I don't understand how the forums in Spanish are organized

[Claudio_González1]

1. First problem.

If I go to this page

http://adobeforums.adobe.com/index.jspa

scroll down to the "Foros internacionales" button (that's what I see although most of the rest of the page is in English), click on it and then on the "España" button, I'm taken here

http://adobeforums.adobe.com/community/international_forums/espanol

where the first item in the list is two weeks old. There is however a TOP PARTICIPANTS box, at present with two names, one of them mine. And if I open the profile of either, I find a list of fairly recent messages, including some of today. And if I click on the title of one of these messages, I'm taken (for example) here:

http://adobeforums.adobe.com/message/1616675#1616675

and the route is shown as:

> Adobe Forums > International Forums > Foros de usuario a usuario > Spain General Discussion > Discussions

But the route i get if I open any of the messages in the window with only old messages is

> Adobe Forums > International Forums > Foros de usuario a usuario > Discussions

one missing step, perhaps explaining the different result.

2. Second problem.

In none of the two routes I get a list of subforums such as Acrobat, InDesign,..., or even grouped in arbitrary categories as in the existing forums. My impression is that categories got simply lost in the process.

Anyone?

[John_Cornicello_Photo]

The non-English Forums (except for Japan) will be collapsed into one overall forum in the new system. All of the old content should be there, though.

The test forums are a snapshot of these forums as of about 2 weeks ago. You shouldn't find any imported data there less than two weeks old. But you will see any message that were posted in the new forums since Monday.

In the test system you and Xacir are listed as the top users because you two are the only people who have posted messages there since Monday (when the test forum launched).

But I do see an issue. The Adobe and Macromedia Spanish Forums look like they have not been combined during the import. If you go to http://adobeforums.adobe.com/community/international_forums/espanol you will see a "General Discussions" sub forum listed in the right side column under Soporte. This shouldn't be there. There should only be one level.

I'll get that changed in the importer.

Thanks!

John

[Claudio_González1]

Thanks for responding, John.

> The non-English Forums (except for Japan) will be collapsed into one overall forum in the new system. All of the old content should be there, though.

Do you mean -for example- that we will get just one "espanol" forum, with messages from all ex-Adobe and all ex-MM applications all mixed up and sorted just by date? No subforums of any kind? I hope not, that would be a real mess!

[John_Cornicello_Photo]

Yes.

[Claudio_González1]

John, you cannot be serious. At least, I hope not. Here you have some thread titles taken from the forums in English:

>Error when opening legitimate documents "Insufficient data for an image"

>Color management question on having separate profiles in one document

>Can't open file due to unexpected file format

Although these are very clear titles within each forum, how could anyone know with which program each one is associated if they were all in the same bag?

[Ramón_G_Castañeda]

Yikes! 8|

¡Buenas noches, foros en castellano! (Good night, Spanish forums!) :(

[Jacob Bugge]

John, I hope you were joking/agreeing to the last sentence in post #2, rather than answering the questions.

Otherwise what Claudio and Ramon said, I am afraid.

[Claudio_González1]

> ¡Buenas noches, foros en castellano! (Good night, Spanish forums!)

And bon nuit, forums en français, etc.

John, I didn't think in the possibility mentioned by Jacob. Now that I have read it, I sincerely hope that you were agreeing with me in that such a mixture would be such a mess as to make the forums absolutely unusable. Please confirm, if you can, that the localized forums will have subforums of some kind.

Otherwise, I think it would be a complete waste to spend any more money and effort in maintaining forums that will serve no useful purpose at all.

[Dorothy_Krause]

I don't know how it will shake out in the end, but with the nature of the software being able to create nested subforums, I would guess that it would be reasonable to keep one general forum for each language under the languages umbrella, and add product forums within that as the need for each become apparent.

I haven't been in on discussions, but I have to imagine that there is agreement "up there" that the amount of traffic doesn't really warrant a full set of product forums. In the meantime, it would be fairly easy to ask people to add the product name to the subject line. Assuming there will be someone hosting in the Spanish forum, they could add that to sublines until people start catching on and doing it themselves.

In the meantime, I understand and appreciate that it's an important topic to you guys, but it necessarily has to be fairly far down John's priority list... so I'm mostly just offering a reasonable suggestion in how it can work out, even if it starts out as just one big room.

[Claudio_González1]

Dorothy, do you seriously see people giving their program, platform, and program and OS versions at the beginning of each question? Even if there were special fields for them?

Just take a look at all the questions with the equivalent of "My Adobe is broken" in their titles, and very little else in the body of the question...

