How we can fix the forum..

[HolyK]

What do you guys think about having a prefix called "Repeat"? That way we can set it for posts that we know have been discussed or answered already.

DUPLICATE sounds a bit better for me? :]

And what about creating subcategories for the Hardware section for, Network, Disks & Controllers, Power Supplies, Motherboards, and ??? other suggestions?

Too many nested and specific sub-sections is not good idea. People could get confused and and numbers of duplicate threads will increase. For example one user will create thread about on-board controller issue under "Controllers" section. Another user could create thread about same issue but under "Motherboard" section, because it is "on-board" controller. Same situation could happen in question of NIC/onboard NIC, ...etc"

Maybe specific prefixes could be better. So keep one "HW' section but define prefixes like MB, HDD, Network (or "NIC"), Power (or just PSU ?) ...

But if we go that route we should have a sticky with the most commonly asked questions and answers included for each section as appropriate.

We have two possible ways in this.

1] One sticky thread in each section with FAQ
2] One global FAQ with all Q&A and just static link in each section linking to specific part of the global FAQ

 

[jgreco]

As you wish ^^ this was one of the things on my TODO list :)

Its changing dynamically as user is typing thread title :]

Well. I can't say I like all the changes, the color in the message list is horrid to me, and I don't like the aggregation of posts.

However, my posts no longer seem to disappear, get auto-moderated, get arbitrarily rejected, get rate limited, get character counted, or otherwise wind up with dispositions that cause me to feel angst and annoyance, so it is clear that great strides have been made. It wasn't encouraging me to participate when things were being rejected and I was having to try to keep track of stuff I might have already responded to but were in some moderator's queue somewhere. And it is very clear from the other changes that you're trying for some functional improvements, rather than fluff stuff like the "thanks" module that got added at one point a year or so ago.

So a big thanks for your efforts.

 

[cyberjock]

I was just about to consult the FreeNAS manual and I noticed that the 8.3.1 manual has been posted at http://doc.freenas.org/index.php/Main_Page.

It was released today! Woohoo.

But.. that happiness was very short lived. Then posts started flying into my head about what questions we can expect to see in the future because we haven't been pushing people to consult the manual. Some that popped into my head where:

1. Someone doesn't read the manual and sets up the new drive encryption and doesn't back up the appropriate key & passphrase and due to a broken USB key they don't have the ability to access their data anymore.
2. Someone asks if the encryption in FreeNAS is the new ZFSv30.
3. Why does their system run so slow. Naturally, since this is asked every 2-3 days by someone that doesn't meet the minimum hardware requirements anyway, this would have a new twist because some people will see performance tank for a new reason, encryption, and their 5+ year old CPU doesn't support AES-NI. AES-NI was first proposed by Intel in 2008, so no CPU pre-2008 will support AES-NI.
4. How do you convert an unencrypted zpool to an encrypted one. And who will delete their zpool and create a new encrypted zpool without realizing you must backup your data and restore it. The data won't "automagically" appear on the new zpool just because it was on the same drives.

Is it sad that this was the first thing to pop into my head after the "woohoo for 8.3.1?"

Anyone want to make some FAQ changes and hope that people might read the FAQ this time? Of course, since the FAQ is mostly from the manual, you kind of have to assume they aren't consulting the manual :(

 

[jgreco]

Well I think there's an awesome opportunity here to maybe expand on the FAQ a bit and then have whoever can edit the "Canned Replies" set up a small link library there.

Speaking as an old-time UNIX guy (Fortune 32:16, go!) I am at least sympathetic to the people who have difficulty understanding why FreeNAS and ZFS require many gigabytes of memory to do a task that many small NAS devices accomplish on 128MB or 256MB of RAM. To me, it seems "recent" that 32MB for a large, fast fileserver was quite sufficient. I think it is important not to get totally dismissive of the confusion and that we can at least point new users at a resource that explains it a bit better than just "RTFM newbie" where the manual doesn't really explain it all that well.

 

[cyberjock]

I think it is important not to get totally dismissive of the confusion and that we can at least point new users at a resource that explains it a bit better than just "RTFM newbie" where the manual doesn't really explain it all that well.

Yes, but what if we break down and explained in excruciating detail all that is stored in RAM and why so much is needed. Will that really change anything? Do you think that more users will think they need to have the 6GB+ of RAM as the manual already recommends? They'll still need the same amount of RAM even if it says what it currently says.

Personally, I feel like the problem is that too many people think they are "above average" and think they can tweak it to get more done with less hardware than the average person. Then when they can't get it to work, they assume that someone in the forum must have the answer and post to the forum.

The truth is that most people are average. That's the definition of average.

The other truth is that there are no tweaks to get more for less, or they would probably be the default.

 

[HolyK]

Well. I can't say I like all the changes, the color in the message list is horrid to me.

If you are using FireFox, you can get rid of the prefixes easily. Paste attached file into your Firefox profile directory/chrome and restart FF

If you want remove only the prefix colors, edit the userContent.css and remove first half of the code (until "/* Get rid of prefixes COLORS */" )

Windows:

%appdata%\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\<random_chars>.default\chrome\

Linux:

/home/<username>/.mozilla/firefox/<random_chars>.<username>/chrome/

If i miss prefix location somewhere, just add the css path into userContent.css a restart FF :]

I don't know if this is possible also for other browsers