Forum Curation Considered Helpful

[eastgate]

It struck me today that we might really benefit from one or more forum curators — people who would resurface old threads and topics of interest — either because they’re evergreen, or because beginners will find them interesting, or because the answers may have changed over the months and years. We could revisit those threads, or perhaps we could add them to a pinned note that would serve as an index for newcomers.

For example, just going back to July, I find this thread about the usefulness of Tinderbox:

Questions about the usefulness of Tinderbox

Thank you @JFallows for yet another illuminating post. And I think perhaps (I may be assuming too much) this illustrates just how much you can achieve without loads of agents, queries, adornments and the like (though obviously I don’t know what else is going on behind the scenes in this Tinderbox file!).

The threads got off to a slow start, but there are some really fine examples inside. I’m sure there are lots of these!

[doublem (Marc Miller)]

Absolutely. A pinned-for-newcomers section is a great idea. Things like your video are very useful in showing novices what can be done with the app.

[satikusala (Michael Becker)]

@eastgate

It struck me today that we might really benefit from one or more forum curators

I like this idea a lot. I find the threads difficult to follow at times. I’d love to find an easy way by searching by/sorting by Use cases and challenges, with an explanation of fulfilling the use case and steps to solving the interesting challenges.

Love the sample example you raised and th use of the Attribute Browser. I’m going to leverage this myself.

[mwra (Mark Anderson)]

I’m sitting this one out for now for these reason, stated in the conversation leading to this idea, that observing the forum content to decide what needs surfacing again is a different style of reading to the more immediate matter of dealing with issues arising which—as primary admin/moderator—I see as the primary role. So whilst happy to work with the adminisitrative task of how such topics are subsequently re-surfaced I’d welcome a different pair of eyes reading for topics needing such attention. In that regard, I think little distance from immediate matters helps deliver a clearer view.

Also, it always useful to hear from newer or less-frequent forum users who found topic(s) particularly helpful in their understanding as to getting past some roadblock in their use of Tinderbox.

[Jake_Bernstein]

Speaking of forum curation…I’m curious why a number of what appeared to be healthy threads have been closed recently, mostly in the Q&A topic. Were there rules broken or was it decided that there wasn’t much left to gain there?

[mwra (Mark Anderson)]

Yes, they’d spun off topic and descended into pointless tyre-kicking—or fact-free argument to put it another way. I’d rather close topics before the toxicity starts, as it is hard for people to pull back from. this is a small, friendly and helpful forum, so I’m trying to keep it that way.

Topics of the line of “I use app X a lot, why isn’t Tinderbox more like X” whilst having made little effort to engage with what Tinderbox offers are those that go bad most easily as people double down on winning a zero-sum debate rather than about how to use Tinderbox.

Closing the thread doesn’t mean the topic doesn’t imply it can’t or shouldn’t be discussed. It that is the case, the moderators or admin will add a post explaining the fact. This is more like a time-out on the topic. In an ideal world, such action wouldn’t be needed, but our world is not so.

[Jake_Bernstein]

Got it, that makes sense! Thanks for clarifying that, it was hard to know what that meant.