All,
I have noticed a few posts that have made some suggestions about forum enhancements.
As we're migrating and enhancing the site, there may be an opportunity to enhance the forum, as well. Some of the suggestions I have seen are:
If you have any opinions on these or other enhancements/modifications, please post here or email me directly at david.lively@arm.com.
-Will you allow:
-Voting up and down the usefulness of an answer? -Click on a user name to see all his activity? -Badges for good answers / good questions? -Patchwork quilt avatars? -Mark a question as answered or unanswered?
Also a mobile-friendly view for the forum would be nice
"Also a mobile-friendly view for the forum would be nice"
The current forum isn't even PC-friendly in case someone posts "code" with a 500-character line.
There should be a hard maximum width to code blocks with a scrollbar in case someone do post long source lines. Never, ever, should the "normal" text comments be stretched in width.
If making the above change, it wouldn't hurt with a "copy" or "save" button beside the code segment. But that is a minor feature request. Not letting long source code lines break the formatting is a major feature request.
-Voting up and down the usefulness of an answer? -Badges for good answers / good questions? tried in other fora and turned into a 'pissing contest'
-Click on a user name to see all his activity? good idea
-Patchwork quilt avatars? what is that?
-Mark a question as answered or unanswered? I do not see how
Also a mobile-friendly view for the forum would be nice Why on earth, do we not have enough posts 'written' in Stupid Monkey Shit already?
There should be a hard maximum width to code blocks Yes, YES, yes
Erik
Good "karma" or whatever it is called often work out well.
It's the negative votes that tends to result in big fights. 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.
The thing with votes is that they should help a reader without creating badwill from intentional punishments. http://www.8052.com sometimes (has been some time since last I saw it now) suffers from voting as personal agendas. But it has happened that posts have received "Answer is wrong" just because someone don't like a perfectly correct answer. But problems with negative votes are common everywhere.
>>Why on earth, do we not have enough posts 'written' in Stupid Monkey *** already?
Maybe we could add an auto translate Stupid Monkey *** Translator.
Instead of detecting tabs, or C code, it would convert
"HI AFAIK I tryed testing my bored 4ever, it broke. Wut now? l8r"
to: "Hello I type very poorly like I got hit on the head with a heavy object. I am having issues with an evaluation board. Any suggestions?"
Do take David's suggestion and go to stackoverflow.com, get a feel of how it works. Click on the advertisements there.
you do that
asking for a lot (not just the above) in a forum that is provided for free is not reasonable.
The forum as it is works. Yes, it could use some improvements, but keep the fact that you do not pay for it in sight. I do not know what is involved with the various suggestions above, but what i suggest to David is that he does the following: FIRST require registration, then SECOND set up a voting (3 votes per registered user) on the list of suggested improvements that are within an acceptable effort to implement.
finally one suggestion:
A few strangely named creatures hide behind their monniker and spew bile on a regular basis. require registration and the real name used.
Joel Spolsky and Jeff Atwood wrote
Very good suggestions, most of these features are present on TI's discussion forum. I'm not sure that Keil monitors the forum enough to implement the answered/unanswered feature though.
-Walt
Isn't it normally the OP who flags a thread as "Answered"?
That's what I thought!
I'm not sure how it is normally done but on the TI site, I believe that a TI employee has to verify that a question has been answered (I could be wrong). If the OP is a newie, how can he say for certain that he is being given good or bad advise.
Sorry, but when/if technical discussions gets enough complicated, it isn't always possible for a forum owner to even have the knowledge to decide when a question has been answered.
If the question relates to the Keil tools, the Keil technical team should be able tell if the question has been accurately answered. If the question is off topic when maybe not.
the Keil technical team should be able tell if the question has been accurately answered.
that would require Keil to monitor the forum
Erik,
If you read my post you would have would have read the following sentence.
I'm not sure that Keil monitors the forum enough to implement the answered/unanswered feature though.
Again, this feature is offered on TI's discussion forum which is free. Many members of TI's technical team monitor the board and answer questions directly. The "answer verified flag" may be more for their benefit then ours since it tells them they do not have to spend time reading or answering a question that has already been verified. It does mean something to me as a customer when TI takes the time to verify an answer.
It would take a significant commitment from Keil to offer this and I would not be surprised if they choose not to but I don't see any harm is suggesting it and I do not think David needs you to screen the suggestions.
I think TI is (almost) unique in the way that its staff actively participate and support customers via the forum.
It is sad that so few others follow their lead...
:-(
(it must be said that Keil are among the better ones, as Keil staff do participate from time-to-time - even if that is not guaranteed).
I agree Andy.