Memorizing important forum topics

[jkerr82508]

I think a safeguard against doing it in a foolish way is to draft guidelines and submit them to the council.

The council got involved in the edit issue because there was an obvious dispute. (One of the council's functions is dispute resolution.)

I don't see a dispute here, just an open discussion about alternatives. It would be unfair to the forum admins/mods to assume that they will not be able to arrive at a resolution that is acceptable to most users and manageable by the mods.

The council should not have to become involved in the nitty-gritty of every decision that has to be made.

Jim

[juergen_harms]

Jim wrote:
The council should not have to become involved in the nitty-gritty of every decision that has to be made.

Yes. But the present situation looks to me very much like the forum-edit problem: I understand the message from the forum admin as "unless you do it my way nothing will happen". Is that discussing alternatives? - I see it as a diretissma towards obvious conflicts. My guidelines-suggestion tries to live with the admin-imposed solution, but to make it consider solid facts (maybe the council does not need to be involved).

Thanks for bringing this back to discussing alternatives.

HermesLaws wrote:
So till the wiki is ready, a "simple" How-to / Tips and Tricks / Rookie Guide, Forum Post would be enough but it cant beat a wiki

That is in a nutshell how I suggest to address the originally posted topic.

Most of your other arguments are input to a second discussion, that has started in this thread: "how archive our knowledge" - quoting again.

These 2 discussion are related - but I suggest strongly to handle them separately:
1. discuss alternatives for the "How-to / Tips and Tricks / Rookie Guide" in the forum context,
2. pursue the discussion on the more general context. A question to the forum admin: is this OT in this forum-section and should be moved to the "General discussions about Mageia" forum? or just keep the discussion going here?

Both can go along in parallel, but I do not see any reason for (1) to wait for (2) to become concluded: (1) is a light-weight solution and is urgently needed - some candidate posts are ready, creating a backlog should be avoided. In case the discussion (2) shows the need for optimisation, such a light-weight solution can certainly be adjusted.

One question with respect to (2): this is extremly tightly related to the future Mageia Wiki - are there discussions on that wiki elsewhere, is there need to bring things together?

[Max]

Max proposal seems very sensible and solves most of the problems though requiring someone to do the job.

We can create specific user profiles with extended rights to maintain those diggest topics. Creation of profiles and forums wouldn't require much time.

The remaining questions are : will there be volunteers ? and how many maintainers would this task require ? (with 1 onr 2 volunteers we could start it as a test)

I volunteer.
I'm not a Mageia maven, but I do know my way around phpBB forums, and I often find myself with lots of spare time where I just read forum posts.
The initial effort, running through all of the currently existing threads and retrieving important stuff, is quite high, but the everyday maintenance of the new forum will be much easier.
I'd suggest further, that at least for the beginning, anybody who comes across a likely looking post will PM the new forum managers (or whatever we'll call them) to help spread the effort around a little.

[viking60]

I think there are attempts here, to stand on the hands and crap in a 90 degree angel.
Just make a Tips and Hints forum!
Let everyone who feels qualified post there. How hard can it be?
Remove everything that starts with a question or clearly does not qualify as a tip (modest moderation IMHO). I see a tendency that every (good and bad) suggestion is postponed as in nothing will be done until ... someone....has decided.
Democracy is a fine thing but don't let it get in the way of action (we have politicians for that ). Just do it - and let democracy decide if it should stay or be improved.
I can detect a healthy impatience in Juergens post above and I agree. If the Tips and Hints forum turns out to be crap then it is no problem to remove it or ignore it.

There are a lot of good suggestions regarding BBCodes in another forum here too. Why not implement them? Why are we waiting and who are we waiting for? The codes have been posted (for many of them) so it is no big effort to do it. Also there is a long and good discussion and no implementation of any of the suggestions.
The discussion just died and nothing happened.
If the Tip forum does not get up and running now the same thing will happen here. In my experience waiting for perfection takes to much time (more than three days anyway ).

[doktor5000]

*push*
What about this? The need is already there, as one can see f.ex. for the multiple threads about flash-plugin & nspluginwrapper/npviewer.bin.

[doktor5000]

*rebump*

Seems viking60 was right. This is like the discussion about smilies, BBCodes, and some others.

The discussion just died and nothing happened

Is this the new way here? Just let the wishes of the users wait and rot?
(Until nobody has a wish because there are no users left then?)
Seriously, i' starting to get worried about this attitude.

[polonius]

I assume that it needs an administrator to create a new section or subforum. Looking in the the list "The team" I see 4 administrators being responsible for this forum (I think "forumadmin" is only the generic admin after setup?). Where are those 4 people? Why isn't at least one of them available (or inclined) to care for this? They can't be gone fishing for weeks all together?

