Forum FAQ and policies

[g.makulik]

Pro FAQ:

I've seen several discussion threads here that either end up with links to (for long term users) well known issues and discussions, or some generally applicable answers about usage of the forum (e.g. search strategies, 'official' bug reports, 'official' feature requests, when to contact Sparx support, etc.).

Pro policies:
Besides YABB's (sometimes strange) standard policies, there should be some points clarified for this particular forum, e.g. the role of Sparx employees/admins that participate here and what the OP of a question might expect for responses.

Both could be simply realized as e.g. "important" topics like done with RoyC's No English?  topic in the general board.
The FAQ topic may contain replies with question like titles (e.g. 'Will Sparx notice a post I made in the 'Bugs and Issues' board for doing a fix?'), which can be contributed by any forum user, but either be pre-discussed on this board, or be discussed with "Re:" prefix on the FAQ thread (suboptimal IMHO). Anyway replies there be rigorously removed by admins if not applicable.

Anyone else supporting this?

Best regards,
Günther

PS.:
I'm willing to contribute to the FAQ of course, but answers there should be heavily moderated from Sparx admins side, so one or more maintainers should admit for this.

[qwerty]

The FAQ been asked over years for many times. Still nothing. I remember especially the "little red triangle" which came up as question regularly.

Policies is a good idea (too).

However, to cite Dante: ...abandon all hope....

q.

[g.makulik]

However, to cite Dante: ...abandon all hope....

[size=20]Never!!!
[/size]

1 Corinthians 13:13
And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

I'm buddhist BTW, so plz no religiously driven discussions on that. From that point of view I'm very beyond any point of hope. I'm not bound to expectation   ...

P.S.:
As a side note for anyone interested in my philosophical point of this reply: In english the term reliance (german:Zuversicht) replaces hope much better for the bible cite (as it's given in german and I'm going to interpret it), but I have no doubts about the other two main terms (faith and love). I'll never let go my f***ing Zuversicht!

[Eve]

Have you seen the board descriptions? eg. Suggestions and Requests contains the following:

Suggest and discuss, with other users, features you would like to see added to Enterprise Architect. To submit a request for a feature or facility directly to Sparx Systems, use the Feature Request link at the foot of this page.

[g.makulik]

Have you seen the board descriptions?

Yes, I've seen them, but they're obviously not really attended enough to trim down the FAQ noise in the boards.

[qwerty]

Have you seen the board descriptions? eg. Suggestions and Requests contains the following:

Suggest and discuss, with other users, features you would like to see added to Enterprise Architect. To submit a request for a feature or facility directly to Sparx Systems, use the Feature Request link at the foot of this page.

So you suggest to submit a feature request for the FAQ/policies? I looked at this request as only related to EA, not the things around it like the forum.

And then --- would it help?  :-/

q.

[g.makulik]

Gets complicated now (meta->meta):

Have you seen the board descriptions? eg. Suggestions and Requests contains the following:

Suggest and discuss, with other users, features you would like to see added to Enterprise Architect. To submit a request for a feature or facility directly to Sparx Systems, use the Feature Request link at the foot of this page.

So you suggest to submit a feature request for the FAQ/policies? I looked at this request as only related to EA, not the things around it like the forum.

And then --- would it help?  :-/

q.

I thought 'official' feature requests to Sparx apply for Enterprise Architect product solutions, not for the User Forum managment?!? Slightly confused  :-/...

Günther

[Eve]

I'm not being clear...

The original post included examples of FAQ such as how to report bugs. My post was referencing that the information (for that example) is already readily available.

I'd love to believe that people would read such an FAQ, but I've seen no evidence that people have read the existing descriptions on the board.

[RoyC]

I was waiting for Gunther's response, but maybe he was waiting for mine!

I'll just embellish Simon's response by saying that the category headings are intended to direct you to the purpose and use of each category, and a lot of posts and replies in each category seem to ignore that direction.

Gunther mentioned my 'sticky' post entitled No English?, which has been there for a good couple of years. In all that time I have never seen anyone post in a non-English language and ask for translation (I think there might have been one post in German, but the poster - IIRC - provided their own translation!). I have seen a number of brave attempts at English, and responses along the lines of " Sorry ... what?"

