Community

My Discussions is coming back due to popular demand.

New and Hot, who knows. Personally I hate those links, they just seem redundant. If it's HOT, chances are I've already posted as HOT means popular.

NEW, well I can check all new questions in Tech Q&A instead, seems to be the majority of NEW topics are all misposted questions in the wrong forum. This detracts from the effectiveness of Tech Q&A as people answer questions here instead, thos who play by the rules and post in Q&A get fewer responses than before.

That is one issue thay still haven't addressed yet, but I think the idea originally was to merge Discussions and Tech Q&A, which would be a nightmare that nobody seems to like.

I like the 'new' link.

I think that the 'redirection' to the Q&A would improve that issue by asking one simple question when submitting a new thread. I don't want to see the merging of the two, but I do like the access to both within the profile page.

I don't understand why everyone was so bent up over the 'my discussions' link. I've been navigating just fine without.

I'll peer mail you details.

EDIT: Well I WAS going to tell you how to access all open questions, BUT you don't have an active contact link, so no go I suppose.

UNLESS you want to send me an email with a return address, then I can solve your problem instantly.

I think activity is down because everyone is STILL posting to the Discussion forum. THis site has gone haywire and while all these new fixes are great, they STILL haven't tried to define the two forums better, add entry copy to the pages to redirect people to the correct forums etc.

Long way to go I'd say.

The lines between Discussions and Q&A have blurred to the point where there is little functional difference.

To many new "Discussions" really belong in Q&A.

Re. the open questions link, I would appreciate your peer mailing details to me.

Enjoy.

We need to figure out a way to redirect a "start new thread" to the TQ&A in order to minimize this issue. There have been various solutions mentioned, but none of them have been recognized. It could be that this is not a priority, but it is an issue that concerns more active members.

Please, if you have any ideas... elaborate.

Owing to the nature of the decision making process involved in determining the best classification, i.e. a specific Question requiring an equally specific Answer, as opposed to an open-ended Discussion, which elicits an undefined set of responses, short of having a human proctor to guide the process, it appears than AI would be needed.

Since we don't have AI, and having a human pre-screen new posts seems impractical, perhaps we can attack the problem from the opposite end, by implementing some means whereby new threads can, once they are initiated, be re-directed to Q&A, whereby only the initial post is re-posted as a Question.

As regards the authority to effect such re-posting, we might consider allowing anyone to propose re-posting, with an additional number of peers concurring before such could be executed.

Obviously, we would also need to fix a default no. of Tech Points to be offered for the accepted Answer, along with notification to the original postor that there item had been moved to Q&A.

Was a simple buffer page that would ask whether or not they are posting a general discussion, or if they need help with a technical issue. My hopes would be that the question would redirect people to the proper location.

The argument against this is that it is an extra step invloved to post a start a new thread or post a Q&A inquiry.