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Testing waters for radical dc ideas - feedback wanted

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40hz:
40hz...how does cigar box nation approach the "working on projects together" idea?
-superboyac (December 20, 2012, 03:39 PM)
--- End quote ---

In a very ad hoc and poorly implemented manner.

They're running the site on Ning, which IMO is one of the absolute worst platforms out there. Not so much for what it doesn't support - but because it has everything: e-mail, profiles, forum discussions space, groups, blogs space, commenting on virtually everything - nobody knows where to put things. If you have an idea, do you:


* start a discussion thread?
* start a group?
* post a video/picture and invite comments?
* write about it in your blog?
It's overwhelming and confusing. Too much overlapping functionality and redundancy. And it's also an ugly design from both a usability and visual perspective.

The way the collaboration I was in on worked was us sending e-mails and files back and forth and posting news and coordinating in a sub-board in a group area. If they didn't send me links I never would have found the board part. And if I didn't get a personal invite from the guy who wanted to do it I would have never even known anybody was doing a project.

Not a good way to do things. Cigarboxnation.com has nothing in its platform worth copying. It's a total mess even though the community is a nice bunch of people.

TaoPhoenix:
If we started all over again, with the focus on creating clean inviting organizational structure -- would we benefit from creating multiple sites -- one for Custom Software, and one for the rest of the stuff?  Or would we lose the critical mass required for holding interesting discussions?
-mouser (December 20, 2012, 12:02 PM)
--- End quote ---

Well, I can see some minor quibbles about re-ordering the sequence, but except for two boards, it's all software-software-software, which to me all belongs in one board. It's the Living Room and Basement that seem to give people fits about whether it's "right" or not.

Ballpark single-sig-digit guess is we're headed towards 300,000 forum posts. When you have THAT much content, ANYTHING will begin to creak.

After an initial cannon ball run through half the site, I do spend most of my posts in about 5 areas, and I'm as heavy on Living Room-Basement as anyone. Coding Snacks, and General Software Discussions round it out.

cmpm:
Perhaps it is the regulars who can shift their perspective and begin new.
It may take a new board, I like Invision's forums, with new stats for everyone.
I think new folk look at the number of posts and get intimidated sometimes.

One thing I miss is the talk of software for the 'average user',
whatever that is :) . Me I guess.
With a 'review state of mind' talking about the good and the bad of softwares.
And not focusing so much on what one lacks, but the place it holds, it's best features.

vlastimil:
And in the past my attitude has been: It is what it is -- I'm not a fan of change for change's sake, or trying to change things to get "bigger" or more popular.
-mouser (December 20, 2012, 03:49 PM)
--- End quote ---

I still think this is the right attitude. Change always has a price and there should be a good reason for it. As a normal user of the forum, I am relatively happy with it. I usually click on the "Show new replies to your posts" and "Show latest topics" links and occasionally, I use the search function. All of these work OK on DC. But I see some room for improvement:

* The search works, but Google usually does a better job.
* Off-topic discussions are sometimes a problem. It would be nice if it were possible to view a thread without off-topic posts or with them greyed out. I know that this requirement sounds crazy, but what do I know, maybe some of the new forum scripts already address that. If not, the posters on DC are quite responsible, maybe simply having a "Reply off-topic" button in addition of ordinary "Reply" will be enough. Or maybe something like the Q&A sites use - ordinary posts/answers and then comments to each posts.
* Going through all new posts is too time consuming for me and so I do not click that link. Due to that, I may miss some things that would interest me. If there were a way to filter the new posts and only show them to me if they contained certain keywords, that would be nice.
Summing it all up - it would be perfect, if I had a (probably customizable) page showing me all the things I am interested in at once - in my case, it would contain responses to topics I watch, new topics and new posts matching certain keywords or posted by certain people there.

I am not really familiar with other parts of the site. As for attracting new software authors, who want to publish their first applications and do not have a web site of their own, that is a hard task and I guess any change in this area would require a lot of work.

techidave:
I am with 40hz on the Ning sites.  Last week, I joined a work related Ning site sponsored by our state board of education.  its horrible to find stuff.

The search part of the forum doesnt work for me most of the time.  So I use Google as well.

I tend to look only at the Living Room and General Software discussion boards the most.  Occasionally the Coding Snacks, I am sure that I miss a few things in the other boards. I always click the show unread posts since last visit.

Speaking as a non coder and as an average to above average user, its sometimes hard to know which board to post to.

I came here for two things.  A google search showed me a discussion on software or hardware help or about some fancy little coding snack.  Probably FARR or Screenshot Captor. 

I tend not to do the chat part here since that would tie up all my time that I could be doing something useful.  :D  but maybe that parts also needs updated?  :-\

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