The current dance discussion forum is supposed to be International. The only factor I can think of that would cause it to seem otherwise would be the content of the messages themselves, which we have no control over. It is you, our users, who determine the content of the discussion forums.

We used to split the dance discussion into many sub-categories, such as Ballroom, Swing, Tango, Country, Ballet, etc. Some users still prefer this method, and the vote seems to be split about 50/50. It is my personal beleif that dividing the discussion tends to isolate groups from one another, which slows down conversation. In my experience on the various forums and newsgroups, I have found that the most interesting and heated debates stem from comparison of different styles, which is much less likely to happen in a divided forum. Nonetheless, I would see past my own preference if it was far outweighed by a majority vote from the users of this forum. At the moment, it is not.

Being that the users here are so evenly divided on the various issues (eg whether to split the forums, threading order of messages, etc), I realize that there is no one choice I can make that will please everybody. However, there is some good news on the distant horizon: We do plan to actually write our very own discussion-forum program which will be tailored for our own website. And when we do, we will solve the current problem by allowing each individual user to determine his or her own preferences with regard to message filtering, threading, etc.

You can see more discussion ragardingto the threading order and combining / dividing of forums in the following two threads:

(1) One Combined forum or multiple forums?
(2) What do you think of the new dancetalk?

Jonathan Atkinson
www.ballroomdancers.com