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Change Community Layout

Started by MrPhil, June 10, 2012, 09:58:41 AM

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MrPhil

How about rearranging the categories in the SMF Community so that Support is up at the top? Moving other stuff down the page should minimize the noobs' using Bug Reports and Feedback to discuss their problems that should  be in 1.x or 2.x support boards.

While I'm here, how about a Spam Issues child board for both 1.x and 2.x support? There are so many topics covering spam that it would be good to clear out the regular support boards and consolidate them into child boards. Moderators could move a few at a time -- no need to rush to get them all moved at once. Likewise, how about child boards for mod install/removal issues? Those also take up a big chunk of the general support boards -- think of every topic about "undefined index". Any other topic areas big enough to warrant a new child board, such as Security and Hacking?

kat


Arantor

If you have boards for spam issues, mod install/removal issues and undefined indexes, you're going to have almost nothing left for actual support.

Note that almost every undefined index is really a mod bug.

Kindred

you really think that will solve anything?

We've been through this sort of question multiple times. We have sticky posts that answer most of these questions. We have a wiki/doc site. We have search... and STILL people post the same questions over and over and over in the wrong areas as well as the right areas.
Heck, I've seen idiots post a question when the same question was already asked and answered only two posts down the index.
Слaва
Украинi

Please do not PM, IM or Email me with support questions.  You will get better and faster responses in the support boards.  Thank you.

"Loki is not evil, although he is certainly not a force for good. Loki is... complicated."

Arantor

I do think moving the support boards further up than bug reports will help, though. Though I'd argue the news area needs to stay at the top.

Question: what purpose does 'feedback and discussion' serve? Most of the time its content is either really a support issue or a mod/feature request. Fewer boards will help with things ;)

kat

Quote from: Arantor on June 10, 2012, 12:18:32 PMFewer boards will help with things ;)



We discussed dumping Graphics and templates and expecting anything, there, to go in the support boards. For one thing, people posting there never put the bloody version they're using. If everything went in Support, at least we'd have a fighting chance of guessing what version's being spoken about.

It'll also stop Illori posting mod reports about getting them moved. ;)

MrPhil

Quote from: Kindred on June 10, 2012, 12:08:19 PM
you really think that will solve anything?
Yes.

Quote
We've been through this sort of question multiple times. We have sticky posts that answer most of these questions. We have a wiki/doc site. We have search... and STILL people post the same questions over and over and over in the wrong areas as well as the right areas.
Heck, I've seen idiots post a question when the same question was already asked and answered only two posts down the index.
I'm often tempted to refer to many of the members of this community as "idiots", but I'll refrain for now. This is an exercise in Human Factors -- if you present plausible places to enter their problem up at the top of the page, that's where they'll do it. They won't take the time to search further down to find the optimal location -- like a dog out on a walk who needs to dump a load, they'll do it at the first available spot. That's why you steer them to the best places by placing the Support boards first (or at least, near the top, after News).

Then there's the old adage, "You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink." Even if we make it easy to search, and put up lots of stickies, and put in a nice Wiki, and list dozens of equivalent topics on the same page, guess what? Most people will simply start up a new topic. Be thankful if it's in the right board -- that's the most you can hope for with most people. And remember -- members get yelled at for not starting a new topic.

I've seen forums where you are required to conduct a search first, before starting a new thread -- maybe SMF needs that? If so, the Search definitely needs to be made easier and more intuitive to use, and should cover the stickies (presumably it does) and the Wiki. The default should always be to search the whole Community, and not narrow it down to category or board or topic unless explicitly requested. I wouldn't be surprised if many people attempt to search, but don't realize they're only looking in a small part of the forum. Search's design is defective.

