Lysmachia

I like this. I wish I had the time to be more involved on the FAQ end, to have this all wrapped up like that. In all honesty I have a lot of other links to other forums and user pages bookmarked for the "How Do I?" Stuff. In fact I am surprised no one else has brought up the internal thread bookmarking or "subscription" Now clearly that is a band-aid, but clearly for threads you want to reference, subscribing to them works, especially if you go into your USER CP and edit/add folders so you can sort those subscribed threads into sections of your naming/choosing!

I agree with this, but a line has to be drawn somewhere I guess. Where is that line drawn? And as we all know since there are several of us Mods, we all have slightly different ways we interperet this issue...

STAGE 2

Just by looking at your posted rules, you have to draw the line on the side of exchanging info.

Specifically, since one of your rules is "It is ALWAYS better to add on to an existing thread (if the information is pertinent) than to start another with the same information" you can't prematurely close threads solely because of your own personal bias or opinion. In otherwords, unless there is something in the thread that directly violates a posted rule, leave it open.

In my case, I had a thread that was closed despite the fact that I had remaining questions that resulted from the original answers I had recieved. I was then chastised and then banned because I opened a new thread asking these remaining questions. That not only makes no sense, but it flys in the face of the rules that have been established.


In other words, prematurely ending threads, or filtering them based on one's personal views totally contradict the whole purpose of having a good searchable database of information because there won't be anything good to search for.

When looking for info, its the nice long thread with a wee bit of drift here and there is what usually has the stuff I'm looking for rather than the thread with one question and two people saying no, because yes and no are only half of the problem. The other half, specifically the "ok what else" is what most folks are looking for.

Fink

Some good points have been brought up in this thread.

I think a "How do I?" section would be great however is this not the same goal as the Tech Write-Up section?
Now keep in mind, I didn't take the time to read the details of each post as I need to get to bed but the idea sounds quite similar.

The FAQ's are going to be awesome - I will admit, I haven't done anything with them however.

Corey,

Is there a way for IB to break down the permissions you have as an admin and the permissions we have as moderators to allow us to help you more?

If I had access to the forum sections and stuff I would be MORE than happy to help split stuff up, rename things, move things, whatever.
Right now we can do whatever we want on a thread-by-thread level but that's about all we can do minus member management.

I'm honestly not familiar enough with IB's software to know what the options are - it'd be nice to maybe have a level like "Forum Architect" or something less cheesy.
A role that one or two of us could take on to help manage the admin side of things.

Now of course, Corey, if you think there isn't enough of that type work for us to do then obviously we'll scratch that.

I know I may not be on here every hour of every day or get to every Reported Post as quickly as some but when I'm on here, I work my ass off so I would be more than happy to take on more responsibility.

Maybe us mods should have a conference call one of these nights to discuss all of this - might be able to accomplish more than through threads, PM's, texts, etc...

Fink

Mountain Cop

I haven't had any flack the couple of times that I posted a question AFTER searching unsuccessfully (and stating that I searched unsuccessfully) with people just directing me to the right thread. That gave me the information that I wanted, and my "repost" thread just quickly died. It seemed to work itself out.

Another forum that I frequent which is dedicated to XL-series Harleys made a lot of use of the "sticky" function. I was annoyed at first (They went a little overboard- there was a "pics of red bikes" thread and a "pics of green bikes" thread"...), but after a while I noticed that they didn't have the same volume of repeat questions or attempts to start duplicate threads. People wanted to see pictures of Harley Choppers- the pics thread was stickied. There were probably ten stickies at the top of each subforum, and there was an extensive FAQ. Those two factors seemed to help a lot. That forum has probably four or five times as many members, and it seems to run pretty smooth.

Just my .02. Carry on.

Corey

iTrader: (1)

I just do not see this problem many say the search engine has.
As an example, I will use two keywords that I use here often.

Maggiolina
I typed that into the normal search, not the advanced one where you can put in a members name.
Back came a ton of hits on the keyword.

Next keyword, Droid
Again a lot of hits for what I was looking for.

Threads can get buried here real fast, so when I want to append to a thread I have been in or started, I use the search feature to find my threads.
Easier than going to my Control Panel and looking under the ton of subscribed threads I have.

Using Google with YotaTech in it works great too, but I have never had to resort to that to find what I am looking for here.

I will tell you what irritates us the most, and that is the ones who say they did a search and found no info, yet when we type in their keyword we find the info in seconds flat.

Not searching for info is just plain lazy.
We are not saying do not post up questions here or fear getting them axed, but most of the members who have been here a long time can smell the BS too when someone says they searched and found no info on the subject.

