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2007-12-20
, 19:07
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Posts: 1,436 |
Thanked: 3,144 times |
Joined on Jul 2005
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#2
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I suggest you try out the custom Google search first:
http://www.google.com/cse?cx=0059812...%3Awt9tjwf2kd4
It should be quite helpful.
http://www.google.com/cse?cx=0059812...%3Awt9tjwf2kd4
It should be quite helpful.
__________________
Reggie Suplido
Reggie Suplido
| The Following User Says Thank You to Reggie For This Useful Post: | ||
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2008-01-14
, 09:54
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Posts: 474 |
Thanked: 30 times |
Joined on Jan 2006
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#3
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I was going to post a new thread on this, but I'm glad Oculog broke the ice for me. 
This gets complicated, so I'm going to put my money where my mouth is and offer whatever help is necessary.
Right now, I'd call search useless. Well, not useless, but not NEARLY useful enough. Lots of threads have gotten unwieldy, lots of noise gets turned up (someone asks the same question as a previous user, gets told to go search) instead of answers, and in general I've got to spend a lot of time manually parsing text. The mplayer threads were the best example of this.
Let's take all of those redundant questions and give a set of users power to, only after answering the question, move it to a separate forum that doesn't get searched by default. Everyone wins: redundant threads get zapped, newbies don't get discouraged, etc.
One of the biggest search issues, at least for me, is long threads. Let's give this set of users the power to close and redirect (split bluetooth audio into A2DP and Headset, for example) threads that are going too far OT, or even better, split existing threads into "Announce" and "Discussion" threads, or "Troubleshooting" and "Tips" threads. Search seems to work best when the subjects are specific and the number of replies per thread is low.
I'd love to see a way to add table of content links to threads: links like "page 7, post 3: where to find RC2 and how to install it" "page 8, post 8: how to install RC2 on 2007HE" would be insanely useful.
This gets complicated, so I'm going to put my money where my mouth is and offer whatever help is necessary.
Right now, I'd call search useless. Well, not useless, but not NEARLY useful enough. Lots of threads have gotten unwieldy, lots of noise gets turned up (someone asks the same question as a previous user, gets told to go search) instead of answers, and in general I've got to spend a lot of time manually parsing text. The mplayer threads were the best example of this.
Let's take all of those redundant questions and give a set of users power to, only after answering the question, move it to a separate forum that doesn't get searched by default. Everyone wins: redundant threads get zapped, newbies don't get discouraged, etc.
One of the biggest search issues, at least for me, is long threads. Let's give this set of users the power to close and redirect (split bluetooth audio into A2DP and Headset, for example) threads that are going too far OT, or even better, split existing threads into "Announce" and "Discussion" threads, or "Troubleshooting" and "Tips" threads. Search seems to work best when the subjects are specific and the number of replies per thread is low.
I'd love to see a way to add table of content links to threads: links like "page 7, post 3: where to find RC2 and how to install it" "page 8, post 8: how to install RC2 on 2007HE" would be insanely useful.
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2008-01-14
, 09:58
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Posts: 225 |
Thanked: 68 times |
Joined on Feb 2006
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#4
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Originally Posted by aleksandyr
I was going to post a new thread on this, but I'm glad Oculog broke the ice for me.
This gets complicated, so I'm going to put my money where my mouth is and offer whatever help is necessary.
Right now, I'd call search useless. Well, not useless, but not NEARLY useful enough. Lots of threads have gotten unwieldy, lots of noise gets turned up (someone asks the same question as a previous user, gets told to go search) instead of answers, and in general I've got to spend a lot of time manually parsing text. The mplayer threads were the best example of this.
Let's take all of those redundant questions and give a set of users power to, only after answering the question, move it to a separate forum that doesn't get searched by default. Everyone wins: redundant threads get zapped, newbies don't get discouraged, etc.
One of the biggest search issues, at least for me, is long threads. Let's give this set of users the power to close and redirect (split bluetooth audio into A2DP and Headset, for example) threads that are going too far OT, or even better, split existing threads into "Announce" and "Discussion" threads, or "Troubleshooting" and "Tips" threads. Search seems to work best when the subjects are specific and the number of replies per thread is low.
I'd love to see a way to add table of content links to threads: links like "page 7, post 3: where to find RC2 and how to install it" "page 8, post 8: how to install RC2 on 2007HE" would be insanely useful.
totally agree, good idea too.
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2008-01-14
, 10:25
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Posts: 5,478 |
Thanked: 5,222 times |
Joined on Jan 2006
@ St. Petersburg, FL
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#5
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I don't disagree with any of aleksandyr's suggestions (in fact, they're excellent), but I think they may end up sucking up too much effort trying to bring order out of the absolute chaos of the forums. I believe this time would be much better spent working on updating, improving, and adding to the wiki.
The wiki provides us with a much better framework for organizing information, which makes it much easier for newbies to find what they're looking for. It also eliminates almost all of the noise that you get with a normal thread in the forums.
I think two non-administrative features might help make the forums less irritating to search through, though. First, add a sub-title field for topic names that will provide a better description of the topic, and second, leverage the "Thanks!" feature by allowing users to sort the posts in a thread by number of thanks. Assuming that adequate and correct thanks were distributed, this should bring the useful information straight to the top.
The wiki provides us with a much better framework for organizing information, which makes it much easier for newbies to find what they're looking for. It also eliminates almost all of the noise that you get with a normal thread in the forums.
