Recent messages in general have finally prodded me to fix up the definition of the general forum, and I have updated the relevant web pages http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm and http://www.jsoftware.com/jwiki/System/Forums . Thanks to the several people who have written to me about this in the past - and waited too long for some action.
I think the new definitions are straightforward, but I would like to give an overview of the change. We originally had a single forum, but found that too often, the forum got swamped by threads that were of interest to only a part of the community, such as beta bug reports. Hence the split into four forums. I think the split has worked pretty well, except only for general, which has had a lot of traffic that we really wanted in programming or chat. At fault was the definition of general. The (updated) intent of the forums is as follows. Beta is obvious. Programming is the main forum, and in particular should include any postings under the umbrella "how do I solve problem x in J?". Chat is for any other discussions of interest to the community, including related array language discussions. General is a catch all, for things that don't fit elsewhere. A key point is that beta, programming and general are intended for active J users, for issues directly relating to the J system; while the chat forum is open to all and can cover any topic. Opening chat this way has been quite fortunate, particularly with contributions from other vendors, such as Morten. It is also a natural forum for non-usage topics such as "J on YouTube". It should be clear why recent threads in general, such as "J with APL", "Notation as a Tool of Thought", and "Teaching" would have been much better in chat - these topics are of interest to a wider community, and would have benefited from outside contributions. What does go in general? Any issue specific to J, not belonging to programming or beta. For example, installation, support, wiki/website, and this current message on forum design. General would normally be a low traffic group. A few more points: Announcements are moved from general to programming, as being more appropriate for the main forum. At least part of the problem is the forum names. The name "chat" suggests something frivolous, and "general" an open discussion group - perhaps "discussions" and "admin" would have been better names. Unfortunately, changing names now would be a lot of work (for everyone, not just me), and it seems best to leave them as is. Forum members configure their forum access to match the forums. For example, some read only programming; some read programming messages singly, and other forums in digest, etc. Therefore, one reason for posting to the correct forum is to respect everyone's forum settings. It is hard to get these definitions right, and necessarily there will be some overlap. Any suggestions for further improvement are welcome, either to me privately or to this forum. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
