Forum reshuffle

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.

I think this is a fault of the subtitling of Announcements “for discussing new software and hardware releases”. Which means that there are lots of threads about random new ARM boards that don’t run RISC OS. I think that’s a better fit in Wishlists or Porting RISC OS. Probably better to keep Announcements for announcements of new software and hardware releases (by RISC OS folks) and the following discussions about new ARMinis, Plutos and whatever else.

I’m being careful only to suggest things that are simple rearrangements, rather than requiring support in the forum software – I don’t know what Beast can and can’t do, but adding anything to Beast would be a non-trivial amount of work.

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.

I think calling it “Centre” is a bit pretentious, while the addition of an ‘s’ and an apostrophe doesn’t seem to change much. Maybe I’m missing something subtle?
As are you.
It is a forum intended for help/question/support primarily regarding the toolchain. Things that might be too nerdy to sit in “Community Support”, and also to help categorise topics so other developers will know where to look. It isn’t to marginalise developers or push anybody into a corner.

Let’s put it like this: Doesn’t it strike you as odd that RPCEmu, which isn’t a ROOL product and has its own mailing list (mentioned numerous times on the RPCEmu page) has its own forum, yet ROOL’s own extensive development suite…..does not?

but adding anything to Beast would be a non-trivial amount of work.

I think the first question should be – is there anybody here who speaks Ruby/Rails ? I’d have a crack at fixing the goes-to-page-one bug (as it annoys the hell out of me, too) if it was in PHP, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen a single line of Ruby code…

Rick:

I’d need to splice together 3 cat5

Sometimes despite the large sweet spot on Zeiss lenses the varifocal stuff lines up just so – that read on first glance as splicing three cats.
We have three, but one already looks like he’s been spliced from bits of others, or a least an accident involving a white cat with a cap and a fast moving tabby hitting at the rear leaving only the tail.

On topic
Theo:

I think this is a fault of the subtitling of Announcements

I’d agree that sections like Announcements have been incorrectly used, however if it’s possible to move the posts to Wishlists I think that would be the best location for speculative items, with Porting RISC OS being retitled slightly during a reshuffle to be only used for discussion of proposed or ongoing development.
I’d love to see RO ported to many systems, but that’s a wish rather than an active port.
As to Announcements – two sub-sections for hardware and software?

I’m generally very cool towards the ideas put forward so far.

You can rearrange categories all you like; you will never remove overlap. All you do is move the boundaries where the overlaps occur.

Adding a second level is only a hindrance. It’s an extra click that you have to do every time you want to access a second level topic; unless of course you bypass the place where you look at all the rest. It’s simply extra navigation to do, with no gain that I can see.

Leave it as it is, I say. You can make it work differently, but you won’t make it work any better.

Note that I’m not suggesting an additional second level. I’m suggesting a bit of static HTML on the front page to divide ‘user’ forums from ‘developer’ ones. A couple of headings and a few indents.

However, if the page is generated by Beast than that might not be feasible. So at least reorder the forums so that they’re ordered coherently. For example, why is RPCEmu the second listed and Community Support the eighth?

This has zero benefit to old hands, but is less confusing for new visitors.

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 isn’t much consolation but there’s another ‘Logout’ under ‘Options’ slightly lower down on the right.

I think the first question should be – is there anybody here who speaks Ruby/Rails ? I’d have a crack at fixing the goes-to-page-one bug (as it annoys the hell out of me, too) if it was in PHP, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen a single line of Ruby code…

Ticket #169

This isn’t much consolation but there’s another ‘Logout’ under ‘Options’ slightly lower down on the right.

That, being the nearest, is the one I use.
Truth be told, where else would you click to logout than the only part of the page that says “logout”?

It would be handy to be able to tack your name/password onto your URL? – or is that behaviour discouraged.

It would be handy to be able to tack your name/password onto your URL

I’ve suggested that one before, too.

Theo: Your layout change suggestions look very sensible to me. On balance, though, I’m inclined to agree with Dave: boundaries between topic areas are always a bit subjective, and you’ll never eliminate off-topic posts and digressions entirely.

In addition, I ventured back on to Usenet to check out the debate, and found the experience quite depressing. There was a level of cynicism and pedantry there that contrasted very badly with the generally friendly and constructive tone found here. I’m unsure whether any changes made to the ROOL forum would be likely to change the minds of die-hard Usenet posters.

It would be great if some current niggles with the system, such as a small text-entry window on some browsers and the ‘jumping back to page 1 on posting’ glitch were fixed, but the forum’s generally pleasant to read and use, so I’d be inclined not to make too many other changes.

I couldn’t give a monkey’s – I read the forum through the RSS stream and only visit to comment, using a direct link from the feed.

It would be handy to be able to tack your name/password onto your URL? – or is that behaviour discouraged.

If you don’t mind anybody who could be looking sucking your login details, then it is a good idea. Remember if content is discarded and metadata is kept, the URL is metadata, including if there is rubbish appended.
I don’t want to be seen as a tin foil hat wearer, but I think it is sensible to assume that this stuff is probably retained these days.
Furthermore, if you follow a link, would the browser include parameters in the referrer header?
There’s a reason why even the dumbest sign in systems don’t use the GET (stuff in URL) method.

In addition, I ventured back on to Usenet to check out the debate, and found the experience quite depressing.

I think it takes a certain interest and desire to sign up to a website and participate in their “fora”. (^_^)
As opposed to any idiot spewing random effluent on Usenet; and most of them do.
Remember when I ran in to the problem that Orange killed their support of Usenet so I was looking for another way to access comp.sys.acorn.* ?
I resolved the problem. I deleted all the newsgroup subscriptions from Thunderbird…

would be likely to change the minds of die-hard Usenet posters.

Probably best some of them stay far away. It always amazes me when in reply to an obvious (obvious to old timers) question, certain people would post a multi paragraph rant informing the hapless person in exactly which appendage they should insert other parts of their anatomy….when a useful reply could be done in a sentence.

Is the Beast forum code in the CVS thingy? Just interested to know what Ruby looks like.

root» rool» rails» beast

(Maybe also worth noting here that the “Community Support” forum arose as a wish list item.)

Nemo said that

I read the forum through the RSS stream and only visit to comment, using a direct link from the feed.

The direct link from the feed always leads to the first post of any topic, not necessarily the post quoted in the feed. This is because the feed does not include page and fragment data. eg the RSS link to Trevor’s post, immediately before this one, is

https://www.riscosopen.org/forum/forums/5/topics/2004

whereas, as Theo has pointed out in the csa.misc discussion, it needs to be

https://www.riscosopen.org/forum/forums/5/topics/2004?page=2#posts-24005

The #posts data is already available in the guid value in the feed, but the ?page data is not.

It would be handy to be able to tack your name/password onto your URL? – or is that behaviour discouraged.

I use Ffiler by Kevin Wells to enter user and pw with one click of the mouse – it’s quite a useful little app for this sort of thing.

I use Ffiler by Kevin Wells to enter user and pw with one click of the mouse – it’s quite a useful little app for this sort of thing.

Thanks for that Chris, it can be downloaded from:

http://kevsoft.co.uk