I have some suggestions for restructuring the Prince.org forums and better promoting the topics within. These suggestions are intended to address several issues, namely:

1. At least 5 of the current 12 forums receive very few topic posts
2. The topics posted in the above-mentioned 5 forums get little attention
3. Some of the current forums are IMO in the wrong section (Prince vs non-Prince-related)

To provide a little background, here are the current forums with a number next to them indicating how much relative use (out of 10) each forum gets (this is just my back of the envelope estimate):

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A. Prince-related discussion forums

1. Prince: Music and More - 10
2. Music: Non-Prince - 6
3. org Artist Community - 2
4. Concerts - 3
5. Past, Present, Future sites - 1
6. Fan Gatherings - 2
7. Associated artists & people - 6
8. The Marketplace: For Sale/Trade - 4

B. General forums for non-Prince related talk

1. General Discussion - 10
2. Politics & Religion - 8
3. prince.org site discussion - 2

With the above in mind, I propose the following changes to address the above:

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1. Merge forums A3, A6, A8, and B3 into one forum: "Prince fans". All these forums have the fans in common and so this grouping thematically makes sense. This forum would include subjects about us as fans, our gatherings, what art we're producing, and our primary method of communication: Prince.org. The latter subject could be featured as a sticky, since suggestions don't happen often and could be contained in one topic. The result would be a forum that would be checked much more often, benefiting all topics posted within.

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2. Merge forum B3 into forum A1. Forum B3 gets practically no postings and could easily be absorbed into forum A1. "Prince: Music and More" already seems to thematically allow for discussion about websites.

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3. Arrange the new forums in the following way:

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A. Prince-related discussion forums

1. Prince: Music and More
2. Concerts
3. Associated artists & people
4. Prince fans

B. General forums for non-Prince related talk

1. General Discussion
2. Music: Non-Prince (why was this ever in the Prince section?)
3. Politics & Religion

4. On the home page, list the above forums and, under each forum, list the 5 (or whatever number seems best) most recent topics. This would give lesser-visited forums a more equal footing and incentivize people to use those forums more.

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You may disagree with some or all of the above suggestions and so perhaps our best starting point is to agree on what we're trying to fix (see the top of my post).

I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on the above.

[Edited 9/22/14 16:52pm]

I think "Latest News" on the home page should be replaced with an all-forum inclusive, "Latest Posts." But I don't know one thing about computer code and maintaining websites, so I don't know how hard that would be.

I will admit that in the past 10 years, I've visited this forum maybe 3 times total?