Split PHP Help?

[Spaceman-Spiff]

I've only been here for 2 days but...

 

Maybe it can be better if PHP Help is split into 2:

- Newbie/Basic PHP questions

- More advanced questions

 

I hate to see more advanced questions (including my own) get buried inside many pages of syntax error or simple SQL questions.

Boy, this forum is really popular.

[Daniel0]

I think I've heard some of the other staff mention a former newbie forum. It must've been there before I joined this site and removed because it didn't work out. However, if more people (both staff and regular members) are up for it, I wouldn't mind giving it a try.

 

I think people might find it difficult classifying their problem as either basic or advanced though. That would create a lot of work moving the topics for the mods and admins as well as a lot of emails in our inboxes because people might disagree with the placement of a particular topic.

[Spaceman-Spiff]

I think people might find it difficult classifying their problem as either basic or advanced though. That would create a lot of work moving the topics for the mods and admins as well as a lot of emails in our inboxes because people might disagree with the placement of a particular topic.

 

True. I can see some potential problems, esp with maintenance. Guess we'll have to learn to ask questions in smarter ways

[Daniel0]

Guess we'll have to learn to ask questions in smarter ways

 

For that, this article should be useful: http://catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html

[wildteen88]

Yes Daniel is right, there was once two PHP support forums (Newbie and Advanced Help). I think these forums both got merged in to one when Ober and Ronald took over as Admins. I believe there was some discussion between the Admins and Mods what to do with the two forums.

 

There was problems with having two support forums if I remember correctly, Easy questions, which should of got posted in the Newbie forum, would always get posted into the Advanced help forum. On some occasions members felt they was being offended if their question got moved to the Newbie support forum.

 

I know their is a problem with the PHP help forum due it having such "high traffic" threads will get bump'd to the second page within an hour.

 

[Daniel0]

Perhaps a greater degree of categorization could be done. It's already done to some extent (oop, math, app design, regex). People would still need to place the posts correctly though.

[ober]

wildteen is correct for the most part but the main reason they got combined is because it was stupid for those of us that were helping to constantly jump back and forth between the two boards to answer questions.  Throw in the double posting and "wrong" placement of threads and the extra board really didn't provide any value.

 

I realize that many threads may go unanswered simply because they get bumped far too quickly, but that's one thing we've had to compromise with.  I assumed that the addition of some of the specialty boards would take out some of those "advanced" questions to areas that would be better suited to be answered by people specializing in those areas but maybe that's not the case.

 

Either way, I'm personally against separating them again because of the added overhead.  I'm not against discussing it between the other mods and admins, however.

[GingerRobot]

I dont think it worked particularly well either. As has been mentioned, its pretty difficult to draw a line to define "easy" and "advanced" PHP questions.

 

I think you also get a lot of people who would jump straight to the advanced section to post their basic question because they believe (and wrongly) that the level of help will be better there.

 

 

[Barand]

To a noob, all questions seem advanced.

[revraz]

Think the questions are in the wrong place now, I can imagine adding another forum where the user decides to put their post in without reading the forum description.

[deadonarrival]

I've very much noticed this problem. It's a lot harder to use since the forums got combined.

 

Even though the last system wasn't perfect, there were fewer posts on each - I just treated them with equal priority and did one one day, the other the next.

 

More categorisation would be the best solution. Don't make it "newbie, intermediate, advanced" but split it up into categories like there already are.

 

How about a "why am I getting this fatal error" category. So many posts are just about where someone's missing a closing bracket.

[GingerRobot]

I just dont believe splitting really works. Even with the current divide, far too many topics end up in the wrong place. Apart from anything else, the splitting of the forums requires the user with a problem to be able to partially diagnose the problem -- if they could do that, then they would probably be able to fix the problem.

[deadonarrival]

PHP Help would still be available for that, but at least if we knew what our problem was about we could put it where it will get most exposure.

 

I feel something has to be done in PHP help - posts there just drop off the radar within hours. Recently I've not had anywhere near the response to my posts I would have got 6 months/a year ago.

[.josh]

Indeed, there used to be separate forums : shudder :  Barand pretty much summed it up eloquently when he said: To a noob, all questions seem advanced.  And it worked the other way around, too; many harder questions ended up in the newb section, because people were constantly thinking their questions were too easy, or they didn't want to get embarrassed thinking their question was some rubik's cube when it wasn't, etc...

 

It was all a big headache, and there honestly wasn't any real benefit to having an "advanced php" and "newb php" forum, other than slowing down the rate of posts.  But the tradeoff to that just wasn't worth it, not even close.  I am not opposed to talking it over, either, but having been here for it, I can almost assuredly tell you my answer would be a nay. 

 

In addition to that, I am kind of shy about further categorization People already post stuff in there that doesn't belong. Most people already don't bother reading the FAQ Forums, nor the FAQs and stickies in the other forums, nor the Code snippets, etc.. 99.999% of people who go looking for help are looking because they don't know how to even diagnose their problem and debug it, and if they did know, then chances are, they probably wouldn't be looking for help, as Ginger mentioned (not always, but a good chunk).

 

The bottom line is that when people go looking for help, they are either too lazy or frustrated or both or even if they are neither, they don't want to jump through a million hoops trying to find the right place to post a question.  They want to google "php help," go to the first site or second or third site that pops up, Go to the first forum they see that says "PHP HELP" post right then and there.

 

And that's the way it should be.

 

I agree that threads seem to fly off the screen awfully fast, and that it's an issue to be looked at for improvement, but experience tells us that splitting it up and/or sub-catting it doesn't really work.

