Just trying out starting a new thread and seeing what happens. Will there be similar section headings here (e.g. Asking Questions, General Chat) or are we going in a new direction? Hwyl am y tro.
p.s. Again, you can delete this if you want because it’s just a test.
We’ve got rid of the Chat/Questions distinction, so for the time being, it’s just the one big forum. At some point there’ll be a way to separate things out, probably something fun involving tags, but for now we’re keeping it simple. 
There was some talk at one time about having tags for posts or topics, right? Is that still a possibility? One I thought of that I would like to see would be something about “put me on the map” so that I can find people who have asked to be put on the map. Just a thought …
Definitely - tags are in the pipeline. We just have a few important, queued-up things to get out of the way first
Noswaith dda pawb!
Just one big forum?
Sorry, but that’s ridiculous.
Maybe for the “General Chat” it doesn’t need to be too structured (although I think it would help), but what about the Lesson-specific questions, for example?
And depending on tags isn’t going to help, not much anyway. Reminds me of the original Gmail (maybe it’s still like that - I stopped using it for other reasons, but unlike other mail systems at the time, they didn’t allow you to divide your mail into folders. Tags were going to take care of everything. jm…it was horriible in practice. I now use a different mail system that does allow folders and I’m happy with it.
This new forum is still quite young, but it’s already built up a fair number of threads (but we aren’t apparently allowed to know how many, so we have absolutely no idea how far down the column on the left goes. Sorry, it’s just … uh!
Sorry again I realise you’ve put a lot of work into it, but I wonder if you consulted any users before deciding on the look and feel?
Or is it simply aimed fairly and squarely at the Facebook/iphone generation?
Tags and the Search function are useful tools, but you still need Structure which seems to be missing here.
When Google came along, everyone realised that directory listings were actually a pretty bad idea and that search was finally good enough to replace it. By using categories, you’re essentially trying to hammer a taxonomy into something that is dynamic and subjective. People don’t want to spend time deciding on exactly where a post goes ahead of time, and will naturally game the system anyway to ensure their post doesn’t drop into some category that is never frequented. I really think that a good balance would be tags that moderators can add retrospectively. We’ll ultimately see whether it scales in a forum context, but I’m actually pretty optimistic about it.
Simon: I really think that a good balance would be tags that moderators can add retrospectively
Yes, absolutely - in fact, I’d like to see what happens if we let anyone add tags, so the whole body of discussion could become (to a certain extent) self-organising…
Mike, I appreciate that you don’t like the new approach, but do please bear in mind that one thing hasn’t changed at all - our golden rule about being polite to other people, their ideas and their work. We welcome input, the more detailed the better, about how people are using or failing to use this tool, and yes, we’ve gone through three iterations of asking for (and getting) people’s opinions on the changes (it’s a pity that you must have missed the invitations on the old forum).
I’m more than happy to answer any questions at all, and to accept feature requests - in fact, thanks to a great idea from Kev wondersheep, we have an open Trello board at Trello where, if you set up a Trello account and let me know your username, you can add feature requests directly yourself.
@Simon
Same thing happened when Firefox switched their bookmark system to MySQL. Keeping bookmarks organized was a pain. Do I file music related software under Software > Music or Music > Software? Not to mention the time required to do all this. Now, I just add the tags and search instantly finds what I’m looking for.
@Aran: I apologise for the word “ridiculous”. I think I’ve been polite in most other respects. I was under a lot of stress at the time I wrote that though, although substantively my views haven’t changed. And I do respect the amount of work that has gone in.
I was just completely surprised by the direction you’ve chosen to take, forum-wise. (I’m very much on board with the new Course 1 though, FWIW).
And yes, I must have completely missed those invitations on the old forum: regrettably.
Simon Walton When Google came along, everyone realised that directory listings were actually a pretty bad idea and that search was finally good enough to replace it. By using categories, you’re essentially trying to hammer a taxonomy into something that is dynamic and subjective. People don’t want to spend time deciding on exactly where a post goes ahead of time, and will naturally game the system anyway to ensure their post doesn’t drop into some category that is never frequented.
My emphasis
“Everyone?” - How do you know “everyone” did? Everyone who thought in a certain way, perhaps. But people think in different ways.
(And if we take your argument to its limit reductio ad absurdum, maybe we shouldn’t even have individual threads. Let’s just let anyone write in the same long thread. No problem surely? Tags and search will take care of it…)
I don’t know if you use Windows, but have you stopped using directories/folders on your computer?
Or on your (actual) desktop, do you just place paper files / documents in one large stack? The most recently updated ones at the top? I’m sure you don’t. You will have some sort of filing system.
Powerful search is great. Tags are great. But they don’t actually replace structure. You can have the best of both with powerful search and tags added to at least a minimal structure.
It’s not that difficult (and is in fact easier for a new user), if (s)he wants to talk about Bootcamps to look for section headings with the name “Bootcamp” in, say. Or meetups in Cardiff, or Washington DC. Or Course 3, Lesson 20.
Two obvious categories / sections to have would have been
- Bugs
- Feature requests
and a third would have been - Help (in using the forum)
Instead of which the first two are all over the place, and even on a different system (Trello). @Aran: I’ve signed in there using my Google account.
“Mike W Ellwood”. Is that OK?
Don’t get me wrong: I’m 101% behind SSiW/SSi, but I’m really not sure you are heading in the right direction with this forum (or even that a new forum was necessary, at least for Welsh). Still, I suppose, to quote Mark Twain, for those people who like this sort of thing, this will be the sort of thing they’ll like.
I say this because I care about SSiW, not because I want to be rude.
I don’t think I was ever rude on the old forum, and I don’t think I’ve changed that much.
