I have one suggestion - placing another copy of the pagination menu at the top of each page. I often find myself in a race with loading images scrolling the menu away when I just want to quickly move to the next page. Most forums use this convention.

I'm a frequent user of other forums and MoI's is the best for me so far. If you start using it, it will become apparent.

For instance, right now, my left navigation pane only has "3 Titles" in it. The one's I havnt read since I last read the forum. When I clcik on one of the titles, the 3 remain listed there on the left....While I read. I'm not navigated away to some other part, and have to get back to continue.

Vodka martini's note is something that I have thought about also. When needing to review long threads, I have to get to the bottom of each to page on...

The search I had problems with, but if you utilize "Quotes" it can eliminate that pretty well. This was expressed to me when I had to ask for something from the past, and another user noted I should search. I already had extensivly, for like 30 minutes. I revisited the search feature and quoted a couple words and it was the second listing presented. Egg on face.

Leave it as it is, simple, light and we're all talking about the same thing...MoI, so what other areas do we need ? maybe a windger area ;)

Cheers

Hi vodkamartini,

> I have one suggestion - placing another copy of the
> pagination menu at the top of each page.

That's a great suggestion and it looks like that should be pretty easy to make happen.

I think that I'll likely be doing some web site tuneup work after MoI v2 is launched, and that will probably be a good time to make some forum adjustments too.

- Michael

Hi Burr, yeah having the thread list available on the side is especially nice for reading brand new messages. Just one click to go to every thread instead of having the thread list disappear on you all the time and having to navigate back to it over and over again.

Having that thread list always available along the side is the main reason why I use this particular forum.

It makes it behave something more like a desktop e-mail program like where you have your mail list and a reading pane both on the screen at the same time.


re: Searching - putting stuff in quotes helps, also one other main tip about searching is you can put a + in front of a word to require that word.

So for example say you do a search and put in this: Network Sweep

That will then do a search for posts that contain either Network OR Sweep.

If you want to only find posts that contain both of the words Network AND Sweep in them, then put in this: +Network +Sweep

That can really help a lot to find something when you can think of more than 1 word that should be in it and then use the + in front of each word.

- Michael

Hi Michael,

Thanks for the rapid response.



- "You mention that you don't want to go through a lot of threads.... What would you suggest that I do about that, delete old threads or something like that?"


Not at all. Threads should rarely be deleted. What I meant was that if I'm only interested in WIP's, official news or whatever then I'd have a really hard time finding only those threads. As it is now, I'd have to look at the threads and hope the title is sufficient enough to tell me about the content. But even so, I'd still have to look at a list with different kinds of content mixed together.

I just did some searches to find threads about V2 beta that were originally started by you, and it was rather difficult to get a good search result. A novice user wouldn't think of using "" in the search field, and it also seems that the search mechanism doesn't look at thread titles, which only makes it even more difficult to browse the forum. available now or "available now" didn't return any of the beta threads from you.



- "There have been very few problems or negative comments about the forum for quite a long time now, even people who are complete computer novices have been able to figure out how to use it which is a good sign!"


I can only guess why there haven't been more complaints, but you may be missing out on lot's of ppl - it is a realistic possibility IMO. I'd agree that the forum is indeed user friendly, but only to a certain degree. It's easy to "get going" and get a overall look quickly, but very limiting if you are interested in certain type of content. It's very much like having a book without a table of content. You'd have to browse all the pages and spend too much time, even if only glancing at them, to find what you are seeking - and as mentioned above, the search feature isn't helping much. A proper forum is even better than a table of content due to the beauty of computers, but you aren't exploiting it.

A mixed list does have benefits, but it's just that it's the only option here.

You mentioned you don't like all the back and forth browsing like in the other forum systems. Well, I have another window open right now, so I can see what you wrote in your previous posts while typing this - and I have to open another one, because I can't remember some of the stuff I wrote myself :) It may not be "back and forth" the same way, but it isn't particularly user friendly either.

Another thing on that note - tabs are rather common these days. I don't like the back and forth thing myself, so I use tabs (I also use new/latest posts features frequently, but far from exclusively). I'd still use tabs even on this forum, as it would allow the different pages to pre-load.



- "The part that I don't like about that is that frequently people will post stuff in the wrong category and that then brings a bunch of "administration overhead" to the whole discussion, with posts about "you didn't post in the right place", etc...

If there's just one category then that issue is completely eliminated."


