How do you want the law school listing on the forums shown?

[Ryn]

There was a discussion in #meta yesterday about the listing of the school forums on the index page. Right now, it is a subcategory and is listed in the same order as it was on ls.ca (west to east).

The logic behind it being this way is the following:

1. Making it a subcategory saves space. School-related forums are mainly an applicant feature, though students occasionally do use it too. Scrolling down on the main site to get to other forums may be annoying and time consuming.
2. Grouping schools from west to east allows you to find related schools quickly by geography, instead of, for example, having Allard first and Victoria last.

That said, I am open to changing things if there is some demand for it. So I have posed two questions. Let us know how you feel. I will add that this poll will inform our decision but will not necessarily make it so that the result will happen.

[Gamgee]

Current order puts the best school at the top 🤭 (not biased at all)

Edited June 6, 2021 by RUIQ

[Aureliuse]

Is it possible to de-clutter the school sub-forums? Or alternatively, make the fonts bigger? Everything seems so squished together.

I agree with moving away from sub-categories.  CTRL + F results would be easier to spot if all the sub-forums are of the same font size.

On a different note, we need more practice areas.

[Ryn]

6 minutes ago, Aureliuse said:

On a different note, we need more practice areas.

Happy to consider your ideas! I've just put up a few but I don't doubt more will be needed.

With respect to your other suggestions, it's something I can look into. I am just cognizant of the fact that a larger font may end up defeating some of the purpose of using subforums.

[Aureliuse]

1 hour ago, Ryn said:

Happy to consider your ideas! I've just put up a few but I don't doubt more will be needed.

With respect to your other suggestions, it's something I can look into. I am just cognizant of the fact that a larger font may end up defeating some of the purpose of using subforums.

Right now, it's just hard to see a latest post in each subforum when everything is bunched together. If the schools get their own sub-forum, readers can spot the latest reply immediately in each sub-forum.

The alternative to having all the subforums for a variety of practice area is introduce topic flairs such as "e.g. crown, criminal defence, environmental, IP..." So instead of different practice areas with their own subforums, you can have a "Lawyers Section" with a single "legal practice" sub-forum. Posters get to choose a topic flair before submitting a new thread.

With flair, a thread might look like:

As Examples: "[Criminal Defense] 3rd Year Salary Expectations"

                       "[General] Challenges You Faced as a 1st Year Associate"

                       "[Family] Client threatens to sue me"

You can introduce topic flairs for other sub-forums as well:

As Examples: "[Chances] Mature Student 3.7 gpa/161 LSAT"
                        "[LSAT] Summer Study Schedule"

I am not sure if introducing flairs is possible on this BBS.

[Pyke]

I voted west to east, but I have to admit I'm confused why some are on the same line... Also, I think Kamloops is to the west of Calgary... [goes off to check.. yep, even though BC and Calgary don't have a nice straight line border, this is true). Ryerson, similarly, is to the west of Queens. For that matter, I'm pretty sure Osgoode is the most west, then U of T, then Ryerson, but maybe this is getting excessively pedantic. I think by province, then alphabetically, is probably close enough. To be honest, that might actually be more useful, since people may not know where TRU or Ryerson or Dalhousie are.

[Kurrika]

The federal government sits provinces based on when they joined confederation.  You should do that with the law schools 🙂

[CheeseToast]

49 minutes ago, Pyke said:

To be honest, that might actually be more useful, since people may not know where TRU or Ryerson or Dalhousie are.

You could say this for any University that doesn't have a city in its name. 

[TobyFlenderson]

8 minutes ago, Kurrika said:

The federal government sits provinces based on when they joined confederation.  You should do that with the law schools 🙂

I'm for it. Then we could put those new law schools like Ryerson at the bottom where they belong! 🙄

[Ryn]

1 hour ago, Pyke said:

I voted west to east, but I have to admit I'm confused why some are on the same line... Also, I think Kamloops is to the west of Calgary... [goes off to check.. yep, even though BC and Calgary don't have a nice straight line border, this is true). Ryerson, similarly, is to the west of Queens. For that matter, I'm pretty sure Osgoode is the most west, then U of T, then Ryerson, but maybe this is getting excessively pedantic. I think by province, then alphabetically, is probably close enough. To be honest, that might actually be more useful, since people may not know where TRU or Ryerson or Dalhousie are.

To be fair, it's in the same order now as it was on ls.ca. Much like all traditions, sometimes we only vaguely know why they're done the way they are.

[Pyke]

9 hours ago, Ryn said:

To be fair, it's in the same order now as it was on ls.ca. Much like all traditions, sometimes we only vaguely know why they're done the way they are.

Okay so I wanted to use a haha emoji to reply but apparently that's not a thing here.

But noted.

[Ryn]

17 hours ago, Pyke said:

Okay so I wanted to use a haha emoji to reply but apparently that's not a thing here.

But noted.

It is now! You guys make me laugh too much not to have it. 

[Ryn]

It was a close vote so in the interest of trying new-yet-samey things, I've moved the school specific forums to the main level for now. Keep voting on how you'd like it to be, now that you've had a chance to experience both!

[SNAILS]

Put them into three categories: 

(1) Great Law Schools

(2) Good Law Schools

(3) Crappy Law Schools

🤓

[Ryn]

PS - you can change your vote now. Forgot to enable that option.