Project forum

[commodorejohn]

I do agree that it would be good not to over-complicate the forum too much, and it's certainly true that a general "projects" forum would probably see significant overlap with the threads that already get created. On the other hand, it would be nice to have a place for nice proper writeups on complete (or "complete"-ish) projects...

[BigEd]

What's really being said, I think, is that it would be nice to be able to find things. That's not quite the same as saying there should be a new place for those things, so we can find them there. Things will be put in the wrong place, things will have more than one place they might live. It's a bit like asking twins to keep a tidy bedroom, I imagine. But with a hundred twins.

The best service we can do for each other, I think, is to take care to link to related discussions. If a project spins off a couple of investigative threads and some query threads, make a link to the previous relevant threads.

If someone feels generous and energetic and cares about finding project threads, by all means they should post an index thread which links to the projects they've found. Find half a dozen, start the thread, and more will be found.

This forum is some 15 years old now, coming up to 16 years. There's a great wealth of information in the forum and nearby in the reference parts of the website. Please help to organise it!

[whartung]

I wonder if the site has a "tagging" capability. Adding "keywords" to thread, and then finding things by those tags.

If that were the case, there could be a "project" tag that could be added to threads that folks think fit in to that kind of category.

[BigEd]

It's a phpBB forum. They are quite a pig to update and maintain, so it's not unusual only to add official extensions supported on the version in question. I suspect tags are not in the picture. (As noted elsewhere, there's also the oroblem of missing and misused tags...)

[BigDumbDinosaur]

Over at the Chaski home machinist site, there is a subforum called Build Log, in which members chronicle their projects. Perhaps something like that would be helpful.

[BigEd]

(Just to note: that forum has 10x the membership and 100x the topic count of this one. I mention this because I'm sure scale is part of this.)

[BigEd]

As a possibly useful illustration of what can be done with a little reading and searching and copy-pasting, here's a post from last year cataloguing some possibly interesting projects on hackaday.io:
viewtopic.php?f=1&t=4600

[BigDumbDinosaur]

BigEd wrote:

(Just to note: that forum has 10x the membership and 100x the topic count of this one. I mention this because I'm sure scale is part of this.)

Dunno. I've been a member of Chaski's for a number of years and it seems the Build Log subforum has always been there.

That said, it suffers from the same problem seen with the heavily-used subforums here. Topics gradually sink out of sight as new topics are started. There is likely a ton of good stuff buried in the subforums that is unlikely to see the light of day again due to limitations of the phpBB search engine.

[BigEd]

Hmm, an automatic way to show a combination of the best content and the freshest content is quite a challenge. It's that sort of algorithm which people[*] complain about in their social media interactions: you can miss an important event in someone's life because other things have been evaluated as 'better'.

I suspect human curation is the best way to solve this. The same thing happens in a library or even a bookshop - they have thousands or tens of thousands of books to offer, and every month there are more. How to show off the best? And the newest? What chance a nineteenth century novel? Or other classic works?

[*] Not everyone, obviously. Can I even get away with mentioning this example without it becoming a derail? We'll see.

[Druzyek]

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Over at the Chaski home machinist site, there is a subforum called Build Log, in which members chronicle their projects. Perhaps something like that would be helpful.

Great idea!

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If that were the case, there could be a "project" tag that could be added to threads that folks think fit in to that kind of category.

You'll still need to do a manual search every time you are curious about new projects. It also assumes people will know the tags exist and realize to add them.

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That said, it suffers from the same problem seen with the heavily-used subforums here. Topics gradually sink out of sight as new topics are started. There is likely a ton of good stuff buried in the subforums that is unlikely to see the light of day again due to limitations of the phpBB search engine.

This is a good point. With a project or build log subforum you would keep the projects from getting lost among the other more frequent topics. I do think we would have enough content to fill the sub forum and even if some topics sink lower in the list, we still have all projects in a central, easy to find place.

[GARTHWILSON]

There are several ways this could be approached, although no one method accomplishes all the goals. I can imagine disadvantages to all of them. Many phpBB forums allow the OP to give the topic an icon that shows up to the left of the listing in the subforum. One method I think would work well but would require some time from myself or whoever does the original post would be to have a sticky post as an index to projects, with links, and it keeps getting updated. I could do that, although I'm not really looking for more to do. (Some time back, I started a linked index to members' "Introduce yourself" posts since that topic is so cluttered with non-intro posts, and got half or 2/3 of the way through it and got sidetracked again; so that still remains sitting somewhere unfinished.)

We do keep the archives for a good reason. When my work is slower and I have more time, or when I'm looking for something to refer back to in another post, I sometimes enjoy reading old material from years ago. There's a lot of great stuff there. It refreshes my memory, or it many be more meaningful than it was back then since now I have l have more background information or I'm now considering doing something similar. I would encourage others to do the same. This isn't facebook which seems to hold that nothing over one or two weeks old has any value unless fb itself decides to bring it back up as a "memory." The search on this forum works pretty well, and I use it regularly. The only thing I can think of at the moment that I don't like about it is when it tells me certain terms are too common or too short to search for, so it doesn't accept them.

