Hey Warren...

[TyBoo]

Let me know if you see and can reply to this post. It has been a while since I dorked around with the Permissions settings.

Any suggestions, comments and questions can be addressed in this forum for now, and when/if we decide it will work we can delete the extra threads.

If I did the permissions right, the only folks who can see this so far are the Admins and Moderators. So there's no need to pull any punches in what you say until and if it is made public.

Thanks again, and I hope I am not putting you on the spot.

 

[Doryman]

I can see the post, and I'll be happy to volunteer to get the FAQs going.

I have a few questions:

1. Who is/are the Admins and Moderators (userid and real name)? Who started this website and hosts it?

2. I made reference in a recent post to a Wiki -- are there any capabilities of this website software that would support a wiki-like effort? If not, what I have in mind is to create a document and put it out there for comment. I would then make changes recommended by those who read and critique. How do you feel about that approach?

3. Someone just now referred someone to a document in the files section of the website. I don't see a link to that on the home page -- did I miss it?

4. I went to the phpBB website to download some docs that will give me an idea of what is possible here. The "Knowledge Base" there is basically what I had in mind. Thoughts?

5. Is there a command that will copy a message from one thread to another without disturbing the original post?

Thanks,
Warren

 

[TyBoo]

There are just two Administrators, Bill (Da Nag) and me. Bill has exclusive access to the code. We have three Moderators who work behind the scenes to keep the threads in the right forums and to gently remind me and others to be nice. They don't really do any moderating, but that's the title the software gives them.

We're not looking to change anything at all about the C-Brats. It works well with minimal maintenance. The purpose of this forum was to provide a place where folks might quickly find past discussions on particular topics via links posted in a common list.

If you click on the Forums link at the top of every page you will see the complete public forums listing, including the Documents forum.

Sorry to be so brief here, but I am at work and stealing internet time.

Talk to you later.

Mike

 

[TyBoo]

To answer your other questions:

The web site is on leased server space that Bill maintains and the domains are owned by me. Bill and I pay for the server lease and the domain name registration with a little help from the Google ads visible to folks not signed in.

This site is the evolution of an MSN Groups site that was started by me back in 2002. Long story - but me and another fellow got booted off a now defunct MSN C-Dory site (C-Dogs) by a guy who really liked control. We started the C-Brats with the "No Rules" style and found that it worked so well we have not changed it. That site was progressing strongly as a community and was outgrowing the constraints of MSN. Then along came Bill with his vast talents and enthusiasm for using them, so we formed this unconventional partnership and kept the rule-free approach. That's why some of the info can be so difficult to find. We let people just be themselves and do not require some strict method to the madness. We do provide topic-specific forums, but do not admonish anyone for posting in the wrong one. Most people, however, (having already been smart enough to afford the boat) do try to keep things organized when they post. If not, the Moderators will move topics of informative value to the best forum when we notice them.

The purpose Bill was trying for when he created this particular forum was a simple index list of links to previous discussions of frequently recurring questions that have already been covered widely. The Forum listing we already have will guide users to the general area of interest, but as the topic lists grow a specific item gets harder to find. We envisioned this to be a list of links maintained by a volunteer or two, with things added to it as members suggest. Very simple and user friendly.

Bill and I have pretty much the same philosophy of a hands-off approach to moderating and administering - along with a similar lack of egos - and we keep the admins/mods to a minimum so that the friendly way of doing business that has worked so well is not disturbed. When someone has to ask out loud who is in charge here, we feel we have been successful in our roles.

What we would like to see happen with this FAQ forum is to have a very few individuals with editing permissions in it so that a single index list can be maintained with links to particularly valuable discussions. There really aren't that many topics that come up over and over, but those that do have been very well covered and should be easier to find. All the members can post replies to the index thread with suggestions for links to add. Ideally those posts would be deleted after the suggested link is added to the index (or purposely not added) so that this forum remains uncluttered.

We do not have an activated command that will copy a message from one thread to another without disturbing the original post, but we can split selected posts off to a new thread if there is a valuable topic that should be preserved without the mindless banter that we so enjoy. I cringe at the thought of taking people's words and posting them somewhere other than where they intended. That is why I am opposed to moving any of the content here to Wikipedia or anywhere else. We have made an unspoken commitment to the valued members here that we won't do that. If someone wishes to share their own words elsewhere, we would encourage it. But we don't want to have people struggling to tailor their thoughts in a way that suits wherever they might one day be posted.

I don't know if any of that makes sense to you, but it sure has worked well for me.

 

[Doryman]

Mike,

OK, thanks very much for that background, philosophy, and vision for the FAQ.

I was a SysOp of a software engineering "forum" on the old CompuServe back in the day and learned quickly the importance of the "no rules" philosophy.

An index to links of valuable discussions sounds much easier to accomplish than a bunch of new HOWTOs written from scratch, but using the information in the messages.

I just did a little experiment and discovered that I can create a link that points to a particular message in a thread. For example, this link takes me to the 17th message in this thread. However, I can't find anything in the message display that will tell me the message number. I can find it by trial and error, but it would be faster to be able to say, "aha! that is message #17!"

I understand from a PM I got from Bill (that's DaNag, right?) that both of you will be at the SBS. I will be at the Hawthorn Friday and Saturday nights for both events. Hope to see you there. Please be aware that I have a hearing impairment and rely on reading lips to understand people. Most people I can understand fine. A few are more difficult.