Tags again* If you always planned to replace categories by a tag/search system, why didn’t you make tagging available on day 1? It would have made the benefits of that system more apparent, and might have pacified awkward beggars like me, even though not a perfect replacement for proper structure.
And if tags weren’t ready, well, maybe the system wasn’t ready for release.
Leaving that aside, the language site/forum “how-to-learn-any-language.com”, which is far from perfect (mainly because the admin no longer actively develops or takes part in it), has a system of both conventional categories, and also tags, which are themselves categorised (e.g. there is one series for all the languages, like “French”, “German”, etc. and another series for language learning methods/courses, etc, etc.
The tags are all predefined. The admin could add new ones if asked.
Tagging is done in several different ways:
- The user can add tags (from the predefined list) at the time of posting.
- I think the system can automatically add them in obvious cases by word/phrase matching
- Moderators can assign/re-assign them afterwards, as well as moving posts to different parts/sections/subforums.
Which brings out / reminds me that tags and sections/categories are doing slightly different jobs I think, and one is not a replacement for the other.
For example, this whole thread is about section headings, and on a more traditional forum would have belonged in a category such as “forum feature requests”. But it could have tags like “forum-features” “section-headings” “chat” “questions” “forum-conduct” etc.
Tags give you an ability to search (and possibly browse) the forum at a finer grain, but they are mostly only useful if you know what you are looking for, and not everyone is, all of the time. Having a list of all the tags (as HTLAL does) would be helpful, because that then gives users an idea of what lies within the forum (as section headings/subforums also would, but at a more over-view-ish sort of level.
Anyway, when tags do become available, I’d suggest borrowing some of the features mentioned above from HTLAL because they have proved useful to language learners, but of course you can also add bells and whistles of your own, such as a function which draws a sort of tree-structure of the tags, to help give the user more of an overview of what’s inside. Or tags and related or sub-tags, e.g.
Major tag: Course1
sub-tag: lesson5
sub-tag: nouns
Then a search on Course1-lesson5-nouns would bring up all posts mentioning nouns in that particular lesson. Maybe they wouldn’t have to be sub-tags in that case, but I think there might be cases where it would be useful.
@Aran: I am (and always was) trying to be constructive. You need to hear (and listen to) constructive criticism as well as the compliments.
Mike: If you always planned to replace categories by a tag/search system, why didn’t you make tagging available on day 1?
That’s a good point, and one that I can answer, not satifactorily, buit in a “that’s the way it is” kind of way. We had a choice of keeping on with the old forum, falling to bits around the seems, spending time on repairing the old system, which we were intending to ditch withint weeks / months, or getting going with the forum not quite ready.
The problem with waiting “until the new forum is ready” is that techincaly, it never will be ready. There is always something new that will be a “we’ll open once this is ready” kind of thing. We need a system for meet-ups, a taggin system, a better way of organising bootcamps, etc etc. As each problem was dealt with (and tested, maybe), we would be adding new things to the to-do-before-launch list.
In fact, the original forum was tested in February last year (I think - it was that kind of timescale anyway). So ARan and I decided that we would launch. In fariness, Ifan (web developer) said an absolute categorical no, because the system wasn’t ready, and so we knocked him over the head and pressed the launch button while he was unconscious. He has been fightin fires ever since (and not charging us extra for the extra work he’s doing!)
It’s a good analogy, about changing the directory system of the computer - I would love to! I’d love to have all my files tagged so that I could find them easily. Of course, there are some easily indentified places. All my SaySomethingin files are in the same direcory, etc. It’s the random letters and the files that could go in three or four boxes that cause me the problem, and that I can never find.
On the old forum, I could never find certain subjects that were in, to me, illogical places (“obvious logic” is a very personal thing, sometimes!).
I suspect that the taggin system, and certain sub systems that we want to develop, like specific areas for meet-up and bootcamp planning - will start to resemble the essentials of categories, and the tagging within the system will asnwer everybody’s logic rather than individual logic required for the original forum, which a lot of people found difficult to use, and lots more probably missed ot on a whole lot of useful stuff because they never found it.
Of course, at the moment, this forum can seem a bit formless, but that is because we are forming the forum around it’;s users, rather than giving the users a straight jacket to work within.
The chaos will resolve, when we have the time. In the meantime, all our users are helping by showing hoe the forum is getting used, if that makes sense.
I hope that makes things clearer for everyone. And I hope you don’t think that your suggestions are being ignored, Mike - we are listening to everyone as part of the process of making this forum work for the people who are using it. But it will take time!
And if tags weren’t ready, well, maybe the system wasn’t ready for release.
Mike, I think it’s important to remember that it’s been mentioned in a number of different threads that there were major technical problems with the old forum that forced the transfer over to the new forum earlier than was desired. To use the classic swan analogy - it might have looked calm on the surface, but there was frantic paddling going on underneath. And I’m sure you’ll agree that a forum that you’re unhappy with is preferable to no forum at all! Undoubtedly there will be improvements/additions, but as Iestyn said, it’s going to take time.
Thank you for your apology, Mike.
I think I’ve been polite in most other respects.
I think this is broadly true. It’s worth remembering, though, that we set the bar unusually high in this community - we expect politeness all the time, not most of the time.
You need to hear (and listen to) constructive criticism as well as the compliments.
I think you must have missed my initial response: ‘We welcome input, the more detailed the better, about how people are using or failing to use this tool.’ I am delighted by constructive criticism - it is of real value to us. Nonetheless, even the most critical of comments can (and on this forum, must) be presented politely - by way of example, telling other people what they ‘need’ to do is nowhere near as effective (or friendly) as saying that you’re trying to offer constructive suggestions and hope that they will be taken in that spirit.