Is it time to split the Resources forum?

[GarryP]

As there are now 30 pages of threads in the Resources forum, I think it might be a good time to split it into sub-forums to make it easier for people to browse the sort of items they are interested in.
A split along the lines of something like this:
* Vector Brushes (Designer only);
* Raster Brushes (Designer and Photo only);
* Palettes;
* Styles;
* Assets;
* Macros (Photo only);
* LUTs;
* Procedural Presets (Photo only)
* Plugins (Photo only);
* Samples (and maybe templates, when they come);
* Miscellaneous;
… may be useful.

What does anyone else think?

[firstdefence]

Very good Idea Garry, makes perfect sense.

[catlover]

Yes, indeed.

[v_kyr]

One of the reasons some contributors made own contribution link overviews! - But I won't stop there (split resources), one can also automate to build and update a dynamically general overview page/or thread-posting for all downloadable resources, something MEB did and offered in the past here.

IOW, if I can manually find and search after all or certain *topic specific* entries via Google, or a PHP based forum software etc. I can also automate the whole process and let things like overview link lists autogenerate and update periodically. In the past I did such things with Inktomi search engine codings, long before Yahoo bought it and later Google got the main net player.

[Cecil]

7 hours ago, GarryP said:

As there are now 30 pages of threads in the Resources forum, I think it might be a good time to split it into sub-forums to make it easier for people to browse the sort of items they are interested in.
A split along the lines of something like this:
* Vector Brushes (Designer only);
* Raster Brushes (Designer and Photo only);
* Palettes;
* Styles;
* Assets;
* Macros (Photo only);
* LUTs;
* Procedural Presets (Photo only)
* Plugins (Photo only);
* Samples (and maybe templates, when they come);
* Miscellaneous;
… may be useful.

What does anyone else think?

I wouldn’t disagree; however, forum members has ask for separation of the Windows/Mac Desktop three programs, always negative response.  Serif, to my knowledge, has never replied.

[walt.farrell]

40 minutes ago, Cecil said:

I wouldn’t disagree; however, forum members has ask for separation of the Windows/Mac Desktop three programs, always negative response.  Serif, to my knowledge, has never replied.

This is different, though, as the request is not to separate the resources by OS (bad idea), nor by application (also bad idea) but by kind of resource (good idea).

[GarryP]

v_kyr: MEB’s list of links is great (and I have it bookmarked) but it’s only useful if you can find it or are told where it is. Someone coming to the forums to look for some assets, brushes, or whatever, probably won’t be looking for it and so probably won’t find it. Splitting the forum makes it easier for people to find the stuff they need without having to find something else first. Plus, if the forum was better organised, there would be no real need for MEB’s list.

Cecil: The “Should we split the forums by OS and/or Application?” discussion will probably churn on and on without end. I imagine it could be useful for someone with, for example, Designer on Windows to be able to go straight to that section without being bothered by any OSX-specific, Photo-specific or Publisher-specific issues but, at the same time, I can see the benefit from being able to view things from a wider perspective. For example, if someone posts some really good information about using Photo in an OSX-only section, some Windows users may not see it even if it is applicable to them too, so they could be missing out on something that might really help them. Personally I would prefer to have to scan and ignore a few non-relevant things if it means I can get a more rounded overview of the situation. That’s just me though, other people will have their own ideas and, as I said, that argument will probably never come to a conclusion that satisfies everyone. There is no ‘correct answer’, just various opinions, each of which is valid for the people who have them.

[Move Along People]

-

[Cecil]

1 hour ago, GarryP said:

v_kyr: MEB’s list of links is great (and I have it bookmarked) but it’s only useful if you can find it or are told where it is. Someone coming to the forums to look for some assets, brushes, or whatever, probably won’t be looking for it and so probably won’t find it. Splitting the forum makes it easier for people to find the stuff they need without having to find something else first. Plus, if the forum was better organised, there would be no real need for MEB’s list.

Cecil: The “Should we split the forums by OS and/or Application?” discussion will probably churn on and on without end. I imagine it could be useful for someone with, for example, Designer on Windows to be able to go straight to that section without being bothered by any OSX-specific, Photo-specific or Publisher-specific issues but, at the same time, I can see the benefit from being able to view things from a wider perspective. For example, if someone posts some really good information about using Photo in an OSX-only section, some Windows users may not see it even if it is applicable to them too, so they could be missing out on something that might really help them. Personally I would prefer to have to scan and ignore a few non-relevant things if it means I can get a more rounded overview of the situation. That’s just me though, other people will have their own ideas and, as I said, that argument will probably never come to a conclusion that satisfies everyone. There is no ‘correct answer’, just various opinions, each of which is valid for the people who have them.

Splitting the forums, by application - OS,  would not prevent those that wanted to enhance their scope of perspective, they could still review all, if desire.  The resource you listed would add numerous forums split, I ask only three, applications.  How many may have totally given up the relented post as none of the post may concern their application?

[Cecil]

15 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

This is different, though, as the request is not to separate the resources by OS (bad idea), nor by application (also bad idea) but by kind of resource (good idea).

I’m not asking to split Windows/Mac OS, just the three programs for each application. Members, if desired, could still review each program, if they subscribed to the forum thread, your idea could have numerous divisions, mine three.  Bad idea, is in the eyes of each users.  Many users may just give up as current thread, which may contain 10, 15 or 30 post, none meeting their area of interest.  This doesn’t help users learn, if may do the opposite.

