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| Do you think we need a new forum for the Betas of OOo? |
| Yes |
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83% |
[ 5 ] |
| No |
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16% |
[ 1 ] |
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| Total Votes : 6 |
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Message |
hwtan
OOo Advocate
Joined: 24 Aug 2004
Posts: 320
Location: Singapore
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 Posted: Mon Feb 14, 2005 9:19 pm Post subject: Suggestion: A New Forum be created for OOo Beta |
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I would like to suggest that a new forum be created for OOo betas such as the current 1.9.X. I am suggesting this because many discussions on 1.9.X are in the regular forum such as the Writer and Calc forum. Since the 1.9.Xs are still in their beta stage, bugs are common and unavoidable, and thus many of the problems discussed are difficult to determine and helped by other users. A beta forum would invite the OOo programmers and the likes to contribute and receive feedback more easily.
Last edited by hwtan on Tue Feb 22, 2005 7:00 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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8daysaweek.co.uk
Super User
Joined: 29 Nov 2003
Posts: 2130
Location: UK
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| Posted: Tue Feb 15, 2005 1:17 am Post subject: |
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I was thinking the same the other day. If this was a poll I'd vote yes 
BFN,
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James
www.8daysaweek.co.uk - A User-Focused OOo site |
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BookLady
Super User
Joined: 03 Nov 2004
Posts: 727
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| Posted: Tue Feb 15, 2005 10:15 am Post subject: |
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I was just thinking we need one for beginners as a lot of the posts here are getting pretty technical.
Were you thinking a Beta forum which would deal with whatever was Beta at the time? Thought about one for Beta but decided that very soon it will be standard and the questions for the older versions will drop off as everyone is advised to grow up,  move up, umm upgrade that's what I mean upgrade.  |
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Cybb20
Super User
Joined: 02 Mar 2004
Posts: 1569
Location: Frankfurt, Germany
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| Posted: Tue Feb 15, 2005 12:23 pm Post subject: |
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Another option:
1 or more specific threads about OOo 2.0 in this forum.
Christian
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hwtan
OOo Advocate
Joined: 24 Aug 2004
Posts: 320
Location: Singapore
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| Posted: Tue Feb 15, 2005 6:35 pm Post subject: |
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Having too many treads may not be desirable as users may have difficulties determining which one to post their message. What I have in mind is a current beta forum, because it is difficult to determine the souce of problem (whether it is a bug, or it is due to a wrong setting) in a beta build. Also, general users are not interested in the beta builds.
The idea that I have in mind is as follow: for now, I would suggest one for the OOo 1.9.X. When a stable OOo 2 is out, ie. after the rcs, this OOo 1.9.X may be closed. Perhaps, by then a forum is retained for 1.1.X and a new one for 2.0, and may be one more for the betas of 2.1, or 3.0 in the future
Should I put up a poll?
Regarding Booklady's concern of the forum is getting too technical, I do agree with it. But perhaps, instead of a beginner's forum I would counter propose a general user forum and a technical/programmer's forum. But may be you should start another tread. |
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nom
OOo Enthusiast
Joined: 17 Dec 2003
Posts: 153
Location: NSW, Australia
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| Posted: Tue Feb 15, 2005 7:35 pm Post subject: |
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Actually I was thinking of something similar as well.
I was thiking more along the lines of a forum to report bugs, since bugzilla can be pretty intimidating.
I believe that there are a lot of people willing to help debug OOo but are not sure what to do.
If there was a forum specifically for that I am sure people would report the bugs, and the best thing is ... the developers are more than willing to correct them!
The forum could be used to confirm the bugs and then someone who knows how to report a bug in bugzilla could submit it along with the corresponding thread. (This will make everyones job a lot easier.)
So in summary I am all for it!
Nom |
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Kaaredyret
Moderator
Joined: 22 Aug 2003
Posts: 1356
Location: Denmark
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| Posted: Tue Feb 15, 2005 9:33 pm Post subject: |
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How about one locked forum with FAQ's and general help - for the beginners? Only 10-20 threads (one screen max) with help?
We answer ten FAQ's day in and day out, perhaps we could save some time with a FAQ/help forum like that.
I also support the idea about beta forum!
Anyway, we have a major problem here, and that is that access to all knowledge stored in different threads is limited. The search engine in this forum is nothing special and the structure of the forums is very basic; with thousands of posts in each forum much of the knowledge is drowning in 'noise'.
At work we have a few fora with the same problem; we have chosen to let a moderator move the best threads to a handful of seperate, locked, categorized fora. This moderator is a specialist and he knows which threads that deserves to be highlighted.
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Cybb20
Super User
Joined: 02 Mar 2004
Posts: 1569
Location: Frankfurt, Germany
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| Posted: Wed Feb 16, 2005 8:10 am Post subject: |
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| Quote: | | The search engine in this forum is nothing special and the structure of the forums is very basic; with thousands of posts in each forum much of the knowledge is drowning in 'noise'. |
I strongly agree. It also often bothers me to see the same questions asked again from time to time, it's like being a coffee-machine producing the same coffee the whole day long  !
