How would you improve this forum?

[Mez]

What would you do to improve this forum?

Note: Saying "Get rid of Spam" or "Get rid of Trolls" isn't going to make any difference - if we could - we'd have done so - but we fight the long fight.

Also, this is not an opportunity to start a flame war - or to raise complaints about staff

[vbrummond]

All I noticed really (havent checked since it was back up) is that polls and attachments do not work for me. The latter is no problem and the former might be due to me using the "debian red" theme.

[Tadeas]

Polls don't work for me, too. Generally more moderators (and/or administrators) hanging around wouldn't hurt. There was very little spam or flamewars here when Lavene was active and the forums were better place to be .

[nadir]

What i would propose is written in my signature. And yes, i know it will not happen, but you have asked.

( i got no idea why. It works there, in i2p, it works at diaspora, it works in freenet. To a certain degree it has worked here too, and in fact it still does work to a certain degree, cause there is only one moderator left, as far i can tell, and he is rather laissez-faire ).

Besides that ? Dunno. All looks good. People post question, people post answers, people tell stories. What more can one expect?
It usually is better to do nothing than to do the wrong thing (for the only reason to "do something" ).

[vbrummond]

Besides that ? Dunno. All looks good. People post question, people post answers, people tell stories. What more can one expect?
It usually is better to do nothing than to do the wrong thing (for the only reason to "do something" ).

Pretty much.

[meon]

Changing My board style in Board preferences to prosilver made polls work for me. Guess there is something wrong with some themes. So a fix for that would be nice!

[nadir]

Per coincidence i ran into an article about cybercensorship (by reporters without borders, report for 2012 ). I followed the link where i found it, dyne.org, and a typo send me to dyne.org/chat, hinezumi.im There it says:
"The language can be pretty much that of the Internet lulz, so be prepared to all kinds of unmoderated and uncensored stuff ;^)"
What i say (or ask for) is much less insane than it seems at first glance. It ain't even unusual. Forums (and especially free software forums) are the exception on the internet, not the usual way to do it. Ok, ok: that is the way how i (want to ) see it. My problem is that i feel like a Marsian (something which makes perfect sense to me, full free speech, seems to make sense _only to me).
Back to the theme settings now...

[craigevil]

Make the forum work with the Tapatalk app. I for one use my phone or my Kindle Fire more than I do my laptop these days. it would be nice to be able to use Tapatalk for the forum. The "other" debianusersforum is setup so Tapatalk works there.

[julian516]

Well at least to this point we do not sound like a desperately unhappy lot!

I guess if I could I would try to clean up some of the language I find distasteful, vulgarities and obscenities do not do much for me.

Are there ways to make our search tool more flexible? I have looked several times for a thread that would solve my problem and just missed it; either I get 3,000 hits or none.

There is a lot here that is right and I appreciate it.

[confuseling]

1) Search is a major issue. I would submit that you should upgrade it, or just disable it entirely, and replace it with a link to instructions explaining how to use Google to search the forum.

You cannot expect new users to realise that the following is a restriction in the forum software, and it leads to a lot of duplicate posts and regular user angst. I know I wouldn't have known what to do when I started.

search.php?keywords=usb

2) The HowTos section has an immense wealth of useful information, and quite a lot of cruft. I'm wondering whether something like voting (restricted to that section) would help.

[mharrison]

Make the forum work with the Tapatalk app. I for one use my phone or my Kindle Fire more than I do my laptop these days. it would be nice to be able to use Tapatalk for the forum. The "other" debianusersforum is setup so Tapatalk works there.

+1 for Tapatalk

[sossego]

Advertise the forums on individual blogs or other sites through references to items/posts/threads on here.
Allow tutorials that are viewed the most to be posted as articles on a blog that complements the forum.

[llivv]

This is sorta gestault. Not really thinking to hard, and I don't necessarily adhere to transnationalism or gestault princples as a whole either.

Perhaps a few subsections dedicated to rants and/or apologies, etc?
Or more community gossip sections?
This board gets a lot of abuse, while offering a unique experience for users of all shapes and kinds.

I think some of us wish that Debian project/community guidelines were expressed a bit more often in this forum.
Especially, why so many subprojects use it as a [base].

Thanks for having me!

[Randicus]

The How-to section is getting a little long, but has no structure. At present, items are arranged in chronological order based on the most recent posts. It might be advantageous to divide the section into three or four categories, to make searching for relevant how-tos easier.

[saulgoode]

I feel that the prohibition against "political discussions", as expressed in the forum guidelines, is too broadly stated; and should be qualified so as only to address partisan or nationalistic political discussions. As others have pointed out, the Free Software community is intimately confronted by issues of copyright, patent, and privacy legislation and enforcement, and to proscribe against discussion of those issues in the forums leaves an important area of concern for many Debian users unaddressed.

For the most part, I believe what I propose is the interpretation that the forum staff has observed; nonetheless, the wording leaves the members reluctant to engage in discussions that would otherwise be of benefit to the community.