Forum use and newbies

[Guest Stuart_f]

Just some numbers to keep everyone entertained:

Busiest Forums by Number Of Posts

T-Mobile Pulse - Pulse.MoDaCo.com	47728

ZTE Blade - Blade.MoDaCo.com		 42377

Acer Liquid - Liquid.MoDaCo.com	  40218

HTC Desire - Desire.MoDaCo.com	   33221

HTC Hero - Hero.MoDaCo.com		   25949

Dell Streak - Streak.MoDaCo.com	  22788

Busiest Forums by Number Of Threads

ZTE Blade - Blade.MoDaCo.com		 2726

T-Mobile Pulse - Pulse.MoDaCo.com	2353

HTC Desire - Desire.MoDaCo.com	   2241

HTC Hero - Hero.MoDaCo.com		   2082

Acer Liquid - Liquid.MoDaCo.com	  1818

Dell Streak - Streak.MoDaCo.com	  1626

We aren't the biggest forum on MoDaCo by quite some way but look at how many threads we have generated! Wow!

Now wonder it's hard to find things when you have 2700 threads to look through.

Shame merging doesn't work but thanks to WearTheFoxHat we should now get threads locked and the message out that creating new, pointless threads is bad.

[Guest Arr Too]

We aren't the biggest forum on MoDaCo by quite some way but look at how many threads we have generated!

It's the timeframe, too. The Pulse forum has been going for more than a year, but we've only had 3 months!

thanks to WearTheFoxHat we should now get threads locked

Yes, it's definitely worth seeing how that works out. One of the main issues is whether the threads with new posts goes over a whole page in a few hours or not. As soon as something is on the second page it's hard to criticise people for not looking very hard...

[Guest Stuart_f]

Fair point on the speed, hadn't thought about that.

Nobody I know would say that it's a good idea to keep 2,700 documents in a directory. It would be a nightmare to find anything. Obsolete data needs to be pruned for everyone's good. I favour deleting rather than locking duplicate threads, ideally if you could lock it and mark it for automatic deletion in 1 week. This gives the OP time to realise it's a duplicate and follow the link to the real thread and has the added benefit that when, later on, someone goes to search for that subject, the search results are not polluted with all the locked, useless threads.

[Guest WearTheFoxHat]

I favour deleting rather than locking duplicate threads, ideally if you could lock it and mark it for automatic deletion in 1 week. This gives the OP time to realise it's a duplicate and follow the link to the real thread and has the added benefit that when, later on, someone goes to search for that subject, the search results are not polluted with all the locked, useless threads.

I think in a weeks time, a locked thread would have gone from first page. But I agree that it would pollute search results. I guess some manual pruning will need to take place for locked threads after a week or so.

[Guest ThatGuyJim]

I think StevenHarperUK is or at least was working on something like that. Already got a glossary done.

As a newbie with a spinning head through trying to understand 'Android' and my week-old San Francisco phone, perhaps I could throw some pebbles into the concrete:

I am desperate for a guide. Maybe two guides.

I need to know how the phone is organised so that I can correctly, for a start, backup Data and Apps.

And I need to know which apps are "the best" for what I want to use the phone for.

As I have been poking round on MoDaCo over the last few days, here is what I have discovered:

1. Most of it is too technical for me (but, as an ex-electronics engineer, it may be a case of needing time to learn).

2. The best thing I've seen is Paul's video of the San Francisco - "Hey, look," I said, "You can handle it without damaging it."

And the best bit of the video was him opening and using Note Pad - this showed me how to get the different keypads in the App. Before this, when it came up with 'No Note' I closed the app as I could see how to use it.

Perhaps I'm in the wrong forum - though I have got the unlocking code via here, for which I am very grateful (not used yet).

Any pointers for me regarding the above will be gratefully received. Thanks.

First post. Thanks to samjam for raising the issue.

[Guest ThatGuyJim]

Sorry, added a quote in my reply - I replied using the wrong button.

And miised out as 'not' - should be "could not."

I'll give up while I'm losing, shall I?

[Guest IronDoc]

One thing that imo probably causes a lot of newbies to panic is the 'It's not my fault/problem if you flash this and you house catches fire' bits before any ROM. While I understand the necessity, it's pretty hard to brick your phone when following the guides for fastboot, clockwork etc. If there were a note under the disclaimer just saying not to panic as there's a good chance the phone is easily revivable, it would reduce those 'I bricked my phone' threads.

It also reduce the impact of processes that really do have the capacity to ruin your phone (eg the partition editing).

[Guest RussellS]

I think that the main reason for the cluttered nature of this forum is just simply that, it is just one forum. If this was a website dedicated to the San Francisco/ZTE Blade then the forums would be split into many sub-forums, for example.....

Tips & Tricks

Newbie Questions

ROM's

Themes

Apps

Open Discussion

etc, etc, etc

.....however, because the existing forum is already a sub-forum under "Device Specific" everything is just thrown in the one forum and gets lost.

