What has happened to this forum?!?

ericgibbs:

Your ideas are good and also I share your views. BUT! this is not the thing i'm talking about. Have you seen the Electronic Projects Design/Ideas/Reviews forum? It too was originally something I describe above. But my Idea was to post completed projects, not ask questions about your current ones... So there is no need for comments probably and not 'a place where public discussions are held'. The password is just to keep it clean from those questions.

bloody-orc said:

But my Idea was to post completed projects, not ask questions about your current ones... So there is no need for comments probably and not 'a place where public discussions are held'. The password is just to keep it clean from those questions.

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It wouldnt really need to be a completed project. Feedback and comments would be nice though, I was kinda thinking along these lines: (taken from the forum over at 4HV.org)

* Be clear and concise. Remember, you are presenting your project to the community and guests. It should be clear what your project does, or what you're hoping to accomplish.

* Be thorough. A link to a website isn't appropriate, neither is a short paragraph. When possible, include images and other media.

* All information needs to be consolodated to the very first post in the thread. You may post short posts in your thread stating that you've updated your project thread, keeping in mind the double posting rule, but any actual updating needs to be done by modifying the very first post in the thread.

* Asking and answering questions about the project is fine, but discussion is not permitted on this particular board. If you wish to have a detailed discussion, please take it to the appropriate board.

* Brief posts expressing admiration and supportive comments are allowed, and encouraged. Helpful suggestions are fine, too. Outright criticism and rude comments will result in swift administrative action.

* Your project need not be completed, but it must be beyond the planning stages.

I dont know if the password idea would work, it may require too much work on the moderator's end.
There will always be spam, just have to ignore it I suppose. hopefully this project section would be somewhat cleaner than the other sections.

I've had some fantastic private messages both on here and on some other forums from Newbies who want you to do all the work for them.

On another forum I got into a heated discussion with someone via PM who wanted me to teach them all about PIC programming - they had previously managed to learn some Basic (on a PC) and had convinced themselves that they could do anything.

While annoying I mollycoddled them as much as I could and recommended that they bought a ready build PIC programmer - the response - no way I'll build one.

Now their electronics knowledge was minimal to say the lease but off they tootled to Maplin and bought the kit - programmer and basic project board.

A couple of months later having taken that long just to get an LED flashing they admitted defeat and decided that electronics wasn't for them.

After that experience I try not to get overly involved with newbies other than pointing them in the right direction and walking away.

I've been in the electronics field both as a professional and hobbiest now for over 25 years and found the transition from analog/logic electronics to PIC Microcontrollers suprisingly easy once I got onto the learning curve.

It does shock and suprise me the lack of electronics skill some people have when they sign up on here and expect to be building complex circuits straight away though ........

picbits said:

I've had some fantastic private messages both on here and on some other forums from Newbies who want you to do all the work for them.
It does shock and suprise me the lack of electronics skill some people have when they sign up on here and expect to be building complex circuits straight away though ........

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Hi picbits,
I feel exactly the same way, some of the projects they post are well outside
their capabilities, they don't even understand the building blocks of the circuitry.

However, from time to time, you get one outstanding newbie who actually finishes his project and comes back and says 'thanks'.

jrz126: Exactly what I was thinking of!

picbits & ericgibbs: Those PMs do get annoying if there are too many of them. But most of the time it helps to just tell them, to post it in the appropriate forum and luckily they do.

I think most of the new members stumble across this forum while searching the web for answers to a specific problem, the solution is their main focus at first. I try to give them sometime to figure out how the forum and the features work. If I can help, I'll try, who know's after that first post, perhaps they'll settle in an contribute. I don't think it's fair to jump all over new members on their very first post, regardless how annoying or redundant the topic. There should be some kind of link library for threads that cover these topics fairly well. The search function isn't that great, and can also return many less than useful results to sort through.
I usually ignore posts where the member just had a daydream idea, hasn't even done a search of the web, and expect a complete schematic to be posted for them. We all have our own projects, jobs and homes to work on. Homework, kind of depends on how its presented. It can be overwhelming at times. Sometimes it doesn't take much to get things going. Some students ask to avoid studying or make up for the lack there of, usually don't bother, seldom return anyway. Basically, its up to the members to choose which topics they want to participate in, or ignore.

HarveyH42 said:

I think most of the new members stumble across this forum while searching the web for answers to a specific problem.

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Thats how I found this forum. I can't remember what I was looking for at the time, but i stumbled upon this place and have been a daily (somtimes many times daily) reader. I have asked some dumb basic questions but I have learned ALOT in the process. I knew almost nothing about electronics a year ago at this time. Now I have built some simple things, worked with most basic components, programmed a PIC, ect. Most of that was learned here.

I can't remember it being much differnt then it is now here due to me only being a member for a year or so, but I hope it dosn't go down hill to the point that the smart, interesting people stop posting.

I have noticed things seem to go in waves too, no topics that interest me for weeks, then a bunch of good ones will pop up.

IMHO the projects idea would be a good thing for the forum as more completed projects will be posted and more "noobs" can read them and discover the forum and start asking their "silly" questions. Also a lot more people will get inspiration from them and start building something on the same line themselves to "compete" with the original idea, making the original owner in a mood to improve his etc. progress people!

Also It wouldn't interfere with the life this forum is having right now, we would be collecting the good and completer projects into one place so that they will be easier to read and find.

