What Annoys You the Most About the Forum

[Eme Fibonacci]

it seems the topic took another path.
About using an old thread or not: I believe having a big knowledge base spread across a forum will always generate this side effect

 

[NJDude]

I am myself a moderator of a Linux forum, and I personally have no problems with people using old threads, even if they are years old. As long as the question is directly related to the original thread.

One problem with that, the individual searching for an answer might have another doubt: Does that answer still applies?, the best thing to do is indeed to open a new thread and "reference" the old thread.

 

[moster67]

Depends...I am not browsing all new questions on the forum, day after day. So if someone is asking for a question related to my libraries, I prefer them to be posted in such threads, even if the libs/threads are old otherwise I will most likely miss those questions. This way, I will also be notified of a new question and would probably avoid receiving PMs from users who are asking me why I am not replying to their questions "posted somewhere" on the forum.

In other cases, I agree it is better to open a new thread and as @NJDude suggested, reference the old thread.

 

[FERNANDO SILVEIRA]

What annoys me the most is to receive those extremelly short or obscure answers, as if a beginner in B4A should understand the community existing jargon, specially after spending time detailing the problem in the thread.

On the other hand, I find many useful tips reading existing thereads which is positive.

 

[NJDude]

What annoys me the most is to receive those extremely short or obscure answers, as if a beginner in B4A should understand the community existing jargon

One problem with noobies is that they believe that by reading some posts they will get the EXACT answer to their questions, when the FIRST thing they should do is familiarize themselves with the language, meaning, reading the docs, then, get used to the way the forum works, after a little while those "obscure" answers will make sense, in short, before going on a posting frenzy READ THE DOCS!!!

 

[FERNANDO SILVEIRA]

One problem with noobies is that they believe that by reading some posts they will get the EXACT answer to their questions, when the FIRST thing they should do is familiarize themselves with the language, meaning, reading the docs, then, get used to the way the forum works, after a little while those "obscure" answers will make sense, in short, before going on a posting frenzy READ THE DOCS!!!

Typical!

 

[JakeBullet70]

My own posts

@LucaMs You always make me smile. As for me, this is the best forum I have aver been apart of.

 

[Erel]

Why is it so bad to reuse an existing old thread, provided of course that the question directly relates to the thread?

There are several reasons:
1. It is very difficult to find a question and answer deep inside a thread. When you create a new thread for your question, hopefully with a good title then it will be discoverable and will help other members who have the same question.
There is a very good search engine in the forum. It is based on Lucene, it was built specifically for this forum and it provides much better results than what you will find in most forums.
Good content + good search engine = knowledge base

2. It makes the content structure much simpler. The first post is the question and the answer is a few posts later.

3. It gives room for the specific topic to be discussed without interruptions.

4. It is similar to the way that stackoverflow is organized and there is no doubt that stackoverflow is organized well.

5. Last but not least, this is the forum policy.

 

[Erel]

What annoys me the most is to receive those extremelly short or obscure answers, as if a beginner in B4A should understand the community existing jargon, specially after spending time detailing the problem in the thread.

I usually give short answers. They should include enough information to help you solve the problem. I do expect that you will make a search or two to complete the picture.
If something is not clear then feel free to say so.
I try to avoid repeating the same information multiple times. If the relevant information is already explained in a tutorial then I will only refer you to the tutorial.

With that said, as you find this approach very annoying I will let others who are more elaborate than me to answer your questions.

 

[Descartex]

One problem with noobies is that they believe that by reading some posts they will get the EXACT answer to their questions, when the FIRST thing they should do is familiarize themselves with the language, meaning, reading the docs, then, get used to the way the forum works, after a little while those "obscure" answers will make sense, in short, before going on a posting frenzy READ THE DOCS!!!

RTFM!!!!!!

 

[FERNANDO SILVEIRA]

I usually give short answers. They should include enough information to help you solve the problem. I do expect that you will make a search or two to complete the picture.
If something is not clear then feel free to say so.
I try to avoid repeating the same information multiple times. If the relevant information is already explained in a tutorial then I will only refer you to the tutorial.

With that said, as you find this approach very annoying I will let others who are more elaborate than me to answer your questions.

