Sign in
Microsoft.com
 
Microsoft
 
 
 

locked
New forum interface RRS feed

 > 

  • Question

  • Question
    Sign in to vote
    0
    Sign in to vote
    The new forum interface takes up too much room for FAQ's and pinned items and leaves almost no room to view questions or follow threads in which I've answered. In addition it would be good if the settings for following threads could be made sticky so I wouldn't have to set the follow up on thread setting for each thread.

    Ken Slovak 
    Wednesday, October 15, 2008 3:14 PM

All replies

  • Question
    Sign in to vote
    0
    Sign in to vote
    If I want to follow threads that I've answered, I click on my name and then "Mike Walsh MVP's threads" (on the right).

    They are then listed with no sticky items in sight.

    (As a Moderator I use that - with their name - when I suspect someone of a duplicate post)
    Wednesday, October 15, 2008 4:14 PM
  • Question
    Sign in to vote
    0
    Sign in to vote
    Ken are you talking about setting "Alert Me" to get an email notification.  If so you can make it "sticky".  Go to your profile by clicking "My Profile" on the right pane click "Application Settings".  Now you can enable\disable Live Alerts.    Now all future threads that you reply to will be subscribed to for alerts.

    When you talk about too much room for FAQ and pinned items are you referring to the right rail where the link "Need Help with Forums? (FAQ)" or are you referring to a particular forum that the moderators have added "Sticky" threads which show up at the top of the list?  If it's the latter one then that's fully controlled by the moderators of that forum and may be good feedback fot them.

    thanks,
    Sam
    Sam Jarawan Social Platform Forums - Senior Development Lead
    Thursday, October 16, 2008 4:53 PM
  • Question
    Sign in to vote
    0
    Sign in to vote
    >or are you referring to a particular forum that the moderators have added "Sticky" threads which show up at the top of the list?

    That's what I thought was meant.

    > If it's the latter one then that's fully controlled by the moderators of that forum and may be good feedback fot them.

    I was already aware of the issue. So for instance a couple of days ago when placing a new sticky in one forum I removed an old one that was less useful.

    The problem continues to be that people post to the wrong forum. In SharePoint land we have some very specific forums yet people continue to post questions on those specific topics to the several more general SharePoint forums instead.

    Posting a sticky post saying "Post XXX questions to the XXX forum" helps reduce the number of posts on XXX that don't go to the XXX forum and which otherwise the poor moderator would need to move. At least that's the assumption.

    Naturally the sticky posts get ignored as well, but I'm hoping not by everyone.

    But as for FAQs put there by Microsoft people .... They do take up unnecessary space ! 
    Friday, October 17, 2008 6:12 AM
  • Question
    Sign in to vote
    0
    Sign in to vote
    I  have suggested this before, and was told that there is some difference between posts suited to "Sticky" and those suited to "Announcements". Nevertheless, I think we should get rid of all Sticky posts and move them all into the Announcements section.

    Also, I think there should be some way of hiding/collapsing the Announcements section. As it is, Sticky/Announcements can take up a huge amount of vertical real estate in some forums (vcgeneral, for example).

    David Wilkinson | Visual C++ MVP
    Friday, October 17, 2008 11:58 AM
  • Question
    Sign in to vote
    0
    Sign in to vote
    I couldn't find the Visual C General forum but I did find this one


    which shows the problem that was no doubt the reason for this thread being started.

    It has 8 stickies and on this 20inch screen at a fairly small resolution that means I can see those eight stickies and 5 (only) real messages.


    The first thing to note is that the Moderators here have not been carrying out their Moderating role actively.


    One of those sticky messages is a sticky telling people that the forum moved on XXXX. This must be one of the most pointless messages ever because if the people can't see the difference in look, they aren't surely going to be able to think about Visual Studio architecture.  I asked for - and got - permission to remove such stickies (there were usually two "we will move" and "we have moved") from all the SharePoint forums.

    Another one from August 2008 tells is that the Visual Studio 2008 and the .Net Framework 3.5 SP1 are now available. Useful perhaps for a couple of weeks after release but hardly useful today.

    Another one informs us that **in April 2007** (not a misprint) there was a new Visual Studio Team Architect Blog.  Well it certainly isn't new now.

    ... and so it goes on. Of the eight only TWO (*) are the sort of thing that ought to be there (i.e. information for how to use the forum). 


    (*) Even that figure of two includes the one on using Connect for submitting bugs - when there can hardly be any bugs for Architecture and Design (the area covered by this forum) surely.

    So all we are left with is Clarifying Forum expectations. That's OK.  Just. Even that is a general post for ALL the VS Team System forums and has nothing specifically to do with the areas covered by this particular forum.

    (The three I haven't mentioned are a) an ad for a CTP that came out in April. My guess is that it's no longer valid. b) an ad for Team Architect Power Tools **from May 2007**. c) a request from February 2008 to complete a survey. No doubt they evaluated the survey a log time ago.)


    In other words the problem isn't with stickies per se. It's with very poor moderation and Microsoft people piling stuff in stickies that shouldn't be there and never removing them when long past their selling date.

    Mike






    • Edited by Mike Walsh FIN Saturday, October 18, 2008 1:22 PM SP1 added after .Net Framework 3.5 (to make this statement correct)
    Friday, October 17, 2008 2:39 PM