David Kim asked for ideas for forum sections

What topics would people like to see on this board?

I guess their aim is to take our feedback and create a better forum which is more informative.



My ideas are here

Scrap the current support section (Q&A) that is separate to these 'Community' sections, as far as I know they have never been popular.

Keep all of it in the Community area
- This means there is only one place to look, less confusion.

Sections

- Official Announcements and Happenings
Where details of good and bad news as well as current problem that are known about or trying to be solved. This is being looked at already.

- FAQ
Not sure about this section, good and useful posts to be moved here by mods ? Problem is BOINC and the project change quite often. imho a better idea would be a big fat link to the Wiki :-)

- Rosetta Science
We have it now, it's popular and is working fine
Talk on the science and the projects being run, always good and very interesting.

- Help & Support
For all people to come for help with their problems,
some have suggested Member to Member Support, I think that is a BAD name, implies only members should help in there. To the point titles are better for the 'serious' aspects.
I do not think they need separating into Linux, Windows, Hardware... In the future if needed it could be split (Can BOINC do sub-sections ?)

- Number Crunching
Standard Boinc section for stats & tech talk and the Help/support/suggestions will be out of here at last,
boinc calls it the
'Credit, leaderboards, CPU performance' area.

- Suggestions & Feedback
Rosetta always needs feedback, how else can they improve, suggestion for dwelling upon.

- Robeta
Actually just call it Beta ;-) but I do like that name
Beta testing talk, although from what D.Kim said it's actually alpha server ?
Ralph ?

- Cafe Rosetta
Standard Boinc again for chit chat

- Team Chat
Gets the team threads out of the Cafe, some people do not have their own home forums given the number of team threads in the Cafe seems it will be used


I also strongly believe there should be another section called
- BOINC
Now this is actually a link to the BOINC forums,
Why? you & I may know the difference but just try usability style testing on people, does the user?
At the moment it is assumed it is. I don't beleive the ave user does. This will mean people will see the BOINC area and visit the boinc forum. The internet is all about giving information and linking it together, this at least integrate 'BOINC' more with Rosetta.
i.e they may follow the link an just find the answer there ;-)




Well that my idea, should hopefully make it a little more organised and less seperated. Keeping relevant information in relevant areas.
As at the moment the Number Crunching which is not suppose to be for help and support although it currently is and posts can often get 'lost' in the middle of it all.


Just ideas, and I like 'clean names' but with trying to keep some inter BOINCness to the forum.

thanks FC for pulling this out of the other thread. here is my suggestions copied from there for Dr. Kim

my suggestions........

on the front page, eliminate the question and answers link, and then merge that section into the message boards, keeping the topic titles. all problems, questions, answers should be together in one section only. rename that link question and answer message board, or something similiar

within the message boards i would like to see the following list of topics

official project news
including topics from the "about section" such as
technical news
new and articles about rosetta

BOINC/Rosetta links
move the "add ons" link from returning participants to here what a wonderful resource that i just found!
BOINCview
BOINC manager
BOINC wiki....etc


member to member support
within member to member support list these topics

windows
[edit] add topics here such as connectivity issues and hardware as it relates to rosetta. this would include a discussion of amd/intel and anything memory related. [/edit]

unix/linux

macintosh

these can be broken down more if need be

sugggestions
notice i didn't include problems. they have their own space and don't need to spill over here. there are a lot of bright people who have tons of ideas to contribute, the compression problem comes to mind. this would be the place for it.

cafe rosetta
for the general BS chitchat

no general computer support...there are plenty of those already around and this is not the place for another one. sorry carl

team recruiting

statistics
a pace to brag, ask questions on how they're calculated with links to the top stats sites

i think with more topics it will be easier to decide where to post your questions and look for your answers, it'll be easier on the mods to move posts, and keep things nice and orderly. and not to harp, but we NEED a preview option!

FC,
i do think that there should be the windows, linux, mac seperations, especially for the linux users. that way they can have a space for their own "how to's"

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I'm pretty much with Paul on this one.

