Launch of New Forums!

[Stux]

Maybe it’s time to prevent new threads here?

But allow replies?

Or maybe that’s done already…

 

[Stux]

I have to say, the feelings of a purge towards CORE and everything related (including the userbase) is real.

There is a lot of crusty info in the forum in a post core world.

BUT there is a huge amount of gold too. As long as this forums content stays preserved for google searches and linking from the new one it should work well, and sort of fits with dragging the userbase kicking and screaming into the “shiny future” ;)

 

[wsoteros]

BUT there is a huge amount of gold too. As long as this forums content stays preserved for google searches and linking from the new one it should work well, and sort of fits with dragging the userbase kicking and screaming into the “shiny future” ;)

This content will preserved. Forever.

 

[Etorix]

"Forever" as in "CORE will be maintained forever alongside SCALE"?

 

[ChrisRJ]

I opened my account, already hate the new layout and organisation with a vengeance.

Same here. In the context of my main job I have to use Discourse, although until now I wasn't aware of that. In fact, I always found the UX so bad that my assumption was that it was part of enterprise license deal with a certain vendor that does their marketing stuff.

As a consequence I will drastically reduce my interaction with the forum. Yes, that is how much I dislike Discourse.

 

[chuck32]

One of the biggest strenghts of TrueNAS, for non-enterprise versions, is its community; some would say its biggest strenght. This strenght has been built year by year by knowledgeable users post after post on this forum. Switching to another one, for whatever benefits you have identified, without porting its content is going to deal a huge blow to this strenght.​

Combined with what other users already mentioned I can't really understand the decision and how it was carried out.

Unfortunately I also really dislike discourse so I can't really find anything positive on that, what I can't grasp is:

• Why the rush? One week out of the blue surely read like an April fools post
• No migration of existing content? Surely many people, especially new members will miss out on all the great content posted here and it will just be confusing
• I would have preferred if the community would have been asked prior to making the decision whether the change is welcome and/or supported. From what I read here I'm not the only one not in favor

Ultimately it's not our decision, however one shouldn't disregard the enormous support this community gives to the platform.

I fear that some of the experienced users around here will either leave or don't visit as frequently and the new forums may slowly die eventually.

 

[tprelog]

I realize I'm an insignificant member of this community but I'm one of the few who is happy to the switch to discourse. It's not that I prefer the new forum so much as I prefer writing in markdown.

It's certainly a moot point now, but back in the days of maintaining some of the plugins on CORE, I would have been much more active providing documentation and guides on this forum for the plugins I created, if I would have been able to do that in markdown.

I'm just really sad to see so many of the veterans who provide the real value to this forum are so unhappy with this change, they my stop being such active members. That's what's really going to hurt this community as a whole.

 

[Kris Moore]

"Forever" as in "CORE will be maintained forever alongside SCALE"?

Touche' :)

But yes, it will persist. We ultimately made that decision once we did some experimental content migrations to discourse. While it can be done, it ruins everything. Clutters new forums. Breaks existing links / search indexing, etc. While I realize this may seem rushed from the community perspective, it's something we've been discussing here for 2+ years internally, so perhaps our perspective is that this is somewhat old news. Again, my apologies since this wasn't communicated well with the rest of the community wider first.

That said, I would suggest folks give the new system an honest try first. The week period was chosen intentionally work out some of the worst kinks, but obviously we have lots of room to tweak features and functionality in the weeks to come. We've already enabled many of the good suggestions and requests that have come our way, such as custom reactions and the ability to mark issues as "Solved", which also boosts their visibility for users searching or potentially posting duplicate questions in advance.

In the end, this was long overdue, and we think will be a net positive to the community discussion once some of the initial dust settles. I could be proven wrong but like when we stopped our official IRC in favor of a newer option, it only increased the participation, despite some of the original folks being unhappy with it. So I'd say, please be patient, bring us feedback and suggestions on how to improve the new tools and we'll be happy to incorporate ones which are viable.

 

[tprelog]

I realize I'm an insignificant member of this community but I'm one of the few who is happy to the switch to discourse. It's not that I prefer the new forum so much as I prefer writing in markdown.

It's certainly a moot point now, but back in the days of maintaining some of the plugins on CORE, I would have been much more active providing documentation and guides on this forum for the plugins I created, if I would have been able to do that in markdown.

I'm just really sad to see so many of the veterans who provide the real value to this forum are so unhappy with this change, they my stop being such active members. That's what's really going to hurt this community as a whole.

I can't seem to edit my previous post anymore, but I should also mention most of the other forums I belong to are also using discourse, so I'm already somewhat familiar with and used to the different navigation and layout style it provides

 

[Davvo]

and the ability to mark issues as "Solved", which also boosts their visibility for users searching or potentially posting duplicate questions in advance.

Such a thing is possible here as well, my point being the necessity of the community being educated in how to use such tools.

 

[danb35]

I'm just really sad to see so many of the veterans who provide the real value to this forum are so unhappy with this change

Discourse seems to be pretty polarizing, probably in large part because it works differently than most other forums. I myself am kind of ambivalent on it, even as I run two Discourse sites myself--but as an admin it's great to work with. I do mostly favor Markdown over BBCode, though.

