Is the rep & points thing fair?

Loolipop mine keep going across the screen and then down the left and side,so don't worry.Someone has Thanked me but i can't find anywhere to show that I have been thanked and by whom so Thankyou to the person who Thanked me for whatever you Thanked me for:lollol:
I have also answered one of Roders posts in General Gardening Discussion and now can't find it,only when I look back on my posts do I SEE it then it goes again.:cnfs:

Must dash, I am going to Google Gardening Forums and see what I come up with:thmb:

 

"And what, in my comment, made you suppose that the feedback we've had has NOT been from the local community?"

Nothing, but that's my point.

I agree that regulars, in particular those that frequent the non-gardening "chat" threads, can make good use of the new tools.

My concern is about attracting new "regulars", casual visitors, and so on.

I came here for the gardening community, I personally don't find it as enjoyable as I used to, and it takes me, personally, more time to follow the threads that I am interested in.

I think its a pity that there aren't some smarter thread-following tools in vBulletin, and I know there is nothing you can do about that, that's how the software is!

And as I've said its up to the owners what sort of site they want. I think the emphasis has shifted from providing a haven of useful information for casual visitors to a community for the regulars.

"Another thought you might like to mull over: This forum is in two sections:"

I rarely have any interest in the "General Discussion" section. Don't get me wrong, I do NOT have any issue with the fact there there is one its just not for me.

However, in order to follow the threads that I am interested in / have participated in / would like to offer opinion and advice on, I find that increasingly hard to do as the "signal to noise" ratio falls.

I came here because of the high number of informed people who posted on gardening threads, and of course the general friendliness and so on.

"In a recent bit of analysis of activity in the forum, it became obvious that postings are about equal between to two areas and that posting in non-gardening areas also about equal those in the specifically gardening areas. So I would suggest that this forum has, over time, become a general interest forum with a gardening bias rather than the soley gardening forum it once was. There are many regular members who seem not to engage themselves in the garening fora overmuch but they are still regular members."

I agree 100% with your assessment. I'm not sure how you can also favour folk who want "just gardening", going forwards. If your informed members post less the site will become less attractive to me.

I've made my point, I'm sure I've overdone it but I did want to clarify to be sure that my view wasn't misunderstood as such - a text only forum is harder than face-to-face of course; my view is different to that of the owners (which is fine by me too), and I do, of course, what to see the forum prosper in the future.

"My point was that the upgrade has only just taken place. Given that Nathan, Rich and I all have lives outside of this forum, nothing is going to happen overnight in regard to this. We need to get the upgrade completed before we start pruning things off. Even so, people do seem to be using these features which would indicate that they approve of their presence."

I would recommend you do it the other way round next time. Build a test site, invite some folk here to have a look, if you like, or just decide for yourselves. Try things out, and then implement only what you want, understand, etc. Probably less work that answering a bunch of time consuming posts from the likes of me! as well as folk who haven't understood and just want some handholding.

I'll leave it there, barring any specific questions. I have no wish to labour the point, and whatever I do wish you all well with your site.

 

Well, as long as everyone has the same problems then that`s alright-I think. (I am not sure at all but let`s whistle into the wind and pretend shall we?-it`s getting worse-I am talking to myself on a public forum)


I am going off now planting my £3.99 fruit tree-yes £3.99 apple tree from Lidl-my new pavourite shop in the world. When I have put all right with the world I`ll come back and try again.

 

Building a test site was done on another forum I admin'd on, much, much bigger than this one. It too, upgraded from a basic vBulletin to the V3 and we did build a test site. Spent many weeks going over things and deciding what we wanted and how. It was very successful as far as it went.

BUT when we got to actually upgrading the site itself, everything was different when it came to creating the "How-To"s. I was largely in charge of that side of things, having a team of peeps to do the actual stuff, and we found that all the work we'd done making the "How-To"s in the test bed was wasted effort as we had start from scratch all over again! See, the test bed didn't have all the personalisations that the original did and when we upgraded there were a lot of sytem bugs that surfaced and we had to tweek things here and there to sort them out. So the stuff we'd started had to be trashed yet again as they were no longer correct.

Lesson learned: wait till all the upgrading and tweeking has been done before making "How-To"s unless you want to age very quickly!

 

I tend to think the forum is overeaching itself and losing some of its identity,it takes so long now to trawl through to keep on top of things I find it's taking too much time to get through to the relevant bits (gardening)often missing out on posts I should perhaps have followed up.

 

Just a thought - how many of you use New Posts to read the forum?

And do you think that's what Kandy meant by her "signal to noise" ratio remark?

Would be interesting to know.

 

I use New Posts, but I have a problem with it as follows:

if I go-away from the site for a while it considers the last thing that I did represents the time of the last post I read. So if I view the New Posts page, and then open a thread and then, maybe five minutes later (maybe half an hour or more if I have a cuppa!!) I reply to it that is the last thing I did.

If I then close my computer, come back tomorrow, its the LATER time that is seen as the point I have read up to. So anything posted in-between is NOT on the NEW POSTS page :(

I also use "Quick links : Today's posts" which shows a "line" at the time it thinks I have read up to, but shows earlier posts too. (However, the earlier posts don't have the icon that lets me go to the first new post in the thread - so I have to scroll down and try to find where I had read to, and navigate to the last/appropraite page etc.

Its almost a perfect solution, but not quite! in my opinion. (Nothing to do with the folk here, its how the vBulletin software works, so its the same on all the forums I read which use that software)

 

Same here Daisees-I use new posts 99% of the time, but like Kristen if I need to pop off for a bit there is now ay of seeing the ones I didn`t read without searching for them-I don`t know, maybe view unread posts and allow us to select our own cutoff-say unread within the last two days or something.

 

Diasee,Can you point me in the direction for my 'Signal to Noise' ratio remark because I am blowed if I can see any mention of it in any of my posts.I wouldn't have a clue what it means anyway:cnfs::p

 

Post #32. kristen,not you Kandy.

 

Daisees Quote: Even so, people do seem to be using these features which would indicate that they approve of their presence.

That doesn't follow. I have tried out some of the features to see how they work & what they do, as many people probably have. This doesn't mean that I like them.

 

The "signal to noise ratio" remark was made by kristen on page 1, and she has explained it - it means the proportion of important ('signal') content to unimportant ('noise') content. I suppose it's radio terminology.:thumb:

Sorry John, for duplicating your msg. Posts must have crossed.

 

Quick Links: that's neat - I'll have to try that. So much to explore, so little time!

In another forum where I am mod and technical expert, I have to read every single post that's made (20-30 posts twice a day!) to look for questions and I have found it very annoying when, as you say, I'd take a break half way through and then find most of the posts vanished. So now I have a seperate window with the new posts list in one tab then I right click on the and choose "open in a new tab".

Sure - it's here

 

I'm sure that's true for some, but the number of people who have used them more than a couple of times is growing.

To be perfectly honest, I tend not to use thanks/reps myself but neither do I have any difficulty ignoring their presence.