Forum moderators flag topics for ez to look at

Thursday 22 April 2004 8:40:22 am

Sometimes forum moderators cannot answer some forum questions and all to often these questions can slip off the radar and vanish.

If moderators were able to flag the question, allowing ez staff to easily find it, it may help to improve communication in some ways. It would at least help to address the problem of too many question being unanswered.

Of course, this info might be used for useful areas like 'top 10 questions'.

paul

--
http://www.visionwt.com

Thursday 22 April 2004 9:16:24 am

This is definetly a good idèa. Makes it simpler for us to see which posts we should answer. Mabye we could have a three level system?
1) Every user can flag a message as "need input from moderators"
2) The moderators can then either answer themselves or flag it as "need input from eZ crew"

But then again, why will not everybody flag their post right away. Just to ensure feedback;) If all posts get this, then it would make no sense.

--bård

Documentation: http://ez.no/doc

Thursday 22 April 2004 9:23:08 am

I would assume every question needs answering, so allowing anyone to flag a question wouldnt work.

We could perhaps create different types of moderators for this, or just expand upon the current moderators. But, i feel if there was a flag option it would need to be a moderator or someone from ez who has the permissions to do it.

If each moderator was able to flag a question (preferences?) you could count this and display it in some way.

paul

--
http://www.visionwt.com

Thursday 22 April 2004 12:02:26 pm

Maybe you could handle this another way.

If all new posts have a time limit say 2 days, so if they are not answered in 2 days they automatically get marked "need attention". These can then be reviewed by authorised members who can mark them as needing answers.
If this system where used we would need to resolve dead of answered calls. So we would need to have a mechanism for questions on the forums to be marked by their owners as "closed" or "answered".
thinking about it, what we are doing here is a loose ticket system, we have to be careful that we do not bluh the lines. The forums are used for discussions "and" questions. Would it not be better to split these and treat discussions "as" discussions; the current format. We can then have a second list in each section that would be questions. We can then use a ticketing process to handle these.
I know this may seem like a hammer to crack a nut... but I think it needs to be discussed.

--tony
http://www.visionwt.com

Tony Wood : twitter.com/tonywood
Vision with Technology
Experts in eZ Publish consulting & development

Power to the Editor!

Free eZ Training : http://www.VisionWT.com/training
eZ Future Podcast : http://www.VisionWT.com/eZ-Future

Thursday 22 April 2004 1:12:03 pm

Tony: I like your idea of setting up two types of forum posts. We will just need to keep an eye on those situations where one turns into another mid-stream. Quite often a question of function will turn into a discussion of practice, so we will need to make sure people realize when they need to start a new thread for that discussion. The ability to close a thread will help, but moderators will have to remain vigilant for these divergent threads.

Paul: They just set me up as a moderator, so hopefully I can help ease the load a bit. :)

All in all, I think some of these ideas have some real promise. Hopefully some decisions will be made at the conference so we can move forward.

Alex

Alex
[ bald_technologist on the IRC channel (irc.freenode.net): #eZpublish ]

<i>When in doubt, clear the cache.</i>

Thursday 22 April 2004 2:24:16 pm

Welcome to the moderators Alex :)

>>Forum threads
I see your point, the forums could become fragmented and difficult to follow. This needs to be addressed, I you would allow me to waffle for a bit.

There as I see it are a few types of messages on the forums

1. Request for help/replies to these
2. Discussion (sugestions, event conversations, release comments, products conversations etc)
3. Spam (abuse/rants/adverts) - I have groups these... but rants can be useful, people tend to be at their most truthful in these.
4. Inform (links to bugs/product releases php etc)

You are right again, the progression from problem to new learning and subsequently to practice is a vital roll, if not the most important role in a forum. True solving problems is important but for the long term growth of a product this type of evolution is vital.

If we can assume that the above is true then we need to start organisng the forums around this. I feel that the current forum structure fulfils the need for people to "view the latest". But does not address the issue of turn the learning in the forums to good practice. So what to do?

I think the first step is to reorganise the forums. My suggestion, rather than have install/setup/developer/general/suggestions we look at a new format. This new format should reflect the progression of eZ publish developers as they learn the product. The current setup is more of a role based setup.

Sysadmin - install
Designer - setup
Coder - developer
general - catchall
suggestions - catchall

I feel that if we change the forums to reflect the learning cycle we can better server the eZ publish community. This would enable allow community members to select the forum that matches there skills

I would suggest the following as a "straw man": this is my experience so comments please.

*Getting going - Getting your basic environment ready
This would be an area for the I can't see images, I can't login, where is admin type of questions.

*Entering content - Adding and remving content Online editor usage
This could be a forum dedicated to working with the package, entering content, understanding how to make use of the product features. I am guessing lots of end users can see the eZ site as a "tech" only zone. This should not be the case. We only exist because of end users and so we should reflect their needs.

*Customising - Change emails/basic temaplate/ini
One someone has eZ working and they have entered a little content and gone... hey I like this.. I want to know more.
This stage would be one of changing template .tpl, ini and the email files to get something usable

*Extensions - PHP developing, extensions, kernel
Experience eZ publish developers or PHP developer who want to intergrate with eZ publish.

*Commerce - Shop
Working with ecommerce sites in eZ

*Translations - Working with languages
Language translations. Talking about mutlilingual sites and how they work

*Administration - Server administration
How to optimise, maintain the perfect eZ site form small to large installations

As we are dividing the forums people in the forums can help people going thru the same things. I know, you are likey to get people "stay" in certain forums, but the knack here is to represent the forums in a way that enables a global view of the forums whilst maintaining the intimate relationship with your core subject or skill. This could be completed by allowing different views on the forums. So, your could have:

* the basic latest 5 first in each item.
* the latest 5 in each forums unanswered
* Show me topics i am interested in
* Show me unaswered topics I am interested in

There are many other types of view you could have but I think its worth taking a step back and exploring the possbilities of what we could do with the forums before we move forward.

--tony
http://www.visionwt.com

Tony Wood : twitter.com/tonywood
Vision with Technology
Experts in eZ Publish consulting & development

Power to the Editor!

Free eZ Training : http://www.VisionWT.com/training
eZ Future Podcast : http://www.VisionWT.com/eZ-Future

Thursday 22 April 2004 2:50:58 pm

Thanks Tony! I'm glad to be of help. :)

I really like what you laid out above. The community has come a long way over the last year and it makes sense for the tools that we use to shift to meet the new perspectives and uderstanding. The categories you listed make sense and would serve well going forward. I would really like to see a stronger connection between the forums and the documentation. These categories might help do that. It would be great to have a FAQ thread at the top of each forum (i.e. 'sticky'), which listed common questions and provided a link to the location of that answer in the documentation. So, instead of putting the answer to a common question in a forum thread or FAQ, it should be placed in the appropriate spot in the documentation, and then linked to from the forum. This will:
1. Cut down on questions that have already been answered
2. Ensure the documentation is kept up to date
3. Provide the answer to the question
4. Introduce new users to the documentation and its structure

Alex

Alex
[ bald_technologist on the IRC channel (irc.freenode.net): #eZpublish ]

<i>When in doubt, clear the cache.</i>