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New Forum Solution - What would you want?


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  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee

If we were going to... say... upgrade the community board in the near future. What would you consider your most important must-have features?

Go nuts. Feel free to echo or +1 what others have already posted.

I personally require:

1) Direct video and image embedding

2) Attachments via drag/drop

3) Voting system (Easily trackable system of +1s by post as well as by user)

4) Mobile device compatibility

You?

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I agree with all the items on your list Jim. Especially the video and image embedding. I also think a 'like' button similar to FB would be interesting.

I visit this forum daily and look forward to the diverse topics and challenges. It's a great resource that could be improved with a few tweaks.

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How about an easy way to post ones own avatar. I have no idea how to do it now.

Upgrade the search engine to make finding a topic easier. So if I typed in "Hardware" I'd get a list of threads that deal with hardware and preferably showing the latest first as the last in this subject maybe something posted 5 years ago and now therefore obsolete.

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Ability to tag or vote someone's response as the 'Solution'. Some website forums make it very obvious by putting a green box around the Solution post. Maybe once a post has received a number of votes (at least 3) it gets marked as the solution.

+1000 to better searching. Currently, I have much better luck searching the forums with Google instead of the built-in search function.

Ability to search for a three-letter word. Try searching for 'BIM' to see what I mean.

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Jim,

That's a great list. Beyond the basics the single biggest priority should be "usability as a long term repository of VW information". Anything that helps this would be welcomed - better search, ranking of responses, marking "solution" posts, uncluttered layout etc.

Customizable by forum type would also be good (ie. +1 system for the wishlist, a compact way for doing resource share forums where you can easily see shared files rather than a long scroll of posts). Perhaps a tagging system for shared files so they're searchable.

Kevin

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In general, moving to a back-end that supports the full capabilities of modern browsers.

Especially, for example, not having to go to separate "confirmation" web page for every action, before being taken back to the previous page.

I agree ++ with the remark that long-term accessibility should be prioritized. Of course good content has to be curated to remain good. The StackExchange model (see http://www.stackexchange.com if not already familiar) of vetting content and questions seems to work very well. And SE also vets users as well.

Other large org's like Apple/Filemaker seem to have official discussion boards which are semi-moderated by well-respected and experienced users who are not employees. Maybe use a system that allows multiple levels of moderators so that experienced users can help with the work of funnelling & sorting posts by quality and importance.

I would like to be able to set a default posts-displayed time horizon of more than 3 months. I realize this default may have been chosen in an earlier era when server & network bandwidth were more precious. It is a drag to have to continually choose "Show posts 1 up to 1 year ago..." or longer.

I look forward to whatever the new forums solution turns out to be. I am confident it is going to be an improvement over what now exists.

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All of the below

1) Direct video and image embedding

2) Attachments via drag/drop

3) Voting system (Easily trackable system of +1s by post as well as by user)

4) Mobile device compatibility

The Voting System with if possible feed back as to what may be or may not be planned for the next release and ...

Honestly I think NV (or whatever you guys are called ...

Over the years I have been involved you have provided some things that were not in a sense main stream requests and that should continue - that being the surprise stuff

Oh and free pills that install all Vectorworks knowledge into the person that takes them

You know the ones Islandmon was taking

D

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Direct video and image imbedding

Attachments via drag/drop

I would also like to see posters stop abbreviating terms that new users have no idea what it means. IE: for the longest time I had no idea what OIP meant or EAP and now tbh. Is it really too much work to type a few more letters?

How is someone new to Vectorworks going to learn from a post with terms he or she can't understand?

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  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee
Direct video and image imbedding

Attachments via drag/drop

I would also like to see posters stop abbreviating terms that new users have no idea what it means. IE: for the longest time I had no idea what OIP meant or EAP and now tbh. Is it really too much work to type a few more letters?

How is someone new to Vectorworks going to learn from a post with terms he or she can't understand?

This is something I concern myself with, but wouldn't want to push as a habit onto experienced users. The happy medium I've found in quite a few forum packages has been Acronym Expansion, which is customizable, so when a user has "OIP" in a post, it should as underlined and if any other user mouses over it, it reads "Object Info Palette". This has been my favored solution so far, as I personally don't mind typing out common terms so that new users can get used to them, I also want experienced users to be able to take advantage of shorthand.

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I recommend looking at www.controlbooth.com for their overall function. I believe they have everything on the wishlist and lots more. They are a very similar crowd and many are VW users.

The coolest function solves the above issue nicely. There is an automatic linking to a glossary/wiki that explains the word. Theater is full of jargon/slang/TLA (three letter acronyms) and product names.

Their wiki of articles has built up over decades and proves that it is a viable long term storage that is accessible to newbies. That deep storage can go far beyond a vendors tech support.

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  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee

^ Will do!

+1000 to better searching. Currently, I have much better luck searching the forums with Google instead of the built-in search function.

Ability to search for a three-letter word. Try searching for 'BIM' to see what I mean.

The 3 character search issue is a problem with our MySQL database (the database that runs under all of this.) Its currently set to 4, because whenever i attempt to set it lower... extremely bad crashy things happen.

This won't be an issue in the replacement we choose.

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+1 on automatic jargon expansion, there's no way regulars are going to type out "Object Information Pallette" every time, nor should they be expected to.

+1 on better searching, agreed that Google often does a better job than the forum search engine.

+1 on long-term Wiki with well-curated articles, so many questions occur over and over again.