I agree that it requires some effort, but you can have volunteers that you trust as moderators - many do this including professionals.



- "It's actually possible to have multiple folders with the forum that I use now, but I have intentionally avoided doing that kind of fragmentation.

Also I'm not really sure what kind of categories that I would create that would not end up with the vast majority just in one general area."


While I understand what you mean by "fragmentation", I'd say the current forum is fragmented. All sorts of threads mixed into the same bunch makes it cluttered. One of the first things I was interested in when I ones again looked into MoI, was to see how others were using the app. The Gallery section is one place to turn - I could also use Google, but having a forum gallery/wip section would have made much better and easier to get a "real life" impression of the application. Current forum forces me to dig harder and not all thread titles indicate what they may contain.

Looking at how other gfx/single app specific forums are split up would be a good place to start.

I'd also suggest this forum in particular: http://www.lfsforum.net/index.php
It's game related but very nicely split up - a bit too many sub-forums for MoI, but worth a look.



- "often times all the action just happens in one "misc" or "general discussion" category and the sub-categories just languish with nothing much happening in them."


Depends on how well the forum is split into sub-forums/sections. What you are describing occurs most often in generic forums (forums that covers many applications), whereas forums that are for a single or few apps tend to work much cleaner - I wouldn't say I can recognize what you are describing on the other boards that I visit - not as a problem.

But to make myself clear - a forum with sections will be a big improvement, and I don't think you should worry too much about novice users - they can't stay novice forever and I'd dare to say that you are more likely to scare away potential costumers, than to lure someone in with this one. This forum is also the exact opposite of how MoI is.

One final note: I think you are underestimating the importance of a proper forum - I've seen bunch of sites using old forums. They ignored the problem (in their case simply by not upgrading for whatever reason) for too long, and in turn ended up with too much valuable content that they weren't OK with to lose when implementing some new forum system. The problem with that can be seen in the amount of traffic these days - very limited. Why it matters to upgrade? It's not the upgrade in itself, but the fact that software improves/changes over time. Usability improves/changes and before you know it, stuff that ones were fine, aren't sufficient any longer, because the behavioral pattern of ppl changes.


I hope I made myself clearer this time - if not then feel free to ask about more.

Hi Zafar, I think your problem is that you're not making use of other resources, specifically the wiki.

For especially notable posts I'll try to put a link to those in the wiki, for example you can find links to several tutorial posts there:
http://moi3d.com/resources

Also on the top part of the wiki's resources page, there is a link to Petr's MoI page which contains a collection of all the v2 beta release notes, that is available here:
http://kyticka.webzdarma.cz/3d/moi/doc/V2releasenotes.html

Probably when v3 betas come out I'll try to maintain a wiki page that contains the release notes rather than relying on Petr to collect them up as I did for v2.

In general though I think that having notable posts indexed by the wiki is a good strategy and deals with your most significant issues.

Note that the wiki is linked to from the main moi3d.com web site, it is the "Resources" link on that main page.


> A novice user wouldn't think of using "" in the search field,

Well, Google works pretty much in the same fashion, so that's a good one to learn to make better use of any searching mechanism.


> and it also seems that the search mechanism doesn't look at thread titles,

Yes, I think this is correct. That's probably something that can be fixed in the forum and most likely does not require just switching to a completely new forum.


> I can only guess why there haven't been more complaints, but
> you may be missing out on lot's of ppl - it is a realistic
> possibility IMO.

I doubt it - before the last forum update I did it was definitely mentioned more frequently. Your post here is the first gripe I've heard about it for quite a long time.

It would be odd for there to be a sudden and persisting drop off in negative comments if there were still significant issues.

It's certainly possible that I'm wrong, but based on all the information I have seen, it seems unlikely.


> I'd agree that the forum is indeed user friendly, but only to a
> certain degree. It's easy to "get going" and get a overall look
> quickly, but very limiting if you are interested in certain type
> of content.

Well, it's easy to post a question to and get an answer, and to read new topics... Those are the most important functions for the forum to accomplish.

Could you give some examples of which "certain types of content" you would be trying to find?

You mentioned my beta announcements, but as I've already described those are collected up in another place already.

If you look back over the past 100 posts or so, I think you'll find that there are quite a variety of things being covered - I don't think it is feasible to break things down in to like 50 different categories with a trickle of stuff in many of them and then a whole lot in one "general" category. For the most part you will still run into the issue that you are complaining about, with having a lot of threads in one category.


