I've made some changes!

[CharlieDelta]

Hello everyone,

As you may have noticed, I've changed a few things!

My aim is to get away from being a purely cadet-orientated forum and to attract more qualified officers and people working ashore. This will benefit the cadet section with more experienced voices and hopefully better reflect the make-up of the industry.

So, Industry News and Discussion (formed from Industry and Recruitment News and Pictures and Videos forums) and take prime position at the top of the home page. Let's talk about what's going on! New technologies, new ships, incidents, changes in training, changes in legislation. Basically anything that affects our industry, let's talk about it. If we have a busy news and discussion forum (which welcomes everyone from cadet to captain) people will come to see what we're all about.

Aspiring Cadets is now Cadet Applications and Interviews and Current Cadets is now College and Sea Phases. Hopefully this will help to end confusion about where people should post if they've been accepted but haven't started yet. These two, along with the college forums, form the Cadet Section.

The new Officers section includes the Qualified Officers forum, and a new Job Hunting and Interviews forum.

Next we have the department specific Deck, Engine and Electro-Technical forums (no change there), followed by the off-topic section which includes theHello Sailor introductions forum, the Mariner's Pub and For Sale and Wanted.

Finally, I've added an India forum, which will be followed by other specific national forums depending on demand.

Your feedback's really important so let me know what you like and what you don;t like, and any other suggestions you might have!

Thanks

Chris

[Hatchorder]

By default I would move the International forum to near the top. Logged in users can move it down, but it might stop overseas visitors from posting in other threads before they realise there is an International one.

Ian

[CharlieDelta]

Only problem with that is it puts very quiet forums "above the fold" which I'm not keen on. The top 9 forums all have posts within the last 24 hours and hundreds of threads/thousands of posts each.

[GuinnessMan]

To be honest, I'm still all for a "Debates" or "Current Events" or something thread within the "Off-Topic" section...

[CharlieDelta]

What about weekly on-topic debates along the lines of the big bucks vs job satisfaction etc etc?

At the moment, pretty much everything off-topic is covered by the Pub.

[RudderNonsense]

Debates sounds like a good idea. Fingers crossed it'll be like the famous Monty Python Argument Clinic sketch, "I'd like to have an argument please".

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQFKtI6gn9Y