10,000 Posts.

[Llorean]

I'm quite certain he was upset about the removal of his posts, as I read both his original post, the single response to it, and his single response to that one response, and there was no sign of anger or discourtesy (even arguable discourtesy) in those three posts on either side. Since he had the last word, and he's shown some willingness later to express anger, I'm fairly confident that it would've been there if he was angry with the first response.

And I didn't think baobab68 was saying he was justified. But he did say

there is nothing to indicate from the Paypal icon on the main page, what level of support or influence you can expect to get if you donate.

and I find this statement entirely incorrect. The word "donate" alone indicates everything that can be indicated about what level of added support or influence you can expect to get.

[ki]

Well, without wanting this going around in circles and not achieving anything at all. I'd just like to say that I think you're points are quite valid Llorean.
And I also think that mine are quite valid. (And Baobab68's too for that matter).

I don't think I have suggested "rewarding" behavior at any point. And I do understand the situation from your point of view.
But it's also important to try to see the situation from other perspectives isn't it? Especially as it seems to be that a lot of people are apparently 'misusing' the forums.
Perhaps it is unrealistic to expect people to have the same knowledge as you or other experienced users. Of course there are going to be people in any community or forum who say inappropriate things, or don't seem to be able to do things the 'right way', and I'm not suggesting that you should have to pander to them. But if you notice the same things coming up again and again (like having to remind people of the rules etc), then I would suggest that it might be beneficial for you as much as anyone else to reconsider how to deal with it.
At the moment it seems like there is no mutual understanding going on, which is never good for community.

I think you are probably in a better position to come up with solutions to this issue, but I would suggest that everyone who is an active member of the community get involved with reminding users of the guidelines or rules in a polite and friendly manner. That way the responsibility is not only on the admins, and hopefully everyone can get along a little better.
Perhaps even the guidelines need to be rethought about and possibly refined.
Perhaps some of the guidelines could be defined as strict 'rules' and other parts a little more lenient (as the term guidelines implies).

These are all just suggestions, and I leave them with you (as a community) to do with as you please.

[Febs]

It is a shame that this thread is going to be deleted. It should at least be filed away as a reminder, something that mods can go back and read occasionally.

In most instances, we do not actually delete threads.  Instead, they get removed to a portion of the forum that the moderating staff has access to, but the general public does not.

Since the project happily takes donations, it needs to be prepared to listen to what its users have to say.

We have no fewer than six different ways that users can give feedback:  (1) the developer mailing list, (2) the user mailing list, (3) these forums, (4) the Flyspray tracker, (5) the #rockbox IRC channel, and, perhaps to a lesser extent (6) the wiki.  

The thread that Ki quoted:

http://forums.rockbox.org/index.php?topic=15596.0

was clearly coming from a misguided person. The responses were just *mean-spirited*. There is nothing to indicate from the Paypal icon on the main page, what level of support or influence you can expect to get if you donate. He/she might have felt that it was totally kosher to ask for a feature. I'll admit I've not read the IRC logs to see what was said in IRC though.

I don't see that there is anything at all mean-spirited about my response.  In fact, in light of the overt threads contained in the first post, I thought it was fairly restrained.    I agree with your general observation that these forums could be more welcoming.  In this one particular instance, however, I don't believe that there is anything that I could or should have done differently.  The threads in the New Ports forum have a very specific purpose and that purpose is stated very clearly in the sticky at the top of the forum.

In any event, I appreciate the time that you and ki have spent to offer observations in this thread and thank you for doing so.

[soap]

All the below is the opinion of Soap and not necessarily the opinion of Rockbox developers.

The effect of that kind of response is probably going to be that the original poster (whose first post it was) will not return to the forums again. That may or may not concern you, but as an administrator for a community forum, I think it probably should. Another byproduct may be that other people reading the thread may be turned off by the community and rockbox in general.  

I picked a quote of yours at random to use as a springboard for my story...

I, personally, think there are a number of differences between this forum and others you may be a member (or frequent browser of) which may not be taken into account when complaints are made.

1 - This is a very open forum.  We air our dirty laundry.  Many of the posts which receive replies you dislike would have been trash-canned on sight on other forums.  Many of the users who are frequent and flagrant violators of the rules would have had their accounts deleted on other forums.  
Does this clutter up the forums with responses to non-productive users?  Yes it does.
Does this provide an opportunity to clarify forum policy to users who perhaps started out on the wrong foot?  Yes it does.  
The second result is well worth the first IMHO.

2 - This is the forum of an open-source project.  Unlike Sandisk's forums (where they are selling a product and provide a forum as cheap-technical support for the boosting of their profits) Rockbox has no real incentive (outside good will towards men) to provide a forum at all.  This seems to confuse many people.  
Rockbox does not need users.  
Really, it doesn't.  
Rockbox is not first-and-foremost a community (like HydrogenAudio or AnythingButIpod) which needs members to maintain interesting discussion.  Rockbox is a small group of programmers who are working together from a variety of motives to write a software program.  Most (if not all) of them would be doing it regardless of how many people (outside themselves) were using it.  
This is not trying to justify an intolerant attitude towards users - but to explain why the Rockbox forums have a different set of expectations placed upon participants.
Again - users aren't needed.  Is it any wonder users who come in making demands invoke intolerant attitudes?  If someone wants to contribute - they are welcome to.  Remember, though, Rockbox is not a democracy - a certain level of group think is not only existent - but required to keep the machine moving.  Think of the attitude as an evolved filter set.  Those who pass through are more likely to be functioning parts of the machine.  Those who get chewed up and spit out are less likely to have ever been contributers.

