Making Sense of all the Projects

Scott Stites · Posted: Wed Aug 22, 2007 7:23 pm Post subject: Making Sense of all the Projects

I thought this would be a good place to put this idea forward.

A while back, someone mentioned that it would be nice to have a forum dedicated to the PCBs and projects available on EM. I have a bit of trepidation about that - my own habits have me go from one to another few forums, and I miss stuff in other forums as a result.

My idea is to do a sticky in the main DIY forum. Now, I think we can have too many stickies, too, because they start to eat into the current thread space. I'm thinking maybe we could unsticky the mammoth and lethargic Super Klee thread to make room for this.

The thing is, we have a lot of PCBs and projects that are becoming available, are available, and were available. Things are so dispersed from thread to thread, people may have a hard time finding things, especially newcomers.

The sticky I'm talking about would be a list of projects, with links pointing to the threads. Each project would have a short description and a short mention of status: current, polling, or closed. For example, we could put all of JHs projects together, Ian's projects together, Fonik's, etc. They would never "slide off" the front page, so even though a thread of Ian's may lie dormant long enough to miss that all-important front page, he may still be offering boards. People could just look at this thread with the big waving arms and browse right through the projects and find it right there. In the case of a "closed" project, say Ian isn't taking any more orders for 5 pulsers, that could be noted so people don't pummel him with PMs, or if he's interested to know if more people want them, we could have them pummel him Very Happy

.

So, it would be a sort of directory of the stuff that's available through the board or members of the board in one easy to browse thread.

What say ye all?

elektro80 · Posted: Wed Aug 22, 2007 7:28 pm Post subject:

Right! Excellent points.
It seems to me that we really need some kind of magazine/newpaper interface on top of the forum software in order to make sense of it all.

Scott Stites · Posted: Wed Aug 22, 2007 7:30 pm Post subject:

BTW, I'd set it up like the quick-links stickie - all of the info would be in the first post.

elektro80 · Posted: Wed Aug 22, 2007 7:31 pm Post subject:

Yup, that makes sense.

Still, I see the use of some kind of magazine on top of the forum. Hmm..

blue hell · Posted: Wed Aug 22, 2007 7:32 pm Post subject:

Yup, the lists of lists thingie Exclamation

The demo we once had was good.

And while we don't have that a sticky with links seems like a good idea.

Scott Stites · Posted: Fri Aug 24, 2007 10:43 am Post subject:

I'll get on it as soon as things cool off in Stitesland - I've got a greater than normal number of irons in the fire right now, but that should change here in a little while.

EdisonRex · Posted: Fri Aug 24, 2007 2:39 pm Post subject:

DIY doesn't behave like the rest of the community. Probably because they are refugees from the lists and other places which got hot. It's also, anecdotally, the most active forum(s), if you leave the spammers out. It even leaves the new music folks in the dust.

I think some stickys would help a lot, stuff is getting lost and nobody ever knows how to search in a phpBB forum. Trust me I know that... Rolling Eyes

blue hell · Posted: Fri Aug 24, 2007 3:03 pm Post subject:

Dan Lavin · Posted: Fri Aug 31, 2007 11:20 am Post subject:

We really need a "frequently asked questions" area. Sorry, I should have more patience with newbies, but it's been too long ago for me. And as has been stated, they won't use the search function....this seems to be a newbie problem on every forum I use/belong to. For folks that say " I used the search function and couldn't find what I was looking for" I usually go out of my way to help.

v-un-v · Posted: Sat Sep 01, 2007 1:56 am Post subject:

This, although a good idea, smacks of what Kofi and a few others (Jan?) tried to achieve with nm@code404. Although that site wasn't phpBB based (Majordomo?) I remember having my head cleanly 'ripped off' for even suggesting anything because it was stressing Kofi out too much.

Jan had a really good idea before- which I was going to get round to, but took a turn for the worse due to family and university commitments. One sticky, with lots of internal links etc.

If someone can do it- that's great, but there's a lot of work there to be done, and it'll need updating everytime someone makes a new post.

(sorry for stating the bleedin' obvious!)

blue hell · Posted: Sat Sep 01, 2007 3:57 am Post subject:

v-un-v · Posted: Sat Sep 01, 2007 4:06 am Post subject:

blue hell · Posted: Sat Sep 01, 2007 4:21 am Post subject:

Just kidding but how the hell did you manage to stress Kofi out?

v-un-v · Posted: Sat Sep 01, 2007 5:15 am Post subject:

Kof was working on some system to help archive the patches, and had asked specifically for people not involved, not to interfere. Being the great interfering idiot that I am, I opened my trap and got flamed!! Laughing

The good old days Cool