My top ten criteria for the new forums

[Guest]

This is my view on what the new forums should provide. This is what I'll personally be measuring the new forums against when we have a fully testable beta version.

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1 - The new forums should encourage the participation of new members, both to feel encouraged to seek help in the first place, but also to stay and become long-term contributing members of the online community here.

2 - The new forums should alienate the existing users as little as possible, as there's no point in having questions with no answers - though equally there's no point in having answers with no questions. A tricky balance to strike.

3 - Response of the forums should be no worse, and hopefully better, than typical performance here in recent months. If that means beefing up the hardware to accommodate the demands of more graphic-intensive software, so be it.

4 - The forums should look not unlike the majority of typical modern internet forums. This will not be favoured by those familiar with the sparse appearance of the present forums, but incoming new members expect to see something that looks more contemporary and familiar in style, even if there's a modest performance cost.

5 - They should function not unlike the majority of modern internet forums, in terms of the user interface and usable features. If you've got your first problem with Adobe software and you arrive in the Adobe forums for the first time, you don't want then to be confronted with something that looks like another problem and which takes time and effort to understand. The learning curve should be absolutely minimal. There should be a very low turn-away rate (potential users taking one look and backing off before participating or even complaining).

6 - The search function should be state of the art. If you have a good manual for the product software, a good user interface for it, and a good search engine for the knowledgebase and forums, the number of questions needing to be asked should be significantly lower.

7 - To support the regular participants it should be possible to list the discussions which have unread posts in any given member's selected forums, and within those discussions it should be possible to go directly to the unread content without scrolling around to find it. It should then be possible to go to the next unread post in the next unread discussion without first going backwards to the overall list.

8 - NNTP access, though a mystery to me, seems highly valued by some, and providing it does not seem to mess with what the rest of us see (setting aside the quoting problem), so let's have it.

9 - An effective mechanism to enforce the forum rules by restricting access by individuals who persistently break the rules should be provided - and there should be no simple way round it. Failing that, provision of an inbuilt method for users to ignore posts by other specified users is necessary.

10 - There should be a properly functioning list of banned words.

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That's my top ten list of criteria - though in five minutes I'll probably think of some key stuff I have left out.

What's yours?

[PJonesCET]

Look here:

[Guest]

> although Cmd Plus will do it on a case by case basis on the Mac.

that's how i do it (firefox).

[Ann_Shelbourne1]

Re: #78

Yes, those settings are already set in my preferences in the way that I wish them to be but there is NO separate setting for JUST the message-posting box as I stated previously; and if you set your type-size so that it is large enough for the message-posting box on a high-resolution Monitor, it wrecks the whole of the rest of the Page layout.

( I do happen to have been using these Forums for more than the last ten years but thank you for trying to help anyway.)

Cmd + remains as the best answer to this as it now stands but the message-posting box either needs to have its own Prefs or else it should adopt the same settings as the rest of the text in the thread.

[PJonesCET]

I tried anyway. That all anyone can do. is try.

[pyngthyngs]

I think there is a lot truth in this statement. After the first few weeks, everyone will find there way and that may or may not include using all of the functionality in more "contemporary" forums.

> Points systems only matter to people to whom they matter, if you see what I mean. If we have it in the new forums, IMHO it will be a novelty for a couple of weeks and then for most people, it'll become a yawn. I'd be very surprised if it had any significant effect on whether most people participated or not - compared to other factors. Ozpeter, "My top ten criteria for the new forums" #65, 5 Mar 2009 7:02 pm

[Ann_Shelbourne1]

> After the first few weeks, everyone will find there way and that may or may not include using all of the functionality in more "contemporary" forums.

That is always supposing that they don't take one look; shudder; and depart poste haste never to return.

:(

[Guest]

Some folks have made their opinions well known far and wide. I'd like to ask some of you to take a back seat for a time and allow others to express theirs.

John says there are 210,000 registered users, and I guessed of that, maybe 60,000 have posted in the past year, and probably at least a few thousand since the notice has been posted. Since the link to this area is on every forum page on both sides, we should have had a lot more folks stopping in to discuss their thoughts.

I'd willingly bet that there must be at least a hundred interested enough to peek in here. To only have heard from a dozen or so is not giving things a fair hearing. Perhaps the vehemence of some of the opinions has intimidated many of those that might otherwise have posted something.

There isn't much reason we shouldn't be able to sit back and listen for a time. Please, let others have their say for awhile. Take a day or two off if that's the only way you can do it.

[John_Cornicello_Photo]

Little correction on the numbers...

Make that 650,000 registered users, and 210,000 different accounts that have posted in the past 4 months. 270,000 in the past year.