To repeat myself though—nearly everything on the forum fits in the category of "projects," whether programming projects, emulation projects, simulation projects, programmable logic projects, hardware projects, BASIC projects, SBC projects, Forth projects, etc.—and those are the names of the various subforums—so it would be counterproductive to take those out of their rightful categories and put them all under "projects." As for a "completed projects" section of the forum, when is one ever completed? And why separate the completed project from the process that got it there, essentially losing continuity and background? I think it's best the way it is. Ultimately it's up to Mike though.

[whartung]

GARTHWILSON wrote:

To repeat myself though—nearly everything on the forum fits in the category of "projects,"

Truth. This is a hobbyist web site. It's quite different even something like the Vintage Computer Forum.

Sure, you COULD come here asking how to restore some old machine, but there are better forums for that.

This is more a "tinkering with the 8bit 6502 CPU" website, and all of the stuff that entails.

Like Model Railroading isn't so much about railroading, as it is about modeling (and modeling EVERYTHING).

All people do here are "projects", all in some intermediate state of completion. Just rename the whole forum "Projects" and that will be that .

[Dr Jefyll]

Maybe forum members who've got projects or other material of interest should be encouraged to each create a central thread and entitle it "links". The lead post would have links to whatever seems relevant... projects, certainly, but the scope could usefully be broader. For example the lead post in my "links" thread could link to my web site, to my KK Computer and to my Introduce Yourself post if I ever get around to writing one! And in his links thread, BDD, for example, might link to the most pertinent threads related to his various POC machines. As the total number of POC-related posts is rather large it'd be a benefit to be able to steer the reader toward the content which is most helpful. The links post would also be a platform for any overarching comments by the author.

So, rather than a method for finding projects this is a method for finding notable stuff -- a slightly different goal.

It would be easy to search for these link threads since, by convention, the word link will be in the subject line. Another advantage is how other folks can do the work -- it doesn't all land on Garth's shoulders. Just throwin' the idea out there...

Jeff

[BigDumbDinosaur]

Dr Jefyll wrote:

Maybe forum members who've got projects or other material of interest should be encouraged to each create a central thread and entitle it "links". The lead post would have links to whatever seems relevant... projects, certainly, but the scope could usefully be broader.

Sounds like a good idea.

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For example the lead post in my "links" thread could link to my...Introduce Yourself post if I ever get around to writing one!

What's the holdup?

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And in his links thread, BDD, for example, might link to the most pertinent threads related to his various POC machines. As the total number of POC-related posts is rather large it'd be a benefit to be able to steer the reader toward the content which is most helpful. The links post would also be a platform for any overarching comments by the author.

Now that you mentioned it, I looked at the two POC topics and was a bit alarmed by how much blather is in them. I almost feel like I need a table of contents in the lead post of each topic.

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It would be easy to search for these link threads since, by convention, the word link will be in the subject line.

Also, since various search engines come and visit the forum at regular intervals, they would likely pick up on this "indexing" forum, helping to spread the word, so to speak.

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Another advantage is how other folks can do the work -- it doesn't all land on Garth's shoulders.

And here I thought Garth liked maintaining the forum.

[Druzyek]

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One method I think would work well but would require some time from myself or whoever does the original post would be to have a sticky post as an index to projects

It sounds like you are already doing a lot to help, Garth, so I would definitely lean against anything that adds to your workload.

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To repeat myself though—nearly everything on the forum fits in the category of "projects"

I have heard you say this before and I disagree with you. Even if most threads are related to a project, they would not be projects themselves. At least the way I have seen project subforums used elsewhere, people do not in practice seem inclined to start threads there like "Problem with bus timing" or "Bug in macro assembler" even if they are related to a specific project.

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programming projects, emulation projects, simulation projects, programmable logic projects, hardware projects, BASIC projects, SBC projects, Forth projects, etc.

A quick look at those forums shows they are mostly questions, not projects themselves.

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And why separate the completed project from the process that got it there, essentially losing continuity and background?

If I have started 10 threads about various aspects of my project (programming, hardware design, CPLD, etc), and I start an 11th in the projects forum showing my project and its progress (even if not completed), would that somehow be a separation? Also, how is the process separate from the completed project by starting a project thread, unless I am already giving the full details of the project in every thread I start?

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All people do here are "projects", all in some intermediate state of completion. Just rename the whole forum "Projects" and that will be that

My inclination for a projects forum stems for my experience on microcontroller forums, which are very similar to what we have here. Most threads are related to projects but most threads are not themselves projects. Maybe some examples will show what I mean. Do you think these kinds of threads would work here?:

https://forum.43oh.com/forum/6-projects/

https://forum.arduino.cc/index.php?PHPS ... board=29.0

http://forums.parallax.com/categories/customer-projects

http://picforum.ric323.com/viewforum.ph ... b24b619443

https://www.cemetech.net/forum/viewforum.php?f=4