Forum reshuffle

On a recent thread on comp.sys.acorn.misc we were discussing the eternal forum v mailing list v newsgroup debate. I said the forum could be improved, so here’s a suggestion:

Currently the ordering of forums on the front page is:
Announcements
RPCEmu
Wish lists
Bounties
Code review
Bugs
Porting RISC OS
Community Support
General
Aldershot
Tests

This ordering is somewhat haphazard – in particular the ‘user support’ and ‘developer’ sections are all mixed up together. I don’t know if we can have subdivisions on the forum list page, but how about:
Announcements
User support:
→ Community support
→ RPCEmu
Wish lists
Bounties
Developers’ corner:
→ Code review
→ Bugs
→ Porting RISC OS
General
Aldershot
Tests

That should make it clearer what’s aimed at users and what’s at developers, while still allowing some overlap between the two.

Thoughts?

TBH if you were just to change one thing I’d suggest something totally different!

This is to alter the page construction to give a ‘letterbox’ for writing ‘replies’ that is much more than just 8 lines high! Something like 20 lines would be better. Or give the user a switch of some kind (that works with NetSurf!) to choose a window with a greater height.

Personally, I think it may be a good thing for the subtopics to be ‘mixed up’. May help avoid users and developers to keep in touch rather than find they are always in different ‘rooms’. But that is just IMHO. :-)

Jim

Is it really worth the effort, if feasible at all? Those preferring newsgroups will probably never use the forum anyway. Not that the forum couldn’t be improved but for various reasons those changes aren’t likely to happen. It’s all a compromise and we’ll just have to live with the limitations. IMHO the forum works well enough as it is and I strongly doubt the changes you’ve suggested would convince hardcore newsgroup fans to switch.

Another [anecdote] refers to his practice of exhibiting his works in the front of his shop, then hiding nearby to hear the comments of passers-by. When a cobbler commented on his mistakes in painting a shoe, Apelles made the corrections that very night; the next morning the cobbler noticed the changes, and proud of his effect on the artist’s work began to criticize how Apelles portrayed the leg—whereupon Apelles emerged from his hiding-place to state: Ne sutor ultra crepidam—"Let the shoemaker venture no further."

Traffic is only light so I tend to use ‘recent posts’ it saves searching around for something interesting mostly everything gets lumped into general anyway – when you post to the other sections you can feel the echo of an empty room :-)

Jim I agree about the size of the text box. Its even a pain in google chrome an I can resize it there! – I’m lazy at heart. I can only think that someone is trying to discourage long posts. I’ve just thought you could post the word ‘writing’ and edit it, then you get a bigger box.:-)

I said the forum could be improved, so here’s a suggestion:

One small alteration:
The base page for every section could have the section use text added to the top of the page so that when someone is about to click on “New Topic” they get a text reminder right there about is or isn’t supposed to be in that section.
Perhaps, along with Jim Lesurf’s suggestion of the text entry letterbox alteration, that same text could be added right by the “Reply” text that is just above the text entry letterbox. Then we know when we are guilty of putting the wrong thing in a particular section. Only the saintly may say they haven’t done that.

Is it really worth the effort, if feasible at all? Those preferring newsgroups will probably never use the forum anyway.

Erm… If you’ve been reading the newsgroups you’ll know I prefer them to a forum, but I am using the forum. I do find it awkward to use, but I think it could be improved. e.g. the suggestion I made.

WRT ordering of the subforums. So far as I’m concerned I’m happy if we have the ‘general’ one and people simply say in a thread “this topic is probably better deal with on the XYZ subforum” if those used to the forum would think XYZ more appropriate.

Jim

I’ve just thought you could post the word ‘writing’ and edit it, then you get a bigger box.:-)

Alas The snag with that is when I ‘edit’ something and submit it… NetSurf takes me back to page 1 posting 1 of the thread. I then have to navigate again back to the end of the thread, generally on another page.

So this does raise another improvement I’d like:

How about when you finish ‘editing’ your posting you’re returned to the end of the thread – just like when you’ve written a ‘reply’?

Again, I’d find that far more useful that a reshuffle of the order of the subforums on the ‘front page’.

Jim

Hmmm, I just noted an irritation:

Here I am writing an addition. I skip and read something else and respond, or not, and then log-out.
The log out like the log-in is way up the page…
Why isn’t it down here where all the action currently is?

This is to alter the page construction to give a ‘letterbox’ for writing ‘replies’ that is much more than just 8 lines high! Something like 20 lines would be better.

The box I’m typing into now must be more than 20 lines high, but then I’m not using NetSurf so I could just drag it to whatever size I wanted.

Making the box large by default would be a problem for those posting from small screens.

Or give the user a switch of some kind (that works with NetSurf!) to choose a window with a greater height.

