Project forum

[Druzyek]

Would the admins consider starting a Projects forum separate from the Hardware forum? On other forums that have this it is convenient to have them in one place to see what people are working on or have finished years ago without having to wade through other questions. I thought about it after Garth posted a link to his projects, which I had unfortunately never seen before. Would anyone else find that useful?

[DerTrueForce]

I think you may mean forum...
The whole thing is a forum, but the categories like "Hardware", and "General Discussions" are also called forums. It can be most confusing.

[Druzyek]

Woops, you're right. Fixed.

[GARTHWILSON]

Anyone is welcome to submit their projects information for posting in the non-forum part of this website, and then they won't drop down deep into the archives if they go for long periods without updates. Relevant parts of the site are:

• Homebuilt Projects on the Web (actually this would be to link to your project elsewhere)
• Hardware Mini-Projects
• or something like a mini website of your own under 6502.org which will appear under http://6502.org/users/<your_name>.

My project pages (which you mentioned) are in the third option. Others there are André Fachat, Dallas Shell, Dieter Müeller, and Steve Gray, as you see indexed along the right edge of the front page of the site (not the forum), under "Features." I wrote up my material and sent that along with the pictures for Mike to post many years ago (and he put a lot of work into it!), long before I was an admin or moderator here, and long before I had my own website or digital camera or scanner or knew any html. Actually, the workbench computer portion in particular is in desperate need of updating [Edit, 11/6/17: done, on my own site, and with a lot more detail]; and I later got my own site (linked below) because it's much easier to post things and make updates that way, something I do a few times a week.

I can ask Mike what he thinks of adding a forum section for projects; but traditionally we haven't added new forum sections without a really strong reason. We keep the archives for good reason though, and I encourage everyone to browse them from time to time, sometimes without even particularly looking for anything. There's a lot of good material there. That's one of the huge benefits we have over a facebook group. Facebook seems to think nothing more than a few days old is relevant anymore, it's not searchable, and you can't do a lot of the things you can do in a phpBB forum. If you have something relevant to contribute on a particular topic you find here, go ahead and do so, even if there hasn't been any activity on it in years.

If you want to start your own website, you can probably find the help here that you need. My own site was originally hosted on an old '286 PC in our garage, meaning you don't have to have anything special. I don't know the networking stuff like our son does though, so he takes care of that for me, and he has my site hosted on a virtual server 3,000 miles from here, with upload speeds something like a thousand times what our DSL at home allowed. I just do the html, edit my pictures, post the files, etc.. The way I do it is very simple, although my site is rather voluminous and visitors download over a thousand pages a day.

[Druzyek]

That's neat that you can have pages on the 6502.org site with your projects. I like looking on the forum, though, because it's interesting to read people's posts about how they worked on things and the advice other people give them. Ya, browsing old posts is really useful. I was just thinking it would make it easier to have projects in a separate forum so you don't have to wade through random question to find what you're looking for. Just my two cents.

[GARTHWILSON]

It might be pretty hard to separate, and end up with a pretty foggy line and lots of "violations," because most of those "random" hardware questions are for hardware projects anyway.

[whartung]

It also gets a bit confusing since projects tend to consist of everything: hardware, software, and even Programable Logic.

The idea being that when you're discussing getting the code right for your UART, that's typically lives in the Programming section vs what chip to use for a UART.

The idea of maintaining your own project is then you would consolidate the information regarding it as a managed whole, while folks interested in Programming can see the relevant aspects from that topic.

[Aslak3]

FWIW the Project Forum on the companion site, anycpu.org, works quite well:

http://anycpu.org/index.php?content=FORUM

I think this is a pretty good suggestion.

[BigEd]

Hmm, I find the anycpu sub-forum hierarchy too complex for what it needs to do... personally I wouldn't take it as a model (although it does work.)

[Dr Jefyll]

I too find the anycpu.org forum heirarchy overly complex. I can't even find my own threads without using the search facility! In contrast, the structure of the forum here at 6502.org seems quite good.

So, lets look at Druzyek's original comment -- ie, that Garths' material (posted in the non-forum area) was too easily overlooked. I agree. Under the front page at 6502.org there's a LOT of great material by Garth and others, but folks who only visit the forum will miss it. I think it would be good to raise the visibility of that material somehow. Not sure how that could be done, though. Suggestions, anyone?

-- Jeff

[DerTrueForce]

I've seen links in among where the forum entries are on some forums. You'd have an entry in the forum index, with a different icon, and the link in there would link to an index of project pages(or somesuch).
That might be an idea.

[Druzyek]

Those are interesting ideas. Originally, I was thinking Projects would be a top level forum like Hardware. I think anycpu's sub forums are confusing too, so I wouldn't want to make Projects a subforum of Hardware.

Quote:

It might be pretty hard to separate, and end up with a pretty foggy line and lots of "violations," because most of those "random" hardware questions are for hardware projects anyway.

Right. Random questions would stay in hardware, even if they are about projects, and each thread in Projects would be dedicated to one project. On other forums I have visited, moderators politely move posts that aren't where they belong to the right section. Would that be too much overhead for the moderators here?

[GARTHWILSON]

I've moved a few; but virtually everything is about projects, whether they're software, hardware, programmable logic, whatever, except nostalgia, and even some of those might be about projects for interfacing to old computers or restoring them.

[BigEd]

There are forums where mods are quite keen on moving posts and cutting threads into two pieces - this isn't one of them!

I think too often a thread does meander on into different territory, and that's the responsibility of the people posting to it. It's really easy to start a new thread, and usually the right thing to do. In a flat conversation format it's not really possible to have a quick digression and get back to the subject - and even when you can, it's difficult to then find that digression when searching.

So I'd say: start new threads, give them good titles, and cross-link. If you have a mixed hardware and software project, have two threads. If you tackle a subtopic such as a filesystem, start a new thread.

Categorisation is hard, and search is the answer. Subforums are never the answer! Good titles, separate threads, that's where we should be.

And, if we need an index, use a sticky thread. Update the head post. We've done that several times before.

[BigEd]

I'm bumping this thread because there are two or three people nearby discussing ideas which really belong here. (I won't link over there, because it's already in the wrong place.)

Perhaps I'll note this - and this is a general point, for everyone: if you're about to suggest that there should be a new feature or facility, start by thanking Mike for all the time and effort he puts in. This is personal, not corporate, not an anonymous team. Mike and Garth do a huge amount of work here, behind the scenes, to make this place work as well as it does. They are in the room with you. If you're asking for something, it's not just one thing, it's one more thing.

Thanks to Druzyek, in doing the right thing: starting a new thread for a new discussion, and linking back to an existing thread which people might be unaware of. That sort of thing really helps.