Archived Forum

I think you need help with that in the form of a voting or refereeing system. If a post is thought "useful" or "good", then (and maybe with a bias according to the reputation of the voter or referee) it is promoted into the "elite" list?

(And possibly, if it subsequently loses topicality or otherwise ceases to be important, it gets demoted back to the ranks.)

We, the moderators, also need a way of moving off-topic posts into a more appropriate thread. We can start a new thread by copying the text and attributing the post to the original contributor, but any subsequent posts in the old thread cannot be dealt with in the same way. The ability to do that would help in keeping threads clean and on-topic; and that in turn should help in making good information findable.
(Bill Thomson might want to come in here.)

In terms of forum categories, I get the impression that they are largely, though not completely, irrelevant because there is so much crossover. A start might be to add a forum for each shop product, but as many posts (problems?) cover many areas (emonTx, emonPi, emonCMS) and it might not be clear to the original contributor where to post, I'm not at all convinced that is would be an improvement. What we don't want is multiple posting as that simply dilutes the knowledge and effort.

I've been pondering the questions posed in that other thread. My perception of the problem is that everything has evolved and, although once upon a time there was a clear structure, it seems to have become lost over time. What is needed is guidance, presumably from you and Glyn, about what belongs where; to be followed up with a spring clean of Building Blocks, GitHub and the Wiki. And that guidance needs to be published so that newcomers know where to start looking for what.

In concept, I think everything ought to the thrown away and a clean start made as if starting anew, but with the benefit of hindsight. In reality of course, the majority of the material will be salvageable. It probably means a lot of editing as some material is obsolete (and must be removed from the main stream into an 'obsolete' or 'deprecated' area to avoid confusing the newcomers), some is duplicated and needs to be merged, and undoubtedly gaps will become apparent that need to be filled.

If contributions from a wider circle are acceptable, there also needs to be a "to do" list that highlights the topics that need or have been volunteered for attention, and that must be accompanied by a "work in progress' list to encourage collaboration and prevent duplication of effort.

In the "Useful Stuff gets buried - what can be done about it?" thread Ian suggested a FAQ's while this may not work in an article form due to the need to constantly maintain as needs evolve in and out of popularity, relevance etc a FAQ's forum thread could well be worth a try, if users where encouraged to +1 a helpful FAQ the list would be almost self manage with the more popular entries at the top and the lesser ones fading into the depths of the forum. FAQ's can always be bumped to the top to overrule the natural order and there is always stickies for permanent FAQ's too. 

Paul

I have a personal FAQs file but that evolves naturally, because I write a BB article to cover the topic and that Q ceases to be A F.

But how many questions are "asked" and then answered by users finding their own solutions by trawling the site? I get the impression a lot of the data is usually out there just not easy to locate or differentiate from outdated, irrelevant or inaccurate info, therefore the posts asking questions could actually reflect how buried the info is or the absence of info not how frequently it's asked or how much time users spend looking for answers before asking.

In fact the FAQ's should probably be based on "frequently needed answers to questions rarely posted"

Your system works well given the present lay of the land and I'm not knocking the fine work you do or even suggesting that part should change as it serves to expand the documentation well, but just trying to help improve user experience, as even as much as I frequent the site(s) I still struggle to find stuff.

I would say 1 in 10 times I look for something I can find it via a logical path, most of the time I end up going from page to page to page or try and recall the last time it was mentioned in a post or by who, all that trawling by several users slows the site down and in turn makes the trawling slower. I find using google to search far more efficient as it is quicker can be filtered and includes emoncms.org and all the github repos too.

Paul

What is needed is guidance, presumably from you and Glyn

Agreed. A Ship, plane, car, what-have-you, needs to be "steered" in the right direction. OEM is no different.

My perception of the problem is that everything has evolved and, although once upon a time there was a clear structure, it seems to have become lost over time.

Indeed. OEM seems to have "outgrown" its current support forum. The "project" that started life as an outgrowth of a Physics degree, has become a global product and service. What's needed is something that has the capability to address most, if not all, of the issues with the current forum. I.e. a different forum package.

In concept, I think everything ought to the thrown away and a clean start made as if starting anew, but with the benefit of hindsight. In reality of course, the majority of the material will be salvageable.

Yes! A good point. Replace the current software with forum software designed to handle things like peer rating, post/sticky/thread maintenance, categories/topics, user/forum permissions, moderator roles, spam to name a few, but retain the current content, where appropriate.

Some of the companies running phpBB forums include Oracle, Mozilla, APOD (Astronomy Picture of the Day), Apache Friends (XAMPP Server) and VideoLAN (VLC Media Player)

It would seem, that a Forum package written in php, would be a natural for a company that produces a php based product i.e. emoncms. phpBB is highly customizable, free, and with the addition of ZBBlock (a free php add-on script) virtually spam proof.

