Message boards : Number crunching : Forum Section Ideas
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FluffyChicken Send message Joined: 1 Nov 05 Posts: 1260 Credit: 369,635 RAC: 0 |
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. |
vavega Send message Joined: 2 Nov 05 Posts: 82 Credit: 519,981 RAC: 0 |
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" |
Angus Send message Joined: 17 Sep 05 Posts: 412 Credit: 321,053 RAC: 0 |
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. 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) |
Twinkletoes Send message Joined: 2 Nov 05 Posts: 54 Credit: 92,865 RAC: 0 |
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... |
j2satx Send message Joined: 17 Sep 05 Posts: 97 Credit: 3,670,592 RAC: 0 |
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. Paul, I agree strongly with you. I also crunch for SIMAP, but will not use their phpBB. We need to keep this simple. |
AMD_is_logical Send message Joined: 20 Dec 05 Posts: 299 Credit: 31,460,681 RAC: 0 |
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. |
JChojnacki Send message Joined: 17 Sep 05 Posts: 71 Credit: 10,566,999 RAC: 6,286 |
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Scott Brown Send message Joined: 19 Sep 05 Posts: 19 Credit: 8,739 RAC: 0 |
@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)? |
Moderator8 Volunteer moderator Send message Joined: 10 Jan 06 Posts: 16 Credit: 0 RAC: 0 |
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. I agree with these points, but also agree with the motivation behind the Einstein change. So for me the question is how to combine the advantages of both approaches. My solution would be to have the Q&P boards listed on the main list of forums, as they are on Einstein - ie not just a separate link to the Q&P boards. That page would therefore look very like it does on Einstein. However, the Q&P boards would retain their current internal format - the "I also have this question" button, etc, that I found so helpful when I was starting on BOINC. Finally, from the front page there could still be a link to an alternate listing that only showed the Q&P boards. That way all those who find the boards on the Einstein method would find them, but so would all those who find them on the traditional method. The pattern would probably be that newbies would use the links from the front page, and oldtimers use the links from the main boards - but who cares? There is no excess charge for giving people more than one route to the help. There could be an excess benefit. m8 |
River~~ Send message Joined: 15 Dec 05 Posts: 761 Credit: 285,578 RAC: 0 |
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~~ |
David Baker Volunteer moderator Project administrator Project developer Project scientist Send message Joined: 17 Sep 05 Posts: 705 Credit: 559,847 RAC: 0 |
I think if there is a consensus about the optimal structure of the forum, we can try both |
dcdc Send message Joined: 3 Nov 05 Posts: 1831 Credit: 119,448,284 RAC: 11,030 |
...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. 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... |
Moderator9 Volunteer moderator Send message Joined: 22 Jan 06 Posts: 1014 Credit: 0 RAC: 0 |
These are the general "roll ups" of the conversation to date. The numbers are approximations as it is not easy to separate from all of the conversation, the specific suggestion the posts are presenting. But for a general idea of where this is heading the information is close enough. I will be moving a number of the posts from this thread to Another thread, I am not deleting anything they will all only be moved, as most contain more discussion that specific suggestions. Please keep your posts to this thread, short and specific to the suggestion, with as little discussion as possible to describe your idea. If you want the project team to work on this then it must be easy for then to gather up in a few moments of reading the thread. As of 25/1/06, 18:50 UTC - Users asking for change - 9 Users asking for no change - 6 Details 1) I believe there should be a News/Announcements section in the fora which is linked to from the home page. -2 in favor - Against - N/A 2) Eliminate the separate - question and answers link or move it - in favor -3 Against - 2 3) move the "add ons" link from returning participants - in favor 1 Against - N/A 4) Forum Developers at Boinc should make the changes - In Favor 4 Against - N/A 5) This forum should look more like Einstein@Home - In favor - 3 Against - N/A 6) Add a Wish list to the main boards - In Favor - 1 Against - N/A Concepts Presented User FluffyChicken Submits (Add sections to single forum) - Official Announcements and Happenings - FAQ - Rosetta Science - Help & Support - Number Crunching - Suggestions & Feedback - Robeta (R@H Beta testing) - Cafe Rosetta - Team Chat - BOINC User Vavega Submits (configure boards as follows) official project news 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) windows unix/linux macintosh sugggestions cafe rosetta team recruiting statistics Moderator9 ROSETTA@home FAQ Moderator Contact |
UBT - Halifax--lad Send message Joined: 17 Sep 05 Posts: 157 Credit: 2,687 RAC: 0 |
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. Join us in Chat (see the forum) Click the Sig Join UBT |
Angus Send message Joined: 17 Sep 05 Posts: 412 Credit: 321,053 RAC: 0 |
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 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) |
nasher Send message Joined: 5 Nov 05 Posts: 98 Credit: 618,288 RAC: 0 |
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 |
Moderator9 Volunteer moderator Send message Joined: 22 Jan 06 Posts: 1014 Credit: 0 RAC: 0 |
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. Moderator9 ROSETTA@home FAQ Moderator Contact |
Moderator9 Volunteer moderator Send message Joined: 22 Jan 06 Posts: 1014 Credit: 0 RAC: 0 |
You obviously missed the point of the post altogether, in your rush to attack me. Actually this thread is for gathering specific and concise suggestions for forum changes. The comments you quoted from Paul were incorporated within the summary document posted below. The thrust of Paul's posts on this matter is a vote for using the BOINC baseline structure with some modification along the lines of the E@H forum. The baseline from which any changes would be begun is the assumption of "no change required" from the BOINC baseline. The "discussion" on forum change is located in this thread. Moderator9 ROSETTA@home FAQ Moderator Contact |
Scott Brown Send message Joined: 19 Sep 05 Posts: 19 Credit: 8,739 RAC: 0 |
The thread has been quiet now for about two days. 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. |
River~~ Send message Joined: 15 Dec 05 Posts: 761 Credit: 285,578 RAC: 0 |
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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