Discussions

Anyone that's browsed or started a new thread in the discussion groups over the last couple of years has likely noticed that the overall listing of groups has become increasingly bloated and difficult to sort through because of how much the site's grown. We had groups that were started several years ago that had one post in them, multiple separate groups on the exact same topic, etc.  
 
Over the last few hours I've gone through the listing of groups and done a few things:  
- removed groups that had been sitting on the site and serving no purpose... basically entire groups that had only 1 or 2 posts in them. In most cases, posts from those groups were moved to the general "The Lounge" group before removal.  
- flagged certain groups as "archived" since they are no longer currently relevant. Ex XFest2, Canada Votes 2008, Memorial Cup 2010.  
- flagged a handful of groups as "popular groups".. basically the groups where 99%+ of all discussions take place in.  
- merged groups that were on the same topic. For example we had two separate ones for landscaping, two for gardening, three for Christianity, etc etc.  
 
With this done, I was able to make two improvements that make the discussions section of this site much easier to navigate:  
 
1) On the "Start a discussion" page that comes up when you hover your mouse over top of "Discussions" above and click on "Start a discussion," all groups have been split into three categories: Popular, Regular and Archived.  
Popular groups are displayed at the top for easier access  
 
This will save sorting through a list of 200+ groups before you even get to the point where you can start a thread  
 
2) On the main groups page (hover your mouse over top of "Discussions" in the top eBrandon menu bar and then pick "All Groups"), the same division has been made between Popular Groups/All Groups/Archived Groups. Just click on the appropriate tab on that page to see groups within the specific categorization. This will make it MUCH easier to come to the site and get a sense for what is new in the more popular groups. It will also make it much easier to find those groups to view only discussions posted within them.  
 
Nothing changes as far as one's ability to post to any group on the site and nothing changes as far as one's ability to start a new group... the main difference is that it's now a lot easier to sort though everything which should in the end result in posts that are much better organized. When you have over 350,000 posts such as what's been accumulated over the last 5 1/2 years that becomes an absolutely critical thing to have.  
 
Enjoy!