As many of the "oldys" have said before me, there are less and less complicated questions and projects here to train your brain on there days. Simple LED blinkers and dice rollers... There used to be Tesla coils and electromagnet cannons and 10kg robots here! Now most people posting in the robotics forum are people looking for a complete drawings of the robot they want and usually from Middle-East... (Pakistan, Afghanistan etc)

Bloody-Orc;

I don't share your negative opinions regarding the degrading of this forum. I would accept that there is an increasing amount of "can you do my entire project" related questions, but as has already been mentioned they can be ignored. Usually you don't even have to read the post, you can tell by the topic wording if it's likely to be a waste of your time.

I don't think you'll ever stop those kinds of posts from happening, but regardless of that I think this forum remains an excellent source of information, opinion and advice for like minded contributers with the right attitutude. I don't think that will ever change.

Aside from all of that though, I do quite like your projects forum idea. It would suffer from a number of issues that immediately spring to mind though. One is that a board confined to your so-called "elite" would probably not be very busy at all, especially when compared to the regular activity seen on the other forums. Also, there is the potential to offend new and old members who will feel excluded from discussions for no good reason. The basic idea is good but it would need to be thought through much more carefully I think. One idea I can contribute with regard to the exclusion problem is this. What if contributers were only permitted to take part in discussions in the completed projects forum *if* they had already qualified to do so. To qualify, they would need to have contributed a project of their own and submitted it for approval. This would in effect limit discussions to those who are genuinely active project builders. It may even encourage members to submit their projects so that they can take part in the discussions, who knows.

Mind you, I am not suggesting that even this is a perfect solution to the problem! There probably isn't one.

Oh, and regarding the OT forum, I think you should be quite happy that a lot of OT discussion takes place here. If there is room for an OffTopic area, at least it means that more OnTopic discussion is taking place in the relevant forums!!!

Brian

I just joined this forum, and I'm afraid its just like other "specialty" forums: the "old timers" consider it their own private message board, and only want to communicate with the "good old boys". New comers ask all those dumb and boring old questions that the "old timers" are tired of and bored with, since they've all moved on to bigger and more advanced things, as one of the "old timers" above stated. Is this not the place to ask basic questions about electronics and electricity, or is it for highly qualified EEs only?

nothing wrong with asking basic questions, but at least try to be original with the basic questions ... asking basic questions without searching or even browsing first is just rude. chances are if the question is basic, someone just asked it 10 min ago

Or 10 years, and the answer is easily viewed on Google. Though it would help if the forums search engine was more intelligent, you have to know EXACTLY what you're looking for and exactly the terminology used to look something up. If you so much as enter a spelling error when someone else spelled it right or they spelled something wrong in their post about the perfect subject, it won't come up.

Blue sky: I would like to see a forum system with a second level of organization. In database terms it would just be another view.

Worth while threads could be given meaningful titles and included under categories like programmers, tachs, FM transmitters, or one of the other common topics that keep showing up.

You could take this a step further and let each member keep his/her own set of interesting threads. Allow users to view others users favorites.

The point I keep pondering, who is going to decide, whether or not someone gets the password for this special site.

By definition and using his criteria 'bloody orc' being a student, no experience and no qualifications [according to his profile], as a Newbie/noob, he would not qualify as being one of the elite??

I dont think the proposal is a good idea, if you want to be a forum member of a project group, search the web, there are lots!

Look at pwotoole's response.

I just joined this forum, and I'm afraid its just like other "specialty" forums: the "old timers" consider it their own private message board, and only want to communicate with the "good old boys". New comers ask all those dumb and boring old questions that the "old timers" are tired of and bored with, since they've all moved on to bigger and more advanced things, as one of the "old timers" above stated. Is this not the place to ask basic questions about electronics and electricity, or is it for highly qualified EEs only?

On another (automotive) forum I use we have at least 2 or 3 newbies a week signing up to ask exactly the same question (usually how to fit a digital dashboard in a certain model of car).

Using the search button generally brings up 30-40 solutions.

Another classic is asking why they can't post in the classifieds section even though there is a big notice at the top of the screen stating that they can't post until they have been signed up for 60+ days and have 50+ posts.

Then you get the women . A new male member generally gets 10-15 replies to his "hi - I'm new" post while a new female member gets 10-15 pages of replies.

Oh - and don't get me started about the trolls who drive BMW's but use a Vauxhall site as their main hangout ........

ThermalRunaway said:

One idea I can contribute with regard to the exclusion problem is this. What if contributers were only permitted to take part in discussions in the completed projects forum *if* they had already qualified to do so. To qualify, they would need to have contributed a project of their own and submitted it for approval. This would in effect limit discussions to those who are genuinely active project builders. It may even encourage members to submit their projects so that they can take part in the discussions, who knows.

Mind you, I am not suggesting that even this is a perfect solution to the problem! There probably isn't one.
Brian

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I like that idea. I like that a lot. It sure is better than mine

ericgibbs said:

By definition and using his criteria 'bloody orc' being a student, no experience and no qualifications [according to his profile], as a Newbie/noob, he would not qualify as being one of the elite??

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If you say I wont qualify, then I don't. The password will be given to anyone who wants one. It's just that those, who don't have a project to share usually don't want to go through all that trouble of asking one in the first place and therefor post his/her question on another subforum.

But as I stated above I like ThermalRunaways idea more than my current one so his idea is something we should go for.

hi bloody-orc

>> If you say I wont qualify, then I don't. The password will be given to anyone who wants one. It's just that those, who don't have a project to share usually don't want to go through all that trouble of asking one in the first place and therefor post his/her question on another subforum.

Thats the point I am trying to make, I don't have the right to say you dont qualify!, BUT who decides which one of us does qualify?

Regards

As I said before

The password will be given to anyone who wants one.

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bloody-orc said:

As I said before

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Little weird, I could foresee issues with such a procedure

hi,

>>> The password will be given to anyone who wants one.

If this is the case, whats the point of the password???