Re: [Suggestion] Sticky Posts to avoid thread spamming!?
 

Thanks Estel for your detailed answer, but sorry mate, I am not convinced we should leave everything as it is :cool:

Heck, I am not sure if it makes sense to stress my point once again without having a feedback from mod/admin whether this is possible at all...

Oh well here we go,
I think we can agree that with wikis and Post #1´s we have all we need for efficient knowledge sharing - in THEORY!
But, I think no one can deny that in REALITY repeating posts and questions are a problem and annoying!

So, sitting back saying "we have all we need" and, even though it does NOT work, simply accept the situation without even trying to improve something is not a satisfactory answer for me...

As already mentioned the primary goal is NOT reducing redundant threads but limiting repeating posts within one thread!
For someone not finding the right thread and simply opening a new one, a sticky post would not be of help, of course...

We all know this is absolutely not realistic.
Users will never ever be that disciplined.
Besides that a wiki is simply over engineered for most threads.

Again, we simply have to deal with the fact that most users are not as disciplined and patient as you.
Further, your words cry for improvements...triple-check *sigh*

We even do net get an answer regarding this topic and you ask for more moderation? Not to speak of complains due to deleted posts...

Ok, here is an example:
A while ago I created this thread in order to sum up another messed up threat in Post #1 and maintained this post with updates, solutions etc.
When the summary got to big I moved it to a wiki which was constantly updated by me and other community members.
All tools and features we have where used to give users an easy way to find available information.
BUT, there where still tons of posts asking for information available in the wiki! Why?
Users just didn´t know there is a wiki...they didn´t know that checking Post #1 might help, or they where to lazy...

I don´t see why trying sticky posts for small summary's and/or a link to a wiki when available would do any harm...
So why not just try it???

Re: [Suggestion] Sticky Posts to avoid thread spamming!?
 

So, how about something like say a button to klick, to mark a thread a technical issue (to contrast against those "...drink my beer.." or "...Nokia goes Windows..." threads). A moderator would be informed by that and can then send a final post,
- linking to either an existing or a blank wiki page,
- calling users to transition the info from the thread to wiki and continue discussion on the corresponding wiki discussion page
- blocking this thread against further posts.
As a result of this, a new topic can be discussed, maybe after about 30 posts some useful hints should be collected so far, so these can be moved to wiki. Where topics are repeated in new threads (by not searching before posting) a hint pointing at the wiki page should appear within say the first 5-10 posts. So, these threads can be closed as well, by this technique.
This will not generally reduce the number of threads, but the mass of posts with redundant information, improving the overview, which, as I understand correctly, was your intention.

One precondition to make this really usable, in this I fully agree with slender, was to merge the two user bases from garage and talk.maemo.org. This is really a bit annoying.

To those, who shy away from wiki markup: Unformatted collected information is much better than no information. Reorganization and formatting can be done by someone else who is more used to wiki (it's not too hard). Wiki is not for creating the complete, perfect documentation in one shot.

Another nice feature, I saw, but I don't exactly remember where (maybe bug-tracker of launchpad or so) is the following:
The subject is checked and compared against existing ones. So on creation of a new thread, a list of existing subjects is presented accompanied by the question, if one of these subjects covers the question. Only if this is denied, the new thread is actually created.

I'm no expert in forum software, so I don't know if this is available, in any way.

Re: [Suggestion] Sticky Posts to avoid thread spamming!?
 

Hey, I'm also not opting for leaving things as it is ;) In general i agree with You, Reflektorfalke. I just wonder if that middle-sized mess we got is due to lacking feature (You propose new, simple feature as i understand), or just lack of discipline after wiki editing, pointing to wiki, wiki searching etc. If it is ''laziness", I'm skeptical if new feature will fix that, if what we need to fix is user behaviour - both power users (lack of updating wiki and editing, most of the times - yea, i know that some people do that hard work and they do it great, we just talk about general view), and new aka ''lame'' users. I thing that better discipline amongst "us" can lead to at least little, even very little positive change amongst ''them''. (i use terms "we" and "they" on purpose - i think it started to be even little hostile, since all that mess with Vi_'s russian roulette script in kernel-power topic)

Anyway, if mods/admins confirm that your propositions are technically possible, why not try? If it fails, we can always revert to current state... So, even skeptical, I'm with you on this ;)

Also, i agree with cowboy that even dirty formatted proper info is better for start that no info at all, or tripple checking thing.

Re: [Suggestion] Sticky Posts to avoid thread spamming!?
 

So currently what is blocking people editing http://wiki.maemo.org ?

Major obstacles on editing maemo.org Wiki

• Separate user base with TMO, user has to register him/herself to two different places.
• Markup language of Wiki, to even make wiki posting as "stylish" as what is possible in vbulletin advanced WYSIWYG editor you have to learn quite a lot of mediawiki markup and still looking the markup"code" makes most of people head ache and think that this is something really from dawn of word processing
• Let´s face it, Wiki is hidden, appropriate link to it would be _right_ in the main-bar not under community and then from list small link "use wiki"
• Something else?

