Check It Out/Think Tank Dialogs

Is there any chance you can post the previous Think Tank discussion as round table articles?

Im sure it would be greatly appreciated! Would be by me anyway :smiley:

Anyway that we can access them again for a short period of time? I was hoping to save some of the threads especially some studies that CT posted…

[quote]Atomic Dog wrote:
Yes, it’s a huge conspiracy!

We felt so sorry for Davies that we killed the whole damn thing.

Listen, we rarely got more than 5000 page hits on a single thread. That sucks.
[/quote]

Blame it on the writers. Aside from the thread on legs, most of the ‘content’ was f’ckin boring.

But hey, I’m just somebody who read the site for 3 years now.

[quote]Atomic Dog wrote:

The guys can continue any discussions on a regular thread, plus that allows you to join in, which, by the way, was a major complaint (another reason we killed it.)

[/quote]

Oh, man. That’s what made it great. I didn’t have to wade through pages of crap from billy-bob “don’t know shit” johnson. This is what made the information conveyed there so usefull.

If commoners such as myself wanted to comment, we could always just start up a regular thread with the same name.

It’s a shame it has to go. Although, I understand why it had to get yanked.

I recommend that the same type of conversations continue in the regular forums. Shugart could still play devil’s advocate, and we can hope that everyone will just stay the hell out of the way unless they have something profound to say.

I second the idea of having those threads archived somewhere.

All in all, great idea guys. It’s great that you’d at least give it a shot.

I also really enjoyed the “Think Tank Dialogs”.

** SUGGESTION **

Just add a staff forum for this sort of think tank dialog. Right there with the other forums. Give it a catchy name and see what happens. Was the private forum from a couple of years back such a dismal failure?

** QUESTION **

Did people not view TTD out of lack of interest - or was it actually site design or lack of awareness of the feature?

** OBSERVATION **

It takes 5 “page downs” (I’ll call this a “page” for my purposes) at my current screen resolution just to look at the T-Nation home page. And it’s a DAMN BUSY page. I’m not saying it isn’t PRETTY, but I for one think that some of the information/features available gets lost in there. Yes, it is a fully featured T-Nation portal, but –

Look at the top portals: Yahoo - approximately 1 page. MSN - approximately 1 page. Commercial websites? Amazon is about 2 pages. And at the extreme end look at Google: 1/2 page.

T-Nation:
[Most Recent Articles - 1/2 page ]
[Special Reports - 1/2 page ]
[Products - 1+ pages ]
[T-Jack]
[Library - 1 page ]
[Forums - 1 page ]

Maybe I’m blind but I didn’t even NOTICE the new audio feature until someone mentioned it in the forums. My eyes just filtered it out as another fancy t-nation graphic.

** THINKING OUT LOUD **

I wish I knew the profiles of who used the feature and who didn’t. For example, maybe it was the least popular feature, but it was used by the people who buy the most supplements!

It would be good business to track data like that! If the most popular features are used by the leeches and the least popular by the top customers, would that effect things?

I’m dissappointed to see the Think Tank Dialogs go. I liked getting all the site contributors opinions in one thread.

As for the Web Blogs, its a different story. I love the idea in the beginning but besides Shugart none of you guys were consistent.

Lonnie had some cool ideas about posting studies and recipes but that never really materialized.

TC was pretty active in the summer. I especially liked his coffee shop stories. Everyday he told some chick some random piece of information in which she had to decide if it was fact or complete bullshit. But then he faded into the abyss.

And the elusive Tim Patterson, well, he had a grand total of…1 blog entry. I was very dissappointed with that. I was kinda hoping that it would be a small scale version of his old weekly column Behind The Scenes where he would answer questions about Biotest products and tell T-Nation about new products in the works.

If T-mag brought back an old column Behind the Scenes would be my pick.

I’m surprised that so few have chimed in about this.

[quote]Chris Aus wrote:
Is there any chance you can post the previous Think Tank discussion as round table articles?[/quote]

Yeah, if you can have them publicly archived it would kick much ass.

I agree with one of the previous posters… there is a huge amount of content on the “front” page of this site. Is there some way to trim it down? Maybe trim old articles / forum links / product links / T-Jack links into seperate links and into a page of their own so you could reduce the size of the “home” page?

mike

That sucks…I just stumbled onto them and thought they were great. The poster who mentioned that perhaps the home page is a tad busy and long is on the money. I have only been using this site for about 2-3 months and it took me a while to realize that there were forums. I love this site I spend almost all my “working” hours reading articles and various threads. Hell before I came here I was a firm believer in Sisco’s partial rep training is all you need philosophy. I have progressed more in 10 weeks from Waterbury’s programs than I did in a year of that worthless crap! Anyway I hope that you guys can come up with something that resembles the think tanks becuase it was a very informative section.

