Why I don't like this forum

[winnielinnie]

Time to go read other interesting threads.

Weird, but okay. No judgement from me.

https://www.amazon.com/01-Weaving-Interesting-Professional-Clothing/dp/B08M45NGNN

 

[Arwen]

...

This is also a problem for the forum in general. I think a lot of the posts are not about Core or Scale but about ZFS.
A better structure in my opinion would be to have a "ZFS" as a main category right beween "News and Announcements" and "TrueNAS". That category could have the forums "Getting started with ZFS" and "ZFS Performance".

Thinking about a separate ZFS forum section, I agree. And yes, sub-forums of "Getting started with ZFS" and "ZFS Performance" make sense.

I would add a "ZFS dataset & zVol attributes" sub-forum too.

 

[cobrakiller58]

Does openZFS even have a forum? I do think a Section for it might be a good idea or sub forums under the respective branches of TrueNAS

 

[danb35]

Does openZFS even have a forum?

It has a few mailing lists, but I'm not aware of a forum.

 

[Ericloewe]

Not a forum per se. Overall this is one of the largest forums with a focus on ZFS (although not dedicated).

There are discussions on Github, but those are development focused. Then there's the OpenZFS Slack channel, which suffers from the typical problems of IRC and the like, with multiple simultaneous conversations going on over each other.

 

[cobrakiller58]

It has a few mailing lists, but I'm not aware of a forum.

the mailing list is dev/bug focused like the github right?

OpenZFS Slack channel

hmmm slack eh? that will likely be getting messier as the ZFS userbase grows....

 

[danb35]

the mailing list is dev/bug focused like the github right?

There's a users' list too:

Mailing Lists — OpenZFS documentation

openzfs.github.io

 

[Davvo]

I don't think a ZFS subforum would be a good idea: a new user wouldn't be able to tell wheter to write its question there or in the TrueNAS section.

Even I wouldn't be able to.

 

[cobrakiller58]

I don't think a ZFS subforum would be a good idea: a new user wouldn't be able to tell wheter to write its question there or in the TrueNAS section.

Even I wouldn't be able to.

That is a very reasonable concern, it can be very difficult to even guess what can be the source of some problems. Perhaps we should leave that to the openZFS documentation team.....

 

[Jamberry]

I don't think a ZFS subforum would be a good idea: a new user wouldn't be able to tell wheter to write its question there or in the TrueNAS section.

Sounds like a reasonable concern.

Maybe a better way would be to have a "TrueNAS General" category directly under TrueNAS and rename the other two to "Core specific" and "SCALE specific".

Another idea could be to ditch the (arbitrary?) separation and use flairs instead?
Looking into the forum right now, most entries are not specific to SCALE or CORE and even if they are specific to one of these, I don't see a problem them being in the same place.

 

[Davvo]

Sounds like a reasonable concern.

Maybe a better way would be to have a "TrueNAS General" category directly under TrueNAS and rename the other two to "Core specific" and "SCALE specific".

Another idea could be to ditch the (arbitrary?) separation and use flairs instead?
Looking into the forum right now, most entries are not specific to SCALE or CORE and even if they are specific to one of these, I don't see a problem them being in the same place.

Imho, a lot of users simply don't read and open a thread in whatever section they want. I feel it quite simple to go post in SCALE if I'm using SCALE, compared to CORE: this is especially true for virtualization (post there, I've basically no competence to help you!)

Rant mode off: maybe the actual alphabetical order should be slightly changed to put the 3 main section up (CORE, SCALE, VIRTUALIZED).

 

[Jamberry]

Hmm... I get what you mean. How about this:
Under the TrueNAS category we could have

• General Discussion
• TrueNAS Core
• TrueNAS SCALE
• TrueNAS Virtualized
• Applications and Jail
• ...

That way most posts would fall into General Discussion while you would be still able to ask a specific question in the corresponding subforum.

(Although I don't understand why Applications and Jail is a subforum. Here where it would make sense to split it up because it is totally different, you don't distinguish between SCALE and CORE? Just a wild guess, I don't use these forums.)

 

[Davvo]

Hmm... I get what you mean. How about this:
Under the TrueNAS category we could have

• General Discussion
• TrueNAS Core
• TrueNAS SCALE
• TrueNAS Virtualized
• Applications and Jail
• ...

That way most posts would fall into General Discussion while you would be still able to ask a specific question in the corresponding subforum.

A "General Discussion" area was closed recently, I don't see the need for it.

 

[Jamberry]

The need would be that if I have a question that is not specific to SCALE or CORE, I can post it there.

For example getting started information or posts like these
New pool, 8 drives: 4 x Mirrored pairs vdevs OR 1 raidz3 vdev with 8 drives?

Or lets say I wanna discuss the new Samsung XY SSD and how that could perform as a SLOG device. Do I post it under CORE -> Hardware or SCALE -> Hardware?

 

[Davvo]

The need would be that if I have a question that is not specific to SCALE or CORE, I can post it there.

For example getting started information or posts like these
New pool, 8 drives: 4 x Mirrored pairs vdevs OR 1 raidz3 vdev with 8 drives?

Or lets say I wanna discuss the new Samsung XY SSD and how that could perform as a SLOG device. Do I post it under CORE -> Hardware or SCALE -> Hardware?

Post in the section of the OS you are using/plan to use.

 

[Jamberry]

Post in the section of the OS you are using/plan to use.

I could, but that also comes with some drawbacks.

It could mean that someone like jgreco only uses CORE and does not visit SCALE, so his knowlege is missing in one of them.

Another drawback is that useful information Burn-IN is either only in one category (or even worse, an archived one like this example) instead of both, even though it applies to both.

 

[jgreco]

It could mean that someone like jgreco only uses CORE and does not visit SCALE, so his knowlege is missing in one of them.

Well, I may not participate in Linux-y discussions on topics I am not familiar with, just like you will rarely if ever see me chime in on an SMB or ACL discussion. I typically won't talk about things where I do not feel I can add something to the discussion. I do try to eyeball all new posts in the "New Posts" section (which covers all subforums) or at least in the moderation approval queue. So it's not a big problem for me.

However, there's certainly some truth to the idea that general ZFS questions tend to get asked in both places. Some of this could be handled by making resources such as the burn-in guide available in two places. Or we could take better advantage of the forumware design, making sub-resource sections for ZFS topics (mirrors, SLOG, etc) and hardware topics (build/burn-in, HBA-vs-RAID, etc). This assumes we can prevail upon posters in both the SCALE and CORE forum subsections to redirect people to resources as needed.

 

[somethingweird]

Personally all public forums have the same issues - What do you expect - we are HUMAN (aren't we - got those silly CHATGPT lurkers don't we?)

 

[Davvo]

Anyway, I love how a "why I don't like this forum" changed to "how can we improve the forum".
Great community (aside chatgpt).

 

[Arwen]

Personally all public forums have the same issues - What do you expect - we are HUMAN (aren't we - got those silly CHATGPT lurkers don't we?)

Speak for yourself, I am an Elf!