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A request to the community

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aonomus

Mon Feb 09 2009, 04:29PM

Registered Member #1497 Joined: Thu May 22 2008, 05:24AM
Location: Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Posts: 801

So for the longest time this has been a bit of a complaint with the general community, however not too many people have said anything about it. This is a request to the community to improve the quality of their posts and is mostly directed towards new members of 4hv.

Most people would agree that the quality of forum posts have been declining for a long time, and that this is driving away many good members of the community because there are rarely threads of quality worth the read. This is mostly due to a few problems which I will go into below.

1. Lack of background research - this is likely the #1 problem with most forum posts, there are far too many users joining 4hv expecting people to give them their homework answers. Please for everyones sake, use the search function and try checking the HvWiki for your answers. If you are relatively new to the community and you have lots of simple questions, you can also join the chat room (left menu, and you don't have to be registered on the forum either).

There are numerous threads about building the Steve Ward mini SSTC, use the search function and you will find your answer somewhere in the forum! Even if the search function on 4hv is bad, use Google, it has a much more powerful search algorithm, and you can use "site:http://4hv.org/ QUERYS_STRING_HERE".

2. Post quality - There isn't a critical rush to get your question posted immediately, take the time to spell check, capitalize and use punctuation. Don't ask yourself why no one will read your thread if it is a illegible block of text.

3. Replies - All members should realize that it is against the forum rules to reply with 1 word or 1 liners like 'cool' for the most part. Compliments for a project should probably be followed up with a question, or a point, however one liners are just clutter on the forum.

All in all, for the new users, if you seek help and answers for your questions, please, put more effort into presenting yourself as someone intelligent and people will be more likely to help you. Users that put little effort into asking the question, will get little effort from other users answering it.

And one last point aimed directly at the mods: you guys need to actually do your job and lock down on poor post quality, the most modding I see done is usually due to spam, or an illegal topic. A moderator should help moderate discussion and kindly ask people to do some more research, and the moderator status is not just a extra '1337' status because you've been around so long.

So this is where I leave it up to anyone that reads this thread, reply with your thoughts broken down by the points, if you have a major point to contribute it can be edited in if needed.

rev

Mon Feb 09 2009, 04:51PM

Registered Member #112 Joined: Fri Feb 10 2006, 01:19AM
Location:
Posts: 48

I am one of those people who are increasingly turned off by the lack of quality over the years. So much so that i feel it to be a fruitless burden to check new posts only to find "cool" or "thats neat" as the cause for the thread to look active. It's not worth my time.

We all had to agree to the rules of the forum when we joined. I have always followed these rules and it annoys me to see others violate the rules with no enforcement by the mods.

Please note the low number of posts that i have. This is due to the fact that i have utilised all the features of this forum from day one and also apply effort to get the answers on my own. IRC chat is perfect for simple things that have so far been littering the threads. If i don't have something worth the time and effort of others then i do not post.

This reply if made by some of you would have been simply "i agree" followed by a dozen or so variations. I realy do hope we see none of that.

Dalus

Mon Feb 09 2009, 06:01PM

Registered Member #639 Joined: Wed Apr 11 2007, 09:09PM
Location: The Netherlands, Herkenbosch
Posts: 512

I'm also one of the guys who thinks that the forum could benefit from a more active and aware community. There are quite a lot of threads that go unanswered or neglected, yet some threads are spammed full with the same comments over and over again.

For what rev said about the IRC channel is true, it's an nice and easy way to ask simple questions ask for advice or just introduce yourself to the community. It's a great medium and can help a lot of the new guys here. And furthermore keep the forum free from noise.

Keeping the forum free from noise and under quality posts would be great. It makes it way more pleasant for all of us to read.

Making a propper post isn't that hard,

1-Search if the question didn't came up before (when starting a new thread)
2-Ask for advice on irc (skip when it's something difficult) (when starting a new thread)
3-Write the post for on the forum, try to be on topic and don't post single liners
4-Reread the post, use a spellchecker when English isn't your native language
5-Try to format the post in a nice way
6-Post

Tom540

Mon Feb 09 2009, 06:09PM

Banned on 3/17/2009.
Registered Member #487 Joined: Sun Jul 09 2006, 01:22AM
Location:
Posts: 617

I agree with 100% of what both of you are saying. I'm bored with the constant help me find this, theere are too many new topics that are the same. Like flyback drivers and Steve's mini SSTC. When I first joined this site you guys were super strict on who you let become a member and the posts were very good and interesting. Lots of guru's starting threads that we could all learn from etc. Now it's more like a tech support for noobs. I still love it though.

The problem I see is new members rarely read the rules and will probably not see this thread either. One thing I'd like to note is when you use the search command you have to click the magnifying glass symbol. if you simply press enter it will come up with nothing as a result.

