Nominate a Mod/Split the forum into sections - Poll now closed.

[Guest panteraz]

Both of course and sub-section like omnia.modaco.com !

[Guest Alex_P]

I agree that currently both some subforums and some active moderation would be beneficial.

I have some experience of moderating a quite busy forum (although not on my own!) for the Rockbox project at forums.rockbox.org, and from that have a few observations.

Sub-forums

Some thought needs to be put into this. I personally don't find a "newbie" subforum particularly useful, as nobody (especially new people) really knows what should go into it, and so topics don't end up much better sorted than before. What I would suggest is to try and analyse the principle subjects that are likely to come up, e.g. Development, Themes, etc., create forums for those and then have a "General" subforum in addition for when people aren't sure, or the topic doesn't fit anywhere else. Mods can always move topics.

Moderation

There are a few important things here, such as having people to cover different time zones (although that would seem to be less important here as most people seem to be EU based), but to my mind the most important aspect is having a published and transparent set of rules/guidelines (call it what you will) for the mods to follow. There is nothing that annoys people more than seemingly random moderation. Having a decent set of guidelines means that everyone knows where they stand.

An interesting point that I don't have enough experience of android/modaco to answer is how long particular phone forums tend to stay active. I can for instance see that the Blade forum is currently very active (I am one of the many people who recently got a SF and stumbled over here searching for better ROMs), but for how long will it stay this active as e.g. development slows or people get new phones? 6 months? A year? With this in mind, I guess that the admins (Paul :D) might think it not worth while. Personally I think it'll stay active for a good while and that sub forums/mods are well worthwhile.

Edited January 9, 2011 by Alex_P

[Guest Lancez]

i totally understand the situation here, MoDaCo is a very large community with over 1 million members, but we only have 4-5 active mods/admins. i hope you guys can understand that we do have regular jobs/lives.

however, we welcome anyone who's willing to put some of his/her own time to help out. if you think you can do the job, please contact awarner or any mods. thanks

[Guest mELIANTE]

I think a moderator or even more is a bigger need right now. Maybe a forum division, with several sub forums would keep it tidier but blade.modaco.com is in dire need of a more active moderation. Not that the current mods are making a bad job, they are doing great, but this forum is too big for just 5 mods. I offer my services for this section, eventhough I realize I don't have any proven credits but it would be my way of giving back to the great community that we all are, and seeing how much time I spend here... :D

I have some moderation experience too, albeit in a forum much smaller than this :P

[Guest Davie1888]

I agree we need a mod in here, but I don't think we should be choosing that person, I'm sure Paul reads all the posts and would nominate the person of his choice if he so decided

[Guest asdfdsaddaasdas]

Dividing would be cool. I mean this is the main source for anything related to ZTE Blade (which is a big community) and its kinda bad having only 1 place where all random topics are in the same basket.

[Guest IronDoc]

I agree we need a mod in here, but I don't think we should be choosing that person, I'm sure Paul reads all the posts and would nominate the person of his choice if he so decided

I think you're sorely mistaken if you think Paul's read all 40 000 posts in this forum.

[Guest awarner]

Paul certainly does not have the time to read every single post and unfortunately I do not have the time either.

I did in the past read every single post and know most members and their posting habits but that was in the good old WM days before ROM cooking became more popular than the new user asking the the beginners questions.

I personally stay more in the Windows Mobile/Phone side of the site but do lurk around here from time to time. I do rely on my team to update me on any issues which is how I found out about this topic.

Sub sections to the Blade area may be possible but I would have to look into the actual needs and issues before creating suchj an area (unless Paul does it before me).

Moderator wise I will look into this, all mods have guide lines to go by and I will generally support their actions and will listen to their advice. If you would like to help out and possibly become a moderator please pm me with details about how you would be able to help including previous experience (not a requirement asit's my job to teach you), knowledge is not everything, it can help but understanding how to keep things in order and help others certainly makes up for it.

I will look at time spent on the site and post content. Depending on the amount of offers to help in reality you only need one maybe two mods but offers to help out other sections is important. The general discussion and Beginners sections are big spam magnets for example and help there would be greatly recieved.

For those unable to mod due to time or just don't want to you can always report posts but please only report proper issues ie piracy, flaming etc. Asking about ROMs or close this or that topic becuase there is another one like it already is not really reportable unless you give precise links to all topic in question. Remember please don't tell people to do a search, it is human nature for us to be lazy and just create a new post, no ammount of complaining will ever fix this and it just generates less of a community spirit. If you see a duplicate topic try posting in it and give a link suggesting the originator go to the other existing topic.

The main problems I have is due to shift work a lot of time on the site is actually spent at work during quiet times but there is an issues which I have asked Paul to look into where the Android sections error in IE6 but I am not sure exactly why. As yet this issues has not been rectified which is a pain for me and means I have to reply more on the mods than normal.

