OMG!!! Do we have constructive criticism here??!! And when some of it is less constructive... it is still calm and civil! Coool!
I'll comment on a few points from your last post, chrisc90:
I do wonder, who-ever makes the race thread for the weekend, could include the invite link to the discord to push it and make finding it a LOT easier. Even a moderator could add the link in pretty easily afterwards.
Excellent idea. Second best, you or any other user can simply post that link in the race thread after it is open.
One thing that does seem to be slowly taking off is splitting big/key race discussions away from the race thread. For example say Norris/Verstappen incident in Mexico - which would keep all discussion of a discussion like that in its own thread. A little massaging would sort that side of things out pretty easily IMHO. Just have to be on the ball and make sure threads for those discussions are opened and/or posts moved pretty quickly to avoid clogging things up.
I agree, and the current mod team is often too small/slow/busy to react with lightening reflexes. But "make sure threads for those discussions are opened and/or posts moved pretty quickly"... is something that every user can do! Go ahead (you or any other user), open the thread quoting one-two starting posts, go to the original place, drop the link to the new thread and suggest people to move it there. It works most of the time. For extra help, then report your own post, so it is like a disco-ball for mods, who can then enforce the moving or redirecting faster.
A couple of users have taken a knack to doing all that (takes 5 minutes), and it often works wonders.
One thing I don't quite get about this forum,maybe it is the engineerish mindset: Most users seem alergic to opening new threads. Like it is impossible to do so! And I don't get it. Is it hidden that EVERY user has the full rights to open whatever thread wherever? (please, find a right-ish subforum, though, but moving a whole thread is super-easy in any case).
I think having separate areas for more off topic vs technical discussion would work much better
But that is exactly what we are trying to do. Car threads, engine threads and in tgeneral the whole "Hardware/Aero/Engine" triad od subtopics here:
index.php That is your "technical area".
Those 3 subforums we try to keep extra clean, extra technical, extra on topic.
The race threds, and team threads, almost anything goes as long as it is on topic (as in F1 competition, no girlfriends if possible, please).
And from "other racing series" down in
index.php, well, there is even an "off topic" subsection!
Maybe this size doesn't fit all, but it is the result of a lot on internal discussion over the years and found to work reasonably OK. Not perfect by any means.
1) More people, 2) more posts, 3) more revenue comes in
1) Cool.
2) Cool... as long as they have a significant information content. They bring the signal to noise ratio down otherwise. Less posts is often better, few poeple have the many hours daily that it would take to read the whole forum.
3) Do you really think that is a motivation here?!
Precisely because this site is NOT about revenue, we try to make it as interesting as possible. And that, in a narrow topic choice, by design. Precisely because there is no profit here, we are not too afraid of stepping on some toes it it must be.
Rivals, not enemies. (Now paraphrased from A. Newey).