In all honesty, I have to say I'm biased, as I have webmastered a phpBB based forum since 2008.
www.aluminumalloyboats.com

Here are the links to the company forums listed above:

https://forums.virtualbox.org/

https://forums.addons.mozilla.org/

http://bb.nightskylive.net/asterisk/index.php

http://www.apachefriends.org/f/

http://forum.videolan.org/

But how many questions are "asked" and then answered by users finding their own solutions by trawling the site?

Sounds like a "self-help troubleshooting," and/or perhaps a "most common issues" section might be a good idea.

In fact the FAQ's should probably be based on "frequently needed answers to questions rarely posted"

Good one, Paul!

As the OEM project deals with subject matter that to lot of folks is nothing short of "black magic," one thing that might be helpful would be to tell a prospective buyer/builder/user of OEM, that some background in, or at least familiarity with, Linux, Arduino, soldering, etc will be valuable if/when issues arise.

Really appreciate the input, thankyou.

Thankyou Bill for the input on the forum software, Im not sure that switching forum software entirely at this stage would be a good idea, I think it would cause a big division and make a lot of things even harder to find as it would then be hidden away in an archived forum, if we need more software features it would be worth checking if upgrading drupal to 7 would bring improved functionality or really spending some time on customising drupal to fit our needs.

I see your forum aluminum boats has a lot more forum categories, although it looks like most of the posts are focused in 3 or 4 of them. Is it just the nature of forums that a lot of content becomes hard to find? Whats your experience with aluminumboats?

We did actually start with phpBB but then switched to drupal so that seperate login's where not needed, http://openenergymonitor.blogspot.co.uk/2011/04/should-we-change-too-dru... from the days blog posts where short ;)

"most of the time I end up going from page to page to page or try and recall the last time it was mentioned in a post or by who"

As an initial exercise before trying to implement software changes perhaps it would make sense to try and manually categories forum posts on a simple drupal page. To collect examples of similar questions / topics and then see how that could evolve into an FAQ. I can make a start to see what that would look like.

I think any kind of organisation, categorisation, conversion of forum content is going to be a lot of work to do well and Im under no illusion about this, as I mentioned before I dont think there's an easy/quick fix, but if we can find achievable steps then I think its worth trying.

I suppose it's a bit scary 'throwing out' what we have accumulated - a bit like 'throwing out the baby with the bath water', but the project has moved on so far that much of the stuff is now redundant and often detrimental and confusing for users seeking help.

As Bill points out, oem has outgrown the current Drupal forum software, and a more up to date platform could make a big difference. I'm sure that a new forum would become very quickly populated - and with current material. PhpBB get's my vote too.

Some kind of pre-post check list could be helpful, which users should refer to before posting, and contain such things as;

• How to look for error messages in the various logs, how to check browser developer tools for errors, ect.
• What basic information to include in the forum post - self hosted/emoncms.org, version, operating system, hardware, log/browser errors.
• Has github 'issues' been checked to see if it's a bug already reported 

Many other things could be included, and should posts not meet that minimum posting standard it would be easy for moderators to signpost posters to it, before time is spent trying to guess what is actually being asked.

Paul

+1 for the pre-post check list - I think that would be valuable to help with troubleshooting - as a new user, I would have appreciated such guidance, as it might have helped me to identify key information and allowed me to solve my own problems, or, I would have felt more confident I was providing sufficient information to others that they would be able to help me.

I understand the concern about the work involved in moving to a new forum product, and can see why trying a re-vamp of the current software would be easier, and so I would also vote to separate development from support / troubleshooting, so that us newbies know where to go for help, and won't be put off by the clever people doing the complex stuff.

I see your forum aluminum boats has a lot more forum categories, although it looks like most of the posts are focused in 3 or 4 of them. Is it just the nature of forums that a lot of content becomes hard to find? Whats your experience with aluminumboats?

The forum activity on AluminumAlloyBoats is a direct indicator of what's popular. Plate aluminum boat owners are an odd lot. They like things easy, they don't like a lot of change, and when something gets changed, stops working, is something don't like, etc. they're not shy when it comes to saying something about it. One thing we've never heard them complain about is difficulty finding any info they're after. Once we got the forum the way we wanted it, and the way the users liked it, we stopped making changes - at least big ones. It has more of less run itself for 6 of the 7 years I've been associated with it. The only real problem we've ever had was spam. Once we started using a php script called ZBBlock, the spam dropped to zero.

Im not sure that switching forum software entirely at this stage would be a good idea, I think it would cause a big division and make a lot of things even harder to find as it would then be hidden away in an archived forum

That would only be the case if the current forum is kept available. If, as Robert suggests, things were started afresh, it sounds as if quite a bit of outdated/obsolete info would be purged i.e. not transferred to a new forum.

A new forum doesn't have to be phpBB. It could be vBulletin, Simple Machines, or any of the available forum packages.