Most people who post questions are desesperate because they have an urgent problem, and don't even pay attention to where they are posting their questions...

[PJonesCET]

In the Apple Mac Forms They have a setting to allow you to type the Machine your using and the system OS you are using. once filled out, when you post a message then its automatically added to end of your post. I believe you said Apple forums use a version of Jive software.

[Claudio_González1]

Pj, that wouldn't help too much in guessing with which program is each question associated... And although I haven't been to those forums, in any case I gather from your post that it's not compulsory to fill in that information.

[Claudio_González1]

Well, JC or whomever, this is not really an improvement. Now

http://adobeforums.adobe.com/community/international_forums/espanol

is taking me to what seems to be a copy of the ex MM forums from more that two weeks ago. All recent post are gone, as well as the Last Post column. And of course, as well as all the ex Adobe threads.

[Claudio_González1]

It would seem that things haven't stabilized yet. The lin in my previous message is now showing me as one of the top participants, and there is a link that takes me to this message of mine:

http://adobeforums.adobe.com/thread/336921

but I cannot find the forum where this message was posted.

[Claudio_González1]

Well, right now the message quoted above has disappeared from my profile in the top participants list. However, the above link still takes me to that message, but there are no traces of the forum in which I posted it. I assume that in a couple of minutes even the link will cease to work. :-(

[Claudio_González1]

Correction. In my message #12 above, I wrote "...from more that two weeks ago". Well, I should have written "...form more tha n one year ago".

[Ramón_G_Castañeda]

Claudio,

That's just the Preview area, a beta or demo, if you will. All of that will be deleted when the change over happens.

What you post here now is NOT reflected there and vice versa. Think of it as a convenient punching bag that will be completely discarded in a few weeks.

If you want your content to remain, post it here, not over there.

[Claudio_González1]

Ramón, you seem to be misunderstanding me. As you may not be the only one, please let me try to be more clear.

What I am complaining about is that the "España" part of the international forums has been changing for the worse. The last change transformed what there was to a one year old copy of the ex-MM forums, elimintating the ex-Adobe part, which naturally eliminated from the forum structure the threads that had been opened since this trial started.

Curiously, the threads themselves have not disappeared completely. Contrary with what I thought last night, the link in my message #13 above is still working. Problem is, I have not found any easy way to get to that thread...

I know that everything posted in the trial version will eventually disappear. I won't miss any of my messages, as I have been only testing how things work. However, I would expect things to be more or less consistent. And things to change foir the better, not for the worse.

And in any case, the idea of all ex-Adobe and all ex-MM forums mixed together in one single bag makes me shudder. Do you think messages will at least be ordered chronologically?

[Claudio_González1]

Things seem to be more complicated than I thought. All observations reported in my recent posts, including changes in the España forum, have been made in a Mac, where I remain logged all the time. Well, I have just moved to a Win-Vista machine I use occasionally, and in which I have to login every time, and the situation is quite different here. And yes, I have just checked and nothing has changed in what I see in my Mac since my previous message.

First thing, the España forum here (Win)is now a fusion of the ex-Adobe and ex-Macromedia forums, with no subforums, and includes the new threads I miss in my Mac. The Last Post column is visible, and there are several more options in the Actions box.

However, both views (Mac and Win) share something in common: I find no way to add a new message in "my" thread, although they have no indication of having made read only. Ah, and threads are in chronological order :-)

Go figure...

[Claudio_González1]

Addition: the "closed thread" feature afects the whole España forum, but not a couple of other forums I have been to.

[Claudio_González1]

>In the meantime, I understand and appreciate that it's an important topic to you guys, but it necessarily has to be fairly far down John's priority list...

Fortunately, although John may not have time to come back here, he does manage to worry about things that may be low in his priority list:

http://adobeforums.adobe.com/thread/336863?tstart=0

(message 10 onwards).

[Dorothy_Krause]

Yep, I've been following that, tho not commenting. Hopefully the vital stuff is relatively sorted by now and he gets to start tweaking details... using everybody's eyes and experience.

The post numbers are hotlinked also, so you can right click and copy that. http://adobeforums.adobe.com/message/1617341#1617341 (no idea, yet, why they repeat the number. I'll ask eventually.)

[Claudio_González1]

Thanks for the tip, Dorothy, although I won't try to understand why they drop the thread number and repeat what seems to be the message number...

[Dorothy_Krause]

>I won't try to understand why they drop the thread number and repeat what seems to be the message number...

There is a method to the madness, I'm sure. 😄 I don't even wanna know for now... too much else to figure out.