6 replies to this topic

[flibblesan]

Hello,

In the last year there has been an increase in the amount of users harassing developers on the forum by asking questions through private messaging instead of in the forum thread.

Please DO NOT do this.

It is extremely rude and unfair to contact a developer directly and expecting personal 1on1 support. Developers have personal lives away from the forum and this should be respected.

If you have any questions then ask them in the relevant forum thread. If you do not receive an answer straight away then wait. Sometimes it may take more than 24 hours for somebody to reply to you. If you do not find the answer you are looking for or do not get a reply then try re-wording your question giving as much information as possible. Logs are useful, screenshots are useful.

Any members that have been pestering developers by requesting help directly using PM will be reminded not to do this. If members carry on then warnings will be given.

These forums are a community and by asking questions openly you are helping other members. Asking questions privately is rude and inconsiderate to developers, and not fair on the rest of the community.

[lolwot]

If the forums were organised better, then perhaps people wouldn't have to PM the mods...
At the moment, without Sub-Forums, it's extremely confusing to navigate your way around here, especially because there are a billion different roms/ nightlies/clockworks and another billion different  ways of doing things in order to achieve the same end result.

I know Paul chose not to do Sub-forums at the start of last year, but perhaps he should consider special treatment for the Blade forum, seeing as it is the biggest section on this website. The immense fragmentation is the number one thing that has stopped me using this site to regularly check back for rom developments and is the sole thing kept me away from purchasing Modaco Adfree membership.

[hedgepigdaniel]

lolwot, on 10 September 2011 - 01:28 AM, said:

If the forums were organised better, then perhaps people wouldn't have to PM the mods...
At the moment, without Sub-Forums, it's extremely confusing to navigate your way around here, especially because there are a billion different roms/ nightlies/clockworks and another billion different  ways of doing things in order to achieve the same end result.

I know Paul chose not to do Sub-forums at the start of last year, but perhaps he should consider special treatment for the Blade forum, seeing as it is the biggest section on this website. The immense fragmentation is the number one thing that has stopped me using this site to regularly check back for rom developments and is the sole thing kept me away from purchasing Modaco Adfree membership.

There are subforums. You just posted in the ROMs subforum. The OP here is about PMing developers, not necessarily mods. How do you think the subforums should be organised?

[wbaw]

There could be a tech support subforum.

At the moment if somebody does have a problem or question they don't know where to ask, we end up with similar questions cluttering up the rom forum, the main forum, or being private messaged to mods & developers.

Another subforum for technical help & questions is needed. One issue per thread, state the issue clearly in the title, add [solved] when they're solved (but leave the thread open for other people with the same issue). It'd need proper moderation to keep it under control, merge threads that ask the same question, etc. I'm not volunteering to staff it either.

Edited by wbaw, 12 September 2011 - 05:31 AM.

[wbaw]

The rom threads & forum are being cluttered up with general tech support questions about the phone. It makes it hard for me to find & respond to genuine problems with the rom. It's hard for people to find information too, so that makes the problem worse because they post the same question that's been answered 100 times before & it adds to the mess.

I think there should be a tech support forum & all the general tech support type questions about the phone should be moved there. It'd need somebody to spend a lot of time moderating though, checking each thread & splitting off questions from them, until people get the message. Done properly it could be a good resource, we wouldn't get the forum full of similar questions being asked over & over again, because people would be able to find the answers easier.

As a forum grows it needs to be split into more different sections & subsections, otherwise it gets totally unmanageable. As forums get quieter (like when a particular phone gets older & less popular) the subforums can be recombined again.

A better search system is needed too. Sphinx isn't up to the job for a large site like this. Use Apache Solr instead https://lucene.apache.org/solr/. Maybe a Google custom search to back it up too. Introduce post tags & a taxonomy, then the search will work better & it'll be easier for people to find posts on particular topics. Open Calais http://www.opencalais.com/ can help you generate those tags automatically.

That feature that a lot of other forums (cough xda) have when you post a topic & it says do you really want to post a new topic - here are 5 of the same topic is pretty useful too.

The forum could do a lot to beat this problem by using better software, organising it better & having more careful moderation.

Edited by wbaw, 15 September 2011 - 01:05 AM.

[hugobosslives]

i second a tech forum

[bladebuddy]

Sorry to but in but I am a newbee to android in fact this is my first android phone purchased 3 months ago. And if it was not for the help of people doing stuff like this for free I would without doubt still be on stock rom 2.1. So a big thank-you to all that help people like me and please remember this stuff is free and the people behind it put a lot of hard work in helping us all out and bothering them personaly with your problems instead of asking on the forums will only mess it up for the rest of us who realy appreciate there work and thank them for it.