Improve 'Support over Forum' situation

[chwe]

This should be a thread where we every one is invited to improve the 'Support over Forum' situation (there was some discussion about it in the nightly & tkaisers support propsal thread). Threads like this one showed clearly that a lot of good supporters and problem solvers gets more and more frustrated about the situation. Being new as moderator on this board, I have some questions:

• What do you (as a good problem solver) expect should a moderator do, to avoid situations like this?
• Should moderators keep the development threads as clean as possible as long as images for those boards are in experimental stage? (throw out every: i'm also interessted in getting armbian on  'random SBC' or why does kodi doesn't work one week after development guys decided to work on 'random sbc' etc.)

 

Some points that I see we could improve on support subforum (thats not discussed with Igor nor other moderators, so point out when you think that is a stupid idea):

•  As an example: on the Allwinner H2/H3 Subforum there are ~16 threads pinned. IMO this is to much, I'd rather see those tutorials on a seperate 'projects' or something else called subforum or a wiki.
• Having one pinned thread on each support forum where it's pointed out once again what a problem solver expects out of a question to give support (e.g. did you follow the 'getting started', which board, kernel, keep in mind that there is no end user support for experimental stage, which powersource, which model of sd-card, have a meaningful title for your question etc.) somehow similar to this one from the arduino.cc forum
• Have a 'cool down' mechanism if a thread gets rude. Maybe closing a support thread for 24h to give both sides time for drinking  a tea , calm and starting again less stressed try to solve the issue. It's obvious that the moderator has to point it out clearly why he decide close the thread temporarly
• Deleting support questions if there is no response from the thread starter for a defined time (e.g. I have a stabilitiy issue on my 'random SBC' --> did you check power-supply & sd-card?) no response for ~2 weeks and this question is more or less discussed multiple times, I see no reason to keep it in the support subforum.

 

So I invite every one to take a seat in this discussion especially @Igoras head of everthing @tkaiser@martinayotte  @TonyMac32 @zador.blood.stained @lanefu @pfeerick @StuxNet@Tido (please forgive my ignorance if I forgot someone personally)

[tkaiser]

IMHO just try to act as invisible as possible while at the same time never ever delete/censor posts or edit posts (except formatting --> spoiler or code tags while at the same time sending the user a PM asking/explaining to do this the next time on his own). Stepping back is the most important part a moderator can do if we want to avoid situations like in Pine64 or Banana forums (censorship is always wrong).

 

I've to admit that I hate forums in general and especially moderators who misuse their powers and IMO the best thing at Armbian forum so far was that it was not 'overmoderated'. We had a few incidents where former moderators created an impression of an 'Armbian family' normal users were not part of and this should never happen again. So please no 'insider talk' or stuff like that.

 

I also don't think there's a need to 'cool things down', just push it at the technical level again if people start to focus on Mimimi. It doesn't hurt to tell people how they behave so at least they can think about after they cooled down weeks later...

[Igor]

Recent hot debates sparked many ideas, but no need to rush. Rome was not built in a day

 

Rearrangement outdated forum structure should also improve the situation - at least we have to get the best out of forum, even it has limitations, which were exposed and I am aware of it. 

Few concrete ideas for reshaping the structure - what if we clearly divide support forum into stand alone section - we isolate section "Technical support" only for: "Allwinner A10/A20   Allwinner H2/H3   Allwinner A64/H5   Amlogic   Freescale i.MX6x  Other boards"

Than we have section, which does not live very much and should also be redesigned: 

Projects and services

Reviews 

Support of deprecated boards / old board support 

3rd party armbian builds, etc.

 

Development

I propose to merge / remove Armbian build framework and Armbian Tasks into Development.

Free / rearrange
Move everything up to corresponding forums, what can be moved. This part was never meant for technical stuff but more for casual stuff like: "I have a new cat - what do you think?" stuff

[zador.blood.stained]

13 minutes ago, Igor said:

Few concrete ideas for reshaping the structure - what if we clearly divide support forum into stand alone section - we isolate section "Technical support" only for: "Allwinner A10/A20   Allwinner H2/H3   Allwinner A64/H5   Amlogic   Freescale i.MX6x  Other boards"

Agree. Maybe it's also the time to add a "Rockchip" section.

