A few ideas to thin down the forum

[Davvo]

As previously written in a thread that I don't seem to find anymore (I thought it was located in the CC's section, but it's not there), I believe to be time to retire the FreeNAS section of the forum since users (not necessarily new) continue to mistakenly create new threads about CORE or SCALE, which hampers their own visibility and possibly creates confusion for the users actually searching about a FreeNAS-related issue. I don't see much users anymore running a FreeNAS version and actively posting about it, so maybe archiving the section would help: doing so would however require a mass moving of the resources threads to the new CC section; there are plenty of non-resource (as in the forum's resource cathegory) useful threads, but those are more difficult to find and move (and would therefore impose a greater workload to mods/admins).

At least weekly I'm also amazed by how new users can get creative and post in the wrong section despite thing being quite clear to me, but that's a dangerous slope I don't want to bring up in this thread.

And since it's not constructive to just complain about things, I am also proposing a different reorganization of the forum's structure in order to hopefully help the less experienced users to navigate the sections and correctly identify the best place to look into things and post their help requests.

News and Announcements can remain as it is (maybe give users the ability to react to TrueNAS News' posts).
Then I would create a new section containing Developer's Corner (which honestly could be removed and a few important threads located there moved since discord seems to be the privileged channel for this topc?) and Community Contributions: I'll call that Knowledge Forge (placeholder name).
Then we would have the actual TrueNAS section (that could as well be renamed with something like Troubleshoting Lair), the Community Discussion section and finally the Archive Section.

I also propose to set the required post count in order to open a new thread in the Community Contribution's to 5 in order to prevent "accidental" pollution of the section with troubleshooting discussions.

Code:

News and Announcements
    Announcements
    TrueNAS News
Knowledge Forge
    Developer's Corner
    Community Contributions
TrueNAS Troubleshooting Lair
    Applications and Jails
    International Discussion
    TrueCommand
    TrueNAS CORE
    TrueNAS SCALE
    Virtualized TrueNAS
Community Discussion
    Community Forum
    Great Deals
Archives
    General Help (Read-Only)
    FreeNAS (Legacy Software Releases)
        FreeNAS Archive (This is ancient, no idea if it makes sense to put in under the Legacy Software Releases)    

Finally, a shoutout to all the mods who bear my constant reports of mislocated threads. I know I am a bit fussy.

 

[victort]

As previously written in a thread that I don't seem to find anymore (I thought it was located in the CC's section, but it's not there), I believe to be time to retire the FreeNAS section of the forum since users (not necessarily new) continue to mistakenly create new threads about CORE or SCALE, which hampers their own visibility and possibly creates confusion for the users actually searching about a FreeNAS-related issue. I don't see much users anymore running a FreeNAS version and actively posting about it, so maybe archiving the section would help: doing so would however require a mass moving of the resources threads to the new CC section; there are plenty of non-resource (as in the forum's resource cathegory) useful threads, but those are more difficult to find and move (and would therefore impose a greater workload to mods/admins).

At least weekly I'm also amazed by how new users can get creative and post in the wrong section despite thing being quite clear to me, but that's a dangerous slope I don't want to bring up in this thread.

And since it's not constructive to just complain about things, I am also proposing a different reorganization of the forum's structure in order to hopefully help the less experienced users to navigate the sections and correctly identify the best place to look into things and post their help requests.

News and Announcements can remain as it is (maybe give users the ability to react to TrueNAS News' posts).
Then I would create a new section containing Developer's Corner (which honestly could be removed and a few important threads located there moved since discord seems to be the privileged channel for this topc?) and Community Contributions: I'll call that Knowledge Forge (placeholder name).
Then we would have the actual TrueNAS section (that could as well be renamed with something like Troubleshoting Lair), the Community Discussion section and finally the Archive Section.

I also propose to set the required post count in order to open a new thread in the Community Contribution's to 5 in order to prevent "accidental" pollution of the section with troubleshooting discussions.

Code:

News and Announcements
    Announcements
    TrueNAS News
Knowledge Forge
    Developer's Corner
    Community Contributions
TrueNAS Troubleshooting Lair
    Applications and Jails
    International Discussion
    TrueCommand
    TrueNAS CORE
    TrueNAS SCALE
    Virtualized TrueNAS
Community Discussion
    Community Forum
    Great Deals
Archives
    General Help (Read-Only)
    FreeNAS (Legacy Software Releases)
        FreeNAS Archive (This is ancient, no idea if it makes sense to put in under the Legacy Software Releases)    

Finally, a shoutout to all the mods who bear my constant reports of mislocated threads. I know I am a bit fussy.

I am in agreement. I rarely use the categories though, because I find myself using the “What’s New” tab for the most part.

