[help us] How can we keep forums clean

[remb0]

We see a lot of bug reports/suggestions posted in general but there are seperate forums for.
And there are a lot op topics which we moved. sometimes it looks like there is no good place for it (based on topic title)

My question is: what can we do to avoid this and keep the general clean.

Are there missing sub forums?
Must we set a minimal post count before posting in general?
Should we ask everyone to review there own topicz and solve/move them?

Do you have good ideas, suggestions or questions to make the forum cleaner and for the users easier to find the right information?

[Egregius]

I think it's a bit general lazyness of lots of people.
Why search if you can just post and ask?
Why write a good topic title?
Why review your post before submitting?

I think that's the work for mods to move topics, adjust their title's and post a reaction in red text to indicate what they have done.

[alfred_j_kwak]

I have made mistake couple of time. I read forum with tapatalk timeline and it shows all messages in long list. So I have put question in wrong thread - ie. while ago I asked about Philips Hue.
Also disturbing is spamming similar post in multiple threads.

Sent from my Transformer TF101 using Tapatalk

[Timdgr]

I don't know if it will help much but maybe create a subforum for the ESP8266 Wifi Module?
And the ESP Easy maybe?

And then be more strict on moderating topics. People will learn that they have to look for the right subforum first.
Maybe you need more moderators, one for each subforum

[Domosapiens]

To prevent a lot of moderation,
I would suggest to make a section where members with less then 1 year membership can post.

That gives some discrimination on what level the question is.
More important, it encourage self help and using the search function.

If the subject is of real importance, a Mod can raise it to the regular forum.
That means ... selective moderation, less in the younger forum, strict in the other forums.

Just my 2 cents
Domosapiens

[jannl]

Not sure if that will help.
Posting in the correct section is mainly good reading and depending on someones background I think.

You could may be create such a section for posters that frequently tend to use the wrong thread for their questions or keep crossposting double messages....

[malarcy]

As a new user I would like to make a couple of observations

1) sometimes it's not clear where to put something I have recently posted questions in mysensors and rfxcom sub forums that could have equally gone into general questions or for one of them bug reports. Some clarity around the etiquette would help.

2) a noob sub forum is a good idea but please don't restrict those of us who have only just discovered domoticz to that area only. You never know. You might for example be locking out a software engineer with 30 years experience in various fields and 10 years of home automation development. Just because they are new doesn't make there questions dumb but some people will need a little hand holding.

Just thoughts.


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[alfred_j_kwak]

How difficult would it be to have something like "Stupid question thread." where one can post the problem and might have some hint to find correct thread?
This "Stupid question thread." could be deleted maybe twice a week - thursday and monday perhaps. I don't know anything about forum moderating, but I suppose that if there really is relevant conversation going on it could be moved into another thread or just not deleted.

[bbqkees]

I think the current setup of the forum is not optimal.
There are already too many sub forums with almost no topics.

Almost every new post should ideally be in a sub forum of 'Functionalities and Protocols'. But these sub forums are way down in the list and you need more clicks to get there.
There are some main forums like 'News and updates' which are not needed as a main forum because there is (almost) nothing in it.
They take up much space in the layout.
You could list the updates in a sticky topic in 'General'.

If you want everybody to post in a relevant sub forum you need to make it more visible or at least convenient to access.
And no matter how well you build up the categories, there are always a lot of people who will post in 'General' or 'Bugs' no matter what.

And my personal experience is that topics in 'General' usually get a fast reply while topics in a sub forum often go unnoticed for days or even weeks.

So what I would improve is a layout of the forum categories that is more clear and a faster moderation so new topics are moved to the proper sub as soon as possible.

And one further remark: Should this topic not be in 'Forum Feedback' instead of 'General'?

[ThinkPad]

How difficult would it be to have something like "Stupid question thread." where one can post the problem and might have some hint to find correct thread?
This "Stupid question thread." could be deleted maybe twice a week - thursday and monday perhaps. I don't know anything about forum moderating, but I suppose that if there really is relevant conversation going on it could be moved into another thread or just not deleted.

That isn't a good idea i think. It won't motivate people and it will become a large, unstructured dump place. Very hard to keep clean as a moderator.

I think the current setup of the forum is not optimal.
There are already too many sub forums with almost no topics.

[...]

Finding the balance between not enough and too many subforums is something we find a bit difficult.

Changing the order of how subforums are displayed is a good one, might be a quick win.
The problem with subforums like 'General discussion' is that they are too 'general' in theory you want everything nicely categorized, but a user might think 'i will just drop it in the general section, far more easier!'.

I think the 'Functionalities and Protocols' subforum should be almost at the top, because it is the most important one, this one contains the most subforums.
Then the bugs & problems subforum, and then other subforums.
The Board index ‹ Functionalities and Protocols ‹ Other questions and discussions needs to go i think, because it is too general. Topics there should either fit under other subforums under func. & prot. OR in general discussion.

I have put the subforums & their amount of posts in Excel, when i sort from high amount of posts to low amount of posts, it would look like this:

Code: Select all

Functionalities and Protocols                 20550
Bugs / Problems                                    17026
Suggestions				            5943
Compatibility					    5253
General Discussion				    4662
Third party and supplementary tools	    3179
Design, usability and languages					2092
Show your projects											1228
Sales, Deals and Bargains..							637
Forum feedback													105
Developers Hangout											50
Before posting, read this!							45
News & Updates													2

Which is already a better order i think, and that for a simple sorting query haha. (apart from that a subforum like "Before posting, read this!" (the forumrules) needs to be on top)


If someone likes to help us, by becoming a moderator, send one of the moderators a PM and we will discuss it. Extra pairs of hands are always appreciated. You can recognize moderators by their red-colored or green-colored nickname

[D'rMorris]

To start with good news: the fact that we're having this discussion proves that a lot of people are using Domoticz .
Maybe we could have some more strict moderating. You can take that to the extend that a moderator has to approve each and every post / topic, but with the amount of posts / topics we have each day, that would be quite time consuming. Or you could switch that on for users with less than 50 posts for example. I don't know the exact possibilities of BulletinBoard regarding this subject.

Next to that, I'd say that we have to make the (already quite good, but somewhat unstructured) wiki better and update the user manual. With all the releases coming out, that will also be a lot of work, but it's the only way to get it done I think. Maybe even put the wiki topics in BB as well (with no write access for users).

Next to that, we could appoint "content owners" maybe? So that someone is responsible for a part of the whole? Maybe something with subject-experts per topic or something?
Just naming some ideas here, don't know if they're feasible / desirable.

[alfred_j_kwak]

...This "Stupid question thread." could be deleted maybe twice a week - thursday and monday perhaps...

That isn't a good idea i think. It won't motivate people and it will become a large, unstructured dump place. Very hard to keep clean as a moderator.

How large is it going to be in couple of days?

[bbqkees]

Changing the order of how subforums are displayed is a good one, might be a quick win.

Code: Select all

Functionalities and Protocols                 20550
Bugs / Problems                                    17026
Suggestions				            5943
Compatibility					    5253
General Discussion				    4662
Third party and supplementary tools	    3179
Design, usability and languages					2092
Show your projects											1228
Sales, Deals and Bargains..							637
Forum feedback													105
Developers Hangout											50
Before posting, read this!							45
News & Updates													2

This already seems a better order.
And maybe you can set the subforum in 'Functionalities and Protocols ' to be expanded by default.
And still at least the 'news and updates' 'before posting' sections should be converted to sticky topics.

[Egregius]

I think 'Bugs / Problems' could be better just 'Bugs'. Now the title implements that you can also post problems in that board.