Admin - Call for forum enhancement requests in 2019

• Category filtering On the forum thread list: add some category filtering? Like: just ARM, just ARM7, just 8051 - P. Faltynek
• Search for related threads when about to post (based on keywords) - D. Lively 17398
• Require a part number - for the actual device (or, at least, manufacturer & family) to start a thread? - A. Neil, thread 17398
  • This would also help the ARM section - where so many different ARMs (7, 9, Cortex-M) all get bundled together...

• Category filtering On the forum thread list: add some category filtering? Like: just ARM, just ARM7, just 8051 - P. Faltynek
• Search for related threads when about to post (based on keywords) - D. Lively 17398
• Require a part number - for the actual device (or, at least, manufacturer & family) to start a thread? - A. Neil, thread 17398
  • This would also help the ARM section - where so many different ARMs (7, 9, Cortex-M) all get bundled together...

• Move from discussion thread to question/answer format. To encourage on-topic posts, improve the value of the forum archive as a technical resource. - D. Lively
• Report a post (inappropriate/unrelated content, spam) - D. Lively
• Voting up and down the usefulness of an answer. - J. Spolsky, J. Atwood
• Threading - view the data as a tree. - P. Westermark
• Answered Mark a question as answered or unanswered - J. Spolsky, J. Atwood
• Display other threads referencing this current thread. - P. Westermark 17398
  • So if I would post a link to another thread in this thread, then that other thread would show a reverse link to this thread.
• Karma (esp. negative votes) tends to result in big fights. - P. Westermark
  • Especially since it quickly becomes obvious that some people use them in a fight, i.e. A and B have an argument, and B uses negative votes on A:s comments. Only A and B online at the time with rights to vote, so very transparent.
  • In a forum where everyone may give any number of + votes (but of course only one + vote/post) you get a situation where most posts gets one or more +. So the difference between a good and a bad answer is zero or one votes contra 10 or 40 votes. But you don't get any "revenge" involved in the voting - best revenge anyone can do is to avoid to vote. But their missing vote will not make much of a difference.
• Prevent voting as personal agendas The thing with votes is that they should help a reader without creating bad-will from intentional punishments. But it has happened that posts have received "Answer is wrong" just because someone doesn't like a perfectly correct answer. But problems with negative votes are common everywhere.
• Non-judgemental post flagging - without having to repeatedly re-post the same basic information; e.g.: - A. Neil
  • There is insufficient information in this post to permit an answer;
  • This question is answered in existing documentation (Manual/Datasheet/etc)
  • This is a 3rd-party question - please contact the 3rd party (eg, chipmaker)
  • Please don't try to cheat on your homework by posting it on this forum
  • This post is factually incorrect.
  • Preferably, flagging the post should result in a detailed explanation being sent to the poste';s registered email address.
  • In the case of factually incorrect, the person setting the flag should be required to state why.

• Real-time preview of the posts, rather than entering a message on a separate page from the thread in a 50 character wide text box. - D. Lively
• Page width limits max page width of 300. Posting code blocks over that size creates a horizontal scrollbar. - P. Westermark
• Colored Code for inserted code, have colors within the code, not just black and white formatting. - Cpt. Vince
• Edit your posts - D. Lively
  • "It can cause great confusion when a post is edited after replies have already been made..."- A. Neil
• Automatic code snippets detection Add pre tags around code - T. Michael
  • We replied " It's difficult to detect code automatically, but a revised editor could provide a select-and-mark-as-code feature. I use a component that already provides this feature on another site."
• Markdown moving from HTML to Markdown; language might be a good idea, but I'd like to get some opinions before making any significant changes.
• Tags from third parties Like BB-code and images - P. Westermark
• True Unicode - P. Westermark
• Spell check - A. Bradford
  • Note: most browsers do this for you now
• Predictive text
• Detect characters that will not format well detect the presence of tab characters and warn the poster specifically - A. Neil
• Convert Tabs to spaces for plain text code (not in pre tags), e.g. convert tab characters to a default to 4 or 8 character expansion. - P. Westermark
• Copy Code widget Copy or Save button beside the code segment, to make it easier to select and paste into a code editor - P. Westermark
• Convert text to links for text with http or https - A. Neil

Old threads should be locked BEFORE someone posts X years later, not AFTER, which seems to be the current behaviour.

Provide a simple means to ask a SIMILAR question, where the current thread is provided as context, but discouraging just saying "Me Too" by providing a means to provide current/specific details.

Auto-generate a list of related threads/questions asked when displaying the current one. Think Amazon, people who bought X looked at Y. Rank by relevance/score, ideally just as a short title. Perhaps provide for a means to up-vote, or add to the list.

Make sure 'Search' actually works. see SaXlesforce based sites to see how NOT to do it. Typically either completely fails to list threads with known content, or a wall of noise.

Fit forum to browser page width, regardless of how large the screen is. I'll resize if I don't like how it flows, but don't serve a screen with 60% of unused space.

Two or three flags from high karma users will hide spam immediately for review by staff on duty. Sufficient flagging on a single user, or multiple hiding behind a single IP, should be enough to hide content from everyone except the user(s) in question. ie they don't know they are invisible, but their behaviour reinforces internally scoring as a spammer.

• Category filtering On the forum thread list: add some category filtering? Like: just ARM, just ARM7, just 8051 - P. Faltynek
• Search for related threads when about to post (based on keywords) - D. Lively 17398
• Require a part number - for the actual device (or, at least, manufacturer and family) to start a thread? - A. Neil, thread 17398
  • This would also help the ARM section - where so many different ARMs (7, 9, Cortex-M) all get bundled together
• "Me too" button for a similar question simple means to ask a similar question, where the current thread is provided as context, but discouraging just saying "Me Too" by providing a means to provide current/specific details. - P. Westermark 64447

Hello Per,

Thanks for the quick reply and good suggestions.

re: SaXlesforce, is it search by metadata that you want to discourage? Ranking results?

re: BB-code - is this something you still use? Should we be looking into it?

Just really it is an implementation that is completely useless and frustrating. Basically sites using this Salesforce "forum" software would be more effectively searched with Google, than sites own resources. Several large corps have migrated to this as it integrates well with back office and CRM systems. Microsoft's system was similarly awful. Jive was reasonably workable, but starved of developers to actually fix anything behind the pretty facade.