I've been using this forum for a week now and I notice a lot of missing features.
For example its hard to see which topics are new/unread, which of you favorite topics have new replies, ... I also find it annoying to have to do many mouse clicks to read every of the sub forums that interests me.
And the karma system.. well, it feels a lot like a poorly implemented stackoverflow clone.
I don't think this means that this is a *bad* forum, I think the main frustrations I have are because I'm used to stackexchange sites and how polished they are.
I noticed there is already a proposal made for an Umbraco discussion forum on the StackExchange system and I was wondering what people's thoughts are about this.
Personally I think the Umbraco team can spend their time in a much more useful way than reinventing the wheel by developing a forum on this site. Why not take a finished, proven product and use it instead?
At first it sounds like a good idea to have a StackExchange for Umbraco, but the more I thought about it, the more I felt it isn't the right direction for the community - it would fragment it - which is a horrible thought, since it took so long to bring the community together with Our Umbraco.
Another approach on getting a better forum might be to enable the community to improve this one then.
It's just that it looks really bad for people starting with umbraco to see unanswered questions or constant error messages, double posts, etc..
When my current company asked me to get into umbraco (it had been 3 years since I worked with it), it was one of the first things I noticed: Unanswered questions, broken links, errors in IE9, .. and all that in the first 5 minutes of figuring out the current state of the CMS. This wasn't really motivating. But perhaps that is a discussion for a different thread.
I do know what you mean... broken links (especially for project pages) is my biggest issue! (Simple 301s would work). Double posts are getting really annoying too!
I disagree about the unanswered questions - that's not through the lack of activity, knowledge or community. They generally remain unanswered because either no one knows the answer, or the questions don't make much sense, (as in they never supply enough information). I highly doubt having a StackExchange instance would increase the level of quality.
The Umbraco community is thriving - especially when compared to other open-source ASP.NET communities. See you care already about it, otherwise you wouldn't have posted this topic. :-)
I think there are some serious shortcomings in this forum that need to be adressed. I also believe presence Stackechange will draw more professional users to the platform.
Some things that bother me:
* inability to send forum members messages/questions
* inability to get a list of all your posts
* very limited profile information
* broken editing functionality of your own posts
* frequent xslt errors during visits
* no way to mark topics as solved when you provide the answer yourself
The search could definitly be improved. Missing the ability so search in a specific part of the forum, i.e. if I'm in the xslt section I would like to search only the xslt messages.
I think it would be a great idea to have a Stack Exchange site for Umbraco. I don't think it would fragment the community. Lock this forum so no new posts can be added, put a big header on every page that one should use umbraco.stackexchange.com, and people would migrate.
I would assume that most people in here already have an account on StackOverflow or another StackExchange site, and I believe that it would be great for our dear Umbraco developers not having to worry about bugfixing, updating and maintaining the forum.
What exactly happened with the proposal, there weren't enough supporters?
I see that the link to the StackExchange states that it might have been deleted due to inactivity.
On the more related topic - I think that this would not do any harm to the current Umbraco community, on the contrary, it would introduce a lot of people to Our Umbraco and perhaps even bring a more vibrant increase of popularity.
Considering the popularity and community reputation with StackExhange, I think that this move would bring a lot more benefit than harm.
Umbraco on StackExchange
Hi.
I've been using this forum for a week now and I notice a lot of missing features.
For example its hard to see which topics are new/unread, which of you favorite topics have new replies, ...
I also find it annoying to have to do many mouse clicks to read every of the sub forums that interests me.
And the karma system.. well, it feels a lot like a poorly implemented stackoverflow clone.
I don't think this means that this is a *bad* forum, I think the main frustrations I have are because I'm used to stackexchange sites and how polished they are.
I noticed there is already a proposal made for an Umbraco discussion forum on the StackExchange system and I was wondering what people's thoughts are about this.
Personally I think the Umbraco team can spend their time in a much more useful way than reinventing the wheel by developing a forum on this site. Why not take a finished, proven product and use it instead?
edit: Seriously, I can't even edit my question without getting a "Error parsing XSLT file: \xslt\forum-commentsList.xslt "
This is the proposal:
http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/22662/umbraco-cms
Hi Thomas, there was a discussion about it earlier on this year:
http://our.umbraco.org/forum/ourumb-dev-forum/features/9161-Here's-a-wild-idea
At first it sounds like a good idea to have a StackExchange for Umbraco, but the more I thought about it, the more I felt it isn't the right direction for the community - it would fragment it - which is a horrible thought, since it took so long to bring the community together with Our Umbraco.
Cheers, Lee.
Another approach on getting a better forum might be to enable the community to improve this one then.
It's just that it looks really bad for people starting with umbraco to see unanswered questions or constant error messages, double posts, etc..
When my current company asked me to get into umbraco (it had been 3 years since I worked with it), it was one of the first things I noticed: Unanswered questions, broken links, errors in IE9, .. and all that in the first 5 minutes of figuring out the current state of the CMS. This wasn't really motivating. But perhaps that is a discussion for a different thread.
Hi Thomas,
I do know what you mean... broken links (especially for project pages) is my biggest issue! (Simple 301s would work). Double posts are getting really annoying too!
I disagree about the unanswered questions - that's not through the lack of activity, knowledge or community. They generally remain unanswered because either no one knows the answer, or the questions don't make much sense, (as in they never supply enough information). I highly doubt having a StackExchange instance would increase the level of quality.
The Umbraco community is thriving - especially when compared to other open-source ASP.NET communities. See you care already about it, otherwise you wouldn't have posted this topic. :-)
As for any features and improvements, you could always drop HQ a message? http://umbraco.org/get-started/make-a-wish
Cheers, Lee.
Edit: Just noticed that no one has actually answered any of your questions. Yikes!
Thanks for your comments and the link, I did not know that page existed :-)
But I think I'll use codeplex and this forum instead for suggestions since the "state" of your suggestion is more visible
I think there are some serious shortcomings in this forum that need to be adressed. I also believe presence Stackechange will draw more professional users to the platform.
Some things that bother me:
* inability to send forum members messages/questions
* inability to get a list of all your posts
* very limited profile information
* broken editing functionality of your own posts
* frequent xslt errors during visits
* no way to mark topics as solved when you provide the answer yourself
* extremely limited search functionality
* no way to list all unanswered questions/posts
i agree with the above, there should be more human power on the forum to fix bugs and bring more features.
The search could definitly be improved. Missing the ability so search in a specific part of the forum, i.e. if I'm in the xslt section I would like to search only the xslt messages.
Just tear it all down and burn the escrow disks with the code and that would be a significant improvement.
I agree with Rik's list of issues.
I think it would be a great idea to have a Stack Exchange site for Umbraco. I don't think it would fragment the community. Lock this forum so no new posts can be added, put a big header on every page that one should use umbraco.stackexchange.com, and people would migrate.
I would assume that most people in here already have an account on StackOverflow or another StackExchange site, and I believe that it would be great for our dear Umbraco developers not having to worry about bugfixing, updating and maintaining the forum.
Here is the new proposal link.
What exactly happened with the proposal, there weren't enough supporters?
I see that the link to the StackExchange states that it might have been deleted due to inactivity.
On the more related topic - I think that this would not do any harm to the current Umbraco community, on the contrary, it would introduce a lot of people to Our Umbraco and perhaps even bring a more vibrant increase of popularity.
Considering the popularity and community reputation with StackExhange, I think that this move would bring a lot more benefit than harm.
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