None of Sparx employees are likely to deny that a FAQ board would be useful, but such a board would require some possibly complicated and/or lengthy instructions for use and, as Simon points out, a lot of people don't seem to be able to apply the existing guidelines.

Consider that an FAQ would be at least a de facto 'sticky note', but once you exceed, say, ten posts the 'stickiness' is no longer an advantage. Also, how do you organize the posts - would topics such as "The role of Sparx Employees on the Forum" be intermingled with topics such as "What is this red triangle?", or would we have a set of FAQ boards with further directions on which one to check for what category of information?

I don't think that such 'problems' would be hard to overcome, but we could put quite a lot of effort into setting things up and still have people ignoring/not looking for/not finding the information.

I'd have to say that I find the same thing with the Help - people asking "How? What?" or saying "Gosh, I'd never have found that" when the information is available, indexed, cross-referenced and fully labelled in the Help. One of the things I like about Geert is the frequency with which he says "Have you looked at the Help topic called 'Exactly the information you asked for'?"  Look, the Help is far from perfect, but it isn't TOTALLY impossible to use!

[g.makulik]

I was waiting for Gunther's response, but maybe he was waiting for mine!!

I thought I've posted one, mentioning that your 'sticky topics' might attract more attention than the forum boards description (lost in my browsers guts, whatsoever).
But you're right insofar, that not many people made usage of your suggestions made up in your 'No english language?' topic.

That's all common behaviors:

• Users don't read the available documentation, or aren't able to search it the right way
• People are too lazy to make up a research on the available resources at all
• People expect others to give them solutions for not clearly elaborated problems (especially if 'others' means Sparx employees for our case)
• ...

But any consolidated, easy to spot and clearly documented policy of forum admins and experienced forum members might help to reduce the

[size=18]f***ing noise[/size]

IMHO
Günther

P.S.:

Consider that an FAQ would be at least a de facto 'sticky note', but once you exceed, say, ten posts the 'stickiness' is no longer an advantage. Also, how do you organize the posts - would topics such as "The role of Sparx Employees on the Forum" be intermingled with topics such as "What is this red triangle?", or would we have a set of FAQ boards with further directions on which one to check for what category of information?

Something pragmatic (regarding rules, policies and categories [required title format?]), but instantiated 1st place (may be as a trial) for my preference. Would be fine if Admins remove posts rigorously and contributors ask after (That'll need some efforts, right! You should ask Geoffrey to pay for that, seriously  ).

[skiwi]

Actually IMHO, this sort of requirement is ideally addressed by wiki (example), perhaps in the community area.

Another point, how about joining the community and bulletin board communities.

[g.makulik]

Actually IMHO, this sort of requirement is ideally addressed by wiki (example), perhaps in the community area.

Good point, but it should be linked at top level of the forum somehow, to be spotted easily by any new(bie) forum user, shouldn't it?

Another point, how about joining the community and bulletin board communities.

Agreed, this should be an additional degree of enhancement for the available information pool!

[qwerty]

Users don't read the available documentation, or aren't able to search it the right way

There is no right search strategy. I just was curious how often a wiki had been suggested. The default time "week" is just ridiculous. How likely is it that my "little red triangle" question has been asked/answered the last week? So I choose "(all posts)" since I want the answer no matter when it was asked. Now, that takes 10 (in words: TEN) minutes and ends up in a BLANK PAGE. No wonder people do not use search.

Furthermore the search is double confusing since the "Search the Forum" field top right does never deliver anything useful. Why is it there at all? To frustrate users?

(My last post in this thread.)

q.

[skiwi]

the "Search the Forum" field top right does never deliver anything useful. Why is it there at all? To frustrate users?

That is certainly one outcome,
another interpretation might be to demonstrate that Sparx customer service can be improved,
or perhaps that sticking with YABB is not a good decision, there are plenty of alternatives,
or customers like sitting in front of their machines while they wait for a response,
or that the hardware is grossly underspecced for what is is tasked to do.
Who knows?

[skiwi]

See also:
Improve speed of forum searches
FORUM OPERATION:  Searching the forum
Is EA Forum Search broken ?

There is nothing stopping anyone submitting this as a bug or feature request,
in fact the more the merrier