New Subdivisions of the Lenovo/IBM Forum

As I'm sure some of you have already noticed, the NBR moderators have decided to add two subcategories in the Lenovo/IBM forum:

For the moment, we have chosen to keep Thinkpad T/X/W/R/Z-series discussion in the main category, along with general Lenovo discussion. In the future, though, this may be further split into another category, based on demand.

We believe this is the most logical division of Lenovo's wide array of different laptop models, and hope that it will help organize discussion and prevent threads focused on less-popular IdeaPad and "nontraditional" Thinkpad models from disappearing.

As we transition to the new subcategories, the moderators would appreciate feedback (post below in this thread) and help reporting any uncategorized threads that belong in one of the subcategories.

Thank you.

 

I posted a thread in the Edge (et al) subforum about this, before I saw this sticky. Pasted below... Feel free to delete that thread.

 

Great job NBR mods! Now ThinkPad section will be consistent and IdeaPad/non-ThinkPad threads won't get bumped 3 pages back in 20 minutes.

 

@thetoast: I did think about this issue. Because the URLs of the subcategories and the Lenovo/IBM main are different, using Google's site search will only be able to either search the entire forum or search just the "general" category or just one of the subcategories--there is no way to search the Lenovo/IBM main and both subcategories at the same time.

A workaround would be to run three searches, one for the Lenovo/IBM main and one for each subcategory... but that is less than ideal

Unfortunately, it's probably a small sacrifice we'll have to make for the greater benefits, at least until the vBulletin search (which can do proper forum + all subcategories searching) begins to work properly again.

As a note, all threads found on Google that were made prior to the subdivision will redirect to the new location in the proper subforum. So, if you search the Lenovo/IBM category, you will still find X120e threads that have since been moved.

 

Is it possible for me to suppress the sub forums? They take up precious screen real estate at the Lenovo Laptop Forums - IBM Laptop Forums and Notebook Computer Discussions level.

Thanks,

Thor

 

@Thors.Hammer: Not that I know of, no--sorry.

 

Quote:
Now, since the search function is so inadequate, we need to shuffle through up to 3 areas of the Lenovo/IBM forum.
~
+1 on the need for a BETTER search function. Maybe a MOD can forward a request to the site admin. to work on providing a working search function.

 

Then I would vote for having several more sublevels. I would vote to have at least three. W, T and X. You guys basically did the opposite of what I would have done. I would have done ONLY the W, T, and X and left everything else in the general forum.

 

I think it would be good to have
-Ideapad/Essential
-T/X/W/R/Z/?L
-Edge/X1/X120e/?L

Also there is some debate to what counts as a traditional Thinkpad. I notice that the thinkpads.com forum groups SL, L, and X100e/120e with the traditional Thinkpads.

I would prefer a separate section for each series of Thinkpad, but considering the painful inadequacy of the search function, I don't think it would be worth it.

 

Thank you for the feedback, everyone.

The reason the less-commonly owned "non-traditional" Thinkpads were split out was because discussion of these laptops tended to get pushed to 2+ pages within little more than half a day, with no replies. Subforums would expand discussion of these laptops and keep these topics from disappearing.

The reason the "traditional" T/W/X/R/Z Thinkpads were not put into subforums was because of the overlap between many of these lines--discussion of the W-series largely overlaps with the T-series, and discussion of the T420s often overlaps with the X220 (ie: 7mm HDDs), etc. The moderators were split on whether to further divide these Thinkpads, so for now, we are testing out the existing categories.

 

I think the way it is now is good. By lumping together all ThinkPads as MidnightSun has stated, so you don't have repeat topics for the same stuff. W/Z/R hardly get discussion so it it wouldn't really interfere with the T/x threads.

 

personally, i'd like to see an end to all the owners' threads here.   they make it hard for owners to actually find information, especially after reaching 20+ pages.   this would also end the age-old debate of whether or not certain models should be lumped together.

i'd rather see people ask their questions in new threads or add to existing ones.

