hmm..  so this appears in the original BBB->Discussions area, but when you go to http://www.element14.com/community/community/knode/single-board_computers/next-gen_beaglebone everything seems to re-direct off to Single Board Computers->Discussions.

No direct way to get to the original area that I can see - unless something appears in the Recent Activity panel waaayyy down the page, and what's classed as recent activity seems to be very different from the 'recent discussions' panel on the left and much closer to the top.

I found your post by seeing it in the list of recent stuff under your avatar in a totally unrelated discussion - wouldn't have found it otherwise!   Seems that the fragmentation caused by the knode and various attempts to make it better have backfired, I think I'm actually better off ignoring the knode completely and just going for the global discussions link from the homepage, then sifting through the bits I'm not interested in manually. It's a slightly less frustrating way to do things!

I think I'm actually better off ignoring the knode completely and just going for the global discussions link from the homepage,

But be careful, because the global discussions panel doesn't include blogs or comments on blogs.

In order to find those, I think the best way is to click on your avatar (when logged in), then click on

the "my view" tab in the upper left, and then watch the "Community Activity" center panel, with

options set for "everyone" and filter "hide updates"  (which ignores reports of new members joining).

But that panel only goes back 24 hours.

coder27 wrote:

 

But be careful, because the global discussions panel doesn't include blogs or comments on blogs.

Yeah, blogs were always easy to miss though.

Maybe just me, but I start to think that if I really need to jump through all of the hoops you suggest to get something that only goes back 24hrs then it's maybe not worth it. How much time do we all spend trying to navigate the systems quirks ?

How much time do we all spend trying to navigate the systems quirks ?

yes, it's sad.  At least I know how to paste and highlight as of yesterday,

and how to find blog posts as of recently.  I don't know of a way to find

both discussions and blog posts while ignoring eagle support posts.

I would certainly be interested to hear from E14 how users are supposed

to monitor discussions and blogs of topics they are interested in.

selsinork wrote:

 

coder27 wrote:

 

But be careful, because the global discussions panel doesn't include blogs or comments on blogs.

Yeah, blogs were always easy to miss though.

 

Maybe just me, but I start to think that if I really need to jump through all of the hoops you suggest to get something that only goes back 24hrs then it's maybe not worth it. How much time do we all spend trying to navigate the systems quirks ?

What I do is look at the global discussion list and turn on e-mail notifications for activity in certain topics such as FPGAs, Embedded, Open Source H/W, and BeagleBone.  Usually there's only a few e-mail notifications, unless they're giving away LPC800 boards

I've suggested a number of times that 'blog discussions (and perhaps the initial 'blog) should show up in the global discussion list so users don't miss topics of interest.  For now, when members post 'blogs they may want to start a discussion as well so that users find out the 'blog exists.

selsinork wrote:

 

coder27 wrote:

 

But be careful, because the global discussions panel doesn't include blogs or comments on blogs.

Yeah, blogs were always easy to miss though.

 

Maybe just me, but I start to think that if I really need to jump through all of the hoops you suggest to get something that only goes back 24hrs then it's maybe not worth it. How much time do we all spend trying to navigate the systems quirks ?

What I do is look at the global discussion list and turn on e-mail notifications for activity in certain topics such as FPGAs, Embedded, Open Source H/W, and BeagleBone.  Usually there's only a few e-mail notifications, unless they're giving away LPC800 boards

I've suggested a number of times that 'blog discussions (and perhaps the initial 'blog) should show up in the global discussion list so users don't miss topics of interest.  For now, when members post 'blogs they may want to start a discussion as well so that users find out the 'blog exists.

The development team head really needs to read today's comments here and, unfortunately, weep.  When the site's most active users have to spend their time and creativity finding novel ways to get through this bizarre thicket, it's crystal clear that something has gone very badly wrong with site architecture.

John Beeetem wrote:

 

What I do is look at the global discussion list and turn on e-mail notifications for activity in certain topics such as FPGAs, Embedded, Open Source H/W, and BeagleBone.

