Kirupa and others…
Is it too soon to consolidate forums? Like most of you, I love combing through the posts helping and getting a lot of help. I do find myself jumping around three forums trying to find where someone posted something.
It seems to be that most people that post in Flash5 post some kind of a/s question any way. Umm… same with Flash MX…
I’ll throw it out there, humbly, to see what you think.
Hey montoya,
I agree there needs to be some form of organization. I am open to any suggestions you have on forums to add, delete, merge, etc.? 
Cheers,
Kirupa
Honestly, I think maybe get rid of the forum that is soley for actionscript. Because, I think that people are going to post their questions regarding Flash 5 in the “Flash 5” forum, and their Flash MX problems in the “Flash MX” forum. And if it happens to be an actionscript question, then they will still post their question in the version forum that they are using…
Hmm… how about a FAQ?
I’m sure we can cover a whole lot of ground by doing one of these? You know, from tween to rollovers, preloaders, hittarget, random motion, duplicate movie clips, etc…
I do know that all those tutorials are there… Maybe an index of some sort on the opening page? I don’t know. Kirupa, it is just a suggestion and I’m willing to help.
Perhaps Jubba(who is not) is correct. My feeling is though, that if we’re looking for Actionscript answer on something, then we’d still have to look for answers in several pages in three areas, perhaps two. But hey, no debate here, I’ll help any way I can.
The problem with an FAQ is that few or no people would look there. We have tutorials, and we have the “Best of Kirupa” forum, however people still post questions like “How do I get my button to link to a webpage” or “How can I have one object tell if it collides with another object” Those are all basic tutorials that are on this site, and I’m sure there is something about it in the forums somewhere. However, people don’t realize, and even if there were an FAQ section, I fear that it would all be for naught.
“Let me explain…No, there is too much. Let me sum up” ::
FAQ would basically be like the tutorial section. People are too lazy to check that section, or they do not know to.
There is also a matter of room. IF we were to take out forum, the archives would have to be expanded quite a bit. We are only allowed to keep 20 pages of posts in each forum though… so if we consolodate without a good sense of what we’re doing, we’re going to lose a lot of older posts.
Possibly that’s the answer… expand the archives so that there is a Flash 5.0, Flash Action Script, and Flash MX archive and then sort them as we come across them… certainly you’re opinion is welcome and something that we’ve already been thinking a bit about.
Or shall we do what other sites do…immediately move posts into their respective forums without any prior warning to the poster? I know a lot of mods in other sites help organize the content in such a way, but then again, the forums they use have decent search engines that actually WORK. The ezboard search engine is the lamest engine I have ever seen in my life
Cheers,
Kirupa
yeah… I don’t think that will work well. Maybe if you recreated it use ikon or something… then again, with that, you have no limit on the page count and could keep them all where they lay.
It’s a tough choice… think on it commander, I’ll help out with whatever you deside.
well…if one of the mods wanted to go thru the archives and all of the Actionscript and Flash 5 forums and delete all of the duplicate posts that would clear up a lot of room. I mean if there are 11 posts asking how to tween…why the hell would we want that? That just takes up unecessary room. That would be a task and a half. I don’t want to be a mod (even though this may sound like I do) but if you wanted to give me, or anyone else, temporary moderatorship to go thru and delete all of those duplicates. Just an idea…because I have a lot of free time on my hands…
In that case, we could also delete ‘unuseful’ threads (old ones), couldn’t we ? But then again, we should agree on what is unuseful.
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that is why I had suggested a FAQ, but perhaps I am calling it incorrectly. Sort of a directory of sorts… yet, no matter what you call it, its the same thing… how about a "HOW DO I? " section on the home page (wherever you think it should be…). I know, I know… it’s just like a fact, but I think it would be effective.
How DO I?
..Tween bla bla (answer could link to tutorial or archive post, so and so forth for all others)
..preloaders
..random motion
..Orbital rotation
..droptarget
This type of approach would also help by demystifying all those posts that have “HELP ME!” in the subject field or “Flash question”. Hence, if ended up with a Flash forum, and an Archives forum, and perhaps the Best of… forum. All would be covered. Wouldn’t it?
I, for example, try to print those clever little lines of code that… and I’ve learned so much from this site (thank you!). The printouts dont always work because printable content exceeds printable area, even if I adjust margins. Still, it beats sorting through and trying to remember where thad blasted post on how to create some obscure function went (for more, seek any code by suprabeener! hahhahaah… j/k supra… I admire your skills and dedication to this site.)
Finally (whew), I would like to stress that this is in no way criticism. Instead, it is a simple discussion in hopes of providing others increased functionality.Once more, please tell me how I can help.
Sincerely,
Montoya
Well, your suggestion is why the “Best of Kirupa” forum was created. To provide answers to the most common problems with the best possible answers. Also, that is what the tutorials are for.
“How do you tween?”
“How do I make a preloader?”
But people are either too lazy to try, or they dont’ understand the tutorial and they post something. I understand what you mean, and you make a good point, but they already tried to create something like that…
I am Montoya, I quite agree with you, that’s a good idea. And Jubby, I’ve started cleaning the Flash 5 forum. I took out 40 posts or so, just posts that were left unanswered, or problems that can’t help anybody, or very simple ones.
There.
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