Rant Re:Good topic names

[Knute]

Ok, recently, I was warned about expressing frusteration over a certain application that I was having problems with.

My frusteration is/was only enhanced by doing a search and ending up with a 15 or 16 page "Support Forum" where the answers aren't clear, and 10 or 12 different things are being discussed at the same time.

WTF!?! I thought that the whole reason for the rule of having a good subject name was so that answers would be easy to find.
With thes monolithic "Support Forum" posts, nothing is easy to find!

Please Moderators, put a stop to these fiasco's of posts, because if the topic is big enough to require a forum, then either it deserves it's own section, or the dev's of that application need to set up their own Forum and not get pissed when a question is asked that is in the tangle of christmas lights that they want to call a "forum".

Just thought that I would point that out, because, I refuse to search thru 16 pages of general chatter about god knows what to find an answer that should, by rights, be in it's own topic.
_________________
Knute
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The human race has one really effective weapon, and that is laughter.
-- Mark Twain

If you want proof of that, take a look at windows sometime.

[NeddySeagoon]

Knute,

google works well on the forums if you know what you are searching for.
Add site:forums.gentoo.org to your query to search only the gentoo forums.

In response to your original question, a topic over 1 page is too long, with a few exceptions, e.g. the grub sticky, which is about 300 pages now.
New users post there for specific help - they often don't know enough to generalise the solutions already posted to their own example of the issue. There are a few others like that.
_________________
Regards,

NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.

[mark_alec]

Moved from Gentoo User Representatives to Gentoo Forums Feedback.

I agree that large topics are not ideal, but I am not aware of any solutions.
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www.gentoo.org.au || #gentoo-au

[Knute]

Sorry I put it in the wrong place.

Other boards that I've been on delete posts with such titles as, "Help me", or "newbie here!"

Since it is already in the rules regarding properly titled topics, if a section is needed due to something gentoo specific, (and a project or two comes to mind), I'm curious how hard it is to set up such a section, so that when the questions regarding such projects come up, they can be more easily resolved, rather than have long rambling posts that are just overwhelming to go thru to find a question about "I get error such and such" 300 posts later, you are still no closer to even finding what you want.

I thought that the reson for forums such as this, and rules regarding topics was so that solutions to faq's could be found readily rather than to have someone on page 27 ask a question that was already answered on page 8, and then everybody getting ticked because they didn't wade thru all the other issues.

One solution would be to simply discourage such topics as they don't conform to the rules of the board.

"Official Support Forum" Uhhhh.... Nope, not good topic.... Doesn't tell what the issue they are having is.
If they wanted to set up a specific section for their gentoo specific topic, then why not just im the mods and ask for a section?

I mean, is there some problem with doing that here?

[edit] Also, for people just wanting to try out some of these programs.... enlightenment was one, paludis is another. Paludis is Gentoo specific, so if the forum that is set up is so user-unfriendly (that is a compliment by the way) that it will reflect very poorly on Gentoo itself.

Hey, if that's what you're going for.... [/edit]
_________________
Knute
----------
The human race has one really effective weapon, and that is laughter.
-- Mark Twain

If you want proof of that, take a look at windows sometime.

[NeddySeagoon]

Knute,

There is a blurred boundary between editorial and censorship. We rarely edit or delete posts here. Even spam posts are only moved to the dustbin forum.

A lot of users coming to the gentoo forums for help only know "it didn't work".
They have no idea how to ask smart questions so helpers have to ask for the information they want. Hopefully, they learn some of that skill in the course of fixing their problems. That elongates threads.

There is always an argument for finer and finer division of topics but where do you stop ?
The more divisions you have, the harder it becomes to post in the right division and the more moderator time is spent moving things around.
Moving whole threads is fairly painless - context is preserved.
Move a few posts to another thread usually makes a mess. Look at the grub sticky to see examples of that. Often, context is left behind because moved posts refer to posts left behind. Then, posts in the target are displayed in date order, so posts moved into the thread are interleaved with posts already there. That makes for very difficult reading.

You need a response from an admin about how easy it is to set up another forum/subforum. Its not something moderators can do.
However, when you add a new division to the forums, as what do you do with all the historical posts that suddenly belong to it are are now in the wrong place?

This post provides more points to ponder than answers to your original question.
_________________
Regards,

NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.

[Knute]

Thank you for that explaination.

And even if I didn't get answers, at least I got people thinkin!
_________________
Knute
----------
The human race has one really effective weapon, and that is laughter.
-- Mark Twain

If you want proof of that, take a look at windows sometime.