 

16 minutes ago, Igor said:

Projects and services

This section is really inactive as it is now IMO, maybe we can split it into other sections somehow.

 

18 minutes ago, Igor said:

Reviews

Mixing reviews for supported and not supported devices? And what about adding a "Tutorials" section to reduce the number of pinned posts in "Technical support" sections?

 

19 minutes ago, Igor said:

3rd party armbian builds, etc.

"Community projects"? There we can create a section "Amlogic based TV boxes" and split Hardkernel boards from TV boxes.

Deprecated boards (formerly supported by Armbian) can go there as a section too.

Maybe put Rockchip based TV boxes there too, I don't think we will be adding official support for those anytime soon.

 

22 minutes ago, Igor said:

I propose to merge / remove Armbian build framework and Armbian Tasks into Development.

Agree with tasks, but IMO we still should split build script related development from other stuff like packages, Python libraries, etc. 

[TonyMac32]

I typically hate trying to figure out tutorials via forum after they've been around a while, things change, comments add info or other methods, then the OP isn't maintained.  Also, diagrams and images are realistically impossible in this format.  My thought would be to have the OP of a tutorial consolidate all of the useful information from ensuing discussion, make a document for the website, and stuff the thread into a locked archive bin linked to for reference in the finished tutorial.  Or, alternatively, have the tutorial on the webpage, and link from it to the forum thread, and don't pin it.  The info is on the webpage, discussion is as-needed on forum thread.  There's a ton of useful info here, I was introduced to this project due to a search that led me to @Da Alchemist's post about getting I2S working on the H3 devices.

 

That's also what I was thinking for pre-release/specific version support threads, lock/archive them once they're out of date (how out of date is obviously a discussion point).  They disappear from cluttering the forum and keeping it on point, but we haven't deleted/removed anything, all can be retrieved for trace-ability purposes. (too many years in automotive, you keep all documentation and emails forever)

 

Community would definitely be the place for TV Boxes, I've hesitated to build an image for the UT3S because I know the resulting torrent of requests that would follow...  I've been trying to get the currently interested parties to try it out themselves.

 

If RK3328 devices are the next "thing" with the Rock64 simply being first (and IF the team decides to support it), yes, a Rockchip subforum would be ideal.

 

I like the "How To Use This Forum" bit, of course there are ~ 400k users and only ~190k views of that .  At the very least it can be pointed at, giving the user every opportunity to do it the right way, making any moderation less surprising.

 

[StuxNet]

Quote

Recent hot debates sparked many ideas, but no need to rush. Rome was not built in a day

+2 points for chill.

I'm kind of drawn to a 'cool down,' especially given the linked threads.  Tkaiser, you're a dev right? It would be way cooler if you spent that time developing rather than getting into it with someone who can't be helped. I'm not gunna tell you what to do though. Just my thoughts. Also, you can't spend all your time behind a terminal and lines of code, so I get it. 

The idea of discussing the layout of the forums is interesting. It's way confusing to newbs (myself included). The only way I can navigate this place is via search. 16 pins in a subforum is a bit much but navigation as a whole is more important IMO. I couldn't tell you off the top of my head which one of my boards, (NanoPi Air, Orangepi PC+, OPi Zero, Orangepi, NanoPi Neo, etc...) corresponds to what Allwinner chip. Now granted, all of these boards are listed as sub forums, after you click on a random chip. However my point is, first impressions to the forum aren't good. I've got to go 3 clicks deep to get to the board I'm interested in. Where I'm then greeted with every single post ever made for every board that uses that chip.

I don't think it's necessarily a question of condensing/renaming forums, subforums, etc... so much as it is allowing each board to have it's place. Similar to the https://www.armbian.com/download/ page. That minimalist design is sick and immediately understandable. Perhaps we should consider something similar for the forum?

