Northwest Indiana Discussion

I live in Hammond and most of the people on this board are local. They need to think outside of the box. They want answers they turn to government, there are alternatives the government doesn't even mention for various reasons.

That's why I started a message board, and it's more organized. The problem is a lot of people don't want to believe what is going on around them.

I try harder. . . .

But the thing is, your message board has way to many options

Here is 1 suggestion I think would improve your site and make it more user friendly:

1. divide the state into thirds(Northern, Middle, Southern) and place the counties discussion in those. It will clear up the board and make it less cluttered

I would have more but for some reason I cannot access your board today. when I can access it again, I will add more suggestions.

Do not think I am trying to embarass you, just I run a politics website and have found out through trial and error what works and does not work when it comes to message boards.

My board is like this one, the first layer being the "Board Index." The only way to do that would be for me to set up different message boards and link each of them from a web page.

I would have more but for some reason I cannot access your board today

I remember the old pre-internet days when there were a lot of landline BBS boards up. I wonder how many times a board was down just because somebody needed to use the phone. LOL

The irony today is a dedicated broadband connection can cost less than half of what a phoneline costs. But most people store their sites off site anyway. But you could still run off of your on site PC(s) if you wanted or needed to.

You know speaking of that and thinking of the internet and big brother brings up something that was talked about many years ago. I forget the reason but people were looking for alternatives to the world wide web. One solution was effectively an intranet, connecting house to house kinda in a form of daisy chain. Of course if one PC is switched off you lose all the data stored there. No as big a deal now with cheap memory and cheap PCs and easy home networking of course, but back then even RAM and HD space was sorta expansive and DVD drives didn't exist for retail use.

Another thing that got little fanfare was download only internet like data coming off of PBS. You would need a TV tuner and some freeware software to access the data and had little control over what was offered. Might still be available for all I know.

There's also microwave line of site setups possible to set up a closed network.

So why do you never hear of all this stuff today? Because of free and cheap websites being available.

Say, did you happen to catch this little ditty!

http://www.nwitimes.com/articles/2008/0 ... teaeg0.txt

NEW YORK - The nation's largest Internet service providers all say they haven't partnered with Silicon Valley startup NebuAd Inc. to monitor Web surfing and deliver targeted advertising to their subscribers. Here is a look at six smaller service providers, however, that have conducted trials. The companies say all the tests have ended, often to review privacy and related issues. No provider is known to be currently using NebuAd.

Most notable to us locally:

WideOpenWest

From early March until July 8, WOW used NebuAd's system on its 330,000 customers in its entire service area, which covers Cleveland and Columbus, Ohio, Evansville, Ind., Chicago and Detroit. Besides Web postings, WOW notified customers after the fact via e-mail and physical mail and reminded them on billing statements to review privacy notices online. The company said it received 3,355 opt outs, though an unknown number came from the same customer.

Server problems. I can't complain, I feel that I'm getting more than I paid for.

Not at all, I welcome suggestions. What you metioned above (and I answered in a previous post) just won't work, as far as I can tell, on this free message board.

Server problems. I can't complain, I feel that I'm getting more than I paid for.

You mean like the fact that the site is secretly sponsored by the CIA and used to track users activities online via a stealth keylogger installed as you visit? I guess you are at that!

Maxx,

What I meant was to make a new sub forum and call it say "around Indiana" and when you divide the state into 3, you put the counties that are in the northern part of the state and make a section just for those ocunties, same with middle and southern.

This way you only have 3 area's instead of 92 for talk about the counties. If a specific county gets the most attention, then you can spin it off into its own section.

This is what I mean:

Section name: Around Indiana
Forum name: Northern Counties
Description: This is the place to discuss issues pertaining to the Northern Counties of the state. Post about issues pertaining to Lake, Porter, LaPorte, St. Joseph, Elkhart, LaGrange, Steuben, Newton, Jasper, etc


Something like that, that way you eliminate 89 other sections and make the board less cluttered and you still have sections for all 92 counties

Honestly after looking at the board again, you actually already have something like that on the site, with your Indiana by region section, that is where you should do what I suggest and get rid of the county section all together.

Now, check out what I've done, cut it into two sections.