[Llorean]

Just to elaborate a little bit on what Soap's saying there:

This doesn't mean we don't want to give support. But the main reason for these forums is to be a channel of communication regarding technical issues. Development concerns, bugs, support issues, etc. Because they aren't "conversation" or "community" forums, that means we do have rather strict rules. A major part of the reasoning for his is to try to keep the search feature relevant. If we have 40,000 posts of people chatting about MP3 player X and saying things like "I'd really like a port too", and only 3 of them are development posts, when someone searches for what information has already been discovered about it, they'll have a lot more to read through than if we keep the forums as tidy as we can.

Then, we have more than 15,000 members. If everyone asked every question that came to mind, we'd have thousands of duplicate posts in our forums. Yes, I can understand the idea of "If someone asks a question answered in the manual, you can go ahead and answer it while reminding them to search." I agree this is the politest response. I disagree that it's the best one for our forums. In the time that I've watched these forums, I've seen this method tried several times, and in my experience, here, it results in the user coming back and asking more questions that are in the manual, because it's easier than looking it up themselves. This then makes it harder to find actual new information on say, the subject of USB, because any time someone searches for it, they find 400 posts on "How do I connect USB?"

It is unfortunate, but some degree of impoliteness is to be expected when rules are enforced. Because when it boils down to it, "Please search the manual, our guidelines state that you must before posting and your question is answered within" is going to sound impolite to many people, especially when their question could've been answered with less words.

[mbbda]

This is something that has seemed odd to me..

You say that the reason for strict enforcement of the rules on the forums is so that the answer to technical questions can be searched quickly, yet when someone posts good technical information on the forum they are often told (sometimes abruptly) that they should not have done so & the information should have been put on the wiki, where in my experience, the searching is difficult.

[AlexP]

Permanent information should go on the wiki, yes, so that we can point people to it when they ask a question answered by it.  I agree that the wiki is currently sub-optimally organised but if it were done properly, it would be easier than the forums to find fixed information.  What we want easily searchable is answers to questions that people have asked before that others may ask in the future.

Personally when someone posts permanent information, I always try to say, "thanks very much, but...".  We honestly do appreciate help like that.

[Llorean]

The wiki has a search function that I find, for keyword searching, to be just as effective as the keyword search in the forums. At least, in my experience.

[gevaerts]

I think the main "problem" with the wiki search is that on the wiki front page there's this "Go" textbox that looks like a search box but isn't.

[Llorean]

Good point. But, that still doesn't make the forums the right place for static information.

[soap]

This is something that has seemed odd to me..

You say that the reason for strict enforcement of the rules on the forums is so that the answer to technical questions can be searched quickly, yet when someone posts good technical information on the forum they are often told (sometimes abruptly) that they should not have done so & the information should have been put on the wiki, where in my experience, the searching is difficult.

1 - Search the wiki for static information such as How To's and datasheets and test results.
2 - Search the forums for frequently asked questions (not covered in the manual) and clarifications.

See - I think it is #2 which is what confuses people.  In the ideal world the forums would be a fluid, dynamic, place where questions are asked about topics which are not covered in the static documentation.  If it is found said question actually involves Rockbox the answer can be placed in the static documentation (manual, wiki).

When people fail to put forth the effort to read and search the static documentation they are in fact implicitly stating their time is more valuable than that of others.  

[Llorean]

On a related note, it might be time to clean up some of the millions of repeated questions in the forum. Or rather, put into effect a policy on that.

For example, "If a post is older than two weeks, and contains no information not in the wiki or manual, and no questions not answered in either of those documents or another thread, it may be removed" with "removed" being redefined to "placed in an unsearchable archive in case we need to recover it later for some reason."

Basically, since we migrated to the new forums, we haven't done any cleaning, and while I don't expect the total searchable posts to decrease drastically instantly, it would be nice to make available the option for experts/mods/admins to trim the fat a bit when nothing else is going on, if they feel like it.

[mbbda]

When I first came to the Rockbox forums I remember thinking that the moderators were incredibly harsh & way OTT.  However, after a while you get used to it & come to understand it is not personal and  it is just the way it is & what a good job the moderators actually do.

It is just, like has been said on here before, that it is very abrasive to the newbie, who is not going to read the guidelines before making their first few posts (I am afraid that this is just life).

Edit.

something that I would also like to mention is that, I and I suspect most people watch the forums every day.  It is somewhat addictive.  You check out today's posts & if anything catches you interest then you read it.
I have found out most of the interesting things that I know about Rockbox this way.  If the guidelines were followed to the letter, lots of good information would go straight to the wiki & I would never see it.  The wiki is OK if you are searching something specific that you probably know or expect to be there but I think a/the forum benefits from being less formal.

[Llorean]

Frankly though, the newbie is warned before they make any posts that

The rules in this forum are heavily enforced.

in bold letters on the registration page.

I'm willing to accept they don't know, and we all try to not to be too harsh on the first offense. But it's really the new user's responsibility, isn't it? They clicked "I agree", if they didn't read what they agreed to, why should we act any different because of it?

[scorche]

...the information should have been put on the wiki, where in my experience, the searching is difficult.

As a quick note, if you find our wiki search inadequate (which I admit that I sometimes do if I am not sure of what I am looking for), you can always type this into google to use their search engine.

Code: [Select]

ThingThatIAmSearchingFor site:www.rockbox.org/twiki