I am always happy to recieve ideas and suggestions but please understand I do not get paid to be here and I only do this because I like helping people. I do have a real job so sometimes messages may take a day or so to reply to as sometimes after 12hr shifts + running a scout group family etc I do not have the time to be online.

Thanks

Ashley

Anyway you lot should get a real phone OS like WP7 lol (forget WM ever existed, WP7 is a completely different beast)

Right now to jump off my soap box and have a well earned cuppa :-)

[Guest cobhc]

Thanks for the post awarner! Glad to hear we have the existing mod's backing that something needs to be done. I still think we'd need sections in here because as you said it's human nature to post fresh threads about existing issues, and I personally find it niggling to sift through reposts of things I've seen before in order to either find fresh information, or find out if my favourite developer has released something new.

I don't think moderation would help this, unless we had a team of mods that was constantly on the ball with posting links to existing threads and then closing duplicate threads after. As you can see this is probably the fastest growing forum you have on MoDaCo at the moment, and I really think it needs something/someone to sort it all out a little.

/rant.

:D

[Guest oh!dougal]

Would it be very hard to make subsections?

If one section were left as Miscellaneous, then everything except the last few days live threads could be left in that, and gradually sorted through ... as and when someone had the time and inclination. (Job for a temporary or part-time mod?)

The sooner any division were made, the better.

Its only going to get harder as time goes on.

If people don't like it, then it would surely be pretty simple to re-amalgamate things. Wouldn't it?

[Guest buneech]

I think this area needs subsections, and possibly another mod (or some mods).

Anyway you lot should get a real phone OS like WP7 lol (forget WM ever existed, WP7 is a completely different beast)

I heard it's smooth, but haven't had a chance to test it in person. :D

[Guest awarner]

What I need to know is what sort of subsections are we really talking about?

We are not about to create a complete new off shoot for one device as such but certain things can be created.

Only Paul and myself can actually create new sections, Paul creates more than me normally (I just have to sort out everyones permissions as he always forgets :D)

So lets' keep it simple, how about posting a few ideas but please just give a title of a section you would like to see in bold and a very short description as you would see around the site.

From there I will see whay I can come up with, unles Paul beats me to it.

As for moderation I have had one person offer to help so far, it may be a hard job initially as I am sure there will be plently of posts to close and redirect to existing topics etc.

[Guest StevenHarperUK]

I would like to see

• GUIDES
  
• ROMS & TOOLS & THEMES & ADDONS
  
• DEVELOPMENT
  
• TROUBLESHOOTING & HELP
  
• QUESTIONS
  
• GENERAL
  

Thanks

Steven

[Guest cobhc]

Maybe merge questions and general and have an off topic forum?

[Guest IronDoc]

For all the inane chat around here, there aren't often, if ever, whole off topic threads. I for one, kinda like that you can see the latest stuff across all topics from the front page. I think StevenHarper's are good if you merge Questions and General and just sticky Guides at the top of Troubleshooting and Help (and change the name maybe).

[Guest deanhiggins2]

I would like to see

• 
  
• GUIDES
  
• ROMS & TOOLS & THEMES & ADDONS
  
• DEVELOPMENT
  
• TROUBLESHOOTING & HELP
  
• QUESTIONS
  
• GENERAL
  

Thanks

Steven

+1

[Guest sanfran1]

I would like to see

• 
  
• GUIDES
  
• ROMS & TOOLS & THEMES & ADDONS
  
• DEVELOPMENT
  
• TROUBLESHOOTING & HELP
  
• QUESTIONS
  
• GENERAL
  
  
  Steven

I like it, but it seems like too many sub forums, and visiting all of them just to see what's new would be a bit of a pain... how about merging a few of those?
Something like

GENERAL

DEVELOPMENT, ROMS & TOOLS & THEMES & ADDONS
GUIDES, TROUBLESHOOTING & HELP

EDIT* I also vote for you as new mod

Edited January 10, 2011 by sanfran1

[Guest Rotmann]

@Steven - Too many categories mate. ROMS & TOOLS & THEMES & ADDONS is the same as development, troubleshooting and help is the same as questions. I think we should have:

- GENERAL DISCUSSIONS (Miscellaneous)

- DEVELOPMENT (Guides how to install stuff, ROMs, Themes, Tweaks)

- HELP (Questions, Answers, Troubleshooting - n00bs territory)

For mods I vote for StevenHarperUK and Frankish.

Edited January 10, 2011 by Rotmann

[Guest Matty-p]

I agree that currently both some subforums and some active moderation would be beneficial.

I have some experience of moderating a quite busy forum (although not on my own!) for the Rockbox project at forums.rockbox.org, and from that have a few observations.

