New Users Posting in Unrelated Threads

[Havarti]

I have noticed that many new users are posting in the wrong forums especially the Labview at 20 thread.  I think they are just clicking the top thread assuming that is where they should post. So my suggestion would be to make the top "thread", a link to create a new thread.  This would make it much more obvious where to create a new thread.  Besides, the "New Thread" button is very hard to see underneith the search bar unless you already know where it is (in my opinion.) 

I remember my first time coming to the NI forums (it was also my first time using any sort of web forum,) and it was hard to know what to do and where to post (I didn't read the help of course...Im an engineer 🙂 ) 

Brian

[tst]

NOOOOoooooooooooooooooooooo. (Grabs head with both hands...)

The last thing I need is another thread floated to the top of the board. I think a better solution would simply be to rename the New Message button to New Topic and make it much more prominent (e.g. make it another color).

[tst]

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@tst wrote:

I think a better solution would simply be to rename the New Message button to New Topic

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Or, better yet, New Question.

[RayFarmer]

I think one of the problems, is if you do a search then Post a Question via the search page. The Selected Forum displays the one you were last on which is not always the forum you require to post too.

Maybe the Selected Forum control should be made such that you have to select a forum, with the control displaying some text like "select one" before it will accept a the Post Message.

Ray.

[altenbach]

Maybe one problem is the fact that the "New Message" link disappears once we look at a thread and there is now only a "Reply" link above.

I suggest that the "New Message" link should always be present, even when looking at a thread. It could even be named a bit more obvious, such as "Start a new Thread" or "Ask a Question"... 😉 Maybe it would help....

Message Edited by altenbach on 01-23-2007 09:04 AM

[JQ]

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@BrianPack wrote:

I remember my first time coming to the NI forums (it was also my first time using any sort of web forum,) and it was hard to know what to do and where to post (I didn't read the help of course...Im an engineer 🙂 ) 

I agree totally on this point... it was hard finding the "New Message" button when i first used this forum... i almost posted on somebody else thread asking how to post a new question  ... may be making the button more obvious would be a good choice... (i too didn't read the help... but i'm not an engineer )

[TCPlomp]

Another thing, Dell uses the same forum engine and has a pane on the left side showing the different forums. Might be something?
But it should be something that can be turned off.

Ton

[tst]

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@TonP wrote:
Another thing, Dell uses the same forum engine and has a pane on the left side showing the different forums. Might be something?
But it should be something that can be turned off.

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I just gave the Dell forums a quick look and in my opinion that pane takes up way too much valuable area.

Also, I think the colors NI chose are much better, but maybe that's just because I got used to them.

One thing that Dell did that I do like is adding that arrow to the reply buttons, making them easier to see. Personally, I think a button should appear as a button, not an image or a piece of text which only gets highlighted when you hover over it. In the same way, a link should be underlined or should make it perfectly clear in the text that you need to click there.

[Ray.R]

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@tst wrote:
Or, better yet, New Question.

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I vote for New Question, which would do an automatic search First.  Does 2 things, return found links or allows to post new thread if nothing was found..

(or will I read this when i continue reading the posts??) 😮

[Dennis_Knutson]

I think the problem is much more than not having a clearly defined way to post a new message. I think it's hard for new users to determine which board to post to because there is not a clear explanation for each board. There was one new user that had a question about an instrument driver and he posted it to the Driver Development Kit board. Another one didn't know how to take a measurement and he posted to the Measure board. Some of the board names are pretty obvious (ie. LabVIEW, LabWindows/CVI) but others are not (i.e. DMMs, Signal Generators).