It would be a nice improvement if there was a way to direct such e-mail notifications to

a new "activity notifications" panel under "my view", rather than using actual email.

There also needs to be a "black list" capability in addition to a "white list", so

Eagle support can be black listed without missing unforeseeable new groups

such as E-14 Birthday, (where I just recently discovered a birthday gift almost

a year after it was posted there).

I've suggested a number of times that 'blog discussions (and perhaps the initial 'blog) should show up in the global discussion list so users don't miss topics of interest.

The unification also needs to include Documents.  There have been a number of

significant updates by E-14 to the RPi FAQ over the last year or so, that had no

corresponding announcement in the discussions or blogs, so have been hard to

notice unless someone commented on them.

On the E-14 main page in the upper left, there is a "featured groups" panel, which

seems to be missing a lot of interesting groups such as RPi and BBB.  Above that,

there is a "Technologies" pull down, which has a different set of groups, which are

in alphabetical order rather than hierarchical.  Maybe these two lists of groups could

be unified.

The "Technologies" pull down is particularly annoying because when moving the mouse

from the "back" button in the far upper left corner, down to the "home" button a little ways

below it, one inevitably mouses over the "Technologies" pull down by accident.

Summary:

There needs to be a single customizable "activity" panel that a logged-in user can monitor,

that has the topic flexibility of email-notifications, combined with black-list capability

for unwanted topics, and has the capability to include discussions/blogs/documents

while excluding new member signups, and which has much more than a 24 hour limit.

coder27 wrote:

 

There also needs to be a "black list" capability in addition to a "white list",

Seconded. I turned on email notifications in RoadTest so that I'd see any new road test announcements, but I'm getting swamped by comments to the printbot Jr and various PiFace stuff none of which I'm interested in..  If there's currently a way to get something other than 'everything', only replies to threads you've posted to, or nothing then I've yet to find it.

Something inbetween the extremes is needed otherwise you know you're missing interesting stuff.

I'm just worried about how to help the development team, and asking for more features just pours oil on the inferno.

The big problem here is that E14 website design is waaaaaaaaaay out of control from any functional standpoint, and almost leaves us in a "To get there, I wouldn't start from here" situation.  Utility has become smothered in complexity, and bugs are an absolutely inevitable consequence of that.

It's hard to know what to recommend to avoid making the problem worse.  I think I'd start with "Gather all BBB discussions under SBC->BBB and provide a top-level link to discussion listings".  That will eliminate the major sources of exasperation that many of us have expressed.  After all, we all managed to keep abreast of activity in the Pi group (the blog aside).  Why should the BBB community support be any less functional?

I'd follow up with "Take a month off to consider functional architecture and complexity reduction only, and don't touch the code."

I get the horrible feeling that it's hanging by a thread, and could get a lot worse.

I get the horrible feeling that it's hanging by a thread, and could get a lot worse.

I was inspired by a 14-year-old's attempt yesterday to redesign the E14 website:

http://www.element14.com/community/message/79149#79149/l/re-element-14-website-redesign-please-check

Maybe we can mock up a competing redesign.

You will be happy to know that the API uses REST.

https://developers.jivesoftware.com/api/v3/rest/

coder27 wrote:

 

You will be happy to know that the API uses REST.

https://developers.jivesoftware.com/api/v3/rest/

I only mentioned Roy Fielding in my problem summary out of some (poor) attempt to reduce tension while still advocating for best practices, not because I was insisting on total REST methodology to E14 devs.  After all, Fielding started by analysing what good engineering properties made the Web work well and be scalable and user-friendly, and only then did he codify those properties into REST.  Those are two separate phases.

As long as good engineering properties like page addressibility are not slaughtered by web-2.0 artists that have no clue about what makes the web work well, the site won't decay into unusable, and I'll be reasonably happy.  We're not close to that nightmare here (we're just suffering a few bugs I think), but it's worth marking out the forbidden territory just in case.  That's just engineering caution, placing a few cones on the highway to reduce fatalities.