I can't seem to edit my previous pos

Unfortunately, permissions in this forum don't allow users to edit their posts. Not sure why that is.

necessity of the community being educated in how to use such tools.

Ask and you shall receive:

Marking posts as Solved

When you post a question or problem, it’s good form to acknowledge when it’s answered or solved. Discourse makes this easy. When you start a topic, you’ll see a button below every other post in the topic that will let you mark it as the “solution.” It looks like this: Once you do that, the...

forums.truenas.com

 

[Patrick M. Hausen]

Markdown over BBCode any time. It's the layout and the waste of screen real estate that I do not like. But I'll get used to it I guess.

 

[nabsltd]

One of the major problems with this forum--which apparently was seen to be insoluble, to the point of chucking it in the bin and replacing it with a new one--was the massive proliferation of subforums without apparent rhyme or reason, with the result that people had no clue where they should post.

Other than the recent creation of the "TrueNAS for VM Storage" section, I don't see that this was an actual issue.

First, unless there is literally one choice, new users will often post in the wrong place, so using that at a metric is not really useful.

Second, the top-level structure is actually quite reasonable, with choices being quite logical; Core, Scale, TrueCommand, and Virtualized TrueNAS are good separators. The only really bad one is "Applications and Jails", which should be split and placed as sub-forums beneath Core and Scale.

Third, only the "Scale" sub-forums are an issue, where all the individual major releases get their own sub-forum. This will confuse people, because they don't know if they should post their performance problem on Bluefin in "Performance" or "Bluefin". I would lock the version-specific forums, tag all the threads in each of them with the version, then move them into one of the other more reasonable forums, then finally delete the version-specific forums. Tagging a thread "Bluefin" and posting it in the "Performance" category would then be the way moving forward.

 

[nabsltd]

This content will preserved. Forever.

Which is mostly useless, since threads with no apparent solution (of which there are many) can't be necro'd with "Same issue...was there any resolution?"

Essentially, anything that is a continuing issue will now require reading in two places, which means an external search engine is the only way to see everything that has already been written.

 

[nabsltd]

the ability to mark issues as "Solved", which also boosts their visibility for users searching or potentially posting duplicate questions in advance.

This is a very double-edged sword.

I was searching for a proprietary hardware driver that worked with a particular version of an OS (both of which are now EOL), and found a post marked "Solved" on the Discourse forum. The "solution" was that the previous user was trying to use the driver on a version of the hardware that was specifically not supported by the driver.

So, I wasted time scrolling endlessly through the post to find out that the problem as posted in the thread title was never actually solved.

 

[danb35]

First, unless there is literally one choice, new users will often post in the wrong place, so using that at a metric is not really useful.

"It happens at all" isn't a particularly useful metric, but how often it happens is. If it's happening a lot, that's a valid indication that the layout isn't working that well.

Second, the top-level structure is actually quite reasonable

Not really. You're right that "Applications and Jails" doesn't belong as a top-level forum (and why does Storj--and only Storj--get its own subforum there?), but that's far from the only issue:

• "Community Contributions"--what on earth is this for? According to the posts in the introductory thread, it's for the same thing as Resources--which have been around for several years.
• There are distinct subforums under both CORE and SCALE for feedback--why? These are pointless (and have hardly been used). Feedback is going to be posted throughout the forum, often linked to questions.
• You've already acknowledged the half-dozen new forums under "VM storage"
• Why is "virtualized TrueNAS" a valid top-level distinction? Wouldn't it make more sense to include those discussions under the relevant product?
• Then there are dozens of FreeNAS forums that really should have become TrueNAS forums, rather than iX treating TrueNAS like it's a completely different product. But at least they're now read-only, so people can't inadvertently post new threads there. Though that means that people who are using FreeNAS (admittedly, not very many of them) don't have any place to post any more.
• And finally, the elephant in the room, all the SCALE forums.

 

[tprelog]

a post marked "Solved" on the Discourse forum. The "solution" was that the previous user was trying to use the driver on a version of the hardware that was specifically not supported by the driver.

So, I wasted time scrolling endlessly through the post to find out that the problem as posted in the thread title was never actually solved.

But on discourse (at least other discourse forums I belong to), when a post is marked as solved, the op has a direct link to the later post that "solved" the issue. It says something like "Solved by username in post#X" - post#X is a direct link to the solution. There is no need for endless scrolling.

Here's an example found in another discourse forum

 

[tprelog]

I see a solution in the new TrueNAS discourse that works as expected. You don't even have to go to the post that "solved" the issue. You can view the solution right from the OP. See here

 

[Davvo]

Most threads though don't have only a single correct solution: often it's a team effort where 3 to four user come togheter to write a complete snapshot of the situation, which ends being really, really informative.
In short, this way of running forums has its own advantaged and disadvantages (some of which absolute, some blurring into personal preference)... and I guess iX has already decided that its advantages are worth the switch.​

 

[danb35]

Most threads though don't have only a single correct solution

I don't think that's true of "most" threads where there's a problem in need of a solution, but it is true of many. But it isn't the intent that marking one post as a solution means readers should ignore the rest of the thread. And where it truly is a group effort, a user can post with "I combined X, Y, and Z, and that fixed it," and mark that as the solution.