@mouser : I would like to pick up on your comment (Reply #65 on: 2010-05-03, 06:47:53): (and without teaching my grandmother to suck eggs)
"so i propose we put the organization/exposure/view/browsing improvements as our first priority."
I should perhaps first off say here that, having a somewhat autistic, pedantic and analytical mind, I do not understand the driving purpose behind the question ("How can we Improve DonationCoder?"), and thus I do not understand what areas of DC are potential candidates for improvement. I therefore feel unable to make any useful, specific suggestions to "fix" an undefined problem - if there is indeed a problem (though a lot of ideas do come to mind, which could be useful in a brainstorming session).
However:
(a) the quote above would seem to indicate that
the way in which people view/browse is seen as a problem to be fixed, and so it is being assigned "1st priority" (I'm not sure what that means - is it "mandatory", or "urgent and important"? Could there be other 1st priority problems placed alongside it?).
(b)
I do not see the "Why" of this. I could be wrong, of course, but it does not seem to have been demonstrated that organization/exposure/view/browsing is in fact a causal problem and therefore needs fixing. Therefore, if it is a problem then it might be just a symptomatic problem, the cause lying elsewhere.
Just supposing it does need fixing though:
IF the way in which people view/browse is seen as a problem to be fixed, THEN:
- Do you restrict your problem definition to the view/browse limitations of using the nested structure of the DC forum, and address/"fix" that?
- IF you do that, THEN where do you consider how else DC users might be viewing the content of the DC forum?
I only mention/question this because, whilst I have no idea how other DC users view/browse the site, I have always found the nested structure to be logical, but a very rigid/cumbersome constraint - which makes for S-L-O-W going - so, very early on I decided to avoid the constraint roughly 98% of the time by using new technology. Specifically, by browsing/viewing all the
NEW forum comments and topic posts in my Google Reader (a feed aggregator technology) - thus
never going near the actual DC forum for that purpose. If I wanted to subsequently see all of the related thread history for an item, then I would click into the relevant NEW item in Google Reader, and hop straight into the DC forum nested structure, to that that item in its specific thread in the DC forum. Once you are looking at that level of detail, the nested DC forum structure seems to be VERY well-suited to information-gathering.
Using Google Reader in this manner:- You can keep tabs on every single comment and new posting, and do it with minimal time spent on the activity.
- You can sort and filter duplicated NEW comment titles - thus simplifying the view of changed discussions and reducing the number of lines that need to be scanned (see the greyed-out lines in the screenshot below).
- You can sort and filter just NEW topics (using sort on the Donation Coder unread items, "-Re:" - as in the other screenshot below)
The thing is, therefore, that, IF you restrict your problem definition to the view/browse limitations of using the nested structure of the DC forum, and end up doing something similar (say) to what I have described, then that would mean that you had put considerable thought and effort into duplicating what can already be done using Google Reader (or other feed aggregator technology) within a browser.
This might be relevant to
CWuestefeld's comment (Reply #12 on: 2010-04-24, 07:49:09):
"I haven't been using DC as much as I used to. I think at one point I would check for new posts every hour. Lately, I might check once at lunch, if that."
I hate the thought of missing something in DC forum, but there's stuff that's interesting to me and there's stuff that isn't, so, how do you sort what is (for you) the wheat from the chaff AND avoid using the actual forum? I don't have the time/inclination/patience to go off to each forum or blog or whatever I am interested in. I therefore use a feed aggregator to collect the information and then I scan/sort through it. IF you use Google Reader (or some other feed aggregator) in similar fashion, THEN there's no need to EVER use the DC forum itself
until you spot something of interest to you. Then you can go straight in to the point itself. Potentially a real time-saver.
So, to summarise:- Rule: If it ain't broke, then don't fix it.
- Technology: Use new technology (e.g., including feed aggregator technology).
- Problem definition: Distinguish between symptomatic/superficial/"perceived" problems and causal problems.
- Priority: Only assign priority to addressing causal problems (i.e., expend your finite efforts where they can be most effective).
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