-Tom

Dalus

Mon Feb 09 2009, 09:57PM

Registered Member #639 Joined: Wed Apr 11 2007, 09:09PM
Location: The Netherlands, Herkenbosch
Posts: 512

The forum as it is now is a great place, it brings all likeminded people together that's for sure. Yet the forum itself is poluted with noise. Most people just accept this, fighting this would require a harsher policy and would be harder on the noobs which are still finding there way on the forum. Being harsher would be great for the somewhat older users it makes reading a lot more fun. Now you're sometimes just skipping posts and only reading the stuff from users you know since they provide vallid information.

teslacoolguy

Mon Feb 09 2009, 10:30PM

Registered Member #1107 Joined: Thu Nov 08 2007, 10:09PM
Location:
Posts: 792

I agree with both of you. Personally i think the forum is getting alot of noise and people are starting threads to answer very simple questions that can be answered by searching google for a couple minutes such as "how do i use a mosfet". Although on the other hand, there have been some new members that have impressed me quite a bit. I think that the irc or the hvwiki can eliminate these kind of pointless threads and therefore make the forum more interesting and leave more space for more advanced members to ask questions and discuss more exciting things. I don't start threads often because i always look through the hvwiki and google and 4hv is really my last resort for information.

Steve Conner

Mon Feb 09 2009, 11:33PM

Registered Member #30 Joined: Fri Feb 03 2006, 10:52AM
Location: Glasgow, Scotland
Posts: 6706

I gave up trying to moderate this endless "OMG how does I use mosfet" long ago. Chris can give my modbadge to anyone else he sees fit. (Maybe aonomus should get it, since he seems to care.)

Here

is an example of what the forum used to be like back when it rocked.

Chris Russell

Tue Feb 10 2009, 04:38AM

... not Russel!
Registered Member #1 Joined: Thu Jan 26 2006, 12:18AM
Location: Tempe, Arizona
Posts: 1052

Thank you, aonomus. Very well said.

I don't think the quality is dismal just yet, but we are certainly picking up a lot of noise. One of the biggest problems is that I'm spending most of my time working, and whatever time I have set aside to work on 4hv.org really needs to be spent getting the new site finished, so we can solve a lot of these problems effectively.

It's been a long time since we made any changes to the moderating team. A lot of out moderators are now inactive, or too busy to help very often. I had planned on refreshing the moderating team when the new site opened, but if anyone would like to step forward and help contain things for just a little bit longer, it would be greatly appreciated. It wouldn't be glorious work, for sure, but it would really make a difference.

Alternately, an independently wealthy 4hv.org member could cut me a large check, so I can quit the rat race and stalk the forums, rattling the banstick myself. Not very realistic, though.

In the long term, we're going to have to combat these problems at the source, by doing the things I mentioned with the new site: making sure we have a powerful, easy-to-use search engine; making the wiki a usable and valuable resource for tackling subjects that come up frequently; enforcing as many of the rules as possible via software, so the site rules are less complicated and more likely to be read; and making sure we have the community set up to foster a positive learning environment, rather than fostering a "give me schemz pls" attitude among incoming members. I'm convinced that's the way to go. Moderating is crucial, but even a huge moderating team can only fix these issues as they come up, rather than tackling the issue of why they happen in the first place.

aonomus

Tue Feb 10 2009, 04:48AM

Registered Member #1497 Joined: Thu May 22 2008, 05:24AM
Location: Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Posts: 801

I agree with Chris Russell, we would all appreciate more community contribution.

If you feel like you can contribute towards the wiki, contact Chris Russell via PM (I'm sure he'll appreciate that :P), but also, if you feel like contributing towards chatting on IRC, and HV related discussions, come join us on IRC via either the chatroom link on the left hand menu, or by connecting to #hvcomm on irc.shadowworld.net.

Bjørn

Tue Feb 10 2009, 07:52AM

Registered Member #27 Joined: Fri Feb 03 2006, 02:20AM
Location: Hyperborea
Posts: 2058

Steve's reply answers Anonomus call for the moderators to step forward. Steve is one of the most active moderators, which mean we have no moderators that can really be considered active.

Since Chris is busy with other things the forum and HvWiki are mostly left to its own devices. We need to set up a new moderating team that can take over some of the running of the forum and wiki so we are not dependent on Chris for everything that needs to be done. It is not very likely that he will get a lot more time to spend on the forum and if he gets any less the future of the forum will not look very bright.

If someone have any ideas it would be most helpful to hear about them.

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Moderator(s): Chris Russell, Noelle, Alex, Tesladownunder, Dave Marshall, Dave Billington, Bjørn, Steve Conner, Wolfram, Kizmo, Mads Barnkob