Also, some of the ROM threads are now at 60+ pages and 1300 odd posts each which, if viewing for the first time, is extremely daunting and very difficult to digest all the information or find something specific buried in there somewhere.

[Guest WearTheFoxHat]

Also, some of the ROM threads are now at 60+ pages and 1300 odd posts each which, if viewing for the first time, is extremely daunting and very difficult to digest all the information or find something specific buried in there somewhere.

Tell me about it ... that's one of the reasons I just chose Paul's ROM and stuck with it. I simply don't have the time to read that many pages of posts. BUT I can't see a way around that issue.

[Guest IronDoc]

Tell me about it ... that's one of the reasons I just chose Paul's ROM and stuck with it. I simply don't have the time to read that many pages of posts. BUT I can't see a way around that issue.

You do get 'which ROM is best at the moment' threads every now and again. They generally give a pretty good feel of the prevailing opinion I think.

[Guest ThatGuyJim]

Yesterday I went out and spent six quid of my own money on the magazine 'Smartphone Essentials.' Normally I use my wife's cash, but she wasn't with me.

I have had the San Francisco for a week, but being new to Smartphones and Android I have resisted doing anything other than make calls so that I could learn about them both.

This is a new COMPUTER. How long did it take everyone to learn DOS and Windows? So I look on it as a long-term project.

After spending a week online, the magazine has been the most useful help so far.

Issue 109 - they don't do dates any more - has given me an overview of all the platforms - iPhone, Blackberry, Android, etc.

It has also given me tantalising glimpses of the guide(s) I so desperately seek.

For example, there is a feature titled 'The First 24 hours with your Smartphone,' which sort of acknowledges the learning curve, but gives the impression you can do it in a day rather than, I suspect, the weeks and months that it is going to take.

In the shop where I bought the magazine, most of the other magazines were devoted to hardware or the iPhone. This probably just reflects the current state of the market - in the near future there will be a variety of magazines devoted to Android.

In the meantime, remember: it's a computer.

[Guest triobot]

Yesterday I went out and spent six quid of my own money on the magazine 'Smartphone Essentials.' Normally I use my wife's cash, but she wasn't with me.

...

In the meantime, remember: it's a computer.

on topic?

The thing is, this phone has brought a lot of people without previous forum etiquette so they don't know forum rules (even if they read the stickied posts)

[Guest Anjan Tek]

Ironically, this point has also been answered a few times; the search is not a good tool for finding information in a discussion archive for these reasons:

It is hard to find the informative posts because it is an archive of conversation there are many topics and posts with the key terms.

Many posts mention the key terms but few posts are informative about the key terms.

The search is even less than helpful because it returns topics or threads containing the key terms, not even posts! "blue tint" has 27 threads containing over 2,000 posts

It is hard to tell if those informative posts (when found) have been corrected (are false) or have been superseded (are out of date).

So although the answer is there, search cannot be used to confidently find it.

So the forum is good for discussion, but not good as an archive of information, therefore the newbies must (and do and will) ask - and the answer is not always the same.

I think samjam has hit the nail on the head (referring to the bold text in the quote).

The only way you can encourage people to use "search" regularly is if the search makes it easy to find the "information" or "answers". Couldn't we try to address this problem directly?

Would it be possible to mark / tag specific posts as "informative" or "answer" which could then be used as filters in searches? This tagging could be done by any user or by moderators. But I think we can trust users to do this reliably.

I think stackoverflow.com has a superb implementation of something similar. We don't need exactly that. All we need is a way for users or moderators to tag posts as informative or answers.

I think we need something like the above because not all useful information can always be maintained by the original poster on the first page in the first few reserved posts.

For the other problem mentioned by samjam: I can't think of a way of identifying (from the search results) if a particular post's info has been superseded.

[Guest ThatGuyJim]

I think samjam has hit the nail on the head (referring to the bold text in the quote).

The only way you can encourage people to use "search" regularly is if the search makes it easy to find the "information" or "answers". Couldn't we try to address this problem directly?

Would it be possible to mark / tag specific posts as "informative" or "answer" which could then be used as filters in searches? This tagging could be done by any user or by moderators. But I think we can trust users to do this reliably.

I think stackoverflow.com has a superb implementation of something similar. We don't need exactly that. All we need is a way for users or moderators to tag posts as informative or answers.

I think we need something like the above because not all useful information can always be maintained by the original poster on the first page in the first few reserved posts.

For the other problem mentioned by samjam: I can't think of a way of identifying (from the search results) if a particular post's info has been superseded.

Anjan Tek makes a very good point.

I am interested in using a Bluetooth keyboard with my Android device.

The other day I searched upon this subject.

And because of the 'thread' I followed - i.e. from the original question and with others pointing out where the questioner was/was not in error - at the end I was unsure if the technique had been fully explained.

There was no final "And this is how it is done."