General Help and Support SUGGESTION

[nick21]

I really don't know where to post this as there is not really any "Site Suggestions" forum. Anyways I love this forum it is great and it has a lot of people willing to help, but being so popular is hurting the forums a bit.

AutoIt v3 > General Help and Support is a great example

you get people posting questions for help about every 2 min -10 min and more and less your question says on the front page about 30min or so then it is bumped to the second page where your question might be missed.

So what I am asking/suggesting is make sub forms for the General Help and Support because posting any question in there is just making it packed and post people's questions get unanswered and forgotten.

Here is what I came up with

Once you click General Help and Support you also have sub categories under that as:

Pixel Search

(get help on any pixel search related question)

GUI Help

(Get help on any GUI question)

Script Errors

(Having problems with your script post it here and someone will look it over)

Audio/Image

(Need help on your audio/images for your scripts post here)

and others as well. I know that Autoit has SOOOOOOO many functions that it would be almost impossible to have a sub category for all of them, but just take like the top 10 questions needed help on weather it is GUI, Pixel Search, Audio, Loops and make a sub categories for them at least people will have a proper place to post their question and have a better change of being viewed.

thanks,

nick21

[GEOSoft]

For openers there is already a separate forum for GUI questions. Secondly, adding sub catagories wouldn't make much difference. I usually open a forum, Check for replies to any threads that I have been involved in and then quickly scan the rest. I decide if I want to read them or not ( I don't read certain types of questions anyway) and when I'm finished I mark the forun as read and move on to the next. If I see anything to indicate the user wants help with a game or botting in general then it gets ignored. That is the case with many of us and that more than anything is what causes a question about games to go way down the list before someone finally replies. Sub categories will only serve to cause more confussion because people won't be sure what catagory to put their question in. Although it could have some benefits. Pixel search is a pretty good indicator of a game bot so I could just click the whole forum as read and not open the forum at all.

[Jos]

Nick21,

We have been discussing this before but I am sure nothing will be solved by doing this since many have already a problem finding the correct Main forum in the first place. Look at the V3 support, V2 Support and the GUI support forums and the number of threads that are posted in the wrong place.

It isn't true that your thread/post is on the second page in 30 minutes, at least not for me and many other regular, because I have set "Number of topics to show for each forum page Use forum: 40" which can be done on the "Your control panel" page. For me it was 2 pages since 22:00 yesterday.

my 2 euro cents

[Xenobiologist]

Hi,

nice idea, but I also guess it is not practical. The new ones will post everywhere as they do now.

There was also a discussion to have a sub forum for > one year memebers to no let difficult questions go to page > 1 unanswered.

Mega

[evilertoaster]

Something the MSDN forums do that is kinda usefull sometimes is that ability to mark posts as 'answered'. This lets you check which ones actually need responding to.

At first there was an issue where nobody bothered to go back and mark the post as answered, but now they have it so it's automaticaly checked, unless you go back and mark it unanswered.

[GEOSoft]

Something the MSDN forums do that is kinda usefull sometimes is that ability to mark posts as 'answered'. This lets you check which ones actually need responding to.

At first there was an issue where nobody bothered to go back and mark the post as answered, but now they have it so it's automaticaly checked, unless you go back and mark it unanswered.

Thats a totally different board structure. I don't think there is provision in IP Board for that.

[evilertoaster]

I'd imagine there would be some mod out there that may do that... could be something as simple like automatically setting the post icon to a '?' or a smiley face...

w/e just a thought...

[Swift]

On The Ubuntu Forums They have this thing called: Thanks, and you can give thanks, or recieve them. When a post is helpful you click the 'Thanks' icon beside their post, and it saves their thanks/thanked and displays them beside their name! I bet GeoSoft would get millions of thanks!

Edited April 10, 2008 by Swift

[GioVit]

Some times, there are questions in General Help and Support, that have an excelent solution or answer (normally a very nice snippet) that deserves five stars like the stars you vote in Example Scripts section.

I suggest to implement a star system voting for those creative answers or solutions, for the people that like to collect snippets and some times don't reads all the posts on the General Help and Support Section.

Sorry about my English and and change Topic of discussion.

[Valik]

All of these suggestions fail for one simple reason: They require human effort. If human effort is required, the system fails because people do not have the time to maintain these things or to develop them or to even implement them. I'd much rather see us spend a couple hours working on AutoIt than working on the forum.

[nick21]

thanks for the replies I appreciate it. It was just a question really and as I am new here (but not new to forums) I though I would ask the question. But as mentioned before, as this question was already asked I should of used the search bar better.

And yes more work means just that "more work" sometimes when you change things you forget what the forums is used for Autoit.

thanks again

-nick21

[NELyon]

thanks for the replies I appreciate it. It was just a question really and as I am new here (but not new to forums) I though I would ask the question. But as mentioned before, as this question was already asked I should of used the search bar better.

And yes more work means just that "more work" sometimes when you change things you forget what the forums is used for Autoit.

thanks again

-nick21

It is a good idea, but it's not worth putting effort into if it's going to be abused (Or ignored entirely) which is generally the case (See the Autoit V2 Support forum. Like 90% of the posts there are moved because people ignored the fact that it said it was for V2 and not V3)

People will just post wherever they feel like it, and possibly get a bias if some people get more responses in one forum, so they just post whatever question they desire in that forum, hoping for more hits.

Still a good idea, but the effort would be in vain.