• Tech support
  • Allwinner H2/H3
    • Orangepi PC+
    • Nano Pi Neo Air
  • Chip B
    • Board X, Y, Z
• Projects and Services
  • Software
    • Post Scripts, Python, Shell, ruby...
    • Dev,  Build root, overlays, etc...
  • Hardware
    • Mods
    • Porting modules from raspi, etc...
       
• Development
  • Whatever you guys want. 

Granted the idea of having subforums for boards which will inevitably become deprecated isn't intriguing (hardcode == bad). Eventually (if not already) there will be so many boards out there it might get too cluttered. When that happens though we could always reorganize to Manufacturers, then to boards. Instead of boards directly. At least this way to a layman entering the forum they know 2 things immediately. Exactly how to navigate it and can at least see if the solution has been found for the specific board, then broaden their search from there. As opposed to... *click* *click* *everything ever!*

The forum probably makes more sense coming from a dev's perspective but this is coming more from a users perspective. Who's only dev is tied up in personal scripting.  This might not even be possible and I have a tendency to be really OCD about these kinda things so... idk. Just my thoughts. Lemme know.

[zador.blood.stained]

I don't like the idea of creating a subforum for each board because most threads and problems will be common for the SoC. In addition what about really similar boards like Orange Pi PC vs Orange Pi PC Plus, Orange Pi 2 vs Orange Pi Plus 2. I agree that navigation is confising for users who don't know relations between boards and their SoCs, but right now I'm not sure how it can be improved without adding huge lists or walls of text (given the number of supported boards).

 

I think we already link the right subforums from board download pages, maybe we shoud print that links in the MOTD instead of generic "Support: https://forum.armbian.com/"

[StuxNet]

25 minutes ago, zador.blood.stained said:

Orange Pi PC vs Orange Pi PC Plus, Orange Pi 2 vs Orange Pi Plus 2.

As mentioned, that's where you would break it out to manufacturer, not necessarily each board. It's a good point nonetheless and speaks on the 'hardcoded' issue of doing it they way I mentioned.

The forum links is a good point I overlooked. The downloads page does link to the specified boards subforum, it wasn't always like that ;D Perhaps I'll just use that as navigation. This kinda helps me realize though that my issue is mostly with when you get to that page. It's just every post, ever. Maybe breaking that out one more time to topics? Bluetooth, Wifi, making the pins better, recently asked questions, etc... Slimming down from 16 pins to 1-5 which condense the FAQs, technicals to one place. As TonyMac32 mentions, maybe have those pins just be an aggregate of schematics, images, diagrams, static info, etc... to me this means one thing especially since "diagrams and images are realistically impossible in this format."

Pin >> Github >> Markup >> Schematics, pics, pinout, w/e. Maybe I'll start collecting all the schematics I can find, breaking them out to boards and provide it as an example of what I'm talking about. That might actually be a nice 'laid back' project for me. I know Armbian has the 'Wiki' section but I'm thinking more along the lines of those colored schematics, not just tables. Also perhaps how certain periphs (SPI, i2C) connect to the corresponding GPIO for certain boards.

[tkaiser]

23 minutes ago, StuxNet said:

Tkaiser, you're a dev right? It would be way cooler if you spent that time developing rather than getting into it with someone who can't be helped

 

You're referring to https://forum.armbian.com/index.php?/topic/4520-problems-with-orange-pc/&do=findComment&comment=33884 aren't you?

 

This is a forum. It is not a personal conversation. It is also not an unpaid support chat. If someone talks to someone else in a public forum he might not even think about whether the recipient is able to understand what he says (I'm aware of a common problem). Main reason: since Google. The recipient of the message is someone else. No efforts wasted.

 

I'm not willing to waste my time on unpaid personal consultancy and I don't do (only from time to time since I received some personal open source community support 2 decades back that saved my ass and that is the sole reason why I'm trying to give something back to individual members of open source communities at all).

 

The participation in the above thread was only meant as an example how to deal with such stuff since recently a few more moderators are here. It's a great example for users being confused and failing with most basic things and starting to post bold claims (the one that upset me was the stupid 'I'm not the only one who face this kind of problem, i can garantee you that the Debian Jessie Image was not tested and Ethernet Driver is corrupted. (version 5.25 and 5.30)' which is so annoying for me given that I tried to promote this project now for almost 2 years).