Quote from: Arantor on June 10, 2012, 12:18:32 PM
I do think moving the support boards further up than bug reports will help, though. Though I'd argue the news area needs to stay at the top.
100% agreed (hey, we're agreeing an awful lot lately....  ::))

Quote
Question: what purpose does 'feedback and discussion' serve? Most of the time its content is either really a support issue or a mod/feature request. Fewer boards will help with things ;)
Yeah, well that's the whole point of my proposal... to encourage members to post in the appropriate place and not clutter up F&D with support issues and mod requests. I think F&D and Site Comments could probably be merged, unless F&D is meant for chatting about SMF and its direction in general, while SC is specifically about this simplemachines.org site? The board descriptions could probably be enhanced.

I think that a number of Child Boards for both 1.x and 2.x Support would help the situation. Some members undoubtedly find the huge mass of topics intimidating and don't know where to even start looking. I wouldn't be surprised if some deliberately choose to put their topics in the wrong boards in hope that they'll be more likely to be seen that way. Cutting the general support boards down to size by putting common support themes off on their own may help with this.

Arantor

QuoteI'm often tempted to refer to many of the members of this community as "idiots", but I'll refrain for now.

I get considered negative if I do that. Bloc even told me so.

QuoteEven if we make it easy to search, and put up lots of stickies, and put in a nice Wiki, and list dozens of equivalent topics on the same page, guess what? Most people will simply start up a new topic.

Yup, though it's always obvious if people have attempted to help themselves before asking for help.

QuoteI've seen forums where you are required to conduct a search first, before starting a new thread -- maybe SMF needs that?

I doubt it. What it would mean is that people would carry out a search, not find an answer because they've used the wrong terms, and create a new topic anyway.

Remember the scope of what we're talking about. Different people have different terms for different things, the odds of them knowing the right words to search for are surprisingly slim.

QuoteYeah, well that's the whole point of my proposal... to encourage members to post in the appropriate place and not clutter up F&D with support issues and mod requests. I think F&D and Site Comments could probably be merged, unless F&D is meant for chatting about SMF and its direction in general, while SC is specifically about this simplemachines.org site? The board descriptions could probably be enhanced.

Well, I'm all for people posting in the right place. But I don't think F&D is actually useful - most of what ends up in F&D is support anyway. Very rarely there'll be something of what F&D was intended for (i.e. people expressing how happy they are with SMF) but that could just as easily go in Chit Chat - it often does anyway.

QuoteI think that a number of Child Boards for both 1.x and 2.x Support would help the situation. Some members undoubtedly find the huge mass of topics intimidating and don't know where to even start looking.

I think having a lot of boards would do something similar actually. I also think that having the child boards you're proposing isn't really that useful in itself because most people won't post in them. Spam, maybe, but stuff like undefined index errors, people won't necessarily post in them, they are more likely just to go directly to the support board and be done with it.

In any case, having things like that gives a negative image about SMF that it doesn't deserve - they're mod problems, not core SMF problems. What I could see, however, is having redirection boards as child boards to the 1.x / 2.x Support boards, which point to wiki articles about these things.

Mstcool

Arantor whos bloc?

And btw i was about to send you a pm Not a support one but a regular one and it said you blocked my pm
Did you block everyone's or just mine? and if it is mine why?


MovedGoalPosts

As a relative newcomer to these forums and trying to find useful information so that I can customise my SMF I have to say the layout here does not aid searching for anything.  That is compounded by often not knowing the correct SMF terminology for the issue that one is searching for.

There are two distinct SMF lines v1.X.X and v2.X.X.  Yet there is only one small part of the board that separately identifies these.  Everything else gets stuff lumped together.  Often only once you read a topic do you realise it is inappropriate.

It would be a massive task to move all the stuff around, but ideally I would suggest there should be two main board categories, one for each forum version, with boards within that can deal with general support, themes, mods, bugs, installation, etc.

kat


Arantor

Quote from: Mstcool on June 11, 2012, 12:01:04 AM
Arantor whos bloc?

And btw i was about to send you a pm Not a support one but a regular one and it said you blocked my pm
Did you block everyone's or just mine? and if it is mine why?

