Thread

It’s come to my concern, as I know (and assume) it has to others, that there are many.. dare I say it ignorant people here in this community. It’s starting to seriously annoy me when I see posts like:

hi peeps,

you make good ci framework,
can you make me forums app?

thnx

And just pure idiocity - why don’t people look at the frikken user guide?

My suggestion is that we impose a 10 post limit BEFORE anybody can post. This gives them a chance to contribute, and a chance to see what this community is like, what it stands for and why they should be a bit more civilized; after all, there are so many wonderfully talented people here, and it would be a shame to let this slip.

I’m not fully sure what you mean by this, whether you mean that a user can only post ten times then a moderator will lift that limit, if the quality or content is at the right standard. That alone would increase the moderators work load 5-fold. Another way could be after 10 posts a script decides whether or not the ban should be lifted or it should be referred onto a moderator, but a script like that would be very complex, if it checking a persons content of each post.

I do however believe this should be implemented in some way, and im sure the two ways I have suggested are not the only two ways.

If I understand correctly, people need to have 10 posts in order to post a thread?

In that case the forum would have less threads like you said and much much more posts like you said. I think the good thing about this forum is that it doesn’t impose limits on people, the user guide should definitely be more noticeable around the site since many people ask questions here and it’ll be in the user guide. A number of people already posted threads asking where it was.

I think making the user guide more noticeable would be better in the long run.

It’s come to my concern, as I know (and assume) it has to others, that there are many.. dare I say it ignorant people here in this community. It’s starting to seriously annoy me when I see posts like:

hi peeps,

you make good ci framework,
can you make me forums app?

thnx

Yeah. there’s a lot of Rent-a-coder style stuff going on. “I am looking to develop a simple app that is a clone of Twitter/identi.ca. Will pay $50, because I started and this code is over my head.”

Maybe some kind of “thanking” feature for the forums would help, like Ubuntuforums?

Does EllisLabs have any sort of use policy for the forums? If rent-a-coder stuff is unpalatable to the community perhaps EllisLabs should ban it in the policy, and anyone caught doing it would be banned by the moderator. There is already a [ Report ] link on each forum post that we can use to help the moderators identify inappropriate posts. I never noticed it myself until this discussion. 😊

I like the idea of making people make 10 posts before they can start a thread. Don’t know if anyone else does, but I regularly read the new topics RSS feed, and this could cut down on a lot of useless stuff.

I think limiting the creation of new topics will lead to other topics being hijacked for the new people’s purpose. Plus, as we all know, CodeIgniter is well known for it’s open and friendly community - limiting access right off the bat doesn’t sound so open and friendly to me.

I can say, I fully support something being done. As anyone who follows me on Twitter knows, I was a bit frustrated at the quality of posts yesterday.

I wouldn’t be opposed at all to getting rid of the “hai, I can makez nxt Youtubes w/ the codes you please?” posts. Right now we only target spam and that is moved off to a forum where the EllisLab team can analyze it and put filters in place so we’re not attacked by the same person/style of attack again.

What do you guys think of doing this with the “hai, can I have teh codez?” posts? Should they be moved off into “The Nothing” (I like to call it The Nothing, some people don’t call it The Nothing; but I call it The Nothing).

Should I come armed with a plethora of auto-responses (“Oh noz! No codez for youz! All your RAMs are belong to us!”) and close topics down?

Personally, I prefer the 2nd option as it at least gives the original poster the opportunity to see the error of their ways and to attempt a worthwhile contribution next time. Whereas the former is The Nothing - nothing more than The Nothing.

i also am starting to get bored with the useless topics in the RSS feed, which i read precisely because i want to keep up and contribute where i can.

i do agree with Adam though, that if this has become a pain point for the community (and i think it’s clear it has), then Ellis Labs needs to revisit their IA and site design to try and answer some of these questions (cough, user manual) before people hit the forums.

I think they did a great job with the first iteration of the CI site, but as the community has grown, the audience has changed. The site needs to change along with it.

I’m also on-board with the 10 posts limit, as long as the forum makes it clear why there’s a limit and provides a mini-FAQ with important links—to the user guide 😊.

i also am starting to get bored with the useless topics in the RSS feed, which i read precisely because i want to keep up and contribute where i can.

i do agree with Adam though, that if this has become a pain point for the community (and i think it’s clear it has), then Ellis Labs needs to revisit their IA and site design to try and answer some of these questions (cough, user manual) before people hit the forums.