I don't see any real issues using the BOINC forums. A little tweaking with the forum preferences to get things sorted the right way was all it took. Threads with new posts are identified at a glance. Active threads are always at the top.
New posts are at the top of the thread. If there's a thread that I want to follow closely, the 'subscribe' option is available. Oh, and I ALWAYS turn off signatures and images - way too annoying.

Probably the only thing that bugs me slightly is the lack of a preview capability when posting to get the BBCode right, but the ability to edit for an hour overcomes that.

I can see the value of having Q&A (or Q&P) as the same level as the other 3 forums, but I don't know if the forum achitecture even allows sub-fora to support the windows, linux, new user, suggestions etc. sub-fora.

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Proudly Banned from Predictator@Home and now Cosmology@home as well. Added SETI to the list today. Temporary ban only - so need to work harder :)



"You can't fix stupid" (Ron White)

I consider the separate Q&A section to be the best feature of these forums. For non-techie people starting on the project, it is extremely convenient to have all "newbie" questions collected in one place, and it is a very useful direct source of reference during ones first weeks on the project.

The straight question-answer format is simple, and the language and terminolgy commonly used is easily understood by non-techies. It saves newbies unfamiliar with the board layout searching through bigger forums and longer discussion-type threads to get a clear concise answer to either frequently-asked questions, or to their own specific problem. It surely saves no end of repetitive posting.

By all means put the more sophisticated technical questions and discussions in longer threads in a series of sub-forums elsewhere, but please leave the Newbies Q&A section as it is for the benefit of shy bashful people like myself...

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as informative as that history is, this thread is for ideas that Dr.Kim can use to improve the layout and organization of this board. would you please consider deleting your post here and reposting it in the *other* thread? or as an alternative, remove the history section and add some ideas of how this board should be sectioned so that information is easier to find? as smart as you are, i'm sure that won't be too hard for you to do.

And, though you don't like the history, or some of what I said ... the fact is that these are ideas too on how to improve things. One of the best improvements sometimes is to do nothing.

So, we have one group advocating changes, and I, well, maybe I am alone, but I do not see significant problems that requires much surgery if any. Of all the changes the only one I am in favor of is to copy the layout of Einstein@Home.

One of the points to BOINC was to come up with a common baseline. We defeat that if every project customizes the system so that it is unrecognizable. Because WCG and SIMAP use phpBB *I* don't go there ... I find it too hard to find the new posts and the posts I would be interested in reading and commenting on. Color me however you like, but, I am just suggesting that if Rosetta@Home gets TOO inventive they too may lose some of us ...

Lastly, altering from the baseline means that the project has to maintain these alterations into the future, making changes to each new release of the baseline code and testing them to make sure that they work still. If that is not a relevant idea I don't know what is ...

Oh, and once past 60 minutes the poster cannot make a change ...

Paul, I agree strongly with you. I also crunch for SIMAP, but will not use their phpBB. We need to keep this simple.

I like having a single forum that has everything I need to know as a cruncher. The Number crunching forum does a good job of that now. It has announcements, talk about bugs/workarounds, etc. I have it bookmarked, and it is the place I check regularly.

I vote that all the stuff that crunchers should know should remain in the Number crunching forum and not be split off to some other forum.

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@Paul Buck

Well said...and I agree. It is not a perfect forum, but no change is really needed (or at the most a modest modification similar to Einstein).

@David Kim or David Baker

In other posts, ideas for forum modification have been requested. I think it would be helpful to know if you intend to make such changes here and maintain them 'by hand' through BOINC upgrades as Paul Buck has noted, or is it your intention to use these suggestions to motivate BOINC (specifically Dr A) to change the baseline code using your influence as a project administrator (rather than direct requests/suggestions by users on the BOINC forums at boinc.berkeley.edu)?

One board I would add to your list, FC, is a 'wish list'.

