Survey -- Usergroups

What features/apps/bugfixes needed in a future Puppy
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EarlSmith
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Survey -- Usergroups

#1 Post by EarlSmith »

The top of the Forum Page has a usergroups area. Is anyone interested in forming usergroups to allow us to help Barry develop new programs in specific areas?

My specific area of interest is business applications. You may have other interest.

Is anyone else interest in Business applications?

Other groups like Programming, Multimedia, Education, etc. may also like to form user groups. Then not only could we have a discussion area but might be able to take some load off Barry.

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Lobster
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#2 Post by Lobster »

What is the difference between a topic and a User Group? :oops: :?:
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EarlSmith
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#3 Post by EarlSmith »

Seems to me Lobster, if you had a topic for every usergroup you could end up with a long list of topics. I think of Topics as general areas and usergroups as specific interest areas. Like in my business interest area, you would have all the business interest posts.
I assume that is what the Usergroups area is for.

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Flash
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#4 Post by Flash »

Lobster, we won't know what usergroups are or if they might be useful until we try them. Based on what the forum FAQ has to say about them, my guess is they are basically a sub-forum, with moderator(s) appointed by JohnM to control membership and posting privileges for each usergroup. I think they could make the forum much more useful and efficient, especially for the developers.

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Pizzasgood
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#5 Post by Pizzasgood »

So basically, the big-boys' club. Only the people who are allowed to can post stuff in the club's section. They can also be hidden from other people. That way, the moderators can have their own private sections to devise the cruel and usual punishments for random people. Or plan surprise parties. Or have serious discussions without me and Lobster popping in and offering the peanut gallery's opinions. :)

Personally, I think they're great for administration, but not for organization. That's what categories and topics are for. Why make it so Joe can't see what's going on, or so Pedro can't comment on it? I want to see everything, but I don't want to have to sign up for twelve usergroups. I just want to come to the forum and check the new stuff. So do Joe and Pedro. Even if the groups are free admission, it still costs time. We have little time to spare. Joe is building a workout room in a centrefuge, Pedro is running for president, and I have homework. :roll:

Anyway's, do what you like. Maybe I'm missing something that makes them extraordinary. Forums are not my area of expertise.
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Flash
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#6 Post by Flash »

Pizza, it depends on how JohnM set them up. As far as I'm concerned, anyone who wanted could join any usergroup - at least until the other group members voted him out. Kind of like "Survivor." :lol: I thought they might be worth a try. If they cause resentment then they would be counterproductive.

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#7 Post by EarlSmith »

Ok, Ok, Ok, I see all of your points. I never wanted a closed, controlled grouping. I only wanted a place to put all the postings that concerned a special interest. One of the problems I have is forgetting where I last saw a certain interesting post. I alway look at all the new posts since my last visit and would like that feature to continue. So maybe we just need a special topic named sub-topics. Can you have sub-topics in topics?

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klhrevolutionist
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#8 Post by klhrevolutionist »

The wiki can be used in the same way.
All you have to do is scroll down to the bottom and add a comment.
On this page specifically you have to be registered to edit
So if you have registered with the wiki you can edit page also.

BusinessPuppy: http://www.goosee.com/puppy/wikka/BusinessPuppy

So please visit BusinessPuppy
and add comments.
This will aslo help in keeping clutter down in the forum!!!
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#9 Post by raffy »

Seems like you're voluntering to collect items into a specific category. You can of course create a forum and the categories of that forum. The topics then become the subtopics you refer to. PHPBB is a free feature of budget hosting, so you'll find it easy to put up one. Or you can put up a blog and link to items in this forum that interests you. Blog scripts also come with budget hosting packages.

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#10 Post by Lobster »

OK - if you want to try a usergroup then write to John Murga who will set up a user group.

The Power Puppy topic came out of a private group (which I codenamed the "a team") which was devoted to promoting Puppy using marketing expertise.

It had its own exclusive forum. It was this exclusive nature and the approach that prompted us to bring it back into the public arena. There are two other forums that we could develop but to what advantage except to split . . .

For example we used this briefly before this forum was set up
http://puppy.mypunbb.com/

From what people say I see no reason why a topic called "business computing" or whatever can not be started and added to . . .

User groups just seem like a thread and this is why I ask how they are different - it may be that trying them is the best way to answer this.
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Flash
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#11 Post by Flash »

EarlSmith wrote:Ok, Ok, Ok, I see all of your points. I never wanted a closed, controlled grouping. I only wanted a place to put all the postings that concerned a special interest. One of the problems I have is forgetting where I last saw a certain interesting post.
Those are exactly the complaints that the sticky indexes in the Beginners and Additional Software categories address, perhaps not all that successfully. Also, I move posts to what seem to be more appropriate categories.
I alway look at all the new posts since my last visit and would like that feature to continue. So maybe we just need a special topic named sub-topics. Can you have sub-topics in topics?
The answer seems to be no, according to what I was able to find on the phpBB website. I may have missed something. Redoing the subject lines of posts and threads to more accurately reflect their contents, and making sticky indexes of what I thought were the most useful, or at least noteworthy, posts and threads, are the work-arounds that I came up with.