I think two non-administrative features might help make the forums less irritating to search through, though. First, add a sub-title field for topic names that will provide a better description of the topic, and second, leverage the "Thanks!" feature by allowing users to sort the posts in a thread by number of thanks. Assuming that adequate and correct thanks were distributed, this should bring the useful information straight to the top.
| The Following User Says Thank You to GeneralAntilles For This Useful Post: | ||
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2008-01-14
, 11:03
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Posts: 566 |
Thanked: 150 times |
Joined on Dec 2007
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#6
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Sorting by thanked posts is a great idea. But it should be very obvious to new users how to do that. Maybe a big button with the same font/color as the "thanks" button? Also I wish google was the default search here.
With Firefox at least I have a remedy for all sites with crappy search engines:
add a bookmark with the url
give it a keyword, for example "here:"
then if you type in Firefoxes locationbar
you will search the searchterms in site you are on.
You can use the locationbar to search Google by the way, so you can ditch the "google toolbar":
In about:config set set keyword.URL to:
Last edited by iamthewalrus; 2008-01-14 at 11:45.
With Firefox at least I have a remedy for all sites with crappy search engines:
add a bookmark with the url
Code:
javascript:void(location.href='http://www.google.com/search?&q=site:'+location.href.split(%22/%22)[2]+'+%s&sourceid=firefox')
then if you type in Firefoxes locationbar
Code:
here: searchterms
You can use the locationbar to search Google by the way, so you can ditch the "google toolbar":
In about:config set set keyword.URL to:
Code:
http://www.google.com/search?ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&sourceid=navclient&gfns=1&q=
Last edited by iamthewalrus; 2008-01-14 at 11:45.
| The Following User Says Thank You to iamthewalrus For This Useful Post: | ||
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2008-01-14
, 11:28
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Posts: 248 |
Thanked: 15 times |
Joined on Feb 2007
@ MI, USA
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#7
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An updated WIKI could solve much if not all of these issues.
__________________
Gaming & Tech News
Gaming & Tech News
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2008-01-14
, 11:37
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Posts: 5,478 |
Thanked: 5,222 times |
Joined on Jan 2006
@ St. Petersburg, FL
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#8
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Originally Posted by TTgowings
http://www.internettablettalk.com/fo...322#post127322
An updated WIKI could solve much if not all of these issues.
I'm hoping to get something a little more concrete rolling this time than the last time it came up.
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2008-01-14
, 11:45
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Posts: 474 |
Thanked: 30 times |
Joined on Jan 2006
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#9
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Originally Posted by GeneralAntilles
Agreed, and I miss the old wiki, but wikis don't scale very well to time-sensitive information without even more chaos and management. I do think a lot of our problems do stem from the lack of wiki usage. Wiki search functions range from bad to absolutely terrible, which will bring people right back to posting.
...trying to bring order out of the absolute chaos of the forums. I believe this time would be much better spent working on updating, improving, and adding to the wiki.
I think it'd be far easier to bring this community forward a little more than shift it into a wiki-centric community.Sub-title fields sound good, but I'm having trouble thinking about what would go in a sub-title that shouldn't just be the first sentence of the post itself: maybe let moderator-types set a subtitle to aid searching?
Along those lines, what about letting thread owners / moderators attach a Wiki link to a thread?
Sorting by thanks is great with that assumption, but as far as I've seen, thanked posts aren't much more useful than unthanked posts in the context of a given thread. Maybe have a TOC sorted by thanks to skip around?
I've got to admit that I've found the thanks function near-useless except where a thread author thanks the person who answered their question. I usually see it used as a "Me too!" button on negative comments. Then again, I'm a heretic who hates 10-page threads, so what do I know?
tl;dr recap:
If the wiki was a great match for how this community works, more people would use it. If the wiki model worked for how our contributors do work, more contributions would be made to it.
Honestly, I think we want something like Instructables long-term. For now, I'll settle for fewer threads.
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2008-01-14
, 11:56
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Posts: 5,478 |
Thanked: 5,222 times |
Joined on Jan 2006
@ St. Petersburg, FL
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#10
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Forums are just bad places to have reference information. There's not much you can do to get around that. My idea is to get as much of the stupid reference stuff out of the forums and into a place where it can be easily located so that the forums can go back to talking about cool stuff like emulators and whatnot.
I don't want the focus of the community to move to the wiki, I just want to reduce the astounding amount of noobishness that's causing the level-of-discussion in this place to plummet.
I don't want the focus of the community to move to the wiki, I just want to reduce the astounding amount of noobishness that's causing the level-of-discussion in this place to plummet.
The N800 is my favorite computer of all time. I mainly use it for email, browsing, and media playback. As this standard platform, the Nokia rocks. But the Nokia has a darker side: the bleeding edge. If I was an expert (and had time to burn) I'd be hacking away and developing some great apps. I plan on getting involved in application development, specifically with written sign language, but for now the Nokia is for entertainment and communication.
I'm requesting a new forum called "Redundant / Annoying / Handholding". I know some questions have been asked a million times. I'm probably going to ask the question again myself. I don't mind being ignored, but chastised for not doing my homework is getting old.
I've looked at both the FAQ and the video about how to ask questions and not annoy the user community. I know I could find the answer if I spent anywhere from 10 seconds to 10 days. But sometimes I want a simple and direct answer. I'm tired of finding information that almost right but not up to date, or finding information that requires reading 9 pages of a thread.
I don't want to clutter up the main forum pages and I'm willing to put some of my own time answering simple / redundant questions. So can you please add a new forum besides the "newbie" one for me?