 

Start locking them and driving everyone that direction.

 

I don't see the major issue with Owner's Threads besides hunting through and finding specific posts to specific questions. It gives one single thread all the owners to post in about specifics and if anyone can give advice it is there. Sometimes those 1 time posters post and their post quickly gets bumped 3-4 pages down and nobody sees it. So I think it goes both ways.

 

I see your point. These threads are unwieldy. Searching for something you remember reading within them becomes almost impossible.

Perhaps such threads could be locked when they reach a set number of pages (20 maybe?). This would force people to start new threads on perhaps more dedicated issues.

 

Owners threads are a double edged sword. They concentrate information, but make it at time difficult to find when they get to be 100+ pages. The real bad guy here is the uselessness of the search function. If someone can't find something here, the natural inclination is to search, even for new people. The end of owners threads means many threads dedicated to largely the same topic(s).

 

I agree with asking questions/adding to existing ones in a different and new thread. However, I think that we should keep Owner's Threads and make them into stickies for the current generation of Thinkpad/Ideapad laptops. And for the first post, we can have useful information with links to sites like Lenovo's, other sites, or another topic so users can often just go to this page and read about whatever issue they're having. It'll help especially with the very basic information because I often find searching these forums difficult at times.

 

stickying all the owners' threads would leave pages one and two nothing but stuck threads.   probably not the best idea in my humble opinion.   most would agree that there's enough scrolling and clicking as it is, especially on 16:9 displays.

 

I agree the 'owner's' threads should not be stickied.

 

Maybe the 2 most popular which would be like T420 and x220?

 

The W520 Owner's Thread has far more posts and views than either

In any case, stickying Owner's Threads is out of the question--the two subcategories take up enough room as it is.

 

Yea but the x220 threads are overrunning the forum now. If I look at the other forums at nbr, it seems better structure for the Lenovo area is still in order and we aren't there yet. I mean for heavens sake, look at all of the Alienware forums. But they got it right in some respects.

For example, I would like to see the following at the http://forum.notebookreview.com/notebook-manufacturers/ level:

Lenovo ThinkPad T Series
Lenovo ThinkPad W Series
Lenovo ThinkPad X Series

 

I would vote against having those at the manufacturer level. They should, however, be sub-forums in my opinion (and experience).

 

The downsides of the Owners Thread are quite easy to remedy in my opinion, there should be a protocol on running one.

With the search facility down on the forum its more important for OPs to maintain their thread to help others, not just themselves. I mean for sure you can list out what specs you got for whatever knock down price but down the line would that help someone in say a years time? Probably not, especially when your thread has over 2000+ posts which is daunting for the new user. I sympathise those who want to get relevant information on the W520... (=_=)

Whoever runs an Owners Thread should be committed to constantly update their thread and create quick links on useful and relevant information in regards to the model they have, not forever I mean but generally when the model is actively on sale. There isn't any point for people openly create Owners Thread to get their "15 minutes of fame" and then never come back again so maybe there should be a certain criteria on who is able to open one.

 

I wouldn't mind the parent child relationship so much if the parent was just a container for the sub forums.

As it is today, if I mark the general Lenovo forum as read, it marks all the threads in the sub forums as read.

Something needs to give here.

 

Hrm well I see a point about but also see that the IBM/Lenovo subforum is flooded with T420/x220 posts, pushing all other ThinkPad topics down 1-2 pages easily in a few hours.

 

Which is why I would not have created the subforums that were created. I would have done the T, X and W forums first.

On the other hand, the official Lenovo forums have done this and maybe that's my hint to start using them more.

Please fix this site:

1. Search
2. Organization

 

See my explanation above. I see little sense in splitting the T- and W-series. Other than very real GPU differences, there's nearly nothing distinguishing the T520 and W520.

 

That's true but splitting them by series is a logical way for most people to navigate. You're a minority because you are an SME. New people seeking help aren't.

You don't have to listen to users of this site, nor do you have to make any changes. Obviously.

The search here is terrible. So is the organization.

