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| This page brainstorms on compromises to satisfy communication-related needs of users and still keep efficiency as high as possible |
| This page brainstorms on compromises to keep efficiency as high as possible and satisfy communication-related bad habit (of a significant number of people) to dilute useful information (continuously, and indefinitely) and waste other's time by chronologically writing instead of thematically. |
| In practice main issue is to apply chronological forums to supplement wiki. |
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Forum can be appealing: one can ask something without even checking [help pages], without thinking about where the information belongs.
* However, by saving 5 minutes during writing to a forum, the task is extremely rudely pushed onto readers, to spend 50x or 100x (or 1000 times in some cases) total, to merge the chronological info that should have been merged at the time of writing (if it weren't obvious: because reading happens much more than writing) ** also, if something is added or updated or reworded (which is a good thing when thematically organized), it becomes even more work for readers to merge the information, and the useful information is diluted ** the only way to improve a chronological thread is by tedious work: to extract information, rephrase (thematically, eg. in a wiki) and delete the thread (the good things => extract and merge, the rest is noise)... most of what should have been done at the time of writing in the first place. |
| There is evidence that it is impossible to keep a site clear, useful, organized thematically, well searchable by keywords and userfriendly with 0 effort. A good GenBoard/Manual is needed and nothing else can replace it. The easily understandable manual made MegaSquirt a success (besides starting early and being cheap). It's harder with 10 times more functions but it must be done. |
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There is a forum site [here] * IMPORTANT: official support is only available via [editable, thematically organized format] |
| * Professional webmasters can use a version tracking system like CVS (or SVN; see WikiVsEmail) to store content and use advanced or simple tools to edit |
| * Professional webmasters can use a version tracking system like SVN or git (see WikiVsEmail) to store content and use advanced or simple tools to edit |
| * Absolutely anyone can add info to forums, and most people are convenient to do so: but forum requires the most time to extract useful info and pump into the site organized thematically: absolutely certain that one of the above methods is needed in any case. |
| * Absolutely anyone can add info (well: text) to forums, and most people are convenient to do so: but forum requires the most time to extract useful info and pump into the site organized thematically: absolutely certain that one of the above methods is needed in any case. |
| The wiki MUST be used to build pages like normal websites. |
| The wiki should be used to build pages like normal websites. |
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Take Action
Now that we know many reasons why we need forums (btw, we always had forums at sourceforge!), we just need volunteers * who completes the forum idea. Main task is to bring attention of (new) people. * who works on GenBoard/Manual (my suggestion is organize in wiki first, and format later). Main task is to make info easy to find and maintain. The second is absolutely needed as most arguments "against" wiki really boiled down to the unmaintained GenBoard/Manual Volunteers I will continue to point people to vems forum(when it is created). If we can get a nice forum started, I will certainly hang around and answer newbie questions over and over and over........ I dont have alot of time to sit down and formulate a thought process(which is needed IMO so we dont get more cluttered mess) for generation of the manual, but I do have time to check in and type a few sentences on email or forum. ~Chris Although wiki is a nice repository of raw information I too believe very strongly in a forum. I will be creating a support forum for the PSITech. This is a standardised VEMS board with a few minor mods and custom CnC case packaged for the masses. Maybe something can be worked out so the 2 projects are not competing but the support is shared. - (hackish) |
| IRC - see ChatViaIrc page |
| IRC |
| FacebookBlocksContentAndUsersWithoutCauseOrExplanatation - The recipient should have control of what she sees... not a third party, definitely not Facebook - the nonsense times are back (people not always noticing, if the same that happened before happens again: if it is NOT black and white, it cannot be mass manipulation after all). |
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The Avr guys currently have a chat room currently on IRC. here is how you get there. you have to first have MIRC. to get it you have to download it from www.mirc.com after you downloaded and installed it you go to options then Servers. in that tab you will see a IRC servers list. you goto and click on EFnet: AS, Israel. then click connect to server. after that you go to mIRC Favorites then punch in avrboard and press Join and you are there; Additional info can be found on the ChatViaIrc page
------ Forums will save VEMS. Forums are now the mainstream communications method for all motor enthusiast everywhere. People turn away from VEMS at the door because of the Wiki format and the seriously outdated look of the homepage. It´s literally a "Hello World" example from somebodies first HTML lesson and should have been updated to a presentable look years ago. Search functions make up for 99% of required answers on forums. And solves almost all users questions. Strict searching policies and sticky threads will keep uselessness to a minimum. Project threads linked to from other forums also add to site traffic and potential vems users/developers. I feel it´s time to give up on the Wiki completely and transfer information into a forum. This will get more people involved. Account settings and privilegies can be set so that developers have their closed sub forums. |
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| I´m sure Rob running the VEMS community forum would gladly add sub forums so that enough clearity is had about where to look for information and where to ask questions. |
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* Yes to Forums, 100% of the people I talk to about VEMS are bewildered with the use of a Wiki as opposed to a forum structure.
* Having separate forum sections such as "Firmware", "Software", "Wiring", etc, make finding information easy. ** Best to have a "Sticky" at the top of each forum, with current information, and complete documentation about the subject matter. Kevin Black ** well, that is exactly like a thematically organized article, Help page (or better: wiki if editable)... with comments/chat at the bottom; wikipedia has "Talk page" to keep noise separated, but still linked). |
| So how about starting a move to |
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* Yes to Forums, 100% of thae people I talk to about VEMS are bewildered with the use of a Wiki as opposed to a forum structure.
* Having separate forum sections such as "Firmware", "Software", "Wiring", etc, make finding information easy. Best to have a "Sticky" at the top of each forum, with current information, and complete documentation about the subject matter. Kevin Black |