I think they did a great job with the first iteration of the CI site, but as the community has grown, the audience has changed. The site needs to change along with it.

I’m also on-board with the 10 posts limit, as long as the forum makes it clear why there’s a limit and provides a mini-FAQ with important links—to the user guide 😊.

If people don’t read the user guide, what makes you think they’d read a mini-FAQ as to why they can’t post a thread yet?

Personally, I prefer the 2nd option as it at least gives the original poster the opportunity to see the error of their ways and to attempt a worthwhile contribution next time. Whereas the former is The Nothing - nothing more than The Nothing.

As long as some filtering system is put in place - I for one would only be to happy to go through posts with moderators and other influential members of the community and delete/notify the old nooby topics.

If people don’t read the user guide, what makes you think they’d read a mini-FAQ as to why they can’t post a thread yet?

That’s the exact problem. Even if we have to put a big fucking banner in flashing neon right at the top saying “HEY NOOB, READ THE BLOODY USER GUIDE” then it should be done.

I stand by my ten post idea. We can make it a friendly introduction into the community. Something like “We realise that your new, so why don’t you start by reading the User Guide and having a look round the forums. If you have a problem, try searching for it. If you are using a library from the Ignited Code section, why don’t you comment in the thread and tell the author what a good job he’s done!” etc. This would also cut down spam topics.

Or to take it in a different direction - a CodeIgniter Beginner’s Forum.

I agree that something should be done.  Just because CodeIgniter is an “open and welcoming” community doesn’t mean that pure laziness, ignorance and lack of effort should be tolerated.

Letting the users continue to post the “anyone help can to make forum” messages creates a burden for the established community.  Now somebody has to decide whether or not to respond to that post, and if they do, what do they say?  There’s a 50% chance that one of the nicer people here may look like an ass because they’ve lost patience for that type of post, and if they do stand to maintain their composure, it’s a post that has a number of flaws.  First of all, what is the author’s actual intent?  The question is not stated clearly enough for anybody to do anything with besides make an attempt at what the OP is actually asking.

I think it’s simply community maintenance and something should be done.  It doesn’t necessarily have to be looked upon as a bad thing.  Who knows, the CI community might be able to set a trend in other online communities who are dealing with the same problems.

Um, no CI beginner’s forum. Talk about destroying a friendly environment to newbies…. You’d have the “kiddie forum” and the “big guy” or “elite” forum.

Um, no CI beginner’s forum. Talk about destroying a friendly environment to newbies…. You’d have the “kiddie forum” and the “big guy” or “elite” forum.

Again - it all comes down to perception.  I’m not saying that the beginner’s forum is the way to go, but not everybody would share your point of view and read it as a “kiddie” forum—it certainly wouldn’t be promoted as such, so the perception would be left to the user.

I don’t see EllisLab working new features into this forum anytime soon. They haven’t even got EE 2.0 out the door yet, and it’s already 2009. It’s easy enough to ignore stupid posts. No one forces you to read or respond to them, and doing so only bumps them up.

A simple 5-replies-before-making-new-threads works perfectly on any place I’ve tried it, alot of votes for it!

So basically you’re saying that even though I’m an experienced PHP user who has read the user guide and has a serious question regarding some specific aspect of implementing CI, I can’t create a new thread to ask it until I make X number of replies in other threads?

Well, yes, that will probably reduce the number of new threads that insult your delicate sensibilities. It will also increase the number of useless replies on other threads and “hijacking” of threads while simultaneously driving away potentially useful forum contributors who are too busy or otherwise disinclined to spend time looking for X threads they can reply to just so they can ask a question they could really use help with from experienced CI users.

Unless you want to drive users away from the forum (and as a consequence from CI), I don’t see this as a viable solution. All forums suffer from increasing “noise” as their popularity and membership base increases. (I’ve seen it on many forums over the years and have moderated several of them, including currently being a moderator as PHPBuilder.com.) I think the best you can do is ensure you have enough moderators with sufficient direction as to what is considered an unacceptable post, so that they can remove those posts.

PS: What a coincidence. This is my 10th post here. I guess I’m safe now?  :roll: