Discussion: How can we Improve DonationCoder?

[skrommel]

  Love DC, great content, but the design is a bit dated.

We need a changing start page to let everyone know what's inside, something like HowStuffWorks.com.

Show the lastest threads in the most active forums, the latest test and reviews, the latest programs from Coding Snacks, the latest tutorials, the greates bargains, with pictures, movies and people.

The forum too doesn't show the depth of things, it needs to be arranged, or get a better start page.

It probably takes a new framework, but then we could have tags, clouds, likes and dislikes, Facebook integration and whatnot.

Looking forward to the future.

Skrommel

[cyberdiva]

The forum too doesn't show the depth of things, it needs to be arranged, or get a better start page.

It probably takes a new framework, but then we could have tags, clouds, likes and dislikes, Facebook integration and whatnot.

-skrommel (April 28, 2010, 08:41 AM)

I feel very differently from Skrommel about the forum's structure.  I've been amazed at how easy it is for me to find all the new topics/messages that interest me.  I simply click on the "Unread Posts" button, mark all the entries as "read," and then go down the list and uncheck any that interest me.  I then get rid of all the "read" entries, leaving me with just the ones I want to read.  It takes me almost no time to do this.  As far as I'm concerned, the forums work VERY well, and if they ain't broke....

And I confess I have no interest in tags, clouds, likes, dislikes, etc.  And I'm VERY wary of anything having to do with Facebook, which each week seems to find new ways to erode users' privacy.  

I love the DC site, and especially the forums.  It was the forums that brought me here about three or four years ago.  I think there was a thread about my email client, Mulberry, that I probably found via Google.  I joined so I could post a message in that thread, and soon I discovered that DC was a software lover's dream site.  Lots of knowledgeable and civilized folks offering their opinions of current software, news about new programs, alerts to discounts and special deals, intelligent reviews and useful commentary, and much more.  Eventually, I began to take advantage of some of the impressive donationware from the DC site, but what brought me here and has kept me hooked are the forums.

[JavaJones]

I'm with you cyberdiva, but then I'm fairly used to forum systems and how they work. I think the idea(s) here are to perhaps try to help new users get used to things. But personally I still feel the tag cloud, facebook integration, like/dislike, etc. approach is not necessarily the way to go for DC.

I honestly feel like we may be overthinking things. An improved, more dynamic home page, with a method of culling out active/interesting/useful topics from the forums, along with a way to catalog and update more concrete info like a wiki, would go a long way IMO. No need to change the fundamental functioning of the forums, which otherwise seem to work quite well for what they do.

- Oshyan

[40hz]

It probably takes a new framework, but then we could have tags, clouds, likes and dislikes, Facebook integration and whatnot.

-skrommel (April 28, 2010, 08:41 AM)

I was never much a fan of clouds.

But to skrommel's point about the "depth of things" in the forums, for once I can see where something like a topic cloud might be a useful addition to a site like this one. The only problem I could see is if it somehow made people feel they needed to introduce topics and frame their comments to coincide with existing tags rather than let them range as far and wide as they currently do.

Structured discussions are great when you're looking for something specific. But they can easily become a box if you're not careful. And if there's one thing you can say about DCers - they definitely "get outside the box" when discussing things.

There's also a lot to be said for serendipity. So let's be very careful not to do anything that could scare that gentle little creature away.

As far as integration with something like Facebook (or Twitter *choke*), I'm not super keen on bringing in the whole "social web" thing. Especially since that technology (and crowd) brings with them a whole slew of 'issues' we haven't had to deal with. At least not yet - and thank goodness for it!

So +1 with cyberdiva on that one even if I'm mainly concerned for different reasons.

Just my 2¢



.

[mouser]

the idea of having a topic cloud and a start page showing latest coding snacks, reviews, hot topics, i think has a lot of merit, and could be in keeping with the idea of having nice "VIEWS" into the existing content.

i like the idea of an improved starting page that shows latest and useful stuff in different categories..

[40hz]

in keeping with the idea of having nice "VIEWS" into the existing content.

-mouser (April 28, 2010, 02:32 PM)

Maybe that's the ideal compromise - keep the forums the same - but provide the visitors with a new front end?

Sorta like a hotel or public inn...

Hotels have a general public side (bars, public restaurants, front desk) and a staying guest side (rooms, concierge and guest services, private dining, etc.) which allows them to handle the needs of those who are just passing through, as well as those who have made the place their home away.

I always felt good websites have much in common with good inns. (Actually, I've got a whole chapter written about that point.  ) But maybe this is one way to approach the issue of how to accommodate a new or occasional visitor -  while simultaneously providing that different type of 'experience' the more familiar and active visitor (i.e. "regular") would be looking for.

Just my 2¢ again. (One more penny and you'll have a shiny new nickle! )

[mouser]

i forgot to say.. this thread now officially qualifies as a rare "SKROMMEL SIGHTING" !!

[Armando]

I pretty much like DC the way it is. Not because I'm just used to it and/or that I don't want to change my habits. I've actually rarely been here in the last year for personal and professional reasons, and each time I came back I found what I wanted relatively easily etc. I found the same quality threads, etc.

However, among the things that could either be improved or generate improvement, here's my small take :

1- Someone (40hz ?) mentioned the mission statement. I was going to mention it myself before reading that post.

Everything else should serve the purpose it describes. Refining the mission statement can only improve DC and the decisions about UI, appearance, content, etc.

2- Tags :

It probably takes a new framework, but then we could have tags, clouds, likes and dislikes, Facebook integration and whatnot.

-skrommel (April 28, 2010, 08:41 AM)

I was never much a fan of clouds.

But to skrommel's point about the "depth of things" in the forums, for once I can see where something like a topic cloud might be a useful addition to a site like this one. The only problem I could see is if it somehow made people feel they needed to introduce topics and frame their comments to coincide with existing tags rather than let them range as far and wide as they currently do.

-40hz (April 28, 2010, 02:19 PM)

I'm not always a fan of tags, but I'm a big fan of syntactic or semantic statistical analysis.

Without going into details, maybe what I'd find interesting here would be a statistical cloud representation of all the words used in the forum (minus "determinants" ** (???) and other semantically "useless" words). The top 100 or more would be links to all the posts mentioning them. This, I find, gives a better idea of actual content then actual tags.

"Standard" tags could be useful, of course, but they're hard to use and maintain (quickly) in a forum. And since not everybody use them, they don't give an accurate picture of the actual total content.

I'm a big fan of tags ONLY when they're part of a well structured and managed system.


3- UI (minimal...) : there's one small thing that I think could be positioned differently : "show posts". You need to go into the profile, etc. to get to it. Why not place it (also?) at the top of the page with

Show unread posts  (since last visit).
Show latest topics. Show recent posts (full text).
Show new replies to your posts (unreplied topics).
Show all posts by Armando

I know... small thing... But I often looked for it and spent a few minutes wondering where it is.

3- UI : text editor for posts. I like it but wish it'd understand take keyboard shortcuts for common formatting options (Bold, Italic, Underline, etc.) : ctrl-b, ctrl-i etc.


So you see. These are just very small things that annoy me. There might be more, but... I can't think of any at the moment.

As for those who think that DC is declining etc. all I can say is that... Well it's a really subjective perception...   I don't think that DC is declining. So there you go. Also : it's damn normal to develop other preoccupations after a certain time and get tired of a certain sites that brought pleasure in the first place. So what ? This happens with everything else in life -- maybe because of "hedonistic adaptation", maybe because of something else...

Sure, you can fight hedonistic adaptation, but it's slippery slope. That said, it's good to change the furniture, makeup, hairdo once in a while... If it still serves the mission statement, if it makes things more fun .... and if it does keep people more interested an enthusiast. Usually, if it doesn't really bring more fun more strength to the mission statement, I think it'S a loss of energy and other resource.

My 2¥...


*** Determinants : probably not the right translation but I only have the French word in mind... And google is of no quick help here.

