Forum adjustments and improvements.

[mirosol]

Before i do anything to the current forum, i thought i'd ask you all what do you think about these changes:
-Flushing the current request section
-Replacing it with two specific request sections;
   1) Layout requests. For requests that are ready to be made as layouts, including schematics.
   2) Schematic requests. Requests for schematics on circuits.
-Adding moderated "Contribution section" for everyone to share their layouts. Moderated, because we want certain standards to be followed on the contributions as well as on our own layouts.

First of all, flushing the current request section may sound a bit harsh.. But i do find it extremely hard to find a good request from the flood of schematic requests. These two are two completely different things.

I'm not 100% sure how to set up a moderated contribution section, but we could probably start with contributors emailing their layouts to us. If the layout is good, we will post it to the section. If it needs more work, we'll let you know.

We also should probably pay more attention to moderating the forum in terms of removing obsotele information and so on.

So? How does this make you feel?
+m

[GoranP]

I have no problems with any of your suggestions. Requests could certainly use some sorting out, user submitted veros (especially now that more people are getting into it) need to get more exposure and not get buried underneath a pile of requests and some pruning of existing information also wouldn't hurt.

What I might find interesting is hopefully get a project update on the vero requests. While "it's in the queue" is certainly a great answer and while I certainly have no right to make anyone doing the layouts feel like I'm intruding on their private time, a tiny extra bit of info could go a long way. Something along the lines of
- "I have fifteen layouts to do before this one"
- "won't be before xmas"
- "will get to it asap, I want one too"
- "this one just moved up the queue, I'll get it done next week"
- "sorry, no ETA on this one"

I'm sure noone would feel blown off even if you told them that their request is #100 in line as it at least provides some sort of time reference and gives an idea whether to start sourcing components or not, or whether it makes sense to wait for a layout to build that very pedal for your friend's birthday present or choose an existing pedal because the request isn't about to happen quickly.

[alltrax74]

I think these are nice moves. Maybe you could also tag the requests with someting like "pending" and "Veroed".

The OPen Chat section could also have subsections, like fe
- Help section (debugging, questions about cicrcuits...)
- Tip and tricks
- Components, hardware...
- Misc

Just my 2 cents

[JaviCAP]

I see nothing wrong with the changes / updates you plan.

Just would like to say that I would like too to see on the Requests forum, an status on the requests.  Nothing more frustrating that silence or a "Maybe" as answer :)

I think  it would be easy to simply answer "On queue" or "Rejected". I'm no asking for any reason, just an answer :P

BR

[Silver Blues]

This entire plan sounds good. (I know I've helped out a couple people in the Requests section with a layout or two, and having one of you two gentlemen look them over would be very nice )

[stringfellow_Hawke]

Sounds good Miro. I agree that it would be nice to be able to tag posts in the requests section, similar to the way it's done on FSB. Thanks for taking the time to make the improvements!

[mirosol]

Actually. I see no point in having schematic requests here as we very rarely have anything to do with where the schematics come from.
+m

[GoranP]

True dat.

I'd also suggest posting the schematic along with the vero layout, it helps heaps with debugging...

[alltrax74]

Yup, I second that

[mirosol]

We can't do that without a permission from the person who drew the schematic.

[GoranP]

OK, makes sense. The request will most likely contain a schematic and it's more often than not one of the usual suspects (diys, fsb etc.)

[IvIark]

95% of the time the schematic has come from FSB, very occasionally I get sent schematics from people who want to remain anonymous and often they want the schematic to remain private.  

I'm quite happy to put a note in every post to say where the scheme came from though.  As long as I know of course, I do have a lot of schematics I've collected over the years, some of which are from larger zipped collections.  But as I said, 95% of the time you'll find anything I do on FSB anyway.

[mirosol]

As a rule of thumb, which applies to every layout i draw - i can find it through google or by logging in to FSB. So everyone else should be able to find it too.

[stringfellow_Hawke]

Does anyone else think it would be a good idea to add a buy/sell/trade section?

[IvIark]

stringfellow_Hawke wrote

Does anyone else think it would be a good idea to add a buy/sell/trade section?

Yes I think including a buy/sell/trade section makes sense.  I'll have a chat with Miro about the best way to do it with the other changes.

[dexxyy]

Any chance of including a build gallery pleeeeeeeeeeeeeease

[Madferret]

I'm not sure if there's much that can be done about this but I have issues accessing the forum through my phone or tablet (both android), the forum seems to load but then disappears and I'm left with a blank page with just the navigation buttons at the top and the usual posts/tags/comments stuff at the side. Anyone else having these issues, I've tried it on two different Nexus' an S3 and an S2 without success, the funny thing is when the forum first launched it worked fine, it's only been the last couple of months.

I definitely agree with pruning some of the old posts to clean things up and maybe introducing a couple of new sections like 'build questions', 'music', 'gear talk' etc. I think if you add a schematic request section you'd maybe be opening yourselves up to a flood of requests that as you and Mark have said is probably going involve  other people googling it or searching DIYSB or FSB, let's not encourage laziness.

[adstrum]

I'm running Chrome on an Android 4 phone (HTC One XL) and the forum works fine for me.

[JaviCAP]

Same here. On my Xperia with Android 4 + Chrome, the forum appears, but after a few seconds it vanishes and the page is left nearly blank. Same with a Samsung with an older android (Ginger)

BR

[IvIark]

Yes it does that on my Blackberry too, it works on my iPhone 4S though.  Not a lot we can do about it though unfortunately, Google have obviously included some HTML markup which has compatibility issues with some browsers.