> and as mentioned above, the search feature isn't helping much.

In general it actually works very well, I use it very frequently to find previous discussions. I do agree that it could use some tuning to include the title in the search results, that would have probably solved your problem.


> It's very much like having a book without a table of content.

The problem is, that you can't easily have a table of content when the content is widely varying and not easily lumped into nice neat categories.

Official announcements makes up something like less than 1 percent of the posts.

WIPs probably make up less than 5 percent of the posts.

Unless you can suggest some organization method where there would be a nice even distribution of all the discussion topics, your overall suggestion of having a table of contents mechanism just simply does not fit with what is actually happening in the forum...


> A mixed list does have benefits, but it's just that it's the only option here.

Well as I described earlier, it actually has benefits _when_ it is the only option, because that's when there is no ambiguity or mistakes that can happen about posting to the wrong category.


> Another thing on that note - tabs are rather common these
> days. I don't like the back and forth thing myself, so I use
> tabs (I also use new/latest posts features frequently, but
> far from exclusively).

Yeah, certainly I use tabs a lot when browsing the web as well.

But for something that has a nice already ordered list, it makes more sense to have some kind of UI that tries to make working with the list easier.

You can certainly use tabs as well, but it is just not as orderly or as simple for the primary case of just reading several threads - having the whole screen jump to different states when you want to switch is far more jarring than this forum UI.


> > re: people posting in the wrong category
>
> I agree that it requires some effort, but you can have
> volunteers that you trust as moderators - many do this
> including professionals.

Well, you're not quite getting the whole point - it's not just the fact that it takes moderation time to do that administration work, it's that it just clutters up the discussion and makes for people to have to see extra text, think about extra issues, rather than just post something.


> but having a forum gallery/wip section would have made
> much better and easier to get a "real life" impression of the
> application. Current forum forces me to dig harder and not all
> thread titles indicate what they may contain.

Sorry, I don't really see how the current separate Gallery does not totally solve this - there are a whole bunch of examples there and it is already separated out into its own section of the web site.

That's really why the Gallery exists - it solves this exact problem about giving you an overview of a lot of different things that were produced with MoI.

Why do you consider it so important for the forum to fulfill this task when the Gallery already is doing it?


> One final note: I think you are underestimating the
> importance of a proper forum - I've seen bunch of sites
> using old forums.

Sorry, I just don't really get it - this forum is easy to use and is serving the purpose of discussions about MoI very well... That means it is certainly a "proper" forum.

Additionally it is easier and also nicer to use than the forums that you are suggesting - the overall mechanism of a separate thread list and the way that you can easily see only new posts is superior to the UI in the other forums that you are mentioning.

Switching to a different forum would be a significant downgrade, not an upgrade or an improvement...


I still may do a couple of categories in the future, but like I've mentioned there is not any really good organization method that comes to mind that would evenly distribute messages. So the thing you seem to think is the main problem - having a large number of messages in a single category - would likely also be the case in a different forum as well.

As I've already mentioned, this forum does have a way to organize things into categories as well, so there is not any need to actually switch to a different forum to do that.

Thanks for your feedback, but I'm sorry I find your conclusions to be largely incorrect so it is not likely that I will be able to act on your recommendations.

- Michael

Probably a way that would work a lot nicer for categorization would be a tagging mechanism instead of the rigid hierarchy as in those other forums.

For example when you created a thread you could also specify a tag for it, or a moderator could assign one later on too.

Threads would still be posted in one big list as they are now, but you could go to a tags list and click on a tag to filter the threads list to only contain ones that had that tag in it.

That would actually be a much more modernized organization method than what is used in those other forums.

Of course it would take some work to implement that, and I'm not at all convinced that it is an actual pressing need currently.

But that certainly comes to mind as a superior approach. For example see http://stackoverflow.com/ - that's newer type of discussion site and it is organized like this, the main UI is a linear list of topics but there is a tagging system set up that lets you narrow it to different categories.

Additionally a tagging system can be more flexible because you could assign several tags to the same thread. With a rigid folder type system the thread can only be in one folder.

- Michael

It's so simple, why change something who works :)
I am alas on many from :D and this one is the more speedy : no superfluous!

PS And don't forget that for the moment just one guy manage it so...it's the best for him :)

The tagging system would need to be maintained as a very small "controlled" tag set. Otherwise, it degrades into a useless pile of goo. Community softwares utilize this and i have to run for the hills when I see it. Uterly useless. But the way you just described it, if controlled a bit, could be very usefull!