[urlwolf]

I don't think dc is declining, but the rest of the world is changing in a way that make it less useful. DC is great to 'find the best software. But nowadays, desktop software matter less than say 3 years ago (I use gmail as my main mail client, for example). I also moved to linux, so most of the software finds don't apply to me anymore. When I have a technical question, other sites (SO for example) are more accurate. For tech news, I use Hacker News. So DC is basically just the watercooler experience now.

[nosh]

For me, the real strength of DC is this forum and the wealth of information that lies inside. The regulars know this all too well but a newcomer may not realize the forum's true potential by a brief visit to whichever thread that got him here in the first place. If a way can be found to harness the forum information it would benefit everyone - regulars, newcomers and the site itself. There could be links to other threads automatically generated at the bottom of each thread, based on matching tags.

Tagging has been discussed more than once and generally been considered a good idea, IIRC, but never actually been implemented so I assume it may not be the simplest thing to do. I suppose people like me could just try and be less lazy and cross-link threads where appropriate for now. Also, I don't know how feasible it is for internal forum links to appear different from external links and possibly have an option to be opened in a popup window containing a thread or just a single post to keep the BS level to a minimum.


   

[Dormouse]

Can anyone give examples of forums (with tags etc) that they think have better forum features than DC? I've seen all sorts of things like this in other places, and have generally thought that they've made things worse (or no better at best). I can see some sort of system, as on Amazon, that says "Other people who looked at this also looked at these", "If you like this, you might like these" might help navigate to other relevant/interesting threads, articles or reviews, but I don't think I have seen a feature like that anywhere - and simple tagging just doesn't do it for me.

[Armando]

Can anyone give examples of forums (with tags etc) that they think have better forum features than DC? I've seen all sorts of things like this in other places, and have generally thought that they've made things worse (or no better at best). I can see some sort of system, as on Amazon, that says "Other people who looked at this also looked at these", "If you like this, you might like these" might help navigate to other relevant/interesting threads, articles or reviews, but I don't think I have seen a feature like that anywhere - and simple tagging just doesn't do it for me.

-Dormouse (April 29, 2010, 07:00 AM)

I completely agree.

[paarkhi]

Sorry all seniors but IMHO I think we need more coders who can code on requests because that's how I came to know about this website...

Newsletters is also a +1

[40hz]

Sorry all seniors but IMHO I think we need more coders who can code on requests because that's how I came to know about this website...

-paarkhi (May 01, 2010, 07:53 AM)

Unfortunately, that's always gonna be a challenge to address
any place where the "Gimme-Gimmies" outnumber the "doers."

And that's about 99% of everywhere.

 

[Stoic Joker]

What about having a code snippets library with sample code bits on how to do various things that tend to trip people up when coding. Like my first attempt at using a ListView control took way longer than it needed to because of the complexity involved - Until I ran into the right code sample that made things (finally) click.

Kind of like what CodeProject does but a much simpler version that consentrates on basic How-to-Use-Control-X examples, instead of just providing the source with/for large, complex, & complete(er) projects.

[mouser]

some of the things that are out of our direct control (having more coders participate and share their skills) are things that would be helped by things that are in our direct control, like organizing and making it easier to locate and browse content already created and shared on the site, in ways that gothic and skrommel and others have suggest -- making a better software section where everything can be found in an orderly way.

so i propose we put the organization/exposure/view/browsing improvements as our first priority.

i think that means moving to some kind of cms/wiki system for the main pages of the site, especially the software/reviews areas, instead of static html pages uploaded with ftp, which is how the site was started in 2005 and still exists today.

[IainB]

@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).

[app103]

I am not sure when it happened, but the main page of the site stopped looking like a site where you can download software and began looking like a general technology blog.

The blog is a great idea, but I don't think it should be the main focus of the main page, with the software buried behind a link in the top border of the page.

If you are going to use the blogging mod to place content on the front page, it should be all DC software & review related, with the rest being on the actual blog page.