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#12 Post by Ian »

Using the old PunBB forum for development ideas might not be a bad idea.

The forum is there, it is open to the public, it does not get much use and is separate from this one.

We could give it a go and see what happens.

I think just starting a new post and then announcing what it is all about on this forum should bring in the people who are interested.

Starting a new section on this forum could lead to unwanted querys about other subjects.

We tried to do something similar in the Wiki but it is not really the proper platform for this kind of thing as it only has a comments section whereas a forum is more usable.

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#13 Post by Lobster »

Totally agree with Ian - if the older forum (I think we used it for about 5 days) is used and found useful all well and good. Relevant information and calls for ideas can still be posted here and redirected. Just as the essence of the forum (sans the interaction required to get the knowledge) appears on the wiki.

The wiki is undergoing some radical and welcome shift in emphasis - check out the featured page:

Site Map
http://www.goosee.com/puppy/wikka/SiteMap
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Ian
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#14 Post by Ian »

Ok, I've started a post in the old PunBB forum for developers.

I have put an announcment in the Announcements section in PunBB and a post to start discussion in the Misc section of PupBB.

http://puppy.mypunbb.com/index.php

I have also put an announcement in this forum in the Announcement section.

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ozboomer
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#15 Post by ozboomer »

Even though it may be a little late in the discussion, I'd like to see some focused discussions over in the 'other' forum.

For example, there might be a 'Desktop' Forum, which is for people interested in the window managers, customization of the desktop using Rox panels, pinboards, etc... and a 'stream of interest' would be a 'topic' within the 'Desktop' forum. So, we might have a 'Window managers: FVWM95' topic in the 'Desktop' forum. We could have a 'Menu Maintenance' topic in there as well.

The idea is the development of Puppy is kept distinct from the 'normal' forums, which are basically for user-to-user discussion, whilst the 'other' forum system is for the developers/contributors to how Puppy works.

One of the problems I've had with this 'new' forum is that there's far too much 'stuff' going on now (all the better for Puppy tho!) and I can't keep-up anymore. However, if we had 'targetted' discussions... or if the idea of 'sub-topics' were possible, users would be able to keep track of discussions going-on in the areas of interest to them. So, if someone was keen on 'Office Products', there might be a forum for that but 'word processing' discussions would be under that as a topic that had many postings... I might want to look at Multimedia > MIDI -type things but couldn't care less about video codecs, etc. I wouldn't have to plough through all of those discussions.

I 'spose it boils down to how much hierarchy we want/can use in the forum software we use... and if people are disciplined enough to keep to using it.

Sorry for the scatterbrained thinking on this post... but I hope you get the idea :)

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Flash
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#16 Post by Flash »

How to organize this forum seems to me to be a topic worthy of discussion. What can be done with new forums, that couldn't be done with Usergroups in this forum? I really don't like the idea of putting Puppy information even more places than it already is. Already we have this forum, the old forum - which as Lobster points out is still active and usable - the Wiki, the main Puppy website, and various webpages of stuff that applies to Puppy which are maintained by forum members. There are many things I remember seeing in one of those places that I haven't been able to find again, for instance to answer a post in the forum. Puppy is already too scatterbrained and disorganized for anyone to remember where everything is, and there is no reason to think that discipline will improve. Please, let's keep it simple.

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#17 Post by rarsa »

Here my opinion:

We are not discussing anything private so I don't understand why we sould have private areas.

I think that the open nature of the forum has helped to attract new hands and brains. If there is a toppic where I'm mildly interested I may read the post and find that I can apport something. The same happens with other people. Having a private area will only limit the pool of brains working on an issue.

So I vote for not fragmenting the puppy community in silos be user groups or other forums.

It's not like there are thousands of regulars to this forum. Right now I think that the noise to signal radio of this forum is quite acceptable.

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#18 Post by EarlSmith »

I agree with you all, we don't need to fragment the Puppy Forum.
I just did an experiment with the search function that might be a solution. When you enter a word like "openoffice" you can find all the posts with that word in the post.
How about if we adopt a standard like if you want to talk about a certain subject like "openoffice" just make sure your post has that word in it.
For example:

Openoffice - this post is about the .......etc

This way we have a usergroup buried in the forum but easy to keep organized and be able to scan.

What do you think guys???

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Flash
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#19 Post by Flash »

Sounds like an interesting idea. What do you you mean by 'easy to keep organized' though? :)

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#20 Post by Guest »

Maybe another section titled Development\Compiling ......And be very strict with posts....Anything that is out of context get rid of

And a sticky section with a list of known Apps that compile ok and any fixes required.

But then again if effort is put into getting the build enviroment right things should work and any compile time problems should be directed to the authors

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