I wouldn't quite say the forum is junk either - I had also suggested that Michael use VBulletin (which I own a license) or perhaps PHPBB (I've been recently playing with an install of v3 RC4 and I'm loving it!)

I could appreciate his wishes to keep the forums simple. However only time will tell how this forum holds up over time especially when MOI is released and folks sign up in droves.

My only argument would be that millions of msgboard'ers are familiar and proficient with VB and PHPBB already so (surprisingly) that does mean it will take getting used to using this board when they comes here.

My only other concern is - right now I have the board set to "Unread discussions" - what this means is for one, way down the line, say a year from now, ALL of these discussions will pretty much be gone in the wind - VAPOR!

I've tried searching for recent threads - usually dealing with tutorials or keyboard shortcut scripts and I've rarely found what I was looking for, especially easily finding it.

So my only standing argument would be that (IMO) the common format lends itself to "historical perusal" since the theads are laid out in categories and subjects. (Though I have to say I don't think I've ever seen as many categories and topics like on MIKESCHN's board!??!!)

I can appreciate the ability to have the topics on the side while viewing each post - you CAN do this with the other software when you switch to threaded mode (which is a user option) it's just in those cases, the topics are on the top while the msg body is at the bottom.

Yes a MOD or hack can probably be developed to emulate what Michael desires but that's definitely some development time for sure.

I also agree about the spam and protection; VB and PHPBB are about as secure as you're gonna get and if setup properly (using the verification images and login attempt lockouts and/or even admin approvals).

The one good thing about being attacked so often is they have to be on top of there stuff - if a hacker took a fancy to this software since it's not all that common, they may find all kinds of exploits to hammer on that hasn't come to light yet!

Using CGTalk as the standard, I definitely miss the thread tools; being able to subscribe to a thread that contains really good information for example, and other standard features (being able to see at a glance what topics I have posts in, etc.)

Yes I can save favorites here to meaty threads and I guess I should start! But that ends up clogging up my browser favorites and if I say switch to FireFox, then all of those links need to be ported over from IExplorer etc...

-Will

Hi Will, it's possible that there may actually be a decrease in activity for a while with the V1 release, since MoI won't be free anymore a bit after that.

The combined factors of being freely available plus no documentation has probably made this current time about the most challenging.

Search is definitely one of the weakest areas of the forum currently.

One quick tip for now - the forum is actually indexed by Google, so I think that you will actually get a better search if you use Google instead of the current built-in forum search. Just add the directive "site:moi3d.com" as an additional keyword to your Google search and it will then only search through stuff on moi3d.com including the forum.

- Michael

If I may offer a suggestion... Offer two levels of MoI once you release it. A free, or nearly free version... ($29?) Which doesn't have any export functionality, and the regular version at the regular price ($200?) which has export.

I know the users on my forum balk at spending a lot of money for a modeling or a CAD program. A lot of users use sketchup because it's free. A lot of users also use CADstd because it's only $29. That gets them in the door. The serious people then upgrade, either to a full blown version of the product, or a full blown version of someone elses product.

Liberty Basic does the same thing.

That way you won't lose all those people when the beta expires. The economy is tough right now, and people are hanging onto their money (at least here in Michigan) But your interface has the opportunity to win a lot of people over... see this comment from my forum...

Mike, what software are you using for designing the ET? How hard is it to use (for a newbie)? It looks like it has a good graphical user interface, and I'm a visual learner.
_________________
Steve B.

Anyways, I like MoI. One can become really prolific using your package. The simple interface translates into speed. You need to be well rewarded for your achievement.

Mike...

P.S. I can offer suggestions for version 2.0, if you are interested, from a Unigraphics or Turbocad perspective. Let me know. And if there is anything else I can do, let me know.

P.P.S.WillBellJr. LOL!!!
So my only standing argument would be that (IMO) the common format lends itself to "historical perusal" since the theads are laid out in categories and subjects. (Though I have to say I don't think I've ever seen as many categories and topics like on MIKESCHN's board!??!!)

Actually in fairness Mike, I believe CGTalk.com >may< have as many topics as your board but I have the ones I don't read often collapsed so they aren't all displayed like your board. :-)

I have discovered the source of this forum and I see there are many more features that aren't being used here yet. I guess it would boil down to how easily it is to skin these forums - docs on modifying PHPBB and VBulletin are entrenched in human history; tracable back to scrolls found in Egyptian pyramids! ;-)

Again, I feel this is a better venue compared to a regular blogs since it makes it easier for people to reply OR sign up and contribute - blogs which typically only allow responses to your original posts can sometimes lead to sparse conversations or responses...

-Will

Hi Mike, thanks for the suggestions! I have thought a little bit about doing what you describe there - have a free version that saves to a proprietary file format and has no export capability, and then have the regular version that can save to other formats.

There is some business risk in this approach, because for example with a corporate office where there might potentially be many customers, it really makes sense for them to have most people using the free version and only have one or a small number of the full version. When someone needs to export, they would just send the model to the one guy who has the full version. This is commonly done for SketchUp, and that's fine - it makes sense if there is a free version to make use of it like this.

