Suggestions for forum

Still have to do the Unsolved and Missing children section but all fugitives now have profiles or at the very least a phone number or website to send tips! A couple of AMW cold cases I basically had to say "I've got nothing, please contact me with info" but for the most part, these fugitives worlds have gotten even smaller!

The Hunt's cases are now unstickied since we're now in off-season. But if I ever find out a rerun is playing I will sticky them again to the top for the day. As awesome as the Mozdir capture was, and finally finding out Shane Miller is dead albeit an indirect capture, wish we could have gotten at least one more direct capture.

If anyone notices random shuffling of threads, it's not your eyes playing tricks on you. I'm experimenting with every couple of months arranging the forum's threads by the views they get from most to least. Obviously the newer ones won't have the chance to be viewed as much which is why they'll be given some time to get views. Right now it's the recent AMW fugitive section that's being re-arranged,

All sections now organized by view count! I figure for the average reader, this helps them find the cases that so far has piqued the public interest the most on this forum.

For those curious here are the most popular cases by section-

AMW/Hunt Recent- Christopher Ponce
Forum-Exclusive Fugitives- Alexander Hill Jr.
FBI Top 10- Jason Derek Brown
US Marshals- Dan Hiers Jr.
AMW/Hunt Cold Case: Dennis Melvin Howe
Forum-Exclusive Cold Case fugitives: Pedro Padilla Flores
AMW/Hunt Unsolved: Unknown Nicole Smith Killer
Forum-Exclusive Unsolved: Belo Triple Murder
AMW/Hunt Missing: Leah Peebles
Forum-Exclusive: Relisha Rudd

Of course this doesn't mean I'm going to bury new cases and I will give them time to get some views and/or responses, but every now and then I want to shuffle these case around this site to borrow a phrase from Twitter- to reflect what's trending.

I think it says they're updated because they were moved around. The problem is there's more than one popular thread in one category so pinning doesn't make sense. The only reason I pin topics is for specific reasons such as getting an airing on The Hunt and/or being our forum public enemy. Basically even though there are lots of cases that need attention- the ones drawing the most views should in theory be the ones most likely to get solved. It's an experiment and we'll see where it goes.

And I don't mean to sound callous but short-profile AMW cases and such may need the attention, but I'm also trying to engage the average reader, and chances are they are more interested in the threads with the most view counts. So unlikely but for argument's sake let's say there's no updates on Yaser Said and he gets buried to page 7 as the recent fugitive section gets more and more short-profile cases, the average reader who goes page to page is seeing a bunch of 30-second cases they likely aren't as interested in instead of him up front.

Obviously, just like AMW/The Hunt some of my ideas will be liked and not liked and I unfortunately can't please everybody.

I will see how this goes, but if it becomes an issue with people later on, I'll re-consider it.

I also had another idea for a compromise- until the Hunt comes back or perhaps even during it since more than one topic can get pinned- we can do a "Pinned" case of the day. So every day (or every day that I'm online at least), we can highlight a case that needs attention like that. I probably will just go section by section and put our cases into random.org (an online random number generator) and edit into the thread they're pinned as a "Case of the day". If we think case of the week is better we can do that as well. So you or anyone else let me know if you think a case of the day and/or week is a good idea. I will then randomize the category for that day/week with a caveat that the case needs to be in the latter half of a section and needs the views. If it's a section with not that many pages I'll determine a view count threshold. If you want to request or anyone else wants to request a case of the day/week instead of randomizing it that's fine as well.

So right now recent AMW/Hunt fugitives would be the section with a pinned case of the day (or week depending on what we think is better) and it would have to be a case from pages 5-8.

We'd then work our way by down category each day or week (although I will likely skip the USMS and FBI section since those cases have enough attention as it is).

I hope that wasn't too confusing, but yeah anyone who's reading that, let me know if you like the idea.

EDIT: I think case of the week would be better to guarantee more views.

I was actually starting to second guess myself LOL. I was wondering if chronological was better or even alphabetical by last name to help those searching for particular fugitives (of course new threads and threads with updates would stay on top regardless of that).

I'm only an admin, and anyone's free to tell me if they like an idea of mine or not. It doesn't necessarily mean I may take the advice, but feedback is always welcome and part of what has improved this site.

One thing I noticed though if I ever bump up a topic or pin a topic and then unpin it after a Hunt airing it unfortunately reverts back to chronological instead of view count order. So I unfortunately may have to re-arrange things more often than I thought (more than once a month), but I'll try to limit as much as I can so it doesn't affect the recently updated threads and also people trying to read the pages.

Also, to make sure they get attention, cases of the week will also have a link under the category in addition to a sticky.