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    Forum cluttered

    BJGBJG Member
    edited March 2013 in General questions
    The forum seems to have got busy lately, which is great, but I feel this is putting the single-discussion format under strain. The problem of finding things remains...I feel I need to bookmark important threads in case I lose them forever...and most of the screen in my web browser seems to be taken up with old "sticky" threads of no particular relevance. Eg I've only just posted this, and it's at the bottom of my screen.

    Having recently been exploring various other programming forums, this is my favourite by far, but I still think the UI leaves room for improvement. (Other places where I hang out like "Edugeek" and "Sound On Sound" are bliss by comparison...)

    http://www.edugeek.net/forums/
    http://www.soundonsound.com/forum

    There are various categories that could usefully be separated out, eg for starters:

    Welcome
    Gideros announcements
    App development
    Lua programming
    Built with Gideros
    General chat
    Feedback

    As a mobile app company, it might also be worth creating a forum app...
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    Comments

    • NascodeNascode Guru
      @BJG yes i thought so. But i like the sinplicity of Vanilla Forum. Maybe this forum just need to use category view on vanilla?
      have fun with our games~
      http://www.nightspade.com
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    • BJGBJG Member
      edited March 2013
      I'm not convinced...I've been looking at the Vanilla showcase and I can't see one I like. :|

      http://vanillashowcase.com/

      A complex subject like mobile app development doesn't lend itself to this format. Something like phpBB is so much more flexible.
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    • unlyingunlying Guru
      Yep, Vanilla doesn't looks good here. Forum is pretty unusable.
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    • MellsMells Guru
      edited March 2013
      There is one Vanilla forum that is not cluttered, it's at Codea.
      I don't know, visually it works for me.

      But finding the right platform also depends on the number of active users.
      twitter@TheWindApps Artful applications : The Wind Forest. #art #japan #apps
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    • BJGBJG Member
      edited March 2013
      I'm talking about a jumble of ideas. Codea is single-topic like all Vanilla forums, but it looks cleaner because they're not trying to conduct ongoing discussions on a range of different subjects. Vanilla makes that impossible. There are no welcomes or general chat on Codea. It's not a community; just a list of questions and answers.
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    • ar2rsawseenar2rsawseen Maintainer
      So you all would vote for more categorized forum like https://www.phpbb.com/ or http://www.simplemachines.org/ ?

      I have usually used those type of forums and they all have huge problem with spammers, I'm actually shocked why vanilla does not get so many. :)

      From my perspective spammers, would be one problem, but there are others as in:

      This Vanilla forum might be used as forum and QnA, those forums not. I don't know if it would be good to have separate QnA.

      There are probably many addons and extensions, but I haven't seen any with such shiny stars as in Vanilla :)

      Same goes for social account authentication, haven't seen in other type of forums, maybe they are available now.

      Other issues as transferring memberships and all data also something that would prevent from using new forum.

      Just seeking for opinions, so would you think new forum would justify all the hassle? :)

      And which form script would you recommend?
      http://appcodingeasy.com/Gideros-Mobile
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    • NascodeNascode Guru
      If what we need is more categorized forum - how about making category list view the default on this forum. See it in action here http://giderosmobile.com/forum/categories/all

      Likes: ar2rsawseen, BJG

      have fun with our games~
      http://www.nightspade.com
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    • BJGBJG Member
      edited March 2013
      At first glance I liked that, but now I'm confused about what I want...! I like being able to browse by category (though I think there are too many of them), though it's handy to have a single-threaded "latest" view as well.

      I'm not keen on navigating to the forum home and seeing the entire page filled with "stickies" that I've already read and am no longer interested in. Can we do some unsticking at least?

      Maybe my idea about it being "cluttered" is more tied up with font sizes and things. Somehow there just seems to be more new and relevant info on the screen at places like Sound On Sound, and it's easier to find stuff.

      I know, I'm just being deliberately awkward... :P
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    • NascodeNascode Guru
      By using category view and then click a category we will only see stickies on that category. For those who want a single threaded latest view you could go to http://giderosmobile.com/forum/discussions instead.

      In this forum i think Ask question vanilla forum add-on is not that necessary. How about adding more useful add-on like polling?

      Oh and i agree that we need less stickies ;)
      have fun with our games~
      http://www.nightspade.com
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    • BJGBJG Member
      edited March 2013
      To be honest, I never really cottoned onto the whole "categories" thing. I just saw this long list of "categories" and "tags" each time and pretty much ignored them. I've only just discovered how to switch views.

      Now I understand the categories I think they're useful, though I reckon things could be improved by reducing their number and arranging them in a sensible order. (Eg "Forum talk", "Bugs and issues", "Roadmap" and "Suggestions and requests" could all be combined under a simple "Feedback" heading, and categories like "Build a team", "User experience" and "Marketplace" could disappear. People simply aren't using them at present - most stuff is just dropped into "General questions".)

      I'm used to a "recent activity" view that doesn't have any stickies in it. Not sure if that's possible, but the fewer stickies the better. I'd probably spend more time in the "recent" view than the "category" view, but setting "category" as the default with suitable subheadings would present newcomers with a cleaner, more logical interface and encourage people to pick the right category for their posts instead of putting product announcements and stuff into "General questions". I only started this thread in "General questions" because I didn't know any better.
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    • bowerandybowerandy Guru
      To be honest I would not divert the resources of team Gideros into setting up a new forum with all of the associated problems with how to merge historical posts into the new vehicle. We certainly don't want to lose all he good stuff that is here already.

      This forum is not ideal but its far from unusable as one poster has suggested. The Vanilla search is useless, yes, but I just type "Gideros search-term" into Google and that works pretty well for me. For example, yesterday, I wanted to find my post on popups that I wrote back in September last year. Googling "Gideros popup" found it fairly easily.

      Best regards
      tweets: @ insidebowerhaus blog: http://bowerhaus.eu/blog/blog.html
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    • ar2rsawseenar2rsawseen Maintainer
      Did a little unannouncing, hope it's better now ;)
      BTW did you know that vanilla forum is also great for accessing from mobile devices :)
      http://appcodingeasy.com/Gideros-Mobile
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    • BJGBJG Member
      edited March 2013
      Thanks @ar2rsawseen. That does help. :)

      I certainly wouldn't want to distract Team Gideros from their priority tasks of sipping coffee, playing games, and nattering online. But if, at some point, if someone is bored, they had time to rethink a useful and logical category list and encourage people to post in the right category (and move posts when they don't), I think that would be a good thing.

      I was put off Vanilla because it seemed chaotic, but I see now that it's actually category-driven - it's just that people don't tend to use them, and that's probably partly because they don't realise that they could be using categories, or which one to use if they do. (For instance, you'd think that "Announcements" might be for official announcements, but it's not used like that. Might be handy to have a category that is, though. The general impression is of lots of finicky little categories that people ignore, and a big woolly "General questions" where they dump everything.)

      Having considered this, I've definitely come round to @Nascode's way of thinking. From the point of view of browsing the forum, a single recent-activity thread is great. But from the point of view of posting, people need to be presented with the category view when they first hit the forum, which will mean they post in the appropriate category. Otherwise, they just tend to leave new posts set to the default "General questions" without even thinking about it, which is exactly what I've always done. I also agree about ditching "Ask a question" in favour of more useful stuff like polls.

      Tell you what, why not make @Nascode a moderator and let him sort it all out?!
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