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Mediaworx
06-07-2007, 12:41 PM
OK you hockey pucks. Far be it from me to espouse perfection in forum postings but a few things have been bugging me regarding postings in the SE forums and forums in general for that matter.

First of all, as videographers we are storytellers...professional communicators, we especially should be able to express ourselves clearly and concisely via the written word in the forums. Puleeeeeze ladies and gents, preview your posts so that others may read them without an interpretor. You wouldn't send your client a screener without previewing it first.....or would you????

Secondly, this may come as a shock to some, but NT has gone to a lot of trouble to subdivide forum categories to make it easier to find the information we desire from the forums. SE has four of them, I will now attempt to explain each one so that everyone will know where to post a given thread.

SE community - kind of like a bulletin board, off topic things go here as well as info or questions which concern the SE community as a whole.

SE feature requests - If you have a feature you would like to see, post your request here.....period

SE general support - A catch all for troubleshooting questions, bug issues, procedural questions and so forth, when in doubt post it here

SE tips and tricks - If you have a tip you've found useful or a specific way of doing things or perhaps wonder if someone else has, post it here.....period

I now open this thread to all the sarcasm and smart alecky(?) remarks you yahoos can muster.

PS...for those who don't know me, this was posted tongue in cheek:D and is not meant to be taken seriously. Those without a sense of humor might need directions:stumped:

Jim_C
06-07-2007, 01:51 PM
I now open this thread to all the sarcasm and smart alecky(?) remarks you yahoos can muster.


8/

Did I spell that correctly and place it in the right firum?

ted
06-07-2007, 02:41 PM
Mick, while you may have been kidding, but do have a point, it has always amazed me that LW has 27 topics and LW posters still clog the top "General" catagory. :stumped:
I guess they need 28. :D

JackJ
06-07-2007, 03:05 PM
Think its the other way around, Ted. The main reason (I believe) that all the various topics gravitate to the General forum is because that is the forum most of the readers and posters gravitate to. If you post a question in a dusty little corner of the forums that never gets visited, you may never get an answer (I'm not saying this is right, its just the way it is).

With the level of activity this board sees, perhaps if the default was to see a single page of all the recent posts (within a product line, anyway) in an area where they'd be read, and then have them calve off into sortable subcatagories for reference and searching later on when they've gone dormant, then we could have the best of both worlds. It sounds lazy, but I think the bulk of the forum readers only dip into the different subcategories if the most recent subject line happens to catch their eye, or when they're looking for answers themselves.

If we could keep the 'action' in some type of "General" forum, where you could see all the recent posts with the easy scroll wheel, instead of that difficult, additional-page-loading clicky button, that would be such a time saver. Heh.

For me, the rallying cry I'd put forth is "Make subject lines that give a full and accurate idea of what the post is gonna be about, and then stick to it." Sure, not easy to chant at rallies, but darn useful for sorting through posts. At least, don't be afraid to change the title if you're changing the topic. A hundred posts in a thread, all with the unhelpful title of something like "SE trouble" doesn't give a new reader a very good place to start, or the advantage of being able to follow the general 'thread' of the thread just by scanning down post titles to see what kind of twists and turns the thread has taken, and whether someone might have already posted a question or answer.

Okay. Wordy as usual, but I work in video, so a picture is worth a thousand...well, anyway, the exchange rate is terrible. It used to be worth a thousand words, but a shiny new dime used to be enough for a phone call, too.

Jim_C
06-07-2007, 03:29 PM
Keep General Topic, just that 'general'. Free for all discussion. If mods think it is inappropriate they will remove it.
No VT, LW, SE, 3dA banter at all.
There are General topics under each of those categories for general discussion about those apps..

Keep ALL topics under the subject they belong to even if it is a dusty section.

Use the 'New Posts' button to only display new posts. Then there is no such things as unvisited and dusty sections. If someone posted there you will see it.

JackJ
06-07-2007, 04:18 PM
Well, if the question is about having LW discussions or something under the SE general forum, then obviously that's in the wrong place. But if we're just talking about SE (which, compared to the LW forums already has a very simple structure), then while I agree that having specific sub-categories can be very useful, they're only useful if everyone uses them, and what I've seen in the past is that, given a choice between 20 little categories with little apparent activity, and one big catch-all with a name that could be interpreted to also include whatever it is they want to talk about, most people will choose the big, active board.

So we either need to rename that to something that no longer seems to include their desired subject (like Off Topic or something), or accept common usage and find a way to make it work for us. (Kinda like a story I heard about a university that didn't put in sidewalks until after the first year, then they put them in where the natural traffic patterns had beaten down the grass. Either design a natural process that encourages the right behavior, or you have do continually put up and enforce "Keep off the grass" signs.)

Scott Bates
06-07-2007, 06:08 PM
In Post #4 above Jack lamented about:
that difficult, additional-page-loading clicky button an option is the following for the latest VT posts:
http://www.newtek.com/forums/search.php?do=getnew&f=33
or
http://www.newtek.com/forums/search.php?do=getnew&f=221
for the latest SpeedEDIT posts

("latest" = since you last visited the forums and clicked "Mark Forums Read" in the Quick Links popup list when you were finished)

ps - if anyone knows how to combine those two into one search string I would be happy :thumbsup:

JackJ
06-07-2007, 06:49 PM
Sweet. Well, 33 + 221 = 254...I tried it, but it didn't work. Proving my theory that the boards functioning isn't intuitive enough. Arf arf arf(that's my other dog impression).

billmi
06-08-2007, 12:43 PM
First of all, as videographers we are storytellers...professional communicators, we especially should be able to express ourselves clearly and concisely via the written word in the forums.

I sometimes think one of us is not a storyteller, but rather an artificial intelligence program, stringing together semi-coherent sentence fragments.

JackJ
06-08-2007, 01:14 PM
Yes, there's a ghost in the machine...and I've long suspected that the ghost is quite, quite mad.

Sometimes I talk to it...
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