 

I'm resigning here now since I feel it's still too much »Igor's image« than »Armbian« but maybe that will change in the future.

 

[StuxNet]

4 minutes ago, tkaiser said:

The participation in the above thread was only meant as an example how to deal with such stuff since recently a few more moderators are here

Yea I was referring to that thread. Don't get me wrong though. I could care less what you decide to do with your time, just wanna see Armbian succeed. I'm not sure how pivotal your role is/n't (not trying to trivialize what you do) in the various aspects of development but I know it's important enough to not have to deal with those snide remarks. If you honestly thinks it's water off a tutles back and in defense of other, future Google searches. That's some promotional SEO forethought. More power to you. 

As far as the quote above goes, you mentioned how it's a good example for mods a couple times. It didn't go unnoticed. ;D Not exacty sure what you mean by "I'm resigning here now since I feel it's still too much »Igor's image« than »Armbian« but maybe that will change in the future." but at least I'm aware of the context that the "Common Problem" you link, refers to. xD

[chwe]

3 hours ago, tkaiser said:

I've to admit that I hate forums in general and especially moderators who misuse their powers and IMO the best thing at Armbian forum so far was that it was not 'overmoderated'. We had a few incidents where former moderators created an impression of an 'Armbian family' normal users were not part of and this should never happen again. So please no 'insider talk' or stuff like that.

I just tagged some persons from whom I thought a input would be nice (that's a personal opinion of people that I recognize here, doesn't mean that this list is complete)

 

2 hours ago, Igor said:

Recent hot debates sparked many ideas, but no need to rush. Rome was not built in a day

reminds me of nero burning rom back to the time where this was best in class to copy games..  

 

1 hour ago, StuxNet said:

Tkaiser, you're a dev right? It would be way cooler if you spent that time developing rather than getting into it with someone who can't be helped. I'm not gunna tell you what to do though. Just my thoughts. Also, you can't spend all your time behind a terminal and lines of code, so I get it. 

I'm against it. Having someone with strong network skills could help to show that there is knowlege about things he claimed.

 

2 hours ago, Igor said:

Few concrete ideas for reshaping the structure

IMO thats needed, i just realized after a while that there is also a 'neutral' subforum when there are described parts for chipsets as example..

[tkaiser]

Folks, just don't try to behave like assholes (deleting other peoples opinions/posts, altering contents you don't understand, trying to establish BS like 'peace, love and harmony').

 

Worst case option: move posts to a subforum. Never delete, never alter, never censor. If you do this the whole project becomes irrelevant.

[pfeerick]

I don't have any issue with any of the points raised in this thread so far. So, my 2 cents (or is it 5 cents?):

 

• Forum restructure - yes, "I" think is needed, as current three levels are restrictive. So break it out to development and tutorials at the least. Before we head down the tutorials on the forum approach though, we really do need to nail down if we do tutorial stuff on the forum, or on a wiki. If we stick with a forum approach, we could probably replicate the 'technical support' categories, to sort them, and then just standardise a layout... first post is always the updated tutorial, second might be links to other resources, something like that... 
• Moderator presence - we're here only to keep the peace, keep stuff organised, play wack-a-mole with spammers and that's basically it. I'm a bit confused as to the context of tkaisers 'invisible', but my take is basically what he said - clean up any silly formatting - i.e. not using code blocks, moving stuff to where it belongs, and a friendly PM to the poster to let them know how to do it in future. Other than that, we're just regular users, and as long as we don't do what happened in the other forum which we all know about, things will get on just great!
• As far as deleting a 'support request' that hasn't had a reply for say 2 weeks, I dunno... what happens if the OP comes back to it after three weeks? Unless we get a whole bunch of them, and things start getting out of hand... they can stay. 
• Some sort of pined post outlining how to start a support request would be good. It will never solve the increasingly worse problem of "I'm an expert - Google told me so!", but it will at least get it through to some posters that details do matter. We are not clairvoyant. So if you don't give us the information, like I jokingly said in a recent post, I will assume that you need to tell the hamster in the hamster well to run faster, as I honestly believe your board is powered by a hamster wheel turbine due to the amount of information you have provided. (Who around doesn't remember the old adage of crap in, crap out??)
• As far as cooling down, if you're thinking of the current Orange PC thread... we're far from needing that. The OP is being a little dim, which is understandable, since he is frustrated. However, it hasn't devolved to a slinging match yet, so we're not even near needing a timeout yet!  But the desire to slap a warning on some people is so hard to resist at times (you know what I mean... the "how thick can you be" ones) ... it would be so hilarious if the forum has a commenting system that only the moderators/admins could see attached to forum posts... 

 

[Bubba]

The "thread" is a perfect example of the Dunning–Kruger effect...

 

[pfeerick]

@Bubba I didn't say that, but I won't argue differently either!   Good 'ol Dunning-Kruger... you just can't argue with it without proving the point!

[martinayotte]

Hi folks !

 

I'm overwelmed with daily job as well as looking at this thread ...

Not even been able to do diagnonal reading ...

 

"Time is the missing indredient"  !

 

BTW,  I' ve received today my Rock64 (Thanks @TLLim, but don't expect upcoming work/effort until my  overwelmed situation is cleared out)

 

[zador.blood.stained]

We could split "Projects and services" into "Armbian tools" in "Technical support" for supported and semi-supported stuff like armbian-config, OMV images, etc. and "Community projects" for everything else. Right now this subforum is mostly filled with anything other than projects and services.

[zador.blood.stained]

And in each SoC subforum (Allwinner A10/A20, Allwinner H2/H3, etc.) we could create a pinned locked thread named like "List of boards supported in this subforum" to improve navigation.

[tkaiser]

BTW: If anyone wants to spend a little bit of time on collecting maybe 10 'SD card was the issue' threads, here's an IMO perfect one (since short, some explanation and quick confirmation): https://forum.armbian.com/index.php?/topic/4563-orange-pi-zero-logout-after-password-change/

 

(this is another one where confirmation is yet missing -- 'Authentication token manipulation error' is read-only rootfs most probably related to SD card crappiness). If such a collection exists (same with power supply troubles) it gets a lot more easy and less time consuming to encourage users to focus on basics first instead of blaming software.

[Igor]

I changed a part of structure which looks more or less clear, but let's do some double checking before we move everything here and there

 

- tutorials which are currently everywhere, mostly under Technical support. There could be also "Tutorials" pinned topics with pinned tutorials, like Tony suggested.

- each subforum in here should have "Readme first - FAQ" tagged with "IMPORTANT" with most common questions -> link to answered topics as Thomas proposed. I added hidden post into Allwinner A20 section as example - unhide when done. You should have the power to do so.

 

It is also possible to make use of "Forum rules". Currently this is the text: Use search before starting new topic - add questions to existing topics - support on private messaging is ignored - humans are not error free, be polite.

 

- what to do with "Preview of this and that" board from Free? I would suggest moving SD card performance, storage benchmark and similar at least to "Technical support / common" section?

- current "Project and services" should be split into other forums and section removed?

- we have "Allwinner A64/H5", but we don't support. Should remain simply under Development?

- Build tasks? Merge / remove?

- community projects: 3rd party, deprecated and exotics boards, ... this part is still a bit confusing to me.

[TonyMac32]

Common issue binning seems like a good call, especially if common across all devices.  We could have a general-purpose "You didn't give it enough Volts" collection as well.

 

[edit]  

I think the H5 stuff can stay where it is because it is dev only. 

 

Community boards/deprecated:  There might need to be some kind of build system adjustment to handle that, unless a "recipe" kind of approach can be taken by users to patch a new board into the build system on the fly.  That would leave the official build system alone and allow people to do whatever they want with other hardware.  Probably need to make compulsory "Unsupported Community Edition" notes or something.  Or simply act as a place for people to link to images they've produced.

[zador.blood.stained]

45 minutes ago, Igor said:

- tutorials which are currently everywhere, mostly under Technical support. There could be also "Tutorials" pinned topics with pinned tutorials, like Tony suggested.

