What About Moderators in the New Forum?

[John T Smith]

Read the spam thread for awhile and you will see that moderation works well in these webx forums

You will also see messages concerning the LACK of moderation over in the cfusion side of things

Will the new forum software/structure allow for "this" moderation to continue, or will it fall away to "that" style of non-moderation?

[~graffiti]

Don't avatars have a tendency to slow down load times?

[Guest]

depends where/how they're served, but they certainly can't HELP load times...

[Bill12]

The load time is bad enough on DSL, particularly with the state of the forums that John is trying to fix (we hope). I can only imaging if I was still on my 56k modem (and a few still are!).

[D__McCahill]

> Virtually ALL of us have stated, more than clearly, that we do NOT want to see Avatars and self-promoting "Signatures" of ANY sort and at ANY time.

And you thought this was a vote?

:)

[Günter_Schenk]

--------
Virtually ALL of us have stated, more than clearly, that we do NOT want to see Avatars and self-promoting "Signatures" of ANY sort and at ANY time.
--------

FWIW, "ALL of us have stated..." is the opinion of several folks in here and certainly can´t reflect the potential opinion of the whole user community.

Cheers,
Günter Schenk

[David_Powers]

> "Hosts" are always welcome and welcoming: the title conjures-up a pleasant association of ideas.

That's not the impression I get from the disparaging comments about Community Experts in this thread. For the benefit of our "welcoming hosts", permit me to explain a little about the Community Expert programme.

"Adobe Community Expert" is a title accorded to individuals who have demonstrated a particular expertise with one or more Adobe products. The title is awarded by Adobe, and is by no means based purely on the number of times an individual has posted in a forum (although forum participation is taken into consideration). A Community Expert has to be personally approved by the development team for the program he or she represents. A Community Expert's status is reviewed annually, and renewal is by no means automatic.

So, what sort of people are Community Experts?

One of the Community Experts for Illustrator is Mordy Golding, who was Adobe product manager for Illustrator 10 and CS. Another Community Expert (for ColdFusion) is Sean Corfield, formerly Director of Architecture at Macromedia. Others include Joseph Lowery, author of numerous books on Dreamweaver; Chris Georgenes, a highly talented Flash animator and author; and Rich Tretola, who among other things edits the Adobe/O'Reilly InsideRIA website. As for myself, I am the author of six books on PHP and Dreamweaver, and have been deeply involved in the beta testing of Dreamweaver for the past three versions.

Whatever you might think of the title "Adobe Community Expert", please remember we didn't choose it; Adobe chose it for us. But rest assured, we most certainly are not like something you "might find in a Town Hall: bureaucratic, bossy, hide-bound and bloody-minded!" All the Community Experts I have met at Community Summits in San Jose in the past couple of years are extremely knowledgeable, passionate about their field of expertise, and very willing to share that knowledge.

Now, where's that pleasant welcome that "hosts" are meant to be so renowned for? ;-)

[PJonesCET]

who wants moving avatars?? I don't.

[PJonesCET]

Okay now see how Little room an avatar can take up and the way setup takes up zero space on the server and if it was inserted beside the screen name would take up some what less also. they could have a set up where they use a picture you upload but crop it to specified size. the cropping would be adjustable for the person uploading the Avatar.

[_Phos_four_dots_]

You're not helping your case, Phil.

If we don't have a user control panel preference to turn that junk off, I'll be AdBlocking every damned one of them.

😐 😐 😐 😐 :|
(Do you see me smiling? Yeah...didn't think so.)

[Stan Jones]

> "Adobe Community Expert" is a title accorded to individuals who have demonstrated a particular expertise with one or more Adobe products.

David thanks for that reminder; which has been posted in these forum topics recently.

I want "Adobe Community Expert" to be there. It is a meaningful and official designation. I also want Adobe employees that are in the forum officially to be designated. (There is usually a title - such as John's "Adobe Forums Administrator" or many are descriptive of the Adobe program team they work on.)

I don't really care how many posts someone has made, beyond paying attention to someone who is new. I react negatively to titles that confer an expectation of expertise solely based on number of posts.

I have been most intrigued by a coding for whether a question has been answered (obviously won't work for some threads, but for many), and a count of how many answers a poster has to their credit would be interesting.

[PJonesCET]

On graffiti, questions don't avatars slow down loading. Depends on the size of the avatar the one above I put in my post, is saved in jpg format is less than 22k. If the same image was save in gif or png it would be even less. Now if it was animated it would be much smaller.

[PJonesCET]

On graffiti, questions don't avatars slow down loading. Depends on the size of the avatar the one above I put in my post, is saved in jpg format is less than 22k. If the same image was save in gif or png it would be even less. Now if it was animated it would be much smaller.

[PJonesCET]

Don't know how I manged duplicated messages above. must've been a hiccup in the system

[Ann_Shelbourne1]

The things that Stanley Jones mentions ("Adobe Community Expert" labels, coding for whether a question has been answered, a count of how many answers a poster has to their credit) have never been part of the Adobe Forums.

They have only been part of the formerly Macromedia Forums and seem to be viewed with anathema by virtually everyone who uses the Adobe Forums

The space and time that are wasted by these pointless "attributes" are the principal reason why I avoid visits to the MM Forums.

[_Phos_four_dots_]

DAMMIT PHIL!

You shouldn't have posted either of your messages #85 & 86.

The claims you make are COMPLETELY illinformed, on almost all counts.

You have bigger problems than the occasional typo or grammatical errors, and that is not knowing what the heck you're talking about half the time in here.