As good as NetSurf is, I think you need to be realistic and accept that you’re going to limit your experience if you use it. The lack of ability to resize text fields (plus the ability of other borwsers to spell-check text within them for me) is one reason wny I don’t use it to post here.

It would be interesting to know the browser breakdown for visitors to the ROOL site. I rarely visit in anything but Firefox, for example; I wonder how many RPi owners visit from RISC OS?

How about when you finish ‘editing’ your posting you’re returned to the end of the thread – just like when you’ve written a ‘reply’?

Yes, please! That change alone would make the forum vastly more user-friendly…

Steve:

Then we know when we are guilty of putting the wrong thing in a particular section. Only the saintly may say they haven’t done that.

For this to work, we need first better named fora. What is the difference between “Community Support” and “General”? As this is a small community helping each other, aren’t they fairly interchangable?
Perhaps we need to break down “Community Support” into subsections, like:

Community Support
→ RISC OS
→ Hardware [for WiFi, multiple cores, RTCs, etc etc]
→ Applications [by this I mean third-party apps]
→ RPCEmu
→ Developer corner [for toolchain issues/questions]

Then take the dev specific forums and group them:

RISC OS Development
→ Code review
→ Bounties
→ Wishlists
→ Bugs
→ Porting RISC OS

Which leaves Announcements, Aldershot, Tests and General (if we keep it) uncategorised. I would suggust an order like:

Announcements
RISC OS Development
→ …
Community Support
→ …
General
Aldershot
Tests

Secondly, we need to have some sort of topic redirection – for instance here in Announcements, Matthias posts about the first A15 device and it turns into a discussion about WiFi. Valuable? Yes… but not in Announcements. There have been times when a subject has drifted so I felt that directing to a different place might have been better.

Jim:

NetSurf takes me back to page 1 posting 1 of the thread.

Look at the URL. It isn’t NetSurf, it is (yet another) bug in this forum. Sadly the forum and code archive no longer exist (try it, the “Beast” link bottom right leads to caboo.se which is “parked”). The design specification for Beast is, quote: “An open source Rails forum in under 500 lines of code”. To run in 500 lines, a lot of the nicer functionality was thrown out. Preview? Forget it. Sane threading? Forget it. Tossing your entire message when it decides you need to log in again? Check! It’s as bad as the original Yahoo! Mail! in that respect.
We do, at least, have Stickies.
Oh, and we can override the markup parser to drop in pure HTML, as opposed to restrictions such as BBCode. This allows for more flexibility, but could also be a potential security risk – how easy would it be to stuff in undesirable content (like a tainted iframe)?

Steve (again):

Why isn’t it down here where all the action currently is?

Same reason the log out is way off out of the way on Amazon. Indeed, it doesn’t say “Log out”, it says something like “Not Richard? Disconnect yourself” (I’m translating from French).

Can’t you Ctrl-PageUp or something to jump quickly to the top of the page?

I support Theo’s suggestion that started this thread. I have often been unsure which forum to look at when I want some information as there seems to be a lot of overlap of topics between different forums. I think the division he suggests would be much clearer and make it easier to find progress on applications, hardware compatibility, solutions to problems etc..
Jim Lesurf’s and Steve Pampling’s suggestions are independent of Theo’s idea and should not be muddled up with Theo’s idea that started this thread. There is a danger that we lose track of the original suggestion in this thread and don’t get an important problem sorted out.
So can we, please, return to Theo’s suggestion?

It would be interesting to know the browser breakdown for visitors to the ROOL site. I rarely visit in anything but Firefox, for example; I wonder how many RPi owners visit from RISC OS?

I use Firefox and my Android phone. I would use RISC OS from time to time if we had working WiFi (WPA2/AES). Because the router is waaaay over there and I’m over here.
(actually, right now, I’m sitting in a deck chair under an oak tree)

As I typed my reply above, Rick has indeed returned to the original post, but please don’t use the word “Fora”.
English has a perectly good way of forming plurals by adding an s or es.

Better to get rid of all the forums than have pedants forever telling you to go elsewhere. Much more pleasant in that respect around here.

I like Rick’s suggestion for how the forum should be structured. I am usually using NetSurf when I use the forum. As to outright Latinisms, if one is going to use them one should get them right. Acorn’s naff howlers with naming TaskWindow messages (PRM 3-266) is a horrible warning. They should have stuck to English or at least borrowed a friendly don to check their efforts out.

For this to work, we need first better named fora. What is the difference between “Community Support” and “General”? As this is a small community helping each other, aren’t they fairly interchangable?

Probably correct, I wasn’t suggesting NOT doing the reshuffle. I was merely suggesting that a few very small amendments to the existing setup would help while the reshuffle was planned and the alteration is still useful after the shuffle.
Small effort for a quick win.

As David said my suggestion (and probably Jims) is independent of any reshuffle.