Tutorials may go to "Community projects", abd in each subforum we can make a pinned thread with links to different threads.

 

47 minutes ago, Igor said:

- what to do with "Preview of this and that" board from Free? I would suggest moving SD card performance, storage benchmark and similar at least to "Technical support / common" section?

Or we could add a "Benchmarks and comparisons" section in the "Community projects"

 

48 minutes ago, Igor said:

- current "Project and services" should be split into other forums and section removed?

IMO yes, into a new subforum in "Technical support" and other sections.

 

49 minutes ago, Igor said:

- Build tasks? Merge / remove?

IMO merge and remove

[Igor]

Tutorial can be left un-pined but tagged - https://forum.armbian.com/index.php?/search/&tags=tutorial while deprecated should be simply un-taged and un-pined?

?

[chwe]

I like the new way how topics are arranged. It looks a way more cleaned up than before but I don't feel comfortable that one part is called developers only. Why just name it Development? IMO doesn't sound that 'exclusive'.

 

For the end user support part. I have some ideas how to get rid of some of the mainline questions where the answer is: it's currently not supported by mainline. Why not explain once again the difference between mainline & legacy? If you have a look to the armbian docs its relatively short that legacy should be used for video acc., nand suport & connecting displays whereas mainline is for headless servers & lightwight desktop. So every unexperienced user thinks: ok, I want a server so go for mainline. I think it should be pointed out that stable mainline kernel doesn't mean that armbian works stable on each board (yeah I know that its written in the download part, but just point it out once again could help). I like this on de Sunxi wiki about mainline, they force users to go first for their 3.4 branch before jump in to mainline.

Take me as example: as a former RPi user, it was easy to find everthing precompiled for a RPi. You want kodi on your RPi: just download a Kodi precompiled Linux. You want a printserver: no problem, there is a printserver branch of raspian etc. I realized that this becomes shitty when i had a lot of trouble getting my cheap 3D-printer to work cause the chinese RAMPS board used  a CHG340 instead of a FTDI. That was the point where I thought that I have to improve my skills to get this things properly work. After googling a little bit it was clear to start with legacy until  I understand the basics and feel confident that I bring up things without ask everytime the community how to do something.

[Igor]

11 minutes ago, chwe said:

Why not explain once again the difference between mainline & legacy?

 

This is explained (good enough?) at download page and docs. But here in Technical support we should add this issue to our top ten, since we certainly want to limit questions regarding non working functions in mainline kernel. This is especially annoying in very popular H3 section, but where mainline kernel is simply not done yet (functions are missing or are buggy) to be used in production or by noobs. 

[Bubba]

We someone clicks on the Experimental / Mainline download link it should take them to page which the warning is in BIG RED fonts, with an agree button to click before the download starts. 

[chwe]

One thing, I learned from high school was hammering things repeatedly into your brain helps to remember things. My last french lecture is more than 12 years back and I still can remember the poem we learned there (I think my french skills stunted down to the level where I can order a coffee & get as smile for my bad pronunciation ):

 

Spoiler

Les quatre saisons tournent la ronde.
Autor du monde.
C'est le printemps 
vetu du blanc
Voici l'été
claire et doré
et puis vien l'automne
rouge comme un pomme
gare à l'hiver il y a ses bottes
et un hotte!

Les quatre saisons
Les quatre saisons tournent la ronde...

 

But if just a minority of the users remind this, I'm sure that there are less questions about things that don't work on mainline now.

[tkaiser]

On 22.6.2017 at 11:57 PM, tkaiser said:

Folks, just don't try to behave like assholes (deleting other peoples opinions/posts, altering contents you don't understand

 

Unfortunately I've to repeat that. @Tidobrought to my attention that surprisingly he's also moderator at Banana Pi forum and also part of the hide/unhide/censorship game currently running over there. I won't focus on this but on something very simple.