I might even go as far as breaking the front page into sections, showcasing the main points of what DC is all about: the software we offer, the reviews we write, and something about what we do, why we are doing it, and why the visitor might want to support this site.

Currently, this is what makes up the bulk of the main page:

Discussion: How can we Improve DonationCoder?

Based on that, what would you think this site is? Really look at it objectively through the eyes of a first time visitor.

[mouser]

app: ok i just reverted to our more normal front page.. i changed it a while ago to make the front page show the blog content in an effort to make it more useful.

but i think the issues you raise about what should the front page show, go right to the heart of what skrommel was saying and also what i agree we need to do, which is make the front page more like a NEWS front page, with the latest content on the site highlighted.  latest coding snacks, latest mini reviews, latest software updates, latest blog items, etc., all in a compact format.

[mouser]

Ian,

your post may be an example of the fact that the sophisticated users will almost always have a way to get at the content they find interesting, and locate the stuff they care about.. and so i'm not so sure you are the kind of user who will be much affected by organizational changes.

personally i'm satisfied with the way the forum is basically structured and navigated, in terms of following discussions, etc.

i think the case for re-organization is best made if you view the site from the standpoint of someone new to DC, who comes in and is interested in for example, any small utilities that may have been created on the site for managing keyboard hotkeys..  how would they look for it? they would probably have to search on the forum for "hotkey" and go through tons of results.  here's a case where having a better indexed and organized catalog of coding snacks developed by dc users would go along way.  Our current Coding Snacks page is here.  While it's not the worst thing in the world, it is still far from ideal, as well as not being easy for coders to update themselves.

so from my standpoint i think maybe the best bang for the buck in terms of improving site organization is to leave the forum as it is -- and just focus on making the rest of the non-forum website pages on DonationCoder.com better in terms of exposing the rest of the content on the site, and making it easier to maintain those pages.

[JavaJones]

so from my standpoint i think maybe the best bang for the buck in terms of improving site organization is to leave the forum as it is -- and just focus on making the rest of the non-forum website pages on DonationCoder.com better in terms of exposing the rest of the content on the site, and making it easier to maintain those pages.

-mouser (May 04, 2010, 01:32 AM)

 
 

- Oshyan

[MilesAhead]

so from my standpoint i think maybe the best bang for the buck in terms of improving site organization is to leave the forum as it is -- and just focus on making the rest of the non-forum website pages on DonationCoder.com better in terms of exposing the rest of the content on the site, and making it easier to maintain those pages.

-mouser (May 04, 2010, 01:32 AM)

 
 

- Oshyan

-JavaJones (May 04, 2010, 12:46 PM)

+1

[Stoic Joker]

so from my standpoint i think maybe the best bang for the buck in terms of improving site organization is to leave the forum as it is -- and just focus on making the rest of the non-forum website pages on DonationCoder.com better in terms of exposing the rest of the content on the site, and making it easier to maintain those pages.

-mouser (May 04, 2010, 01:32 AM)

 
 

- Oshyan

-JavaJones (May 04, 2010, 12:46 PM)

+1

-MilesAhead (May 04, 2010, 06:52 PM)

Werks for me too.

[IainB]

@mouser:

so from my standpoint i think maybe the best bang for the buck in terms of improving site organization is to leave the forum as it is -- and just focus on making the rest of the non-forum website pages on DonationCoder.com better in terms of exposing the rest of the content on the site, and making it easier to maintain those pages.

+1 vote from me

Not sure what to suggest re "the rest of the content on the site".

[Perry Mowbray]

so from my standpoint i think maybe the best bang for the buck in terms of improving site organization is to leave the forum as it is -- and just focus on making the rest of the non-forum website pages on DonationCoder.com better in terms of exposing the rest of the content on the site, and making it easier to maintain those pages.

-mouser (May 04, 2010, 01:32 AM)

 
 

- Oshyan

-JavaJones (May 04, 2010, 12:46 PM)

+1

-MilesAhead (May 04, 2010, 06:52 PM)

Werks for me too.

-Stoic Joker (May 04, 2010, 10:14 PM)

And me