Google is able to tolerate a loss of business revenue in this way since they don't really care very much about making money off of SketchUp.

I have actually already made a big effort to keep the price very low - at $195 the price is already severely reduced from the typical cost of Industrial Design software.

Ultimately I am just more focused on customers who will use MoI to solve some kind of problems in doing their design or art work.

But I will have a demo version so that people will be able to try it out first.


> P.S. I can offer suggestions for version 2.0, if you are interested, from
> a Unigraphics or Turbocad perspective. Let me know.

Definitely! Once 1.0 is fully wrapped up I will be focusing in on a bunch of new stuff, there will be a new beta at that point open to 1.0 customers and I'll be taking feedback and suggestions for it just like I did for version 1.0 .

- Michael

Will,

CGtalk has me beat by a long shot.

My forum is a very niche forum, and I'm amazed that the catagories all have activity.

But CGtalk has a much bigger audience, and can easily support all those categories!

Mike...

Hi,

I am still convinced that McNeel's approach to sharing information among users is one of the best. It is based on a simple text forum with possibility of loading an attachement and this is the primary place for sharing anything - troubles, wishes, links, scripts, good or bad news... and in addition to this forum, there are the Wiki pages to save valuable information well-arranged for reference.
Morever, users can particiate without forum membership. I guess this is very important in case the novice has a troubles to use her/his new software and needs prompt reply (registration is very easy into the MoI forum, though).
The Rhino user community itself seems to behave like a huge search engine - there is always someone who can satisfy your need to find whatever you are looking for.

Petr

My two cents worth on the forum. I do find the forum a bit difficult to navigate and find that having to download attachments to view examples quite off-putting (even when the pics are stunning).
One of the other forums I frequent is the Wooden Boat Forum (WBF) http://www.woodenboatvb.com/vbulletin/upload/index.php , which uses Vbulletin. It is divided into 6 sensible categories, and even includes a sort of social category, “the Bilge”, where anything can be discussed, within reason.
Images must be posted elsewhere (Picturetrail, Flickr, or the like) with links added within posts so that the image is right there on the screen without clogging up your server. The interface is intuitive; particular threads can be followed easily, and use is made of ‘sticky’ topics, as required. If a thread has a new post, its heading is printed in bold so it is easy to see where you’ve been.
New members are welcomed by experienced members and questions are answered by members, rather than by moderators – could save you a heap of time, Michael. I know that happens here to a small extent.
Obviously, the wooden boat community is quite different from a community involved with a new software package, but there are similarities too. Check it out when you get the chance. I love MoI, by the way.
Best regards
Charlie

Hello,

Sorry to bump an old thread, but I didn't want to create a new one with the same subject.

I'd like to add my 2cents regarding the forum. I say it really needs to be changed - preferably to a forum system that already exists such as vBulletin or phpBB. Security will always be an issue with popular software, but it would be worth it.

I registered some years ago, but didn't get too much into MoI. I can't remember the exact reason, but my guess would be that I wasn't ready for CAD at the time. I'd also go as far to say that the forum as it was and still is, only made it easier for me to ignore MoI. I'm much more interested in MoI these days, and have been doodling with the trial for a couple of days. I have tons of questions, and normally head for forums to find or ask for answers - the threads here are just one long list which I can either go though, or do searches. Going over the threads will be very time consuming and searching is difficult when I'm so new to CAD/MoI. It's also much more difficult to stumble upon threads with info that you weren't looking for, but proves to be helpful.

Michael, don't take this the wrong way or think I'm an arrogant prick, but this forum is completely backwards. I find it to be more frustrating than helpful, and think about how many others may have thought the same and never gave MoI a chance. The info around the web is limited and that makes it that more important to have a good forum, where the community can gather and share information, WIP's and whatnot.

Hi Zafar, I guess I don't understand what specifically you think would be better with a different forum system...

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?

Even if I had another kind of forum system (which I'm not planning on since the other style forums that you mention tend to be more clumsy than this one since you are forced to do a lot of back and forth navigation all the time), there would also be a lot of threads in that one as well.


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!

Of course everyone is entitled to their opinion, and I'm glad that you have shared yours but my own opinion is the opposite and everything I have seen for quite a while now indicates that the forum is working quite well.


If you could give some more specific feedback about what you don't like about the forum, that would probably be more helpful.

- Michael

Hi Zafar, do you perhaps mean that you'd like to have the forum segmented into a bunch of different categories?

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.


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.

That's something that I see quite frequently with other forums that are split up into a whole bunch of sub categories - 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. Occasionally moderators try to force people to post to the proper sub group and then that creates that kind of additional "meta discussion" (as is happening now, a discussion about how to have a discussion) that is nice to not have at all.

Although possibly in the future I may attempt to have a separate "WIP" category, that's something I've considered.

- Michael

Hi Zafar, just one more note - at the time of the previous comments in this thread the forum was in a somewhat different and even more stripped down state, I made a pass through and upgraded various parts of it (the styling, image attachments mechanism, some various other stuff) after v1 was released.

- Michael

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