forum usage

[Wolfgang]

Hi,

recently I got used to browse the forum for interesting topics and questions, or may be even for problems where I possibly might contribute a bit.

However I consider this browsing experience sub-optimal, because about 10-15% of all messages are a waste of time for two reasons:

1) the question does not belong to CVI at all. Here I admire the patience of Roberto Bozzolo et al. pointing out the wrong forum. Still, these entries persist. I would rather suggest that such messages could be transferred to the correct place by some administrator.

2) I cannot read chinese, I do not understand Spanish and most other languages. While there is this 'select community' button on the Web page, it has no effect (for my browser, IE7). I would expect some sort of filter mechanism...? Anyway, messages that I can not read nor understand are useless for me. Why can't people ask questions in English? CVI language is english too..

Of course I can live with it but in general I am an optimistic person and hoping that things can be improved...

Wolfgang

[PeterAdelhardt]

Hi Wolfgang,

thanks for your input. You always have the option to report any mesage to a moderator. Just select Options->Report to a Moderator.

As to the community selector: It works for me (Firefox 3, IE7) for foreign languages. However, selecting English does not filter correctly. You are right about this. The entry should be called "International" or "All". I will try and retrieve some information on that.

Best regards, 

Peter

[RobertoBozzolo]

Hi Wolfgang,

I see no easy solution to the community item you pointed out: on one hand that "community" selector is not so evident and this results in several users not aware of the existence of a specific community for their language; when possible, I try suggesting to use the community in case native language is preferred over english and sometimes I had seen the same user posting to the community boards.

On the other hand, I can imagine that some people think their question can be better attended on a more populated board: I tend to consider this a youthful folly that will correct by itself as the communities are growing up, but I second you that in this case the use of English should be preferred, though.

More difficult to me to understand why some questions fall in an inappropriate forum: a revision of posting screens trying to make more evident the boards the question will be posted should be considered.

[ebalci]

Hi,

There is actually a very easy way of diverting from a specific forum:

Suppose you made a search in the CVI forum and you got some results. Then, if you think the results are not satisfactory and change the keywords and command a second search from the results page, you get results from *all* forums in NI web site and in this case you can (at least I can) easily overlook the forum name in smaller fonts beside the topic name in bold.

I think one should have the right of staying within the limits of a forum, no matter how many successive searches are made.

I also humbly request a "search within the results" facility to be added so that one can refine his/her search phrase in case too many results are returned.

NI support team is great, bu I think the forum's technology is way behind from what it can actually become. 

[LuisG · Accepted solution]

Each of you have made some good points and some good suggestions. Although there isn't much we in the CVI team can do about your feedback, I did want to recommend that, in addition to this thread, you also post some of this feedback in the "forum forum" (I wasn't sure if its existence is widely known). 

Luis

[Wolfgang]

Thank you, Luis, for pointing out the correct forum - I wasn't aware of it and have to admit that the message should hae been posted there...sorry...

Wolfgang