The top 10 thing was just for fun... This site is for badminton discussion... we'll probably see it back later sometime. I wouldn't place too much emphasis on something that doesn't really matter, right?
I say that while it was mildly interesting, the Top-10 List seemed to promote competition to see which poster could post the most messages. This in turn led to a lot of chatting, non-informative posts between just a few people, which had the following two problems: (a) the increased number of messages led to slow downs on the server, giving at least a partial explanation for the very slow downloads we have experienced recently; and (b) it made the site more difficult and time consuming to use to gleem any potentially useful or interesting badminton information - instead of going through 5-10 messages per topic, we now have to sort through 20, 40 or even 70+ messages. As we have all observed, sometimes the topic of discussion changes to a new, unrelated but interesting topic midway through the thread, which means that to find that topic among new discussion threads, one essentially needs to read practically every post. A quick review of new messages is now taking at least double the time during this past week that it did two months ago. I'm guessing that if Kwun removed the missing Top-10 List, he probably had some of the above factors in mind (especially if he is working 16 hour days lately). A possible solution might be to set up a chat room on another site for discussions that are less related to badminton than those on this forum. Yahoo.com allows users to set up a website for a club (which I believe is free) that allows for both a message board and a chat room - why not start up a more social-oriented club for these other sorts of discussions and copy and paste any more substantive badminton discussions on this message board?
Top 10, chatroom, etc.... thanks Brett!! yes, you got it right on. the top 10 list doesn't really add much value to this forum. quality, instead of quatity counts. i put it there initially coz it was quite cute. that's all. as for the chat room, i looked into it, even though it is not very difficult to set one up, it does takes up a huge amount of bandwidth. so at this point, i won't be implementing that. or perhaps i will set on up on another site, i will look into that. the traffic in this forum has really picked up lately, i went to bed for 5 hours or so and then i get tons of messages here! i also noticed the slow down of the site recently. i already looked into the load of the server, it appears that it is not the server slowing down. i am suspecting the network connection to the webhost is slow. i am working with them on it. hopefully it will be fixed. as i have mentioned, we are using double the amount of bandwidth the webhost is giving me. i am contemplating changing to a different and better service, but unfortunately that means higher cost, which in turns mean that i may have to start putting banners here. i will keep you guy updated on it.
Re: Top 10, chatroom, etc.... u could do what brett said, and use the yahoo clubs thing. I have a couple of clubs, but it may discourage ppl from using it because they will have to sign up with yahoo b4 they can become members