Also, a well-ordered keyword "tag" system so posts can be easily cross-referenced over multiple sub-forums. (E.g. a post can be tagged with, for example, "Architect" and "Spotlight" if both of those tags are relevant.)

And, a thread-display system that shows replies in a sensible indented form, the way for example Reddit.com does. (Or, at least an option for the user to select that display format.)

Edited by Gilbert Osmond
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All good ideas so far. Navigation is sometimes an issue - like, just now, I went to the site from the link in an email notification, but had to log in. After logging in, there was no way to get back to this thread except through the browser back-button, and that page didn't know I had logged in. Just being able to navigate back when browsing using a dropdown list of "recently accessed threads" would do wonders. (Yes, I do know the browser "refresh" button forces the site to acknowledge I'm logged in.)

The organization of the discussion groups - it's a long list, and there is a lot of crossover and confusion about which category a thread should live in. I own but don't use Spotlight, but often issues brought up by Spotlight users are relevant to Designer as a whole (for example). I think a database approach might be better, where the website manager enters keywords for each thread so the user could organize and search the site by a list of keywords. That might help with Gilbert's comment, so when a current thread shares a keyword with an older thread, it could be easily referenced.

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I'd like to see a field that tags a post with the current or relevant version of VW that applies at the time of posting. It should default to the current version, but the poster could select an older version or versions relevant to the version he/she is currently using. When reading through older posts it's not always obvious which version is being discussed.

It might also be useful to have a way to flag a post as still relevant in future versions, since issues don't always get resolved by the next release.

Thanks,

Raymond

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I'd like to see a field that tags a post with the current or relevant version of VW that applies at the time of posting. It should default to the current version, but the poster could select an older version or versions relevant to the version he/she is currently using. When reading through older posts it's not always obvious which version is being discussed.

It might also be useful to have a way to flag a post as still relevant in future versions, since issues don't always get resolved by the next release.

Thanks,

Raymond

+1 this has always bugged me. For this reason I have started putting the version in question in the body of my post, and not just relying on my signature.

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+1 voting system esp "the soloution" (like stackExchange).

+1 image embedding.

Upgrade search so it remembers and so one doesn't have to put + before anything to make it work .

I find the site continually forgets me, no matter how often I set Remember.

Many users are on on older versions and much that is newer doesn't work on older versions. So what about a version tag added to subject line - it would also help sort which people to help out for different users. This is so for many programs - I know folk still using ACAD R12 as it does what they need. [i see MullinRJ has posted on this so +1]

An on-the-fly version conversion tool so users of old versions can view / download files posted in newer version discussions. It may even prompt 'old versioners' to upgrade as they can see what's possible in a more socialised way than tradition advertising.

I visit about weekly and find the forum indispensable.

What about a jobs page??

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  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee

+1's for:

- Better searching (+500 for this one actually. I too use Google instead of the built-in forum search)

- Marking posts as "solutions" or "helpful" (+499 on this, as it would make long threads FAR more useful for everyone, especially newer users.) A per-thread option of toggling between all replies and helpful/solutions would be good too, so that a questions and its answer can be viewed together.

- Automatic abbreviation expansion (perhaps as an option in Post settings)

- Embedding of images and videos

- Mobile device support (of course)

- Keyword or topic/theme tags

- A more inviting, easier to read & digest main forum page. Perhaps a more icon based one to make targeting overall forums easier.

Other features to consider:

- Thinking of being able to mark posts as Solutions/Helpful... It would great to have a Post Option to mark a new topic or post as a question needing a response. Combined with that one should have the ability to only view questions questions needing responses at any forum level.

- The ability to show forums active in the last N days/weeks/months right up to the top level of all forums. Currently this is only available only forum level in. (The "Active Topics" links doesn't allow the same time granularity and presents with a new, unfamiliar interface.)

I'm very much looking forward to seeing what you come up with Jim!

-Neil

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  • Bug spotting. So a user, especially a new user, can be aware whether they are working around a known problem or don't understand a particular function.
  • Cross-links to the Help file/databse
  • Choice of viewing either by subject/topic grouping or industry grouping of posts - so for example I would tag my post as Spotlight but it would also automatically list in the ODBC topic/subject forum - if not eliminating the General Discussion forum greatly reducing activity there. This would also remove the need for the awkward intermingling of subject and industry fora like DWG import/export, 3d printing, Solids Modelling which currently live beside Architect, Spotlight, Landmark. It would also allow for more granular arrangement of topics eg. Solids Modeling would become 100 different subject fora like SubDivision, Push Pull, Snapping, Tents, etc (et cetera)
  • Key Image - each post should have a key image associated with the subject line. This need not necessarily be set by the op (original poster) and could be possibly part of the peer voting arrangement you're considering.
  • Searchabillity whether logged in or not - broader audience. The search engines already get around the login requirement.
  • Improved bulleting and indented bullets, because ...

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  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee

I'm a big proponent of a "Best Answer" option as well, something with an obvious visual indicator. I've seen a few implementations, but I think the combo I like the most is setting a threshold count of "likes" or positive feedback from other users and then that reply is denoted specially, as well as a manual system where moderators can intentionally mark a post as the "correct" answer.

Agreed about the search, people should not have to register with us in order to search. I think the main reason this was disabled was related to spambot activity (which is also why we manually approve users here and don't have a captcha or something similar) but this should be resolved by any of the modern community packages available.

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