 

Dear new moderators please have a look at http://forum.banana-pi.org/t/banana-pi-bpi-r2-open-source-smart-router-with-mtk-7623n-design/2697/76 and then compare with the original version at the bottom of http://archive.is/Z1Z8m

 

First what I wrote, then what's written there after censorship has happened now:

• An ASM1062 is providing SATA functionality. Have you or MTK already explored the NCQ problem when accessing two disks in parallel (just kidding, of course you did not)
• An ASM1062 is providing SATA functionality. Have you or MTK already explored the NCQ problem when accessing two disks in parallel

According to @Tidohe felt the need to 'edit' my words since he's confident that I need to improve on my wordings so the person I'm talking to gets the message. His mistake is: I was not talking to @sinovoip at all since it's impossible to talk to Dunning-Kruger guys anyway. The sole reason for participation over in the R2 thread was to publicly document how many times it needed to ask for a boot log or for schematics and that those brain damaged retards are even so stupid to delete/hide posts that summarize where they are and giving suggestions on how to improve here and there (the ASM106x issue). The whole thing was about publicly documenting that you can't help retards since they simply don't get it. It's only about documenting failure since everything else is useless with them (me saying that after over 2 years trying to help those guys to improve)

 

So please don't make the mistake to ever edit or censor others posts. Add spoiler tags if necessary, add code tags, refrain from editing/altering contents ever. It might be that you just don't get what's going on, you simply are mis-using your moderator powers if you start with such crap.

 

We had this over in Pine64 forum where a specific moderator deleted a lot of my posts a while ago or censored all the time the relevant parts away (preventing the GbE issue being workarounded earlier but I believe he really thought he's doing right), we had this even here in this forum with a former moderator constantly trying to 'correct' others posts to eliminate 'mistakes'. He did this multiple times to me alone and didn't understand why that's not acceptable. I as every other human being am doing mistakes all day long. For me it's important to know when I make mistakes. So when someone else spots a mistake and 'corrects' it I don't even get it. Don't edit posts, quote/answer is the only option (or if people really misbehave move posts to somewhere else so that threads that try to focus on something special don't get destroyed. But don't censor: never delete and even more important never edit -- there is no excuse for that!)

 

BTW: Don't know if that's understandable. But the best 'edits' I ever suffered from are now 13 years behind. I wrote a long article in a German Linux Magazine about some networking stuff, the editor and me had some editing sessions that were all good, then before the article went to press the copy editor had to look over the last time. I asked to get his edits for confirmation, they refused, the copy editor thinking he would deal with typos exchanged every occurence of mDNS with DNS (mDNS is multicast DNS and something completely different than DNS). As a result they wasted a few pages of their magazine for an absolutely stupid article that made no sense any more. Just since someone not being into details edited 'mistakes' he thought were obvious typos.

 

[chwe]

Could, signing posts with -Mod or so help to distinguish between something is posted with the power of a moderator and otherwise its just me (the moderator) act as a normal user of this board. 

For example: Someone posts his question in an other thread and it seems that his differs realy from the initial question. I would forke out his question, left a post in the original thread like: Forked out 'random question from random user' cause differs a lot from the initial one. -mod (with the link where he can find his question now).

 

edit: saw your comparison between the two threads this morning with my coffee and had a lot of fun to compare the original and the 'cleaned up' one..

[lanefu]

I've been tracking this thread for a few days, and been trying to get caught up.

 

So lots of good ideas have been posted about things to do and improvements that can be made, however they do feel like solutions to problems that haven't clearly been defined.   It may be worth a moment to take a step back to make sure we're focusing on the right challenges.

 

I've gone through most of the posts and tried to identify the spirit of the problems they appear to be speaking to.    Here's what I identified....please share thoughts and other observations:

 

Forum Challenges that need improvement

* No defined censorship policy

* Eliminate spam posts (solved by having more moderators)

* Tutorials hard to find

* Poorly formatted / difficult to read posts

* General Forum Structure not intuitive

* Forum Structure unclear for supported vs unsupported hardware

* Need differentiation for type of development threads

* Home for reviews unclear

* Homes needed for off-topic / tertiary projects

* Need a way to minimize repeated questions and unproductive newbie questions

* No policy for abandoned single post threads (old thread, 0 replies)

* Heated discussions going too far into negative space

 

lane