Forum request (1)

Report · May 30, 2012

While the forum skin is being redone, I have two requests that I hope to get integrated. I will post them in two different topics, so they can be easier addressed and discussed.

In some forums, when starting a topic I see something like this under the editor window

I'm sure this can be easily added to any forum where it is useful. What I would mainly want is the operating system and browser information.

However, my request regarding this:

force the poster to at least tick one of these
make this choice (at least the OS) visible beside the topic title in the forum overview or discussion list.

The reason for this is that I am wasting so much time opening topics that I cannot answer because it is Macintosh related. Or Linux related. Or Android related.

With the vast number of posts recently arriving in the Flash Player forum, this would be a great help for all involved.

Report · May 31, 2012

Have not seen the window on any of the forums I visit. It seems so overly general to be useless. Administration? General Information? Mobile? Settings?

Would any common user know what question would fit in these categories? If Internet Explorer is listed why not Firefox, Chrome, and others? And would it make any difference?

An yes it has been discussed, just before the combined Mac Win format, that a check mark for OS should be required, but not universial support, especially from Adobe.

Think other suggestions were to enter video card and RAM, but this was less important than OS..

Report · May 31, 2012

Setting up categories can be done on a space by space basis. But in the few spaces where admins have tried it, most have gone away from it. There isn't a way to force users to use it, and it can make browsing through discussions difficult because you might have category filtering turned on and that isn't obvious. So you may be missing a number of posts.

Which forum or forums are you looking to see this in? The admins for that space might consider it.

Report · May 31, 2012

Pat's showing the Flash Player FAQ forum here. I had categories setup to help users quickly filter down to the FAQs they might be interested in, instead of having to go through multiple pages as our number of FAQs increase. While a nice idea, I doubt many people use it. In fact, just today I wasn't seeing all the posts and didn't realize I needed to uncheck all categories to turn the filtering off .

I agree with him though, it would be nice to have certain info required when a your creates a troubleshooting post. We continually have to ask Flash Player users what OS and browser they are using to help identify the first steps they should take.

Report · May 31, 2012

It's not exactly the Category box that I wish for, just a little form requesting some basic information, like...

Report · Jun 22, 2012

While revisiting this topic I had an idea...

Instead of having the user fill in these information, a JavaScript could easily extract these environmental information and put them into the initial post.

Report · Jun 23, 2012

Pat,

I see two potential issues with the JavaScript idea:

In the Photoshop and Premiere forums, users often post from their business/personal computers, and not from their workstations (especially in Premiere). For instance, I could be posting about an issue with my workstation, and the JavaScript would say that I was speaking about my Sager laptop.

Many users will not want anything being harvested from their machines, even something as simple as computer specs.

Just a couple of thoughts there.

Hunt

PS - I also think that knowing the user's machine is so very useful in many threads, and to extract that info from them is often an impossible task. It often takes a half-dozen questions to get the necessary data.

Report · Jun 23, 2012

Bill,

absolutely right: users may post from a computer that is totally different from the machine where the problem occurs. Also, users may have JS disabled. (In which case this forum may not work anyway.)