 

And I disagree.

 

As ZaZ, erik, JaneL, and I have all chimed in, it's probably obvious now that even between the Lenovo mods, there's a lot of disagreement as to how to organize the forum

The simplest way to assign categories would be to give each model line a separate subforum. But with Lenovo (and IBM, in the past)'s mess of different series, that would result in a huge amount of subforums with content that can often be shared (ie: W520 screen discussion is also very pertinent to T520 screen discussion).

So, some way is needed to group the models together, and that's where the disagreements lie. Do we group it intuitively based on what's most obvious to the average user? Do we group it based on "traditional" versus "nontraditional," or do we group it based on the targeted purpose? Do we group it with an eye on the different amount of traffic in each section?

 

Maybe like how ThinkPad forums does it, EVERY single ThinkPad has their own sub forum and there is a general ThinkPad forum BUT the main drawback is not everyone will check every single one. It would be more organized but likely not everyone would get help, increasing cross posting, excessive posting.

 

That's what we're here to fix as it happens...

 

Please remove the lengthy flags from the reply form in the sub forum.

 

It looks like keyboard design was a criteria for the split.

 

I dislike "lounge" threads because they encourage pointless discussions, but the problem is: they are long and unsearchable for meaningful information because the information has no topics.

Is it like Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco, where the locals like people to go, so they stay our of the real SF? Is that it? Are we encouraging all the meaningless discussions to be in one tread?

Or are we just encouraging meaning-less discussions?

 

What is a lounge thread? Are you referring to the owners discussions?

 

As a new T420s owner (back to owning a thinkpad after a multi year gap), I found having the the information for the T,W,and X series in one place very helpful while doing research for my purchase decision as well as sense then, lots of good information overlap, I would think there is much less of that with the Ideapads, etc. one thing I have noted over the years is the tendancy of forums with too many sub groups to either die, or get everything posted in the genreal conversation section, I think the current setup is good, but not perfect. Better would be to split out into 3 sub groups, consumer/prosumer/professional with a top general discussion with the rule not to talk about specific models, or at least not to talk about any current/recent production models so no one has to guess where the right place is to talk about something like the Thinkpad 700c.

Ike

 

Just in case anyone is left here reading this, can I say that I find the subdivisions hopeless. A similar thing was done in a music group that I follow, and the result was a huge drop in postings.

I had no idea that my G550 was an ideapad, so I've been lurking in the wrong place and didn't realise that an old post of mine had been moved. I don't know what my 3000 N100 is or the older R40.

I think I'm getting too old for all this. Back to the newsgroups, I think, with nice threaded postings without all the wasted space.

 

The problem was with 1 whole category (about 2-3 months ago) was ThinkPad topics dominated the IBM/Lenovo forum. Any IdeaPad thread easily in 20 minutes could be bumped down 1-2 pages. After a couple days it would be 4-5 pages and entirely lost.

The way it is now is better, though it is now the breaking point whether or not to further organize it, as as you stated, certain forums would be dead (Z, R forums). Right now alot of the same issues can be discussed as they affect multiple ThinkPads (stealing MidnightSun's example the T420s and x220 using 7mm height 2.5" drives).

 

G550 is the essential line and an ideapad line. It is similar to the Lenovo 3000 N100.

 

Lenovo Support - Home (US) even with all of it's warts is organized better. Considering Lenovo employees post there, it seems prudent to use it more. NBR has it's place I guess but the organization of the information here isn't helpful.

 

Dear Moderators,

I was wondering, why is the word IBM still a part of the forum title? I mean, Lenovo's acquisition took place a long time ago!

 

IIRC IBM still helps Lenovo out with support (at least in the US). And alot of the times when you order Lenovo stuff under warranty it is shipped from an IBM repair depot. Don't know whether IBM still helps Lenovo with designing ThinkPads.

 

The Lenovo/IBM subforum is for discussion of the current Lenovo Thinkpads and IdeaPads, but also for legacy IBM Thinkpads.