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Here is a long text that I think answers your considerations. (I wasn't in the mood for juggling with quoting blocks ;-)
I don't think it is important what triggers a contributing board moderator to create a new post on a topic.
What
is important, is that he doesn't create topics for more basic questions on 'how things work'.
His very first consideration for creating such a new topic should be:
"Is this a known issue/problem that users run into and ask questions about on a regular basis?"
If not, the question can be answered in the questions board, or by providing a link to the wiki or to another post.
About when to answer a forum member's question by creating a new topic in this new board:
These days I myself frequently see questions where I think, "I am not going to respond. That has been asked and answered too many times by now."
With this new board I think in such a case I might be motivated to create a new, relevant topic in this board, and then answer the member that asked the question by providing a link to that new article.
(and I am guessing—hoping—more contributing members will consider doing this)
Either by creating that post from scratch using their own words, or by copying a relevant post or article from another board or the wiki.
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Board, topic, post, thread, article. Yeah, I suspect I do mix those up once in a while.
(is there perhaps an 'Internet Forums for Dummies' book someone can lend me?)
When I used these terms (possibly incorrect) I intended it in this context:
1. The forum's search engine is not very good. (I think that's a statement most of us will agree upon)
2. It is no fun for a user to scroll through many pages of topics to find the one that is relevant to his question or issue.
(I am amazed how many 'more modern' and 'sophisticated' forums do this. It's contra-productive and annoying as hell)
For these two reasons alone I think it will be good to have a compact and user friendly structure, and keep the number of topics per page limited.
I am not sure about the exact amount, but maybe something like 10 or 15, not much more.
If I recall correctly from my moderator days, and especially from the period were we were testing and experimenting on the
new (now current) forum, the way to do that was by using 'child boards'.
They were not too difficult to setup, so it could be a possibility to grant the board moderators rights to create and edit them.
I can't recall if a child board within a child board can be created though. Current moderators/administrator may have input on this.
By the way, the concept of a limited amount of topics on a page would not apply to the start post of each thread itself.
In my mind the start post would contain
all relevant Q's and A's.
(in a well-designed and structured layout though…)
Since at least two levels of filtering already preceded it, I am estimating it wouldn't grow out of control easily.
But if it does, a new child board to split topics probably should be created.
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But… this is obviously all a lot of theoretical dry-humpin' inside my own head.
In practice things may turnout quite differently, or may work better with a different strategy.
We'll work it out running?