Major obstacles on reading maemo.org Wiki

• Searching from it isn't entirely obvious, we have search field in upper right part of page and it´s quite different on different pages. IMO from all search pages the hands down best currently to me is power search (powered by google) with it´s filtering tabs for different areas. Search should be consistent on layout across whole maemo.org/TMO. It should also give option to search from different areas after search is done. e.g. wiki search does this and power search but then again layout differs and that´s not good.
• It´s hidden, look above list
• Something else?

Wiki editing incentives

• We have karma, but to most (just stuff out of my hat) _TMO_ user it doesn´t mean anything! We should have trophies on different levels for karma and different types of karma(from where the most karma points are collected) e.g. Talk Maemo Champion, Wiki Wizard. Community could point these users and council would give these trophies. And this trophy should be shown besides user-name, of course with user option to disable it.^
• As funny or lame as it sounds but little things like maemo.org/meego t-shirts. caps etc. stuff that is designed by community could be some awards on "Good job done on wiki editing" Some funny notations on back side etc.
• Something else?

Should we make brainstorm about this. Sad thing about those are that people tend to be highly excited about inventing and discussing changes and ideas first, but when it comes to execution of chosen idea things tend go halt (even saying NO or just I need help from assignee is hard) and that is just poison that makes everybody passive and currently our brainstorm system is just nice concept. IMO right from beginning of brainstorming there should be assignee who is directly responsible of things under discussion.

^Personal Rant to all those "But there is a flawwww in there" types:Please remember that there is always I mean always downside of these things but point is to make system that makes more good than bad.

Re: [Suggestion] Sticky Posts to avoid thread spamming!?
 

Thanks Estel and Slender for your answer and detailed summary!
Just wish we would get some insight from a admin/mod whether our suggestions and brainstorming are or will be considered at all...:rolleyes:
Actually wondering if there are still mods around, haven´t seen one in quite a while :confused:

Re: [Suggestion] Sticky Posts to avoid thread spamming!?
 

Two thumbs up, IMO this is close to show stopper, especially for those, who don't want to register at maemo.org.

You really think so? Maybe, the wiki editor is even just half as *powerful* ;) as this *Reply to Thread* one, but the markup does not appear stranger than the one, I'm currently editing. Actually, every editor that does not support vi commands seems pretty strange, to me :D Anyway, this obstacle could possibly be removed, by wiping out this idea, that formatting in wiki was a must. Just copy and paste is absolutely acceptable, especially for wiki noobs.

Fully agree!!!

One additional obstacle might be lack of self-confidence. Even newbies sometimes have useful experiences in some special issue. Though, they may not value it adequately, to put it down in a wiki page.
All over the web, you can find wikis, maintained on varying levels of expertise. Some are maintained by the *real public*, while many are not (technically open, maybe, but in practice only edited by some gurus). Our wiki may partially appear like one of the latter, being a disincentive to normal users to add new infos.
What I'd like to say is, that some little (communicative) measures might have some effect, such as:

• Already mentioned here: Add Wiki to the main navbar
• A wiki start page explicitly motivating all users to add new pages with new infos.
• A talk start page explicitly asking the user to look for answers to their questions in wiki, and if not found there, to consider adding information collected by a new thread to a new wiki page.
• Sure some of the proposals already made in this thread (especially unify the user base)

Sounds pretty nice :D, so why not?

Re: [Suggestion] Sticky Posts to avoid thread spamming!?
 

One more idea...
How about an automatic e-mail to the OP after say 20 posts or two weeks of inactivity in a thread, saying something like:

"Did information in this thread help You? If you received useful information, please consider adding it to an existing wiki page, or create a new one.

You can find the wiki under http://wiki.maemo.org/Main_Page"

Optionally extended by:

"A wiki search for this thread's subject resulted in the following list:
...
"

Re: [Suggestion] Sticky Posts to avoid thread spamming!?
 

One thing I found surprising in TMO is the prevailing all-round resistance against any kind of change. For a bunch of geeks like us who loves to constantly mod our phones and anything else around us, to push it to its extreme, this behavior is really surprising.

There were requests to modify the tag behavior to prevent tag-trolling. No change.
There was request to create a new CSSU sub-forum. No change

I really can't understand why this is so. Please, I beg the moderators: Things aren't perfect the way they are now. Sure, they work, but couldn't they be a whole lot better?

Re: [Suggestion] Sticky Posts to avoid thread spamming!?
 

One problem is that this site is not a democracy. Two. it steers like an aircraft carrier. If you think you can just try a quick experiment and then change or abandon it if it doesn't work, well, you have my permission. Put it into effect immediately!

I think you would be more likely to succeed if you tried to improve the Wiki or some smaller scale reform.

Re: [Suggestion] Sticky Posts to avoid thread spamming!?
 

So sad, but so true!
I wonder if there are still mods around!?
From a mod I would expect that in the first place the Community category of the forum is monitored closely - but no contribution from a mod so far...
I would also expect from a mod that they respond to member requests - nothing so far even though I reported this thread in order to get a feedback...

Is it not? What is it then? A dictatorship? A monarchy? Communism?:cool:
If it is not, what are the council elections for?

We will not succeed at all as long as the situation is as it is at the moment...not "no democracy" but no leadership at all...