Suggestion for all Amiga related fora

[Hans_]

This is not a suggestion for just this website, but for all Amiga related forum sites. I've already suggested it over on AW.net, and a few people think it would be nice.

The idea stems from the fact that we have several fora with similar but different specialities: Morphzone is about MorphOS; AROS-exec is about AROS; amiga.org is geared more toward classic stuff; amigaworld is geared more toward OS4; amigans.net is really focused on OS4. Many of us have interests in multiple areas.

What I think would be a good idea is to leave each forum site dedicated to it's Amiga niche, but have them all cross-link to each other. That would be friendly, and give people easy access to news and discussions regarding all systems. Many of us have accounts on AW.net, a.org, morphzone, etc. I think people would be happy with such an arrangement.

Maybe AmigaWeb.net could serve as a bit of a hub. IIRC, it was set up specifically to cover all Amiga like systems. It could amalgamate recent posts/threads/news from all sites and provide a quick overview along with links. Each forum site would have a directory on the side cross-linking to all the others.

So, what do you people think? Good? Bad? Ok, but unworkable?

Hans

EDIT: If someone with an account on MorphZone or AmigaWeb likes this idea, please post it on those respective sites.

[Hans_]

Maybe I should add how this would work. All sites have a "wider Amiga neighbourhood" panel containing links to the other sites, with a quick note on what the sites are about. The AmigaWeb.net summary could be done by reading the RSS feeds and constructing the appropriate tables highlighting recent news/topics from all the sites.

For this to work, admins from all sites would have to agree to it.

Hans

Not a bad idea, but here's the rub.

A few years ago, we used to provide links to other sites, then started getting complaints about "my site's not on that list". If we linked to everyone else's site, we'd have a list a half-mile long, and to whom do we link so as not to insult anyone else?

Wayne

[Hans_]

I hadn't thought of that. It wouldn't be a web-directory for everything Amiga, just a quick-link box for the major Amiga fora. That would not include links to Amiga Inc., Genesi, Hyperion, Elbox or any other company; just the fora. That list should be small enough, shouldn't it?

Hans

[lurkist]

Poll it. Gather up as many as you can for the shortlist, leave it run a good while, then choose the top say half a dozen (or however many relate to the various aspects of Amiga). Not a bad idea by the way.

Cheers

[bloodline]

Nah... I'm only interested in A.org... the topics tend to be more technical here, and that is my interest. Amigaworld and Morphzone are both populated by the less technically minded... Aros-exec is mostly about sorting out AROS related problems (probably what forums are really for...)... life works the way it is... lets leave sleeping dogs lie.

[Krusher]

Just to put in my €0,02 you can search and find all Amiga related sites, I don't see why it's needed to build a "clowd" of sites. Amiga.org is what I'll be sticking with anyway, I sorta know the crowd here and I like it. I can only assume that people frequent other sites on a regular basis like their home base as well. It's like going to your fave pub and seeing familiar faces and know them from interacting with each other. Ok, new people aren't welcomed that good at times, but a scene from the movie Eurotrip springs in mind when the boys end up in a London pub (with the wrong footie club I might add tho' :-D ) but all ends well.

[weirdami]

It could amalgamate recent posts/threads/news from all sites and provide a quick overview along with links.

If someone wanted to do all that work, they could make a whole other website dedicated to it. call it amiga's digest.

[AMC258]

That would make the most sense anyway. Each forum is at the top level of it's 'universe' as far as the forum software is concerned. Adding links to other forum threads would circumvent the forum's format, and be a disaster to navigate, not to mention probably a major pain for someone to manually maintain.

Really, it would be easy to set up a seperate site to link to each forum.

[motorollin]

I agree that the sites should be kept separate. I don't like the idea of all the Amiga forums becoming amalgamated. But amiga.org at least has an RSS feed. I don't know about the others. But if they all had RSS feeds, then an additional site could presumably pool the RSS information in to one feed. If this could include recent threads as well as news then it would give you all of the information you asked for.

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moto