FAQs are being worked on.
They may be in individual sections, or maybe have a section dedicated to just FAQs with the subject/model in the title.
Whatever works best we will try to implement that so the FAQs can be found.

stormin94

Basically, what I get out of this is that the campaign is attempting to fix something that isn't really broken. Most all of us that have been here more than a couple days know how to search. I think the simplest approach.....and one that wouldn't interfere with members that have been here awhile that goof and post in the wrong section on accident...... make all new members pass an extremely simple test showcasing the search feature, and answer a couple simple questions that have to do with the sticky's. For example, one question might ask: What's the largest size tire I can fit with no lift? You could include a multiple choice answer. If V-Bulletin is able to let you do this would be another limiting factor. If you can make new members unable to post a new thread until they pass the test, that would eliminate TONS of the beaten dead topics. They could still post replys, just no new posts till they prove that they can search by answering a few simple questions. I know regular members are unable to post new polls..... so maybe the settings can be adjusted.

That would make things so much simpler than penalizing members that have been here for a couple years for mistakenly posting in the wrong section.


Also, as I stated before, some of the section titles are extremely vague, and have no useful information whatsoever in the sticky's as for the content that you can post in them.

Irish Death

One thing that I've learned and its why my first real post worked fine.

I searched, found diagrams, did research and was still stumped after following the instructions.


I made sure that I posted links to what I had already found, what I had done and took pictures, cause I knew that since this is the internet that the answer is out there. I also knew that no ones had my exact problem, so when I made my post I used my brain to formulate an appropriate post that would yield the correct answers. In using the pics people were able and more than willing to help me, because they were able to understand me. This is no different then when you go to have a conversation with someone in person, or else you might as well be speaking a different language.

As far as the moderation of the issue. I feel that the mods have SUPREME DOMINANCE IN THEIR DOMAIN. Here they are GODS and do not need to be triffled with.

As far as starting new posts. I made sure I went into the newbie tech section, cause in reality I may not be new to forums, new to vehicles or new to wrenchin, I was new here and new to 4Runners. If you have a 'Section' like newbie tech section, just put a notice at the top that says "Here you can post any question, don't expect a response since you should have searched first". At this rate the people that like to help out noobs can and the ppl that don't want to see the crap don't have to go in there...

Now if there was a way to make it so the 'New Posts' link did not include that section it would be 100% rockin! Since i live off the 'New Posts' link.

waskillywabbit

iTrader: (-1)

I applaud you and your brain.

vita sine litteris mors est

Irish Death

et hominis vivi sepultura

waskillywabbit

iTrader: (-1)

OrRunner

iTrader: (1)

I myself see no harm in someone asking a question or starting a new thread on that question, however if it is something like " i am leaking oil, where is it going" with no other information, i feel like there is not enough info to help the person out. Might i suggest a minimum number of words for a new post, ie 100 word description of your problem or your thread will not be accepted, this would require the poster to be more desciptive of the problem they are having. On the search issue, well....i dont see the issue as Corey stated, example, The other day i was researching about the rear marlin crawler dring mounts not fitting a d ring properly and i wanted to see what others had done. i typed "d ring mounts" in the serch box and came up with pages of threads. I then read through 8-10 threads that had come up with the search, and found a link from a member back in 2005 that had the answer i was looking for. This to me is not a problem, and i feel that if your question is that important that you want someon to give you the answer, you should be willing to do reaserch to figure it out. I think if the mod's are trying to clean up the forum and keep it "on topic" the we need to have a couple of stickys for "off topic" dicussion and delete the rest of the garbage, I have contributed to off topic stuff before, but all of our common interest includes toyota's and i think that is what originaly drew everyone together on this forum in the first place. I think the site is great as is, Thank you to all of the MOD's who spend many countless hours of their free time to keep us up and running

Jamey

For what it's worth, and obviously I'm new here, I do have a couple thoughts on this.

First, this site is amazing, the members are knowledgeable, and most everyone is friendly.

On the other hand, I have NEVER seen a place that comes across as so unwelcoming to someone who is new or confused. I mean if the point of a forum is to share information about trucks, and a new person doesn't ask a question because they know they have a good chance of getting blasted for not having found the answer on their own... then what good is that doing?

I have read these boards for hours, and eventually scraped together some very good info that I've been putting to good use. I have also not asked questions at night, and just waited till a local shop was open the same day, in case I missed the answer somewhere on the site.

I realize it's probably very frusturating to many people to have the same questions asked over and over. If you don't want to deal with it, don't answer... I had all sorts of questions about backspacing that could have been answered in two minutes had I asked. I didn't. I searched the boards for two days till my eyes felt like they were bleeding and I THINK I want to go to 3.75" of backspacing. I don't think that'll put narrow tires outside of my fenders. I did it the hard way, but even though the info was there, had I asked I don't see why I should be put through the wringer for it.

Just my $.02. I really am glad I found this site, and I'm grateful for the info that's here, and for those who put in so much time and effort into keeping things running.