Best,
Warren

 

[Da Nag]

Hey Warren - great meeting you at the SBS. Don't have much time right now to chat FAQ, but I've got some ideas I'll post later.

However, I can't find anything in the message display that will tell me the message number. I can find it by trial and error, but it would be faster to be able to say, "aha! that is message #17!"

It's not obvious, but it is easy.

Every message has a line of small text near the top - looks like this:

Posted: Mon Jan 29, 2007 10:13 am Post subject:

If you look closely, just before the above text, there's a tiny icon. Hover over this for the post link.

If using Firefox, simply right-click the icon, and select "Copy link location".

 

[Da Nag]

Well, I lied...I can steal a little company time this afternoon to add some suggestions for FAQ creation.

After speaking with Warren at the SBS, here's what I propose:

Use the Forum software to create FAQ's

I could integrate a real Wiki, there are solutions that do so nicely with phpBB (the forum software). However, it's far simpler to use the forums, and I don't want to add additional site modifications here that are phpBB specific. It's possible down the road, that I'll investigate migrating the site to more sophisticated software, i.e. a full blown CMS like Drupal. Most CMS's have a forum component, and many of them can import phpBB data. So...the more we can keep things inside of phpBB, the better.

Also, a Wiki would most likely just contain many links to existing posts here. Were we starting from scratch, it might make more sense.

Create forum specific FAQ's as Stickies

We've already organized forums by topic, and a single FAQ covering everything would get unwieldy in a hurry. Therefore, I'll suggest creating a FAQ for each forum, turned into a "Stickie" that remains at the top of the forum listing, makes more sense.

A "Super FAQ" that contains links and brief descriptions for each section FAQ might be a good idea. We could link to that document from the common header section, visible on all pages.

Given the nature of a FAQ, I'd suggest they be locked - makes more sense to me, since the post is a reference document. The FAQ can clearly state that suggested changes be PM'ed to the FAQ maintainer, who can decide the validity and choose whether or not to implement.

Create the initial FAQ's in this forum

Doing so, allows us to all look them over in private and comment before publishing them. "Publishing" would easily be accomplished by moving the thread to the appropriate forum.

Thoughts on the above?

 

[Doryman]

Bill, that gets me the number of the post in the system (e.g., right now it is 62XXX. What I am looking for is the number that offsets from the 0th post of the thread and takes you to the desired message.

I guess I can use the system message counter but the database I am building to help me associate keywords with specific posts is built on the idea of using the root URL of a thread (without offset) as a key also. The system message counter won't give me that, at least not directly.

Enjoyed meeting you and Dana this weekend! Never did make it to meet Mike, though.

Warren

P.S. I think I found a forum bug. My signature is not inserted when writing PMs or messages in this forum.

 

[Da Nag]

What I am looking for is the number that offsets from the 0th post of the thread and takes you to the desired message.

Got it...but I just looked at the db schema, and it doesn't exist. It would have to be determined programitically, which is probably a major pain...

Just curious, though...what will your db provide that is not available via the native search?

P.S. I think I found a forum bug. My signature is not inserted when writing PMs or messages in this forum.

Feature. Your sig only displays once per page. I put that mod in place, to address folks with abusive and annoying sigs...

 

[Doryman]

What I am looking for is the number that offsets from the 0th post of the thread and takes you to the desired message.

Got it...but I just looked at the db schema, and it doesn't exist. It would have to be determined programitically, which is probably a major pain...

Just curious, though...what will your db provide that is not available via the native search?

Think native search = Google. FAQ = Yahoo. My concept is to provide links to messages/threads that I (or others) associate with keywords and thereby help provide the user with prequalified results. My db is only for my own personal use. It will be used to generate HTML or any other format desired.

What do you think? Obviously you have some ideas of your own that you have been kicking around for a longer time than I have been thinking about this.

P.S. I think I found a forum bug. My signature is not inserted when writing PMs or messages in this forum.

Feature. Your sig only displays once per page. I put that mod in place, to address folks with abusive and annoying sigs...

Nice. There are some SIGs that I would prefer to see only once a year...

Warren

 

[Doryman]

I just had an epiphany. Could I have access to a couple of mysql tables? If so I could generate the FAQs with php. One table to contain the URLs of the individual discussions. One table to contain the keywords. One table to connect them in many-to-many relationships. This is essentially what I am doing on my local machine, but if it were hosted, it would open up other opportunities as well. For example, you could be in one thread and use its URL to take you to a list of other threads sharing that keyword.

Let me know your thoughts...

Warren (enjoying getting back into the game)

 

[Da Nag]

I just had an epiphany. Could I have access to a couple of mysql tables?

These are new tables, correct? If so, just provide the SQL to create them, and I'll setup a test db and add them. I can't give you raw shell access to the site; we're only given one login, and it has access to everything.

For the PHP code itself, I can set you up with an FTP account, and we've got a beta site that you can drop some code in for testing.

 

[Doryman]

I just had an epiphany. Could I have access to a couple of mysql tables?

These are new tables, correct? If so, just provide the SQL to create them, and I'll setup a test db and add them. I can't give you raw shell access to the site; we're only given one login, and it has access to everything.

For the PHP code itself, I can set you up with an FTP account, and we've got a beta site that you can drop some code in for testing.

OK, great. However, I am a long way from knowing what I want but it is good to know that is a possible way to go. So, about your ideas for the FAQ...?

Warren