Christian
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jetpeach
General User
Joined: 01 Sep 2004
Posts: 22
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| Posted: Wed Feb 16, 2005 2:01 pm Post subject: bump! necessary! |
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yes, this is completely necessary and would be very very nice. I'm wondering right now if I can find 1.9.79 but I don't even know where to look - general discussions? Didn't see anything, a forum for 1.9.xx would be great though and would give me a place to look...
jet |
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draude
Administrator
Joined: 10 Dec 2002
Posts: 356
Location: San Francisco
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| Posted: Thu Feb 17, 2005 5:30 pm Post subject: |
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| Kaaredyret wrote: | | How about one locked forum with FAQ's and general help - for the beginners? Only 10-20 threads (one screen max) with help? |
I think a forum or perhaps even a thread with links to popular, frequently asked and pertinent threads would be very useful. The problem is always in maintaining such a list. It would take a lot of work and regular forum participation to know which questions are frequently asked and which threads are relevant to most users. Any volunteers? Given that there are already several FAQ's on OOo, I think a forum FAQ should focus on user issues. Perhaps a forum where users can submit their own FAQ's and HOWTO's would work? Such a forum would need good moderation, perhaps something akin to the Code Snippets forum?
As far as a beta or pre-release version forum, I think it's a good idea. I'm just wondering if that community of users necessarily benefits from having their issues isolated from normal OOo issues. After all, don't beta users get more feedback on their problems if they post in a high traffic forum? If there are lots of beta users (relative to the production release), won't they all be hanging out in the individual application forums anyway? I don't know the answer but it's probably worth thinking about.
For some apps, like Firefox, the release version is somewhat irrelevant. People use whatever is stable, which was beta or release candidate for a very long time. When OOo 1.1 was beta, for example, I think most of the users here were using it and so a beta forum would have been redundant.
I also like the idea of a forum for reporting bugs. Getting 2nd opinions before submitting to issuezilla would be helpful. Of course, if people get lazy and report here only and not to issuezilla, then it would become counterproductive.
Ed |
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Kaaredyret
Moderator
Joined: 22 Aug 2003
Posts: 1356
Location: Denmark
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| Posted: Thu Feb 17, 2005 6:28 pm Post subject: |
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| draude wrote: | | Kaaredyret wrote: | | How about one locked forum with FAQ's and general help - for the beginners? Only 10-20 threads (one screen max) with help? |
I think a forum or perhaps even a thread with links to popular, frequently asked and pertinent threads would be very useful. The problem is always in maintaining such a list. It would take a lot of work and regular forum participation to know which questions are frequently asked and which threads are relevant to most users. Any volunteers? Given that there are already several FAQ's on OOo, I think a forum FAQ should focus on user issues. Perhaps a forum where users can submit their own FAQ's and HOWTO's would work? Such a forum would need good moderation, perhaps something akin to the Code Snippets forum?
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The FAQ's I had I mind would just be links for threads on this forum, because it is here on ooooforum.org these questions are asked and answered. It could also just be a thread, but a forum would perhaps make it easier for new users to find them, especially if the threads are categorized. A locked thread or two in each forum is also a possibility, of course.
Beta forum:
I thinks it is about not confusing the people that are using the release version with questions about features not at all present in the release version, I think it is a good idea to seperate questions about how to use the program from questions about future plans, bugs etc.
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nom
OOo Enthusiast
Joined: 17 Dec 2003
Posts: 153
Location: NSW, Australia
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| Posted: Fri Feb 18, 2005 12:53 pm Post subject: |
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| Quote: | | I also like the idea of a forum for reporting bugs. Getting 2nd opinions before submitting to issuezilla would be helpful. Of course, if people get lazy and report here only and not to issuezilla, then it would become counterproductive. |
I am not sure it is because people are lazy, but more that they just do not know how to use bugzilla. Having a forum that is simple to use would allow people to report potential problems. The problems could then be verified by the community and someone from QC could then submit the problem (if indeed it was found to be a problem) into bugzilla with a link to the forum thread. (To me this would make everyones job easier).
It has some advantages:
1) Easy to use by everyone
2) People feel they can contribute in a constructive manner without having to spend a few hours working out bugzilla. (I consider myself a computer literate but I still haven't worked out how to use bugzilla and I do not really want to either. Having said this, I would not mind reporting a bug on a forum because I know how to start a thread and make a post.)
3) Avoid multiple entries of identical problems in bugzilla
4) Facilitates the work of QC members, since more people from the community can verify the bug and either confirm it or not. |
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Michael A. Kearsley
OOo Advocate
Joined: 04 Jul 2004
Posts: 390
Location: UK
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| Posted: Fri Feb 18, 2005 1:30 pm Post subject: |
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I don't see the need to have a new forum for a particular development project - maybe if there was a general forum on Developer Versions, apart from anything else it would divert queries about what are bugs in developer versions away from what are release versions that would normally be expected to be more stable.
I think that there should be a seperate forum for the Base application though - there's one for each of the other main applications and a lot of people are now using OOo Developer Snapshots including the Base application. |
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hwtan
OOo Advocate
Joined: 24 Aug 2004
Posts: 320
Location: Singapore
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| Posted: Sun Feb 20, 2005 9:40 pm Post subject: |
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There are a few advantages for a new beta forum:
1) For general users, they do not have to view a list of topics containing many beta issues which they are not familar with and does not concern them.
2) For users like myself, who are quite familar with using OOo and occassionally give advices to others, and also may be trying out the latest build, may still not good enough to give advices to the other builds. To me, to discern whether an issue is a bug, wrong setting or not yet implimented is time consuming and difficult.
3) It will eventually save the time of many, and a topic being responded faster with the right person reading the right topic.
I like the idea of a FAQ page for new users. |
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workklo
General User
Joined: 13 Oct 2004
Posts: 36
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| Posted: Wed Mar 02, 2005 8:03 pm Post subject: |
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| Having a new forum for a new version is good. I have seen other companies doing the same thing. When there is a new version, just create a new forum out of it. |
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