This reminds me of a major problem with forums: categorization. By
forcing users to categorize their issues, you reduce the likelihood
the question will be seen. Take an example where a user has a problem
involving both serial communication and databases. The user expects
the problem to be related to the serial port so the message is posted
to the serial category (if it exists). Maybe somebody like myself who
knows a bit about databases but nothing about serial ports simply
does not browse the serial category but holds the answer. In the case
of the NUG, I'd still see the question. On the forum, I never would.
I know, it's a vague example, but the point is the same nevertheless.
Forums don't work for expert users. We are the ones who customize our
computer to great lengths to make them meet our workflow. We all use
the list differently. The people who need help are more frequently
the newbie users who let the computer tell them how to work. They are
willing to use the confines of the forum. They have not yet
discovered the beauty and simplicity of the list. Here, I don't have
to deal with formatting, pages, avatars and excessive loading times.
I'm reading a problem on the forums about somebody trying to write an
SSL HTTP Server. There are two pages worth of back and forth about
trial and error. On the NUG, this problem would have been answered
correctly in minutes. On the forum, the correct answer was never posted.
So I understand this move is to try to move us experts to the forums.
But as I already stated, we don't like to obey rules. Forums are too
constricting. We won't move to the forums, so this move will only
hurt RS. Experts will go one place, everybody else will go to the
forums. Questions will go unanswered in the forums, and will be
unasked on the experts list. The community that keeps RB alive will die.
If you ask me, kill the forums.
--
Thom McGrath,
<http://www.thezaz.com/>
"Only those who have the patience to do simple things perfectly will
acquire the skill to do difficult things easily." - Johann Freidreich
Von Schiller
On Feb 5, 2007, at 12:42 PM, Dana Mason wrote:
The forum id is the value that is provided for the 'f' variable in
the URL, so in this case the id for the Databases forum is 3. You
can put this same variable in your RSS URL in order to subscribe to
that particular forum. Here is an example for the Databases forum:
feed://forums.realsoftware.com/rss.php?f=3
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