The forum conundrum

[Righty27]

See Airusersblog - http://protoolsexpert.squarespace.co...conundrum.html

(not ER-specific)

I have to say (in case Avid are listening) that DUC helped me tremendously in selecting Avid products e.g. by getting a feel for functionality, issues/constraints, regularity of updates, quality of manufacturer support, etc. ... as well as being a generally polite community where people genuinely provide real help/support (witness recent thread acknowledging Benoni's contributions) ... especially compared to some other forums!

Allowing for 'free speech' is a positive reflection on the company and its products/services -'openness' works both ways! I usually view the lack of an official forum with an active user base with some suspicion.

However, whilst I hope Avid would not contemplate shutting DUC down (however annoying some of the lobbying/group pestering may become!), Russ makes valid points and the 'vanilla' system appears to address many typical forum issues!

Discuss!

[Righty27]

Sorry - wrong section (post moved from 'all things guitar') ... don't normally frequent 'general discussion' so not sure there will be much interest here?!

[DigiTechSupt]

Hi Righty27,

Thanks for posting the link from the Pro Tools expert blog.
I moved it over here because I think there should be more interest for this over here. The topic is not just Guitar forum related.

Thanks

[zedhed]

As a reasonably regular poster, I try to answer peoples questions by imparting with knowledge gained from my own experiences. If I don't know anything about the topic I tend to steer clear of it and let someone else with more experience put their effort into offering help.

On the whole, I find this forum well balanced with sensible people offering sensible answers. Sure we get the occasional flamers but hey, this is the internet.

What I do find rather frustrating is posting the same answers so many times, which to me suggests that others can't find what they're looking for very easily. To some degree this indicates laziness, but it may also indicate that it's time to see if there is a better way to structure this forum.

I would suggest those who may have a better understanding of the dynamics involved with running an internet forum, should be the ones to comment on how to 'upgrade' the DUC.

[TCM]

Originally Posted by zedhed

What I do find rather frustrating is posting the same answers so many times, which to me suggests that others can't find what they're looking for very easily. To some degree this indicates laziness, but it may also indicate that it's time to see if there is a better way to structure this forum.

I would suggest those who may have a better understanding of the dynamics involved with running an internet forum, should be the ones to comment on how to 'upgrade' the DUC.

I am just curious, Zed, how would you 'upgrade' the DUC?

[Hotcrazyfruit]

I think we need a comprehensive search system. Not just search for keywords, but tags.

Some may not understand how tumblr or youtube works, but they use tags to provide relevant results to search queries. More so accurate than keywords.

Maybe a system such as this can be put in place, summarizing the threads and what they entail.

This will make things "slightly" more complicated to post, but could help provide more relevant search results.

Nick

[Emcha_audio]

To some degree, it's very hard to make an effective search engine, mostly due to the infinite permutation of the titles. If one doesn't write his title in a strict way than no matter if the right answer is given in the thread, the next person trying search for the same problem will see the thread title and think it's nothing to do with him, because he himself would post the title differently.

What would be most helpful is if an issue is resolved, then the moderator should rename the title with the appropriate name and sticky it. This way when you search for the problem, the title would actually be pertinent to the search. And that would help alot those making a search.

example.

Say you have someone posting,

"help computer freezes when recording."

There's not much information in there, and how many times have we seen this type of thread title being used right?

So if through the course of the thread, the correct response was given, then the name should be changed to

"Help, computer freezes error (insert number, or actual problem) resolved"

And then the only thing that should be left in that thread, is the question and the actual answer that resolved the problem. And then the thread should be closed so no one else could post in it.

This would in fact eliminate the surfing through all the posts that are not helping, diverting, flames ect, and make it straight to the point. This is the question by the OP, this is the actual answer. No more reading 23 pages of posts to actually get the answer.

Some might have better ideas, and this one would require a truly more proactive moderators base to make this viable.

[John_Toolbox]

The search system is the biggest reason that the same posts appear again and again. Part of it is many users not titling their posts corectly or hijacking an unrelated thread with a question, but the built in search engine function of the duc is junk IMO. It simply can't find stuff that it should when you try to search in a specific forum. You can use google to get around it, but that's annoying and doesn't allow you to look in one specific section. Now that there are what seems like 50 sub-forums, the google results will just make your search that much harder.

Pro Tools made such a major change in version 9 with the opening up of hardware, that version 8 LE, MP and older is really legacy at this point, with the exception of TDM systems, where there are still many users on 7.4 or 8. I have seen posts that are from PT8 or older get bumped up to the top, that are full of information that is no longer true or relevant. The number of options for pro tools that are currently offered are confusing enough for people to sift through, it just makes it that much more confusing when there are so many forums and sub forums and old posts being bumped.

[necjamc]

The only problem I see with deleting posts when a question is solved is that sometimes the very same problems can have multiple answers. Although a comment may not solve the OP problem, somewhere down the line another user may find it helpful. Such as in using pro tools itself. There's always great info that is in the thread I'd hate to see deleted. (well not always )

[Dism]

It has really just become apparent that there is far less activity from Avid in this forum as of late.

Not that they have any obligation to participate... but it would be nice at least to have someone actively cleaning up the clutter, and re-organizing some of the sub-forums. It's really just a time thing that it doesn't seem anyone at Avid has.

Perhaps it's time to start looking for moderators in the community to help keep the forum alive? A little while ago there was an open invitation for community moderators on the main Avid forum, but the DUC seems to remain neglected.

I'm sure there are a few of us out there who'd be willing to help out.

/justathought