 

[Davvo]

I am in agreement. I rarely use the categories though, because I find myself using the “What’s New” tab for the most part.

It's mainly to decrease new users' indiscrimante posting. You see troubleshooting requests in the Introductions, in the community contribution section, in the old Freenas section, everywhere. It decreases their chance of finding someone able to help them.

I routinely use the What's New tab as well to find unreplied threads that might have been buried in some obscure corner of the forum.

 

[tprelog]

It's mainly to decrease new users' indiscrimante posting. You see troubleshooting requests in the Introductions, in the community contribution section, in the old Freenas section, everywhere. It decreases their chance of finding someone able to help them.

I routinely use the What's New tab as well to find unreplied threads that might have been buried in some obscure corner of the forum.

Case in point from this morning

 

[danb35]

Getting rid of the stupid and pointless "community contributions" forum (that does nothing but duplicate the Resources section) wouldn't hurt either.

 

[Davvo]

Getting rid of the stupid and pointless "community contributions" forum (that does nothing but duplicate the Resources section) wouldn't hurt either.

Each resource has a discussion libked to it that's currently in the Legacy FreeNAS section. I see the CC forum as the new place for such things.

 

[danb35]

That's better than dumping them in the legacy section, I guess--but better would be to have the discussion thread be in a forum that's actually relevant. But since iX went on a forum-creating spree, there are a lot to choose from.

 

[Davvo]

That's better than dumping them in the legacy section, I guess--but better would be to have the discussion thread be in a forum that's actually relevant.

I suspect they have to select a fixed "root" forum, and since General Help has been retired that's the most relevant at hand.

 

[Ericloewe]

I suspect they have to select a fixed "root" forum, and since General Help has been retired that's the most relevant at hand.

No, any category can be assigned to a specific section. But it's an admin thing and mods don't have permissions set to allow them to change that setting.

 

[Davvo]

No, any category can be assigned to a specific section. But it's an admin thing and mods don't have permissions set to allow them to change that setting.

So we could have CORE's resources in the CORE section and SCALE's resources in the SCALE section while still being the same "resource" category?

 

[Ericloewe]

Well, "Resource" isn't a category. Currently the categories are something like "FreeNAS 9.10", "Hardware", "Advanced", etc. Each of them picks a destination for their discussion threads. So, if we added "Core" and "Scale", your scenario would be trivial to implement.

 

[Tigersharke]

Do we have some sort of coherent plan for what could be changed which mods are unable to access (I can), like the category idea, or other shuffling/.organization or *whatever*. I am getting to this discussion a little late but my work is in a lull period, only the next two Sundays to work so I should have time. Presently solving the bad text color issue for posts viewed in Truenas dark theme.

 

[MrGuvernment]

Or at least just set them to read only access?

 

[Davvo]

Do we have some sort of coherent plan for what could be changed which mods are unable to access (I can)

Having no clue what mods can and cannot access, I don't.

Each of them picks a destination for their discussion threads.

That's great. Yep, things could be done there then.

 

[Ericloewe]

I did have a plan, but the main difficulty is that it hinges on the forum structure being simplified first.
However, some basic work on the resources categories could be done to make them less weird (FreeNAS 9.10 hasn't been relevant for a long time now).

 

[Tigersharke]

I did have a plan, but the main difficulty is that it hinges on the forum structure being simplified first.
However, some basic work on the resources categories could be done to make them less weird (FreeNAS 9.10 hasn't been relevant for a long time now).

Can older resources be 'archived' or something? if there is something you need me to do for this, let me know, I will try to get back to you about it.

 

[Arwen]

Perhaps a new Resource category, "Archived". Right now we have 4 Resource categories;

• Hardware
• Fundamentals
• Advanced
• Apps and Jails

And of course, put it at the end of the list.

Eventually it will need cleaning up, (aka delete). But, less harm to just start moving them around.

 

[Etorix]

At least weekly I'm also amazed by how new users can get creative and post in the wrong section despite thing being quite clear to me, but that's a dangerous slope I don't want to bring up in this thread.

This seems to be a matter of picking up the first section which seems vaguely relevant, so I'd suggest to put "TrueNAS CORE" and "TrueNAS SCALE" before everything else, "Virtualised", "Apps/Jails", "TrueCommand", "International". (And "Legacy FreeNAS" if it is deemed useful to keep this section open for the lone user which does have troubleshooting issues on 9.x—there was one such case in the last weeks… and the poster managed to pick up a "TrueNAS" section).

 

[Redcoat]

This seems to be a matter of picking up the first section which seems vaguely relevant, so I'd suggest to put "TrueNAS CORE" and "TrueNAS SCALE" before everything else,

Yes!!

 

[Davvo]

My OCD is screaming, do we really need to break the alphabetical listing because people... don't read I guess?