I know we have to break up conversations but are 56 different places necessary to keep things in order?  Does anyone else think folks miss great conversations because the specificity of the thread may not let it be found?

I'm curious.  Who thinks we really need these different forums to house threads?

There are actually a lot more than 56 Forums. There are 30 main forums, 25 rented forums (If I counted correctly), the Trash and Treasure Can, a bunch of restricted forums for different powerlevels, a secret forum that I will not name, and A TON of old, abandoned forums, most of them having to do with flash. I think that it is important to have a lot of forums. It helps keep things organized.

Sure, some conversation might be missed to to specificity. But I think even more gets missed when they are more broad. Individual forums then get a LOT of open threads, and it takes a lot to read through each thread to find one you might be interested in. At least the specificity allows people to know where to look for topics.

I think there is some condensing that could be done to bring the number of forums and sub-forums down. However, I don't think that is necessary to keep up with great conversations. What would help me to stay more in the know is to have more sorting options available. They would be similar to the "Your/New Posts" links but would also include "Hot", "Cold", "New", and "Popular" threads. If you think about it there are all kinds of ways that the threads and posts could be sorted to optimize the forum experience.

I just want to firstly explain a few things, starting off with the fact there is "56" places to post, the large majority of those happen to be the 30 main forums, each of these forums host a topic and are part of a "family" or group/set of forums, these are the official forums where almost all of the posts are accumulated.

The reason why there is so many and they are split into so many forums is because the expansive topics each of the group/sets have as a core topic are quite large. Having 30 forums allow for the topic to be split into a more acute topic which would allow people to find such topics easier. I mean would you really prefer 6 forums? I wouldn't and I agree with goodboy here, the site would be rather hectic and disorderly if there were a lot less forums, another thing is, like rcarter said, many of the threads would end up pushed to far down and end up on the second or even the third page depending on your settings. So the current amount makes a good amount of sense.

Now yes some of the forums can be quite similar however their topic outcomes come out quite differently, take the Game Discussion forum (Vizzed.com category) and the Video Game forum (Gamers Circle) for example, each of these focus mainly on the discussion and talk about games, however both focus on slightly different things. The Game Discussion forum leans more to that of games that are currently hosted in the Retro Game Room or viewable in the Video Game Room (Beta).  This forums' threads tend to focus more on that of the game itself and the content within. Whilst on the other hand, the Video Game forum is more ambiguous in the fact the topics can have a more vague discussion to them, they can talk about favorite characters or even what they disliked in it, not to mention the obvious fact that this forum is open to all video game topics. So the Game Discussion forum is more rooted and the Video Game forum is more dynamic if you understand what I'm saying.

So basically what I'm trying to say about the main forums here is whilst yes there may be a lot of forums, many of them are needed and make the site more accessible when trying to find threads. It also allows users to avoid any topic which they may find boring, take the Health / Fitness / Science forum (Vizzed Ville North) for example, I myself don't take too much interest in these topics (I do occasionally visit the Science part) however many people do and thus it's a good system to have.

As per the rented forums, these aren't anything special, sure they usually have unique mods that aren't the set Locals whom moderate the main forums, that's about the only real difference, they just have there own topic centered around something, like Christianity (Christian Conservatives) which may or may not have another place to talk about it.

Finally, the ones you really don't have to worry about are the "Hidden" forums, these forums are set for specific ranked members to chat with others of their specific rank and higher, take the staff forums for example, these are usually to give tasks to current staff members and allow Davideo7 and tRIUNE (and the high ranks) to talk to them directly but can also be used to report flaming users or broken features or any bugs that come across.

warmaker : I hope this clears everything up on the multitude of forums.
goodboy : I mentioned you

"Why not?" is the better question. The proof of burden lays upon the intervention.

I've struggled with this issue for a long time while I've been here.

We actually have over 100 forums. The rented forums are up in the 100+ range.

However, I personally find that the number of forums allows more conversations to remain active than when there are fewer forums.

Some of the forums may seem like duplicates of each other and may not quite be necessary but I would rather have more separation than less.

Yeah, they are just meant for a variety and to keep the board active with numerous topics to discuss. I had no idea there were over 100 forums, I think hunter broke it down and explained it nicely. It is sort of like a system. Plus it is broken down this way to easily access it and keep it organized, the forums are 30 main forums, the trash and treasure can which is 2 and the rest are rented ones. So this is how it is organized: 

board> threads>posts
simple enough right?