Suggestion for forum improvement

[dw85745]

It would be nice if the forum could be better organized by topic of issue so that it becomes a reference database without having to search the entire forum, then work through 100 posts of which 75 are the same issue.

For example, a Section on each control (Label, TreeViews, Flexgrid, etc)
which would contain the questions and several best answers to the question.
How many times do we see multiple posts related to the same question.

A Debug Section which is part of each group (e.g. DATABASE-ACCESS-BUGS) would also be beneficial. Again this would list specific problems, references (such as MS "Q's") and solutions.

However, these type forums should be moderator controlled for both form and content so they stay clean and useful.

Based on whats currently on the forum, we could come up with a great reference database.

Thanks
David

[si_the_geek]

There are several repeated questions, which is why we decided to implement an FAQ forum - often containing multiple answers to each question.

However, they do not answer all questions in an area - as it would take a long time (and a lot of effort) for each item, for example to go thru all possible uses of a control. It would also probably not answer the majority of the questions any better than VB's Help system can, and would not answer specific 'awkward' questions as well as our members can.

I agree that there is lots of useful information on the forums that could be added to the FAQ forum from other sections, but collecting and organising it would be very time consuming. As we are all volunteers, I'm afraid that isn't likely to happen.

Some forum members will create new FAQ threads if we see a need; If there is anything that you (or anybody else) would like to create an FAQ thread for, then please go right ahead. If you don't think you can write the whole thread yourself, then let me know - I can help.


A re-arrangement of forums isn't as good in practice as it is in theory - several people get confused as it is, so adding more options of where to post would get them (and others) more lost.


Unfortunately the answer is to either improve your search criteria (if you can - it isn't always easy!), or to go thru the threads that the search brings up

[RhinoBull]

Sounds interesting but afraid isn't going to happen as it may require significant forum's software hack.

[Merri]

If we'd look for an easy modern solution, one could be giving keywords (tags) to threads. Keywords for some thread could be "vb6 multitasking" or "vb6 database mssql query" or "vb6 date time i18n". Resolved threads would automatically get keyword resolved. This would, however, be quite difficult addition, unless someone has already coded it. The keywords could be approved, new added and fixed by moderators, users could search threads by keywords via a separate tags page.

I know from experience that this tagging thing really works, it is very easy to use and makes content findable. Can be seen from blogs and some other software that uses it. However... I leave this only as an interesting "oh, nice, now that would be cool" thing. I'm planning on coding this to one of my own forums just for the sake of experiment to see if it would really work on a forum

[si_the_geek]

That sounds good (in theory at least), however it would be a software change and as such out of our control (it would need to be done by vBulletin).

The only thing that worries me is how would the keywords be set? (who would do it?)

[Hack]

That sounds good (in theory at least), however it would be a software change and as such out of our control (it would need to be done by vBulletin).

And the problem with this is that everything vBullentin does to "tailor" our site has to be redone everytime a new software version is rolled out.

[Merri]

The only thing that worries me is how would the keywords be set? (who would do it?)

People could suggest new simply by trying to use them, but admins/moderators would validate them, and the ones that go over eachother would be linked to one (ie. converted to correct one)... some could be added automatically depending on the forum. New ones to an existing thread could be suggested by other registered members, again a tag would get validated only if moderator accepts it or if enough members with reputation suggest it. Also, it wouldn't really matter if all tags wouldn't get reviewed: not all threads are worth finding when compared to others.

So it would work pretty much as a moderated community project, which a forum itself is as well. But as told, merely an interesting idea and not something that is likely to get done here, unless a premade extension can be found.