BLOG: BBB - Working with the PRU-ICSS/PRUSSv2

Thanks for pointing out this great post.  And I agree with you about the visibility of blogs is lacking versus discussions.  We will be upgrading to a major new version of our Community software platform this summer.  I believe the new version provides better visibility and integration of the blog content type.

thanks,

drew

Drew Fustini wrote:

 

We will be upgrading to a major new version of our Community software platform this summer.  I believe the new version provides better visibility and integration of the blog content type.

That's good to hear, Drew.

Don't forget to ask your upstream supplier to fix the invisibility of discussion areas too though.  There's little point in improving integration of blogs with discussions if the discussion areas are themselves cloaked in stealth!

Morgaine,

  Top members can try out the new version of the Community software platform dashboard.

It includes a "Community Activity" panel on the right-hand side that shows all activity

including comments on blog posts that used to be so easy to miss because they

don't show up in the discussions panel.

edited to remove link to protect the innocent while more work is done.

Thanks, coder27.  I'll log out shortly and take a look there.

The whole concept of "Community Activity" is a very poor way of organizing content though.  A 5-year old board is as important as a brand new one, and its resources need to be easily accessible despite not having generated any community activity in the last year.

In a sense, all community activity has the purpose of producing a repository of useful information.  After all the effort that the community expends, to then let that information submerge and become lost just because it's not recent is a mistake, and a very bad one.

"Community Activity" should be just a view into multiple persistent spaces that don't disappear, but only grow with time.

Thanks for the pointer.

OK, I looked there after logging out.  It's as I feared, entirely organized around recent activity instead of around information categories.  An advertiser's dream and an engineer's nightmare, or more generously, unsorted melting pot.

There is a small box listing Communities on that page as well, but knode communities like BBB and Pi are not listed there directly.  The knode itself is listed, but after 4 clicks it still only gets you to the general BBB page, with BBB > Discussions being nowhere in sight.  You still have to click on a recent post and then go up the tree to the Discussions breadcrumb to find BBB Discussions (although even that is currently broken because the BBB Discussions became unmoored and floated up to SBC).  If there is no recent post then a person will never find where they want to go.

This is not how I would design it.  It's focused on recent activity in the same way as social networking sites, instead of focused on information content.  As I wrote before, recent activity should be nothing more than an additional view into an information space, not the primary way of organizing information.

Morgaine.

Suggestion to E14 devs:  How about adding another little box to summerella's prototype, similar to the Communities box, but called "Discussion Spaces"?  Each entry in that box could then be linked directly to BBB->Discussions, Pi->Discussions, FPGA->Discussions, and so on.  This would provide not only an effective accelerator for those who want to head directly to a focussed discussion without a long series of clicks, but more importantly, it would provide the persistence that is missing from your activity-focused views.

PS. And it goes without saying that every article in the knode blog should appear as a thread in the corresponding community discussion, because otherwise it is completely invisible, as John pointed out.  The blog provides no means of listing its article names, so listing the article names as Discussion threads would be perfect, killing two birds with one stone:  one-line summary, and visibility.

Morgaine,

   You have to admit the "Community Activity" tab was incredibly useful for

finding the Beagle Bone Black QT Update thread, although that tab is currently

limited to a depth of 15, which almost wasn't enough.

coder27 wrote:

 

Morgaine,

   You have to admit the "Community Activity" tab was incredibly useful for

finding the Beagle Bone Black QT Update thread, although that tab is currently

limited to a depth of 15, which almost wasn't enough.

It wasn't useful!  I found the "Beagle Bone Black QT Update" thread because I accidentally moused over your avatar icon and in your recent posts I saw the title of a thread about BBB that had never appeared in the BBB community discussions!  I uttered a "Huh?", and clicked on it.

Which really proves my point, and John's.  Finding information here is becoming a matter of pure accident.

Concrete topics are important, they become persistent areas in our mental map.

This is something that social networking seems to disregard almost entirely, except when the topic is cats.  But as engineers, concrete topics as an organizing focus for our information are one of our most important tools.

coder27 wrote:

 

Morgaine,

   You have to admit the "Community Activity" tab was incredibly useful for

finding the Beagle Bone Black QT Update thread, although that tab is currently

limited to a depth of 15, which almost wasn't enough.

It wasn't useful!  I found the "Beagle Bone Black QT Update" thread because I accidentally moused over your avatar icon and in your recent posts I saw the title of a thread about BBB that had never appeared in the BBB community discussions!  I uttered a "Huh?", and clicked on it.

Which really proves my point, and John's.  Finding information here is becoming a matter of pure accident.

Concrete topics are important, they become persistent areas in our mental map.

This is something that social networking seems to disregard almost entirely, except when the topic is cats.  But as engineers, concrete topics as an organizing focus for our information are one of our most important tools.

> It wasn't useful!

Oh well, it may have scrolled off the end.

> Finding information here is becoming a matter of pure accident.

Definitely.  Certainly finding BBB discussions, blogs, and group members

should be on a par with RPi.

Hi everyone,

As the head of element14's development team I can tell you we are listening and appreciate your comments. We are actively looking at ways of making the volume of discussions and information on the site easier for you to find and follow. As Drew mentioned, we'll be upgrading to a new version of the platform in a few months and we think many of the changes that come with that will help address this issue. However, you, our members, know best what will and will not work, so I'm always glad to see your comments and suggestions. We try to pay attention when something about the site pops up in a thread like this one, but you can make sure we see it if you also post your suggestions over in Feedback and Support.

So, back to the beagle bone discussion! Sorry for the interruption.

Christy

Thanks Christy!

Well you know us pretty well by now, always looking for things to improve, never satisfied with "kinda works".

I like your idea of using the Feedback and Support forum where it's appropriate though, as inline suggestions sometimes break the train of discussion if there's too many of them.  Even worse, they can get submerged and lost, and then it's a waste of time having thought about the problem at all.  Good idea!

All the best!