[v_kyr]

2 hours ago, GarryP said:

MEB’s list of links is great (and I have it bookmarked) but it’s only useful if you can find it or are told where it is. Someone coming to the forums to look for some assets, brushes, or whatever, probably won’t be looking for it and so probably won’t find it. Splitting the forum makes it easier for people to find the stuff they need without having to find something else first. Plus, if the forum was better organised, there would be no real need for MEB’s list.

Well MEB's list stems from earlier times, when there wasn't Spotlight and the days the forum itself hasn't been much structured at all. Beside that, it has stopped to be updated some years ago, thus it's far from beeing up-to-date and since then a lot of contribution contents has been added to the forum which isn't taken into account. - Finding specific or topic related things is always a common problem here in the forum.

Also overall the foum structure seems generally not to be always that clear for new users, otherwise people wouldn't often post in wrong categories, or post over and over the same questions since they either can't search/find related contents, or are too lazy to do so. Though AFAI can see it got slightly better lately.

 

[PaulEC]

I think GarryP's suggestion about splitting the Resource section is a very good idea.

But generally, while I don't think it's a good idea to split the forums by app or operating system, I think it would be nice if there was a clearer indication on posts as to which app and/or operating system people are talking about. 

[GarryP]

The forums are getting more organised than they were a while ago and that’s down to suggestions from members and a lot of work by the moderators. It’s not perfect yet – and probably never will be as that’s a purely subjective thing – but a few more tweaks may make things easier to find.

One problem that can happen with some forums is when they sub-divide things so much that they get way too specific.
For example, take things too far and you could have forum sections named:
* “Questions about Affinity Designer on Windows 7”
* “Questions about Affinity Designer on Windows 8”
* “Questions about Affinity Designer on Windows 10”
* “Questions about Affinity Designer on OS X Catalina”
* “Questions about Affinity Designer on OS X Mojave”
* “Questions about Affinity Designer on OS X High Sierra”
* “Questions about Affinity Publisher on Windows 7”
* “Questions about Affinity Publisher on Windows 8”
* etc. etc.

What if the same problem existed on both Windows 7 and Windows 8 but the answer was only posted in the forum for Windows 7? People with Windows 8 probably wouldn’t see it as they wouldn’t be looking in the Windows 7 forum. Or, what if the problem existed for both Designer and Publisher on Windows 7 & 8 but the answer was only posted in the Designer for Windows 7 forum? People with only Publisher on Windows 8 probably wouldn’t look at the Designer on Windows 7 forum.

Another problem that can happen, as has been mentioned, with some forums is when they sub-divide things in such a way that it’s difficult to know which forum to post in.
For example, taking things too far another way and you could have forum sections named:
* “Questions about Vectors”
* “Questions about Graphics”
* “Questions about Shapes”
* “Questions about the Pen Tool”
* etc. etc.

What if someone was looking for advice on using the Pen Tool to draw some vector shapes? Where would they post? What if you are not a native English speaker/writer and a translation is giving you no ‘hits’? Things can get way too complicated that way.

I think some areas, like Resources, can be split fairly easily to make things simpler for most people, but other areas, like Questions, are better as a ‘grab bag’ of general posts that can, often, be a nice place to get new ideas from.

[walt.farrell]

1 hour ago, Cecil said:

Splitting the forums, by application - OS,  would not prevent those that wanted to enhance their scope of perspective, they could still review all, if desire.  The resource you listed would add numerous forums split, I ask only three, applications.  How many may have totally given up the relented post as none of the post may concern their application?

Again, Cecil, this topic/request is not about splitting all the forums by application or OS, but only splitting the Resources forum, which has different considerations. It would be nice, and appropriate, to consider GarryP's suggestion without dragging that other discussion into it. They really are two separate discussions.

[GarryP]

As an aside, just in case anyone thinks the current forum is a bit difficult to get around, have a look at this GIF taken from the MSDN Forum where the user is asked to select which forums/sub-forums they want to look in. (All I’m doing is scrolling through the options and I’ve not even included the Archived Forums areas.) I think the Affinity forums are way nicer to use.

[v_kyr]

4 minutes ago, GarryP said:

As an aside, just in case anyone thinks the current forum is a bit difficult to get around, have a look at this GIF taken from the MSDN Forum where the user is asked to select which forums/sub-forums they want to look in. (All I’m doing is scrolling through the options and I’ve not even included the Archived Forums areas.) I think the Affinity forums are way nicer to use.

Well that's an worst case Apple and Oranges comparison, MSDN has by far another complexity since anno and contains pretty much everything MS developer technology related, thus some thousand more MS OS, tools and library related things. In contrast to that the Affinity forum is a tiny (miniature) one just dealing about three software products. - Beside that, such dev related technical informations are completely missing here in the Affinity forum (not much infos given or discussed at all), they are so to say no existent, instead things here are more or less end user oriented.

[GarryP]

Oh yeah, it wasn’t meant as a valid comparison, just a kind of “look at how badly it could all go wrong in the future if we’re not careful” kind of thing.
Just bit of fun: “Phew, I’m glad we’re not in that kind of situation, I don’t feel too bad about it now.”