[doktor5000]

Looking in the the list "The team" I see 4 administrators being responsible for this forum (I think "forumadmin" is only the generic admin after setup?). Where are those 4 people? Why isn't at least one of them available (or inclined) to care for this? They can't be gone fishing for weeks all together?

This is a good question, because in parallel they are also active in the forums.

[polonius]

This is a good question, because in parallel they are also active in the forums.

Oh, they are? I'm quite new here but I haven't seen much of them in those 2 weeks. As written misc and rda belong to the Mageia board (don't know how this is related to their job as forum administrator), but I don't know about the other two.

I would have expected more and faster response from a group of 4 admins. Other forums have one or 2 admins which are more visible and responsive than those 4 together.

[doktor5000]

Well, the forum admin says there is no need for another moderator. Maybe he answers to you, because to me he doesn't.
I know that first hand because like you i definitely see the need for another moderator, and so i applied as moderator,
because that's what i'm doing for mandrivauser.de for quite some time, with also ~9500 mostly support-type posts.
But he declined my application, because he sees no need.

[polonius]

Well, the forum admin says there is no need for another moderator. Maybe he answers to you, because to me he doesn't.
I know that first hand because like you i definitely see the need for another moderator, and so i applied as moderator,
because that's what i'm doing for mandrivauser.de for quite some time, with also ~9500 mostly support-type posts.
But he declined my application, because he sees no need.

Which of the 4 admins do you mean?
About moderators - there really seem to be lots of moderators.

- I see 4 Global moderators - in the forum I see Germ and Isadora quite often, the other 2 seem to be rather IGMs (Invisible Global Moderators)
- then I see a long list of moderators, don't know what all these are needed for, the large forums I know (>20K users) normally have 6 or 7 moderators. Is this forum so controversial that so many moderators are needed? From my 2 weeks residence here I did not have this impression.

My overall impression, gathered in 2 weeks and without knowing possible backgrounds for certain issues:

The people who are leading this forum do not seem to have much experience in forums (sorry if I am wrong with that, but the overall picture shows just this). Reasons in detail:

- 4 admins listed but none of them responsive in reasonable time span. Even if one or even two may be rather "technical only" administrators there should be more and faster response from the rest.
- 4 Global Moderators listed but only 2 of them active (why are the other 2 listed? is visibility in the forum no "must-have" for being a Global Moderator?). If they do not have the time to fill their position then find others who do have that time, I am sure there will be adequate replacements if you look close enough. This is also valid for the admins. People who do not have the time to do their job right, should pass the job to others who can do it.
- different moderator classes (causes confusion on user side about which moderator to address where and about what). Many moderators listed whose actual reason-to-be is not clear - what is their task?

But even if there was not much experience available in the beginning, the people in charge should have learned by now that there are weak spots / issues / mistakes made and they should have done something to improve the situation. Unless they close their eyes and do not want to change anything (although I could not think of a sound reason for such a position).

Harsh and straight forward, I know. But IMHO sometimes it is much better for the whole thing to share your opinion than to keep your mouth shut and wait for some automagic improvement (and just walk away when that does not happen). This is to show that I wrote this with the best intentions, without meaning any personal offense to anybody.

And the most important point:
All this is my personal view, based on a very long experience in this field, a 2 week experience in this forum, and my personal way of thinking. If my impression is not the same as yours, fine. No need to get heated up all over, I gave this assessment once and I have not the slightest problem with reading that you all think: WTF!

[doktor5000]

Harsh and straight forward, I know. But IMHO sometimes it is much better for the whole thing to share your opinion than to keep your mouth shut and wait for some automagic improvement (and just walk away when that does not happen). This is to show that I wrote this with the best intentions, without meaning any personal offense to anybody.

Well, perfect observation. You hit the nail on the head. I have a similar viewpoint.

FWIW, there are 2 admins, maat and ashledombos, the latter not being active any more.
The only 2 active global moderators are isadora and Germ.

[polonius]

Well, perfect observation. You hit the nail on the head. I have a similar viewpoint.

You are here much longer than I, if you have the same impression and there is nothing wrong in the facts I listed - then logical thinking brings me to the only consequentual question: Why has nothing been done about these issues?

But one could also ask: why should anything be done at all? The forum is working, users with problems get their problems solved thanks to such active helpers like you, ahmad, and others. In other words (coming back on topic of this thread): we do not need an extra place for important topics nor do we need the [solved] mark in topic subjects as long as such active people don't get tired of answering the same questions again and again.

Conclusion:
If this forum's raîson d'ètre is to be nothing else than a stop-shop-go place to solve user problems the afore mentioned issues are no issues, all is well. May be this is what the forum leaders have in mind. It would not really match with the community spirit I read so much about on the Mageia website, but this is not needed for a simple support place anyway.