>:(

[David_Powers]

Surely what's important about a forum is the quality of the discussion and the help that's given there. Most of what I see here is people obsessing about minor details. The world is not going to end because Community Experts are identified or an individual's number of posts is displayed.

[Ann_Shelbourne1]

These are NOT minor details.

The junk that clutters the Macromedia side of the Forums (the very stuff that you are now proposing to add to the new Forums!) is what inhibits their usefulness.

That MM dung-heap is exactly what almost everyone who has contributed to this discussion from the Adobe Forums would like to avoid having dumped upon US.

It is probably the prime reason why so few of us from the Adobe Forums ever contribute to the MM ones and I, for one, find their turgid design and lack of functionality to be intolerable and downright unusable.

[Stan Jones]

> what's important about a forum is the quality of the discussion and the help that's given there.

I completely agree. Content, content, content.

Some things are essentials: can I read and post? Do the forums load fast enough to make my time efficient.

Some things are worth debating, but will not truly effect the main tasks of the forums.

But the current regulars will rest a bit easier if we know how we will (or for that matter will not) have input through providing feedback on a test site.

[Guest]

>I completely agree. Content, content, content.

content is useless unless it's fast enough to keep the regulars - or at least someone who knows the programs - engaged. if it's slow, or cumbersome, or difficult to use, or frustrating, adobe will want to be looking to increase it's paid support personnel budget because the free support that IS the adobeforums will largely dry up.

[Guest]

"That MM dung-heap is exactly what almost everyone who has contributed to this discussion from the Adobe Forums would like to avoid having dumped upon US."

And the very reason why the majority of regular posters to the MM forums use/d NNTP - not the web interface.

Have you tried NNTP for reading posts? I'm sure if you did, you'd probably agree that the web forums (be it MM or Adobe) are very slow and cumbersome.

I'm a Mentor over at Sitepoint where they use a web interface - including all the smilies and avatars mentioned during this thread.

However, I don't have any problems participating via the web at SP because there is no lag whatsoever in calling up posts or in answering them. This is not true of the Adobe Forums.

So why can't the Adobe forums (with many more resources than SP) be created to work in the same way.

I am sure there will be a handful of regular posters who will no longer participate in the new forums if NNTP is not available - and the web forum speed is no better than it is now.

[Guest]

I think for people who use several forums (I use 8 regularly) speed in moving around is essential.

So is a wide overview on a single screen-full.

I have had to use Macromedia-type forums in the past and and was immediately aware of their deficiencies as explained by other posters here and elsewhere.

And I don't want to take a daring leap into the past by using a news reader. I was glad to see the back of them when I left Compuserve!

[Kath-H]

>And I don't want to take a daring leap into the past by using a news reader.

No point in any case as it seems they won't be supported.

[Ramón G Castañeda]

Nadia and others,

Speaking for myself, yes, I've tried the newsreader route, specifically during the ill-fated attempted changeover last time, and I hated it.

The web interface of the adobeforums.com forums suits me much better. The former Macromedia forums are utterly irrelevant to me. I don't use or care for any of their products.

I did and still use Fontographer, which Macromedia bought from Aldus, then sold it again to a third party without ever having made a single improvement, contribution, enhancement or even the slightest update.

No doubt for those reasons alone I'm predisposed against anything that has to do with Macromedia.

As for the "Community Expert" label, it must also have been a Macromedia thing. I've never seen such an animal in any of the genuinely Adobe forums (adobeforums.com) and that confounded term had never appeared on the scene before the Macromedia merger.

Therefore, it's particularly galling to see people calling themselves Adobe Community Experts when they clearly have next to zero expertise on genuine Adobe products. Perhaps they should be called CEFMPBA, "Community Expert on Former Macromedia Products Bought by Adobe". I view them as intruders, not experts, retroactively legitimized trespassers, if you will.

[David_Powers]

> it's particularly galling to see people calling themselves Adobe Community Experts when they clearly have next to zero expertise on genuine Adobe products

Perhaps you would like to tell David Blatner, the editor of InDesign Magazine and author of Real World InDesign, Real World Photoshop, and other books. He's an Adobe Community Expert, and I'm sure would be delighted with your description.

Now the truth is coming out. The concerns being expressed in this thread have very little to do with the performance of the new forums. It's a knee-jerk reaction to anything connected with the former Macromedia side of things.

As a "retroactively legitimized trespasser" (as you so charmingly put it), let me assure you that I consider the web interface of the former Macromedia forums to be an abomination. It is slow, and impossible to search. The majority of regular users will not mourn its passing; and the decision to introduce "features" such as avatars and number of posts comes entirely from Adobe. It is not being done at the request of users of former MM products. All we require is a fast, easy-to-use system.

As for identifying Adobe Community Experts in the forums, I believe it will help newcomers to recognize that an answer is coming from someone Adobe trusts, even if some of you here don't. However, there is one point on which I agree it would be inappropriate. I'm a Community Expert for Dreamweaver, a program I know inside out. I'm also a user of Photoshop and InDesign, but consider my skills in those programs to be intermediate at best. I would not want an "expert" label automatically alongside my name when posting in a forum outside my own field of expertise.

[Guest]

> I would not want an "expert" label automatically alongside my name when posting in a forum outside my own field of expertise.

Good point! Might not be so simple to implement.

Forum members soon learn whose advice they can trust. Also some drive-by posters give brilliant advice without the need for a tag. And bad advice is soon jumped on by those who do know what they are talking about!

Titles are a form of elitism which the Photoshop forums seem to manage without.