I’ve noticed a fair amount of people who comment in the Q&A section at the Appcelerator Titanium developer website don’t really like the style of Q&A forum that resembles stackoverflow.com.
As there’s no way to put a poll up there at the Appcelerator Q&A site, I thought I’d try a poll here on my site.
So if you have an opinion on this issue, feel free to vote in the Poll in the right sidebar here. If you select “a third way”, I encourage you to leave a comment to this post so you can describe your idea.
This is, of course, totally and completely unscientific. First of all, I would imagine that most people who take the time to vote are people who want to go back to a classic forum. People who are pleased with the status quo might not take the time to vote.
Nevertheless, I’m interested in running the poll and seeing responses.
[Update 22 April 2010: Poll closed, with final score 23-0 in favor of “classic.”]
Hi Bill,
32 to zero looks pretty conclusive.
Hard to grasp what the benefit of the current format over a classic style. I’m afraid I don’t buy the connection between format and an unsustainable contribution by staffers. IMHO, the current format just isn’t fit-for-purpose.
Since a standalone forum such as phpBB3 could be setup in an hour, I can only assume that the issue is either integration/single sign-on or consistent styling.
A principle problem that I highlighted some time ago was the lack of distinction between bugs and help. I’ve had contradictory messages (from different Appcelerator people) regarding how a bug in the product is to be brought to the attention of the company. I’ve requested clarification several times, but no-one seems to want to state openly.
cheers,
Chris.
Hi Dan,
I agree. It seems like there is substantial movement towards things changing. Kevin Whinnery (@kevinwhinnery) has been put in charge of the community-facing activities and is getting feedback.
I think we’ll see some changes.
Regards,
Bill
I’m not confident that the exisitng Q&A site would scale well as the community grows.
My reply from Appcelerator site:…
I am actually working on this as we speak!
I have noticed the frustration of some users here, as well as my own, so i have taken it upon myself to set something up.
It is based on Vanilla (www.getvanilla.com) and i am looking into setting up syntax highlighters and the like so that it can be used properly without looking a mess.
I could be mad for taking this on but i think the community needs it! I don’t want to take away any credit from the Appcelerator boys, because after all they are doing a fantastic job, but the users seem to crying out for a standard forum.
A standard forum would also allow for discussion, whereas on here its more structured for Q&A.
I am open to thoughts and feedback on this, we shall see what comes of it.
…await another post on here (developer.appcelerator.com) about this in the near future with a URL.
Cheers
Sam
I’ve already listed what I feel are some of the killer flaws in the new forums in the “How do I use the new forums” question. Jeff Haynie wrote back, “We have a long list of improvements – a lot of which you’re complaining about – coming soon.” That was four weeks ago, and I haven’t seen any changes yet. I’m not holding my breath.
https://developer.appcelerator.com/question/1/how-do-i-use-the-new-forums
Right,
The lack of categorization is perhaps the most uncomfortable part of it for me. I feel like I’m not getting any kind of “overview” of anything when I get to the page.
Also, it’s not easy to find old answers of mine. I think it really only shows you the most recent several answers (not sure the exact number) that you’ve given. Or am I missing something?
Thanks for stopping by,
Bill
Not even close… Really want the oldschool forum back, then everything from android dev, iphone dev, to Announcements to aline sightings can have it’s own section, and still be totally searchable in a chronological or keyword fashion.
No idea why the Ti guys are clinging to this, unless it’s related to selling ‘help’ and not the ‘product’. But that sounds a little nefarious even to me.
Hi Eliot,
Yes, definitely there are problems in the last several days, including over the weekend. They’ve acknowledged somewhere that they are working on it (I think in a tweet somewhere.) Hopefully it’ll be fixed soon, because I’m really tired of logging in — especially when logging in doesn’t even work! 🙂
Thanks for stopping by,
Bill
It isn’t even as much the formatting as it is the problems that I’ve been having with the new forums. Has anyone else had any problems with logining in on Firefox, Chrome, or Safari? I am unable to post in any of them, IE only.
Hi Howard,
I would agree. It has some of the “look” of stackoverflow but not much of the functionality. Ability to comment on a question/answer without posting an “answer” is really something I miss that is at StackOverflow but not Appcelerator.
Thanks for stopping by.
Bill
My problem is that it isn’t Stack Overflow enough. The old forums were fine. A Stack Overflow clone would be fine (love that site). But the current forums that have some Stack Overflow features but isn’t stack overflow is awful.
I’d comment on your post on the forums but I can’t login at the moment, somethings up with the “login” link in the top right of the page header.
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