after writing several emails to the webmaster of this site with getting no response, i try this way to get a larger overview of how many people are interested in getting a great feature:
if anybody knows the 3DSMAX web/helpboard at support.discreet.com, her/his will have recognized that there is a great feature:
a daily/twodaily updated .CHM file of the webboard and its complete content, for downloading; so that everyone can search/browse the content offline without beeing connected to the internet.
i think this is a very cool idea.
i suggested this point to the webmaster of opengl.org, but he did not respond to my email (perhaps he is too busy?)
so, my question to all of you is:
is anybody interested in having the “same way” of getting an excerpt of the opengl.org help/discussion forum for reading it offline ???
It would certainly be a great offline reference. But there is a snag I believe.
If you have the bandwidth to regularly download large and comprehensive .chm files, then you probably have a DSL connection … which means you pay a monthly (or whatever) fee for a constant connection. And if you have DSL, then the speed of download for a give post is almost neglible anyway.
For a modem user, things may be slightly different. But at the end of the day, they (modem users) are a dying breed.
Great idea!!! One must remember that the site might not be available all the time (remember last time?), and it would be a great service for modem-users.
At least a better search feature should be added. Most of the time people ask things that have already been asked but since the search feature is so basic…
The search facility on this forum is diabolical. You’re limited to about 3 words - and sometimes it’s a challenge to summerise your problem in 3 words!
It is also very slow, which is suprising seeing as though it only has to cross reference with 3 words!
It’s often much quicker to search this forum using the google groups search engine - oh the irony.
At the risk of hijacking the thread… I think the most urgent need for these boards is moderators. Moving threads to the appropriate forums, deleting trolls’ posts, &c.
There’s quite a lot of good stuff goes on here, but it tends to get drowned out by the noise…
Trolls seem to annoy people beyond their volume. It would be trivial to deal with them with moderation. Other stuff could be moderated, it depends on where they want to take the boards, the introduction of moderators could mean a more diligent reading of posting guidelines and possible enforcement.
This site seems to use an off the shelf bb system, it may or may not support moving threads etc. It may not support the kind of summary you want. I don’t see a need, but people have different needs.
The search facility on opengl.org seems horribly broken. It just doesn’t seem to work very well for longer term searches, even for single word querries.
I happen to know that moderation is being seriously considered for opengl.org, whether it will happen I don’t know.
I would like some improvements, as flipcode has them.
The “reply” box should always be directly beneath a thread, so one doesn´t first have to click “reply”. Sometimes it takes quite long, until the new page appears. Instead, it could just always be there.
I like flipcodes feature to “mark read”. This way i can quickly see, if something was added to a thread, and when i browse through a thread, i don´t have to read each post so know, whether it is new, or not. On flipcode, i can just scroll down (imagine those 100 post threads) a thread, and when i see the “new” icon, i know, that i haven´t read that yet.
Sometimes moderators would be fine, but i know some other forum, where moderators are present. If they have a bad day, they kick your post, or move them around the different forums, only because one word was slightly off-topic. I really hate that forum. And to be honest, i think this forum works pretty fine without moderators. C++ gets flamed every time he post something, which is another way of “moderating” a forum
I think its a terrible idea. The hole idea of a fourm is to see what people have just posted. Downloading a hole fourm would be pointless and just waste OGL.org’s bw. Browse the fourm while connected to the net it will be much easyer to post and you will always have the latest things people have posted. Could you image reading a chat program that was saved? How would you talk back to the other people? It would be pointless.
the main idea is, that it could act as a sort of “reference book”, reading for offline. and again: it would not waste webspace enormously, i’m sure about this point.
Originally posted by DJSnow:
after writing several emails to the webmaster of this site with getting no response …
Rant mode on.
Fundamentally fscked up things with this (UBB-based|kind of) forum:
No threads. Anything that grows beyond 10 or so posts becomes unreadable and untractable.
No tracking of new items. What have I read? What haven’t I?
Smilies. Need I say more?
Ugly as hell.
Hard to track even with automated tools. There are no message-id nor anything else that uniquely identifies the different posts. Furthermore, it has this annoying “edit” feature. Once a post is made, it’s done. You don’t change it. It only makes tracking even harder.
No post previews. You can’t correct typos before posting, you have to post and then edit. See 5.
Windows centered. For a portable API, it’s amazing how windows-centered people here are. But the forum doesn’t have anything to do with this
>>>>7. Windows centered. For a portable API, it’s amazing how windows-centered people here are. But the forum doesn’t have anything to do with this :-(<<<
What do you mean by this?
PS: if you don’t remember if you read something, then reading it again is like reading it a fresh.
Originally posted by V-man:
>>>>7. Windows centered. For a portable API, it’s amazing how windows-centered people here are. But the forum doesn’t have anything to do with this :-(<<<
What do you mean by this?
People just assume you are running on Windows. They often give advise along the lines of “do this in MSVC++” or “in the control panel do that” or make references to WIN32’s idiosyncrasies out of the blue. The OP never states he’s working on a Windows platform, yet more often than not replies assume he is.
And did you notice there’s “under Linux” forum and a “under MacOS” one, yet no “under Windows” one?
most people are in fact running windows, so if you’re going to assume as OS (and you have no other choice if one isn’t specified), it only makes sense to choose windows.
as for moderators, i don’t think there’s a need – this board seems highly focused on openGL, and even the threads which are off topic are only slightly so.
a daily summary download is a good idea. granted, i wouldn’t use it on a regular basis, but i can envision users that would.