Sub-forums

Some thought needs to be put into this. I personally don't find a "newbie" subforum particularly useful, as nobody (especially new people) really knows what should go into it, and so topics don't end up much better sorted than before. What I would suggest is to try and analyse the principle subjects that are likely to come up, e.g. Development, Themes, etc., create forums for those and then have a "General" subforum in addition for when people aren't sure, or the topic doesn't fit anywhere else. Mods can always move topics.

Moderation

There are a few important things here, such as having people to cover different time zones (although that would seem to be less important here as most people seem to be EU based), but to my mind the most important aspect is having a published and transparent set of rules/guidelines (call it what you will) for the mods to follow. There is nothing that annoys people more than seemingly random moderation. Having a decent set of guidelines means that everyone knows where they stand.

An interesting point that I don't have enough experience of android/modaco to answer is how long particular phone forums tend to stay active. I can for instance see that the Blade forum is currently very active (I am one of the many people who recently got a SF and stumbled over here searching for better ROMs), but for how long will it stay this active as e.g. development slows or people get new phones? 6 months? A year? With this in mind, I guess that the admins (Paul :D) might think it not worth while. Personally I think it'll stay active for a good while and that sub forums/mods are well worthwhile.

Just to say I'm now a mod and will only be moderateing the blade forum so hi and please let me know about problems so should be better but I do still support the idea of sub forums

[Guest cobhc]

Just to say I'm now a mod and will only be moderateing the blade forum so hi and please let me know about problems so should be better but I do still support the idea of sub forums

*waves* hello mr moderator :D

[Guest awarner]

I like it, but it seems like too many sub forums, and visiting all of them just to see what's new would be a bit of a pain... how about merging a few of those?

Something like

• GENERAL
  
• DEVELOPMENT, ROMS & TOOLS & THEMES & ADDONS
  
• GUIDES, TROUBLESHOOTING & HELP
  

EDIT* I also vote for you as new mod

Interestingly that is exactly what I was thinking apart from General troubleshooting & help in one area.

The reason for this is that I know from experience most people new and old will still post in the general section as it will be the main posrt of call, it is what we created device specific sections for in the first place many years ago.

I would also consider having a seperate section for guides, but are there enough to create a seperate section? If there are only a few guides then the best thing to do is make them a pinned topic so they are always on the top of the page in the General section. Years ago I created a FAQ section where post could be indexed for guides and advice etc unfortunalte Paul decided to remove it and create a wiki modaco site. That never really took off and the many FAQ indexes were lost into the depths of the sites never to be seen again.

Now the only way this can work is by not just relying on moderators to tidy up all the time, if you see a post that you know there are already countless others, don't just post "do a search" very rarely is a search done by anyone, just help guide them to a post where they can understand their question.

If you do that the place will stay friendly and importantly the poster in question especially if they are new will feel more inclinded to become part of the community.

Remember you have to help us help you :P

And "chewie" one of the first moderators of the site back in 2002 used to ask "who mods the moderators?" That would be me :D

[Guest StevenHarperUK]

I really think Development should be kept as its own sub forum, as new ROMs being developed will have very similar titles as the ROMs currently out.

Development will be full of Dev's talking about kernels, non-bootable img's, git hubs and other such things.

[Guest awarner]

OK so the first new ROM section has been created

http://android.modaco.com/category/488/bla...s-cutomsiation/

I have not included Development in the forum title as that is all related to ROMs

Small steps to begin with, lets get that section populated first

Go the Mods of war!

(sorry could not resist lol)

[Guest oh!dougal]

@Steven - Too many categories mate. ROMS & TOOLS & THEMES & ADDONS is the same as development, troubleshooting and help is the same as questions. I think we should have:

- GENERAL DISCUSSIONS (Miscellaneous)

- DEVELOPMENT (Guides how to install stuff, ROMs, Themes, Tweaks)

- HELP (Questions, Answers, Troubleshooting - n00bs territory)

One thing has to be keeping dev discussions 'clean' of n00b nuisance.

A significant problem is n00b-beta-tester-feedback (or "noise").

Modding Guides, user-ready downloads, Troubleshooting and Q&A clearly belong together. (Probably with FAQs.)

I can't see a clear way to divide them, that would be understandable to new visitors.

So the question reall becomes, what can be kept OUT of that area?

I think that in future "accessories" are going to get ever more discussion (or rather, threads).

So I'd split out anything to do with buying the phone or bits for it.

But add to that App reviews, Airtime deals, and anything else to do with 'Getting Stuff'.

For now lets call it Apps, Accessories and Consumer Affiairs.

And a Dev Zone, where its clear that hand-holding is positively discouraged.

Read and learn by all means, but STFU.

[Guest robot1000]

OK so the first new ROM section has been created

http://android.modaco.com/category/488/bla...s-cutomsiation/

I have not included Development in the forum title as that is all related to ROMs

Small steps to begin with, lets get that section populated first

Go the Mods of war!

(sorry could not resist lol)

What does Cutomsiation mean? :D