English has a perectly good way of forming plurals by adding an s or es.

Okay. "Fora"+"es". Foraes it is then. (^_^) Looks like the name of a Nordic rock group…

BTW – the pedants would seem to feel that “fora” is correct (long boring reason) but that the masses tend to use “forums”. I’ll point you to:

• http://painintheenglish.com/case/627
• http://www.usingenglish.com/weblog/archives/000121.html
• http://www.google.fr/search?hl=en&q=fora+or+forums
  This latter has some 4 million hits, so I’ll wait here patiently while your head explodes with still no clear concensus. ;-)

As good as NetSurf is, I think you need to be realistic and accept that you’re going to limit your experience if you use it.

Still seems odd to me that a RO forum means telling people to use FF or they’ll ‘limit their experience’. I thought the idea of the web was that those authoring pages didn’t need to care what systems and browsers people used. Accessibilty. However I’m happy to let this pass since I’ve never found forums/fora/foraii/whatever satisfactory even when using FF on Linux.

The lack of ability to resize text fields (plus the ability of other borwsers to spell-check text within them for me) is one reason wny I don’t use it to post here.

Deliberate mistake or the Law about errors? :-)

Jim

Making the box large by default would be a problem for those posting from small screens.

Anyone checked to find out how many would object compared to how would prefer more lines?

If the real bottom line is that those in a postion to make the change feel they don’t think they need to and want to spend the time on other things, that’s fair enough. But the ‘edit’ box is much higher…

Jim

(actually, right now, I’m sitting in a deck chair under an oak tree)

That’s no way to add gravity to your comments

Posted with the crappy browser that comes with Android using a 4.3 inch display that could do with a smaller reply window than is already there.

Oh, and we can override the markup parser to drop in pure HTML, as opposed to restrictions such as BBCode.

That’s interesting. You mean I can dnd HTML to a place like this ‘reply’ box and the basic formatting will be converted OK? Is there a doc specifing what that can handle? Is the same true for the wiki? Might make generating wiki documents much easier as I could perhaps use TW, export HTML, and run it though a simple filter.

Thanks,

Jim

Jim:

Still seems odd to me that a RO forum means telling people to use FF or they’ll ‘limit their experience’. I thought the idea of the web was that those authoring pages didn’t need to care what systems and browsers people used. Accessibilty.

While that is correct on the face of things, does this stand up to scrutiny when people are using a browser that is much less developed than the contemporary versions on other platforms (including mobile phones!)? By way of equivalence to a different technology, it is akin to you plugging a fax machine into a VoIP line and wondering why it doesn’t work correctly…

Frederick:

(actually, right now, I’m sitting in a deck chair under an oak tree)

That’s no way to add gravity to your comments

;-) Thing is, if I wanted to plug my Pi into the Livebox right now, I’d need to splice together 3 cat5 cables; so I think it rather makes the point. If I wanted to do likewise in the bedroom, I’d need just as much wire through a tortuous route including a closed door.

Jim again:

That’s interesting. You mean I can dnd HTML to a place like this ‘reply’ box

This is bold, this is italic, this is red, this is blinking, etc.

etc

You might wonder about <b> and <i> instead of _this_ and *that; it’s because it is easier to predict what will happen than relying upon the parser getting it right (punctuation confuses it).

Ditto URLs with punctuation in them. Often easier to wrap a link in <a href…> than to rely upon the URL being correctly handled.

and the basic formatting will be converted OK?

Yes and no. Sometimes the Textile parser gets in the way. Sometimes you wrap the content in <notextile>…</notextile> and the stupid parser still messes it up.

Is the same true for the wiki?

I have not written any Wiki content, but I would be inclined to say very much specifically NO. This is taken from the Bug report where the linked “markup test” allows you to preview markup prior to posting (as you cannot edit bug reports). The problem is, the bug report markup handling is significantly different to the official. It is like “Textile-Lite”.

Due to this, I wouldn’t be surprised if the Wiki parser is subtely different to that in the fora.

Might make generating wiki documents much easier

…shame it doesn’t use standard MediaWiki markup.

Bearing in mind what Rick said

Secondly, we need to have some sort of topic redirection – for instance here in Announcements, Matthias posts about the first A15 device and it turns into a discussion about WiFi. Valuable? Yes… but not in Announcements. There have been times when a subject has drifted so I felt that directing to a different place might have been better.

and that this discussion is turning into topics irrelevant to Theo’s suggestion, can we return to the re-categorisation of the various forums and sub-forums along Theo’s lines or as modified by Rick?
Rick’s categorisation looks like a good refinemment of Theo’s categories, but I would rather call “Developers’ corner” “Developers’ Centre” as the former sounds as if developers are unimportant and so can be shuffled out of the way into a corner whereas they are vital and central to the advancement of RISC OS.