Many suggestions come over as complaints, for example, but in the context of a board headed 'wish list' would feel more acceptable. To wish for something is not to say it is rubbish at present, but instead to say that I can think of a way that (I think) would make it better.

Maybe we should have a wish list both in the Rosetta boards and in the BOINC boards.

Regarding the problem that many people will post in the wrong place -- Paul is right on this of course, they will -- I see the answer being prompt action by mods to move postings to the appropriate board and always leaving a marker on the old board to say where it has moved to and why. That way the thread is found in the correct place, and everyone reading the redirection posting learns something about the layout of the forums.

R~~

@Paul Buck

Well said...and I agree. It is not a perfect forum, but no change is really needed (or at the most a modest modification similar to Einstein).

@David Kim or David Baker

In other posts, ideas for forum modification have been requested. I think it would be helpful to know if you intend to make such changes here and maintain them 'by hand' through BOINC upgrades as Paul Buck has noted, or is it your intention to use these suggestions to motivate BOINC (specifically Dr A) to change the baseline code using your influence as a project administrator (rather than direct requests/suggestions by users on the BOINC forums at boinc.berkeley.edu)?

I think if there is a consensus about the optimal structure of the forum, we can try both

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...I would add, it's not the Q&A 'functionality' that is the problem I think it is the seperation from the 'community' part that is more of a problem. If they could get brought together into one page that would be better.

You have hit the nail on the head, but with the wrong end of the hammer I'm afraid. It is precisely that feature, i.e. the clear separation from the community part (and threads like you-know-which-one-I-mean!), that makes the Q&A section so easily found and readily accessible for non-techies and newbies. The very fact that they are clearly separated makes it easier for simple folk to overcome their inhibitions and their fear of making fools of themselves. Please please try and appreciate that!!!

Not everybody crunching here has your technical skills and worldly experience. Why make things more difficult for newbies just because you are of the opinion one page would be "better"? "Better" and neater for you maybe, but not necessarily for them. Have a think about the best way these boards can serve them, not just you (collective!)...

<assorted smilies>

I'm with FC on this one, and not directly because of the 'better/neater' (IMO more logical!) layout, but because it seems quite a neglected area at the moment - some questions have sat there for days without reply.

I do also think the Q&A section should be closely linked to the FAQ section...

I guess we should really test this on some newbies and see what they find most useful though...

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I think it would be a bad idea to start putting loads of different sections in this works fine as it is now, easy to see what posts are in without having to jump all over the place to find and view posts.

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Join us in Chat (see the forum) Click the Sig


Join UBT

For the 'tally' post by M9 -

1) Against
2) Against
3) no opinion
4) IF any changes are made, the BOINC (not Rosetta) developers should make them
5) Against - remain BOINC standard
6) Against - Wish List already exists in Q&A

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Proudly Banned from Predictator@Home and now Cosmology@home as well. Added SETI to the list today. Temporary ban only - so need to work harder :)



"You can't fix stupid" (Ron White)

humm well this shows mabey a poll section is needed or may help

1) in favor
2) in favor
3) eithor is ok
4) would love to see new changes i dont care who makes them
5) wont say LIKE Einstein but more catagories would be nice
6) would love a wish list added

alot of these would be nice to see.. i wont say i would stay/leave/donate more or less of my time to this project if any of there happen or dont happen.

alot of us who came from FaD got spoiled because if it sounded good and Think liked it it was added...

as far as section being in comunity sections vs in the message boards. personaly i like to be able to click and see whats been added and such

since we are asking options and such (i know this one has to be a pain to impliment but) it would be nice to be able to select when you open a post to for it to be centered on the last post you read of that topic im sure its hard to program somethign like that although i know some board systems have it.

just my 2 cents

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The thread has been quiet now for about two days.

If everyone feels that what is on this thread represents a fairly complete set of the nature of the changes requested, I will send this information off to David Kim so he can look it over. ALL of the comments from EVERY post here (pro or con), will be included in the summation. I will request that either he or Dr. Baker post information outlining what they have decided as soon as they have the opportunity to look it over. After that, I would like to un-sticky the thread. Thank you all for your contributions and ideas.

