LabVIEW Subcategories - What do you think?

[Molly K]

Hey all -

We have a new approach to the LV Categorization issue, and we want to know what you think!

Basically, from the main page, we can provide links to some customized searches that will return results that are related to the different LV modules regardless of where those threads have been posted in the community.

1 - Please give us feedback on whether we should keep this in the community or not.  If you like it for LV, are there other places we should put in similar "filters"?

2 - Also, let us know how to better fine tune the searches - what words should we be including and/or excluding?

Thanks!

[TiTou]

Hi Molly,

1. I like these subdivision and think/hope that they will help those who come here with a problem to solve.

2. About the search tool, I would love to have the possibility to "search within results" of a previous search and instead of having the star average of the thread I'd like to see the "status" of the most experience person that posted a message on that thread. (by status, I mean the 3 color boxes)

[tst]

I'm sorry, I don't really see any benefit in this. Unlike a board, this doesn't show us when new posts have been posted to the category and it's not sorted by threads and time. As a device for finding data, it's pretty useless, because you get hundreds of results, and the information you want is unlikely to be near the top. I don't see any scenario in which I will click on those links and I don't really see any in which this will help users looking for help.

So, nice try (thanks), but I don't see this as coming even close to the "ideal" site which I envision. As I previously said, I would like to see a site which can stand fully on its own and which will allow each user to create a customized environment which will allow subscriptions to specific users, boards, topics, keywords and so on. These subscriptions can be used to create personalized customized boards. I doubt any such system really exist today, but that's what I'd like to see, in broad lines. Maybe we should start a real discussion about the future of the forums.

To end the post in a bright note, though, I was happy to see that the default option is now to have threads sorted by date and not by thread order.

[Khalid]

Hi Molly,

I agree with tst.  At first sight, I thought clicking on those sub-links would give me all the posts for that product/technology.  But it's only a search filter!

I am usually browsing the forums to see what's being discussed currently.  So, what I would like is to see all the posts for a particular product/technology in chronological order.  And this list shouldn't be just a search-result.  I guess for this to happen, we have to provide optional product/technology categories when posting. 

If I am really looking for a particular topic, I can search for it myself... with better keywords. 

Thanks for at least thinking of this functionality. 

-Khalid

[EdDickens]

I think it's a good start, but as already stated, there's no way to search only the search results unless they leave the "pda -Re:" in the search box. If the user deletes the "pda -Re:" they get results from the entire board, not just the "PDA" board.

Another problem I see with this approach is when somebody goes to post a question the "PDA" board and can't find it.

Ed

[Molly K]

With the new upgrade last night, two things changed here...

I have now changed the results to sort by date so the new ones are on the top of the list so you can check in and see what is fresh.

It looks like now trying to exclude "Re:" from your search results to show only new threads isn't effective.  We thought we were going to get the ability to choose whether you wanted unique threads or all messages in your search results with this release, but it looks like that is more complicated than they had anticipated and it will be a few more months before we get that functionality.

Thanks!

[JÞB]

Molly!

Conversion idea

Somil had a interesting post at this link.  Would you care to enter the discussion and see if there is a way you can help?

[altenbach]

Jeff,

Just FYI, you are replying to a very old post. Molly was administering the forum back in the old days. Now its Laura. 🙂

[tst]

Laura, I would vote once again to get rid of the subcategories. I don't know if you have usage statistics, but I doubt many people use them, and the extra line in the main page creates a usability issue.

Similarly, I'm reminding you of the conversation we had about the board descriptions - if someone floats a board, the description for the board should not be displayed.

[JackDunaway]

In addition to rethinking subcategories, it would also be a good idea to rethink the granularity of the boards. Many boards have become complete ghost-towns (Hyperception, VideoMASTER, HiQ, some of the Additional Interest Boards...).

Stepping back again, I think a reconciliation between some of the forums and some of the Communities Groups is in order. Currently, these are two internal entities fighting each other for traffic.