[Ann_Shelbourne1]

Dorothy:

I very much doubt if the "60,000" are FREQUENT Forum visitors or have any interest in fully participating in these Forums or they would have looked in and posted in these threads already.

And how dare you have the audacity to tell people that they shouldn't post here if they wish to and as often as they wish to too.

You don't want to admit it but the posts you have seen here come from the very people who actually USE and HELP in these Forums the most regularly and more than 90% of us seem to be giving this benighted project of yours A TOTAL THUMBS-DOWN.

[Ann_Shelbourne1]

>Make that 650,000 registered users, and 210,000 different accounts that have posted in the past 4 months. 270,000 in the past year.

And how many of those have come to the Forums on more than a dozen occasions during the past year?

[John_Cornicello_Photo]

No idea. For all I know, 200,000 of them are the same person logging in under different names to either argue or agree with themselves. Such is the life of forums.

[Ramón_G_Castañeda]

&gt;Such is the life of forums. <br /> <br /> Except those forums that display the posters IP address. E.g. the multitude of forums hosted at melodysoft.com: <br /> <br />c <a href="http://www.pixentral.com/show.php?picture=1YjpxRIIfkpB6qN8jVyaVDyxebEdal" /></a> <img alt="Picture hosted by Pixentral" src="http://www.pixentral.com/hosted/1YjpxRIIfkpB6qN8jVyaVDyxebEdal_thumb.jpg" border="0" />

[Guest]

> For all I know, 200,000 of them are the same person logging in under different names to either argue or agree with themselves.

aw come on. mr. todie doesn't have access to that many systems. : )

[D__McCahill]

Man, 270,000 users, and none of them "neophyte computer-users".

[Guest]

what percentage of the 270k have been helped or had helping hand from the people responding to this thread. i believe i can claim (safely on the light side) at LEAST 5 or 6 hundred per year...

[Cindy-]

> Except those forums that display the posters IP address

I would not use a forum that did that. I would not want that displayed to everyone.

[Ramón_G_Castañeda]

Cindy,

You'd be surprised at how smoothly those forums run, once the veil of anonymity has been lifted.

You might also be surprised at how many other forums allow you to look up the IP address of a poster by looking at the source of the page, just adding one extra step.

I contribute to several such forums.

[John T Smith]

Adobe is going to (has already, to a great extent) make decisions
about these forums based on what works best for Adobe... which is
not always going to please everyone who uses the forums

I don't know if the low number of people posting here means most
don't care, or some other reason

But, for all those who have stated they are going to leave once
the forum software is changed, here are a couple products for
anyone who wants to rent server space and build their own forum

http://www.phpbb.com/ for an open source (free) forum product or
look at SMF at http://www.simplemachines.org (also free) - I have
not used either, only noted from previous Dreamweaver discussions

I read several Adobe forums for information... sometimes I ask a
question, other times I answer when I know something... the look
of the forum is not the MAIN thing, the information is

[Guest]

>other times I answer when I know something...

you're being modest john. you answer a LOT of questions...

[D__McCahill]

> I don't know if the low number of people posting here means most
don't care, or some other reason

Well, there is the link on every page, but it is pretty easy to miss up there at the top. If they really wanted to get more people in here, they should bump the type size up a bit, and color it differently.

I think many of the users of this forum got here from the About the Forums one ... I know I did. I only saw those little links after I found this place.

[Kath-H]

Agreed. Given that people miss massive warnings about 'DO NOT POST ABOUT XXX IN HERE' and 'DO NOT DUMP CODE INTO THE FORUM, YOU'LL BREAK IT' they would need a lot more help to find their way here.

[Andrew Yoole]

I'd suggest that the vast majority of Adobe Forum users, much like car owners, don't really care too much about the nuances of the engine driving it. So long as it gets them to their destination, the Forum has done its job. Sure, a few enthusiasts will take the time to kick the tires and check the engine-timing, but the majority of users don't want that kind of involvement - they just want to find an answer quickly and easily, so they can get on with their real work.

[Ramón_G_Castañeda]

Car owners don't really care too much about the nuances of the engine driving it?

Silliest thing I've read in many moons

[Andrew Yoole]

Disregarding your opinion of my analogy, I'm sure you understand my point.

The fact that this Forum attracted 210,000 contributors these past 4 months, and maybe 40 or 50 have commented in this "New Forum" section (many of whom are Forum Hosts or other recognized contributors) implies very clearly that a vast number of Forum users are not concerned enough, or informed enough, about the change to have commented.

[Guest]

You nailed it Andrew!

This section is just for the recognised blow-hards to let off steam. This will, with luck, minimise the inevitable outcry when the change takes place. B)

And, as an engineer, I can reassure you that your analogy was perfectly in order. Most of the people using the machinery that I was responsible for drivers, pilots, whatever knew and cared little about how it worked.