I would ask that you add my suggestion (from another thread) that an overarching forum policies section be placed on the Rosetta front page (similar to that at LHC@home) to this summation.

I would ask that you add my suggestion (from another thread) that an overarching forum policies section be placed on the Rosetta front page (similar to that at LHC@home) to this summation.

I agree totally with having a forum policies section.

I wonder if it would be even more obvious to link it from the message boards page - ie the one with tht list of forums? Or even link it from there and from the front page?

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I would just like to re-emphasis what I mean by this section
since from my quick look thorough for some time away some say there is no need for it, which from what they are assuming they are right BUT

- Official Announcements and Happenings
Where details of good and bad news as well as current problem that are known about or trying to be solved. This is being looked at already.


This is not really for the 'News' (front page) & 'Tech/Science News' (buried further down pages). My preferred titling of this would be more the 'Happenings & Help Us'
It's where they can give 'official' what going on (not news as such) but things like
'We would like some forums section ideas'
'Help fix this bug'
'Eureka, see the news when we can around to typing it up in n official way)
'This fix is under investigation'
'We know about that problem and are looking for a fix'

In other words for all the announcements that regularly change or a bugs have come up we get the message so you can now stop mentioning in the forums.
The will help them by (hopefully) less repeat questions about the same things/bug get asked.
Also less stickies in forums section are there getting lost between other post(I now glance right over them as there are so many). So for example the 1% bug can go in there, the compression/bandwidth can get put in there.
I believe it will help them by grouping together all help they need in one place and as a first drop place for people to look at current bugs and ideas or what is in the works.
It differs from the 'NEWS' sections which are just 'blog' style news. Current 'tidbit' information is getting lost unless you check the forums regularly. For me if you present the help you need or actual what's going on clearly in one place it much easier to get more people to read it and help you.

I do NOT believe in Rosetta having to duplicate their postings, or BOINC people for that matter (and if there is some way the Science News/Tech News and New News could be brought into the forum (but the relayed to the relevant sections/front page), note I do not know if they have to type some place else to input the news maybe this would help BOINC in centralising message input and causing more BOINC project creators to actually read and help in their own forums). The portal idea is much like many larger site use portaling software.
Therefore people that come in via the front page (e,g, new people) or 'it has always been done that way' get their fix and regulars who tend to go straight to the forums also see it. (hey if you could RSS everything you'd never really need to visit other than to reply... ;) actually even then you could reply straight from RSS software)

Err, probably started waffling now hope you get the idea :s

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Team mauisun.org

After, reading this thread and a few other "discussions" pertaining to forum issues. I can say without a doubt forum structure and layout etc. is a science unto itself.

That said, I like all the ideas in your last post, except for the Science News.
This in my opion should be left right were it is.

Alot of us need to:
1. Be able to find this project feedback easily.
2. To find it without enduring the forum chaos and lack of ettiqette.

So my further suggestion would be to not move Scienc News. But, copy it to a particular section of the Forum. That way those of us who only give the forums a quick looksy can find it, and forum Regs can also find it.


ciao all...Have a great Day..........and crunch on all...

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Oh look ! 6 different sections for Ralph@home. I wonder how that was possible ? ;-)

BTW, I would have posted this in the forum discussion thingy, but I couldnae find it.

[Edit]Oh I see it now, way down below.[/Edit]

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That is because the ideas have been collected and sent in so that thread and this one are in effect dead. The Ralph project is the Alpha test project for the next generation of Rosetta. Though not announced, I think is is reasonable that they might also test some of the new forum ideas there as well. So naturally the forums there are different than here. The Project never took the position that changes were not coming. The question was how long it would take. Might be sooner than you think.

Yep, I know the project never took that position, as the team asked for suggestions. Many people here said it was'nt practical, due to the whole BOINC package thing. One person even told me I was'nt willing to learn, then said he was leaving. I see he is back posting. So thats good.

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