put effort into thread subject

[Brandon Martus]

I've been looking at the Technical forum, and I (and a few other people) noticed that there are alot of threads with the same subject... or very vauge subjects:

"NEED HELP" or "HEEELLLLLP" or "help" or "PBASIC" or "gears" or "belts"...

I'd like to request that people put a little more effort into the subject of their threads, to make browsing the forums a little easier.

so --

'belts' == BAD
'would brecoflex belts be allowed?' == GOOD



Thanks.

[Ken Leung]

PLEASE!!!!!!!!!! PLEASE!!!!!!!!!!!! PLEASE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Spend more than 2 second when you write down the subject for a post you are going to post. If not do it for this forum, do it for me! You will not believe how many posts are titled with, "AAAAAAHHHHHH!!!!!! I NEED HELP!!!!" or "big black motor".

It is really confusing when people are flipping through the pages of threads, and find out there are 20 similar titled threads for one topic. Chances are, they will just forget it and stop paying attention to this forum, which I suspect happened to a lot of people.

So, as Brandon said, but a little more effort into the subject, and avoid using, "HEEEEELLLLPPP NOW!" or similar words. Post your question, try to put that question into the subject, and I will personally make sure your question get answered, or at least get viewed.

Oh yeah... it would help me out a lot if you put more effort into the subject, because it will make my life easier when I am summerizing all those threads into a couple of posts. Trust me, it's worth the little effort.

[Joe Johnson]

The forum is getting very busy.

This has more to do with the number of teams than anything else, but it means more work for us who actually try to keep our arms around this thing.

I am suggesting that folks take the 2 seconds to RATE threads.

After enough folks are rating threads, I may actually push Brandon to make the searching by rating feature more user friendly ;-)

Getting a core group of folks rating the importance & usefulness of threads could keep this place from becoming a virtual wasteland.

Joe J.

[Mike Soukup]

Well said Joe, I gave this thread 5 stars

Suggestion: can you include the rating in the 'subscribed new' view?

The high post count is scaring many people away, and it would be much easier to skim through 500 new posts if they were rated. Adding new forums of narrow focus would also help. That way people wouldn't have to search through topics they don't aren't interested in.

Mike

[AdamT]

Here here!

[Brandon Martus]

Originally posted by Mike Soukup
Well said Joe, I gave this thread 5 stars
Suggestion: can you include the rating in the 'subscribed new' view?

Mike

I'll see if i can put the thread rating in the searches [ all new / subscribed new ]


EDIT: added rating stars to those pages.

[Brandon Martus]

Originally posted by Joe Johnson
I am suggesting that folks take the 2 seconds to RATE threads.

Definetly -- this will help alot...

vBulletin made it 10 times easier to rate threads by putting the 'rate this thread' pull-down on the Reply screen.

So hopefully people can try to make it a habit to rate a thread when replying..

[Elgin Clock]

Ok here goes my constructive criticism for the month!


The rating column has got to go!!! It makes the thread subject line squashed on the view all new page!

I noticed it for the first time today and then read this thread, and I totallly disagree on the rating of the forums!!!!

[Anton Abaya]

I know it's more work, but someone should take the time to link popular threads, especially in the technical forum. So all the information about the "big black motor" or what not can be accessed immediately -- and need not be asked again.

Typical questions about gears/gear ratios, motor specifications, pneumatics, pbasic, etc. Let's bookmark these threads somewhere as "quick links."

-anton

[Brandon Martus]

Originally posted by Elgin Clock
The rating column has got to go!!! It makes the thread subject line squashed on the view all new page!

I'll make this a user-configurable option...
I didn't even think about smaller resolutions
(im running at 1152x864 on my 19")

Brandon

[Ken Leung]

Originally posted by Anton Abaya
I know it's more work, but someone should take the time to link popular threads, especially in the technical forum. So all the information about the "big black motor" or what not can be accessed immediately -- and need not be asked again.

Typical questions about gears/gear ratios, motor specifications, pneumatics, pbasic, etc. Let's bookmark these threads somewhere as "quick links."

-anton

I know I've been saying this for ever, but this is exactly the reason why I started the newsletter.

If you look in the "Bulletins and Newsletters" forum under "Featured announcement & Forum help", I already started posting me "Motors and drive train edition" of Fresh from the forum newsletter.

In fact, if you look in there right now, you can see two sections posted in that thread, FIRST 2002 Motors and in depth discussions of motors. You can see that I have all the links related to the big black motor (or the chiaphua motor) and included all the related info from the Technical forum.

That thread will keep growing until I am done, but it is taking much longer than I expected... As I have to flip through 10 pages of threads during the past week. I almost have it though. Expect something in your e-mail tonight or tomorrow.

[Brandon Martus]

Originally posted by Elgin Clock
The rating column has got to go!!! It makes the thread subject line squashed on the view all new page!

You'll notice the option to turn on/off the thread rating column is in your 'Edit Options' page of your control panel.

It doesn't do anything yet, however.
I didn't get to that last night. I will do that tonight hopefully.

[Brandon Martus]

Originally posted by Brandon Martus
I didn't get to that last night. I will do that tonight hopefully.

It works now. Let me know if there are any problems with it.