I have not mentioned you above but if you think it fits, may be you should think about it.

It is weird to read this because, what's the purpose of a topic named "What Annoys You the Most About the Forum" if you one can't say what he/she is annoyed by?

To make a long story short I apologize if someone felt offended. I intent to keep asking questions, maybe one day I'll hold enough knowledge to share with others here. For the time being all I have to offer is my learning curiosity.

Cheers!

 

[Shelby]

Abbreviations are tough on us noobies. What is BB code? What is SW platform? What is IHMO? Thanks Maybe the following are good enough definitions?


BBCode or Bulletin Board Code is a lightweight markup language used to format posts in many message boards.

System Infrastructure SW Platform (SISP) (Software: Middleware) from

Integrated Home Mail Order (IHMO) Pharmacy delivers prescription drugs to members

 

[JMW]

As a noob, I do read the manuals and search (endlessly) for answers. The thing I find most annoying are the 'start a new thread'. So many times..I'll search and be reading a relevant thread and someone will ask a related question...yes I say! I'd like to know that too. But the response is start a new thread, and quite often I can't find that new thread in my searches - very frustrating!

Just a followup. I didn't mean that to sound so negative. This site is great; lots of willing people to help. As I said, I get most of my questions answered by searching and reading the manuals and tutorials. It's just the question was asked...

 

[moster67]

quite often I can't find that new thread in my searches

Yes, that can happen. To find the new thread (if it was created), you can tap on the username and then search for the user's threads created after that reply. It's cumbersome but it works for these cases - however if the user would have opened a thread to start with, then this would not happen...

 

[alwaysbusy]

the 'start a new thread'

As Erel points out, the main reasons for this are:

1. It is way to deep into a thread, so big chance only you, the creator, would ever be able to find the answer
2. The new question has almost nothing to do with the original question, hence again not easy to find afterwards for others. 'Related' questions are more often than not a complete new question, or have a completely different answer than the one asked in the first post. And those answers are the hard ones to find (hey, we're back to point 1 )

I do sometimes reactivate an 'old thread', but only after carefully reading the whole tread and seeing there is no definite answer in it. Maybe my new information can contribute to answering the ORIGINAL question, or I do have the answer myself. But most of the time, I do start a new tread giving my new information. It just is a lot easier.

 

[MarkusR]

idea for Create Thread @DonManfred @Erel
a template text with
(CODE)example code here...(/CODE)
[ERROR]error log here...[/ERROR]
if not used it can be replaced by "" in script.

 

[NJDude]

Abbreviations are tough on us noobies. What is BB code? What is SW platform? What is IHMO? Thanks Maybe the following are good enough definitions?


BBCode or Bulletin Board Code is a lightweight markup language used to format posts in many message boards.

System Infrastructure SW Platform (SISP) (Software: Middleware) from

Integrated Home Mail Order (IHMO) Pharmacy delivers prescription drugs to members

A little bit off topic but, yes, sometimes those abbreviations can be a pain and it has nothing to do being a noobie.

By the way or (BTW) the definition of SW is Software and is not IHMO but IMHO (In My Humble Opinion), add that to your list of geek-jargon

 

[NJDude]

RTFM!!!!!!

Amen!

 

[leitor79]

What annoys me most about this forum is the search engine. If you search two or more words, results with only one of them are shown (even at top). Also, old threads are shown before new ones. I know that "using quotes" maybe forces the search engine to look for an exact phrase, but maybe I'm looking for some words not in that exact order, but just to give context.

Regards,

 

[Erel]

What annoys me most about this forum is the search engine.

I don't think that you will find any forum with a better search engine than the one here. It is true that Google is 1000 times more sophisticated however for this specific forum the custom built search engine returns very good results.

All words are considered in search results and the distance between the words is a very important factor. Remember that there are many cases where there isn't any post with both words together.

If you encounter a case where you think that the search engine didn't return the best results then post a new thread with the relevant information. There are many parameters that can be modified and will affect the ranking.

old threads are shown before new ones

In sites where there isn't a real search engine the results are always ordered by date (and the results are very bad). With a real search engine the date is a factor among many other factors.