Michael:

My apologies for not giving you a proper reply to your comments and questions, because it may seem like I put forums very high, and I don't - I strongly think it would be a wise move to implement sub-forums/sections though, either by adding them through the current forum or a new one. That doesn't really matter. I was primarily interested in expressing my opinion on the matter, and I hope more will join in.

I will be sending you a PM with few notes.

Hi Zafar, well what categories would you suggest?

Ones that have come to mind to me would probably fit something like 6% of the total number of threads, leaving 94% all in one big area, not really much different from the current situation really, just with some new complications.

In the v3 timeframe I will try to put more effort into putting particularly significant notifications on the wiki instead of only in the forum, I believe that will handle your original issue of wanting to track down the beta release notes.

And as noted previously, there is already a separate Gallery section on the web site. There is no need to try and separate out something for that in the forum, it is already separated out.

- Michael

General (can be any topic that doesn't fit into the other categories)
Gallery/WIP's
Help (an isolated place to ask for assistance)
Feature requests (if u'd like. Could get crowded fast - such sub-forums always does :) )

That's only 4 and from the top of my head - but browsing would be much cleaner already and make more sense - as a MoI noob I'd be most interested in the gallery and help sections, and have already filtered out many irrelevant threads. A 100% clean forum can't be guaranteed but as long as ppl do their best to stick within the proper category, this forum will already be heading the right direction.

I understand there may be plugin support later? If that's the case then you might want a category for plugin developers. Perhaps one for development and one for releases.

Those 6 and 94% can very well have to do with the forum not being organized so ppl don't care about how they use the forum. Since it's all one big pile to begin with, it wouldn't make much sense in keeping each thread clean and that, I believe, can turn into a problem in itself - like reflecting as those 94%.

I didn't include announcements/news - if they are available from the site, then that's fine. I used the beta announcements as an example - but it's not the same with the gallery for the reasons I gave in my PM.

Edit: I almost forgot - don't wait till/after v3. You should do it now! :)

Hello,

I actually like the current format, it is simple to navigate and fast. Categorizing is good and bad. It may make it a little faster to get to relevant information, but on the downside I have seen each section and userbase become isolated from the other, so it is always possible to stifle information sharing.

One thing I think that would be good is the ability to tag and follow posts and have those show up at the top in case I want to follow a thread to its conclusion.

As far as demo goes, a timed (8 hour), no save version would be fine. SketchUP was not free until Google bought them, and as I remember SU was more expensive than MoI is today even at version 2. MoI is a steal at $295, nothing else comes close to this number in terms of value for dollar spent. It's just a matter of budgeting and prioritization of funds.

I agree, the current format seems fine to me. You could probably get away with splitting things up into a small number of categories (e.g. "Announcements / Beta Updates", "Bug Reports / Tech. Issues", "Feature Requests", and "General Discussion"). I'm not sure a tagging system would be a better idea for this type of forum, though. It works well for stackoverflow.com because of the extensive range of languages, frameworks, utilities, and so on.

Anyhow, you already mentioned what I consider to be the best way to "upgrade" the forum. A well maintained wiki would do wonders for people simply interested in the random tidbits and nuggets of information that are often hidden in rather dull looking threads. Many of your replies to mundane questions/problems are so perfectly detailed and illustrated that it's a real shame for them to go unreferenced. I bet many people here already keep an extensive list of bookmarks to such posts.

Hi Zafar,

> General (can be any topic that doesn't fit into the other categories)
> Gallery/WIP's
> Help (an isolated place to ask for assistance)
> Feature requests (if u'd like. Could get crowded fast - such sub-forums always does :) )

I really doubt that it would work as well... For example a lot of posts contain stuff that would fit into more than 1 of your categories here, like someone asks for help and also has a feature request in the same post, that happens frequently.

It seems like it would add some complexity to the forum, without enough gain to make up for the negative qualities of the added complexity.


> but as long as ppl do their best to stick within the proper category

That never really happens, instead what happens is a lot of continual noise and additional traffic pestering people about going into the right category.


> I understand there may be plugin support later? If that's the case
> then you might want a category for plugin developers. Perhaps
> one for development and one for releases.

When the time comes for plug-in support, I would expect to branch that off into its own separate forum, that one is easier to do because a plug-in developer is very different kind of user. If there is a clear way to separate one group of users from another group of users, that's the kind of thing that I would agree can make for a good separation into different categories.