[deadonarrival]

I agree that splitting the forum according to ability won't work... and while Sub catting may not be used, noticed or cared about by new users who just make a post or two I still maintain that it's better than "everything goes here"

 

But for those of us who've been around a while and know the site a bit better, it would be a lot easier, faster and just plain nicer to be able to put things where we know they'll be seen by people who know about them, and to help with things we know about.

 

Yes, newbies to the forum will just post in PHP help - but at the same time they would benefit by fewer posts in the php help forum. They'd be more likely to get the help they need and more likely to stick around.

 

Fair enough it might not solve the problem, but it could ease it.

 

Aren't we all programmers here? I'm sure the first rule I was taught when learning to program in Pascal years ago was "Break it down, then break it down some more"....

 

I just think it will make using the site a lot more fluid for those of us who use it regularly, even if it doesn't make any difference at all to new users, it won't do any damage.

 

I've been a regular PHP-f user for years now, but I've found over the last few months that my posts just aren't being viewed or replied to anywhere near as much - and I'm sure it's because they just drop off the radar too fast. I find myself moving away from the community because I just can't find the answers I need. (Sorry, that last sentence looks a bit like "change it or I'm leaving" - it's not meant to be that but it's 1am and I CBA re-writing it)

[neylitalo]

I think the man has a point, gentlemen. The regulars will be able to take advantage of the more localized boards, and the newbies can use the general board because they don't know any better - and if they spend enough time here, they'll learn the proper places for everything. (Hopefully that won't take more than a day or two per person.)

 

If we wanted it to work properly, though, we would have to find a different way to do it - a different organizational scheme. I don't think sub-boards will work very well for this.

[.josh]

I'd also like to just throw out there some of the reasons why posts tend to get buried:

 

- Posting a ton of code and then saying "fix it."

- Posting vague questions

- Posting not enough code

- Not being clear about your question

- Posting questions that have been asked and answered countless times over

- Posting code without code tags, any kind of indenting, etc...

 

I can assure you, that virtually every single thread gets the look-over at least once, by several people.  As a moderator, I systematically go through every thread when I'm there (If I can help, I try to), and I always see other people there.  And I can assure you, from my own experience, as well as reading other people's posts about experiences moderating/helping out, that when people do things like this, even if it's an easy fix, they walk right out the door. 

 

I'm just pointing that out because "high traffic" isn't the only reason why posts get buried, and to be honest, I have a sneaking suspicion that if every single poster came in and tried their hardest not to break posting etiquette, posts being buried due to legitimate "high traffic" probably wouldn't be that big of an issue. 

 

You have to remember that the people who help out here are doing it on their own time, for free, and therefore, they aren't gonna spend a whole lot of time trying to figure out really complex problems.  I go into a post and unless I more or less immediately spot the problem, I move on.  And the cold hard reality is that that's probably what most other people do, as well. 

 

So I would first and foremost suggest making sure you aren't guilty of the aforementioned  acts of forum treason, and second, making sure that your problem is broken into bite size chunks. 

 

Just my 2 cents. 

[.josh]

To answer neylitalo: That's all fine and dandy, except that we as mods have the responsibility to move posts to their proper place.  This causes confusion for those newbies. Sure, we can make sure there's a moved to: link, but that just replaces one slot with another, not solving the problem at all.

 

 

[GingerRobot]

You see, I can't think of too many particularly complex problems which wouldn't already fit into one of the categories -- be it maths based, OOP or Application Design.

 

I also disagree that as people stay around the forum they tend to put stuff in the right place. Sure some people do. But quite a lot don't. Even with really blatant divides, such as the MySQL board, loads of questions get put in the wrong place. How often do you see a question which is entirely MySQL stuck in the PHP board? And, to a lesser extent, vise versa?

 

Personally I think CV hit it right on the head -- the vast majority of posts which drop off without being solved are because they have not been asked properly. Apart from that, there are also cases of more complex posts, which would require more time and effort on the part of the helper. Now, I dont know about anyone else, but there are only two occassions when I will make an effort to solve a more complex problem:

 

1.) I have free time and the problem is an interesting one/i'm not sure how I would sove it, or

2.) The question has been posted by someone i recognise as having contributed a lot of the community.

 

On a side note regarding moved-to links: it's a shame there's no option where the links are only displayed to people who have posted in/started a particular topic.

[deadonarrival]

I'd disagree - some questions are just plain awful, true; but I'd hope that I phrase my own queries well.

 

Short abstract of the situation

 

Code example

 

Problems entailing - usually numbered to hopefully allow people to reply to a specific query without having to say "about x/y/z..."

 

Things sometimes that I know aren't that complex, but I just can't grasp or work out, and still get no replies. It's the same way I've posted for a couple of years now, but they just don't get the same volume of replies.

 

Anyway, I'm glad to see it's at least being considered. And I'd ask whether things would HAVE to be moved from the general board to the sub-boards. Move things from one topic to another if they're mis-categorised, but if it's in general, why not leave it there? Let people choose themself if they want it categorised or not.

[448191]

I would like some division of PHP Help, but not like the previous division between n00bie and regular PHP Help or anything similar. Clearly, and as many have already pointed out, that didn't work.

 

I am not at all active in PHP Help, and the main reason for it is that I don't like plowing through the n00bie questions to find something interesting. Helping someone resolve a parse error or whatever is not very satisfying IMO. It used to be, up until 2 years ago or something, now I rather pick the more interesting threads. Sometimes I look at a thread, tempted to post, but thinking "fuck it, this is going to take forever to properly explain". Or, "pfff not this shit again". I'm sure many of you recognize this feeling.

 

Anyway, putting my posting habits aside. Not all threads in PHP Help are like that, at all. So my point is, if there was some way to divide the posts by whatever criteria, NOT predestined to result in disaster like the n00bie board, I would be all for it. I can't think of one though.