforums
- There are several people with an awful lot of knowledge to predict, anticipate, guess etc on different areas
- There are lots of people who

Is there something between wiki and bulletin board style? It seems that Google Wave, Buzz etc seem to be pushing in that direction.

Not to knock the guide section, but is it used by the majority of new users or current users to the macrumors and forums site sections?

I could see the ability to make a wiki like pages v. quickly using the collective knowledge and talent and nitpicking (in a good way) to be able to incorporate the predictions, and discussion of Apple (products forthcoming, current, past, predictions, direction etc).

It could help with minimising thread duplication for a start, and be an alternative to MRoogle.

I guess this ties into potentially what MacRumors could do with an iPad app. Is there any example of an opensource app, with forum members helping to create one?

 

[miles01110]

The forums are fine. They could be better if certain things (Mroogle, the guides, etc) were pushed a bit harder by the powers that be, but if it's not broke don't fix it.

 

[MacDawg]

I would prefer NOT to try and make it something that it is not

It is just some random people making random posts about random products and random problems

Woof, Woof - Dawg

 

[belvdr]

I believe it's more hindered by the slow response time than the format.

 

[Doctor Q]

In my opinion, there are many excellent Mac Guides they aren't getting the attention they deserve. Despite the Guides tab on every forum page, and links to particular Mac Guides at the tops of forum pages (example), many people don't know the guides exist.

There's a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem. If more people were aware of the Mac Guides they would refer others to them more often when answering questions or commenting on technical information. That in turn would make more people aware of the Mac Guides.

If forum searches could simultaneously return results from both the forums and the Mac Guides, that would help. I don't know how hard it would be to develop that feature.

In the meantime, the Most Popular Guides list makes for good reading.