> as a MoI noob I'd be most interested in the gallery and help sections,

Well, there already is a gallery section, it's here: http://moi3d.com/gallery/

Why do you think having a second gallery section would somehow be useful for someone new who wanted to browse gallery stuff. I mean why would they not just go to the current gallery to browse gallery stuff?


Sorry, but I just don't see much value in what you are proposing, instead it seems likely to add unneeded complexity to the forum and impeding the flow of discussion.


A tagging system as I described previously would probably be a lot better, since it would allow an organization method but as an overlay system on top of the current discussion stream without impeding it.

- Michael

Hi OSTexo,

> One thing I think that would be good is the ability to
> tag and follow posts and have those show up at the
> top in case I want to follow a thread to its conclusion.

Actually that is already supported. To use it, you need to edit the options for a thread, you can do that either by clicking on the little icon to the left of the thread title in the threads list, or there is an "Edit thread options" link at the bottom of the thread's message list.

There you can mark a particular thread as "interested" or "subscribed", and in the View dropdown at the top of the threads list you can pick to show only High interest (marked as interested) or Subscribed threads to filter the threads list.

I think that when you post inside of a thread it will automatically get marked as high interest, there is an option for disabling that under Options > Forum options > Display > "Automatically mark threads I post in as High Interest" .

- Michael

Hi vodkamartini,

> I'm not sure a tagging system would be a better idea for
> this type of forum, though. It works well for stackoverflow.com
> because of the extensive range of languages, frameworks,
> utilities, and so on.

Well, stackoverflow.com is just one example - often times blogs will have a similar tagging system even when there are not a huge range of tags like in stackoverflow.

The part that's good about a tag system is that it allows a main UI that is a linear stream of content, but then gives some organization / filtering available as an option when you want to search and browse older stuff.

That's instead of trying to rigidly separate and impose categories on the discussion from the very top level.


> Many of your replies to mundane questions/problems are so
> perfectly detailed and illustrated that it's a real shame for them
> to go unreferenced.

Yeah, I should do a better job of linking things on the wiki.

Sometimes though an answer may be very particularly tailored for the specific project that the person is asking about.

- Michael

What I envisioned with those categories probably fits in with how you see the tags working. Right now you have a "View" dropdown at the top of the threadlist pane that filters threads based on how old they are (and if you're logged in, whether they have unread posts) and so on. I was thinking along the lines of having a "Category" dropdown above that, which would filter the threadlist by category as well. The default value for the dropdown would be "All Categories", so the forum would still work the way it does now, but people would have the option to browse with a more narrow focus..

So I guess the only real difference would be the one to many relationships (ie. A thread could have many tags, but only belong to one category). My argument against tags was simply that I couldn't see enough overlap in content to warrant needing the tag system. I know you've given the example of a "can't get this working" thread turning into a "feature request" thread, which I realize suggests a tag system would be more beneficial. At the same, however, I can't see people wanting to browse on a great deal of tags. Topics like "bugs", "feature requests", and "beta announcements" are typically the ones I would want to narrow my focus on, and for the most part they are mutually exclusive. In cases like the one you presented, I would personally prefer if the thread was moved to wherever it fit best (perhaps renaming the topic or making it more descriptive).

In all honesty though, I'm pretty ambivalent about the whole thing. I'm just tossing ideas out. Either method is useful in the end.

Hi vodkamartini, yeah what you are describing with a category dropdown is pretty much the same kind of thing that I was referring to as tags.

> My argument against tags was simply that I couldn't
> see enough overlap in content to warrant needing the
> tag system.

I was thinking along the lines of someone posts a WIP of a robot model, that could have 2 tags: "WIP", and "Robots".

Maybe stuff like "Architecture", "Jewelry", "Vehicles", as tags would work. So for example you could target architecture and get everything related to that including WIPs, bug reports, feature requests, whatever.


But another way that is kind of similar in some aspects is to just have a convention that some kinds of threads should start with a keyword, like WIP threads start with WIP: in the title text, then make it possible for the search to search by titles only.


Maybe having tags / categories would be a bit better to integrate with search instead of elevating it to a prominent dropdown like you were describing though. It's more of a searching kind of a thing rather than a daily reading activity kind of thing.


Probably just getting a title only search working would get a lot done in this area though, searching just titles for WIP for example would probably do a lot.

- Michael