I’m sure going to miss hearing about TC’s crazy coffee house antics, and Dr. L’s tips.

I did enjoy the think tank dialogues, however didn’t read them with the same enthusiasm/regularity as the regular articles, or the blogs for that matter. For that I apologize.It was a great feature.

[quote]smallnomore wrote:
I’m surprised that so few have chimed in about this.[/quote]

Maybe more folks have been chiming in, but like one person said earlier, as many features as this site has now, it’s nearly impossible to get anything done. so folks get lost in all the pretty bells and whistles. not complaining but it’s a big reason i don’t come here much anymore.

there was a paragraph here that actually made it on the board, and as this thread got more heavily scrutinized, this paragraph got editted too. if you want to edit me fine. let me know what and why and we should be fine. but this is getting ridiculous.

I’m sorry to see the Think Tank go as well.

I liked the idea of having a separate section for ‘experts’ to discuss/debate without getting interrupted by regular forum members and thought it added to the “Bodybuilding’s Think Tank” tagline. If a forum member had a question about the discussion, they could post it in one of the forums. Nice & simple. My vote is also in for archiving the previous Think Tank threads.

I agree the front page should be reworked. I almost missed Shugart’s weblog last night 'cause it was scrunched between the ‘Important Announcement’ & T-Gallery buttons.

Here’s my two cents if the web guys are taking suggestions:

  • Move the online store to a separate page.

  • Have the ability to add/remove topics viewed from the “Article Library” section (like what one can do with the Forums) - Or make a separate page for the Forums/Article Library.

  • Archive the older ‘special reports’ and keep some space on the front page for any new special report.

  • Nix the “Important Announcement” button on the left. It’s redundant since anytime T-Nation comes out with a new/re-released supplement, it’s plastered on the site anyway.

  • I like the “Strong Words/Cool Tips/Image/Discussion/Post” on the left but Shugart’s weblog and the T-Gallery need to stand out more.

Getting rid of “Think Tank” is like getting rid of one of your research and development departments. Or is it more like Board of Directors…

Please bring back something similar is my vote.

TTD was the first thing i checked out whenever i got on. i’ll be sad to see it go only if the contributors don’t contribute at least a little to the regular forums. the only reason i liked TTD so much was because you got to read what the pros thought.

Atomic Dog,

      Thanks for the clarification.
      I'm sorry to see it go, but now that I compare how few hits it was getting with how many the articles usually get, it makes sense.

I understand the decision. I think it would be great if the information could somehow be preserved in the archives. The TTF did offer a great way to compare and contrast perspectives from great coaches/trainers (Legs). Another thought would be to offer the forum concept intermitantly, with perhaps an announcement to contributers in advance to give them a chance to prep. I know the effect you were going for was more free flowing dialouge, but that sort of “closed chat” might have a lot of traction.

One other thought on the TTF. If you take the perspective that this is the “public” R&D, think tank, or development arm of the Nation, one might use a differant expectation in measuring their effectiveness. In any event, I appreciate the need to be fluid, and have never been dissapointed in improvements at T-Nation

Were you kidding? I didnt find it boring in the least…

Round tables on chest legs arms back… Cool russian articles… Discussions on genetic limits fibre types time under tension etc are pretty interesting in my opinion

Did you mention youve been here 3 years to indicate how that youve been here a long time or that you infact havent been here that long compared to the people who have been here for 8? I dont get it…

Think Tank Dialogs were really a unique feature and I’m very dissapointed to see it go. I don’t think that getting a small number of hits is a valid reason to take it down.

There are at least 3 threads currently with pictures of (almost) naked women, dozens of Pro/Anti Bush and Iraq threads, dozens of threads where people complain about their love life… I’m sure that they all get lots of hits, but, the quality of informantion presented simply cannot be compared.

Let’s not forget that this is a site about “dangerously hardcore” training and nutrition. I come here to read and learn about those things, not to listen to teenagers drool over pictures of female anatomy :slight_smile:

TC, Chris and/or Tim, I sincerly hope you will reconsider your decsision.

I see at least 3 people have chimed in that they agree with me that the T-Nation home page is just so busy (and long!) that features can completely escape observation.

Thanks, I’m glad I’m not alone in that opinion!

Are you listening, mighty T-Nation gods? :slight_smile:

(Now I’m paranoid that people will miss this post because users aren’t used to the 1 2 3 Next feature and think that the thread ends at the first page.)

JOHN K