I blocked everyone's PM and I don't like receiving PMs anyway. Why would you want to PM me anyway, I have little useful to say and I'm certainly not doing any coding these days.

kat

You could unblock me, for a few minutes, though, as I have a small offer, for you. ;)

Arantor

Sorry, but I'm not unblocking anyone. I'm not sure why I'm in front of a computer at all to be honest. People wondering about my mental fragility would do well to read this post at that forbidden forum.

kat

Seen it, already. :(

Ah. I just sent you an email. :P

Feel free to bin it, obviously.

Mstcool

Oh ok Man

I didnt read all of it but i think you are having a hard life?
If yes i hope it gets better
Good luck bro

ARG01

The problem is, certain people are too used to others doing the work for them. They are too lazy to read previous posts/topics or even do a simple search so they just ask the same questions again.

Anyone, even a noob/newb can repair, alter or customize their entire SMF install simply by performing searches here on this site. Anything and everything possible associated with SMF has already been asked and answered many times over.

;)

No, I will not offer free downloads to Premium DzinerStuido themes. Please stop asking.

MrPhil

@ARG, was that in response to @movedgoalposts' post? The whole point of my opening this topic was that we make it too easy (on this particular forum) for lazy/stupid/ignorant people to dump their questions in the wrong category. Time is therefore wasted asking what version of SMF (and moving topics to the right place), and people get confused because a board such as "Site Comments" gets cluttered up with "I have a problem with my SMF installation" questions.

Yes, it is very poorly organized and could do with a good housecleaning. From the responses I'm seeing, however, I'm not going to hold my breath waiting for anything to get done.

MovedGoalPosts

I appreciate there is a wealth of information on this board, somewhere.  Indeed, just by watching posts made over the last month or so, in various forums, I've picked up a lot of stuff that might come in useful.  But I am probably like a large number of users who come to this forum, relatively ignorant as to terminology, so know I have an issue, but not what to search for.  The question I asked a few weeks ago regarding how the main_blog.png file actually worked was a typical example of that and it was not until an answer of css image sprites was given did a penny drop, and yet I had tried entering main_block into the site search and couldn't make much sense of the results.  But then that I hope is what a community based support board does, it aims to enlighten those having some difficulty.

I suspect, but was not around here prior to SMF2, that the current arrangement of forum boards developed from when there was only one product line.  Unfortunately the board has become confused with SMF2 being added and yet many users are running version 1.

There is also a fair area of overlap where one might raise questions, or find answers, as often an issue to the user might seem to be a general support issue, whereas others might think they are creating customisation or modding something, and others think it's simply a template issue, yet the templates being php are related to the code, which in turn is why you post in the support board.  Does that rather muddled sentence clarify the potential confusion?

As a mod on a large support site with some 2 million posts dealing with cable TV and broadband services, I see the issues from a site admin point of view daily where you will always get posts in the wrong forum area, however well laid out the site admins think things are.  What I also know is that once a site is large, even if there is a will to try and make changes, the administrative burden make the task such a headache it's unlikely to happen, especially if that means diverting effort from the limited resources available to support and develop the product.

ARG01

Quote from: MrPhil on June 12, 2012, 12:21:28 PM
@ARG, was that in response to @movedgoalposts' post?

It was not a response to any one particular post but more in response to the general search issue. Although many do attempt a search, those that don't bother to search greatly outweigh those that do. It has nothing to do with proper search terminology but more of an I'll just ask and someone will help sort of thing. It takes only an iota of common sense to realize that simple issues were more than likely addressed many times over but some people would rather ask others for help before even attempting to take a stab at it on their own.
These are the same people that trip over a log in the woods while running from a bear simply because they forgot that they have an actual ability to look where they are going. Instead, they lay on the ground screaming with the expectation that somehow, someone will mosey on by and help them survive.

To get back on topic, I also feel that the boards here can be a bit overwhelming, especially to those that are new to the community forum thing.

;)
No, I will not offer free downloads to Premium DzinerStuido themes. Please stop asking.

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