cscgal

Hey there!

I was talking to Kyle (Big_K) yesterday, and he asked me how the PFO community was doing. I said that I honestly don't know because no one has provided me with any feedback, comments, criticisms, or suggestions lately (which I thrive on), so I can only assume that everyone's been content. However, sometimes just being 'content' isn't good enough.

Therefore, I'd like to open up this thread to get as much feedback, both good and bad, as you can possibly throw at me. I also have a poll going which I'd be most appreciative if you could vote on.

Cheers, PFO!

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Ooble

I'm happy. That do, Dani?

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cscgal

No. You didn't vote

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MiKuS

I think that threads that haven't been posted in for a while need to be automatically locked either that or people stop complaining when someone bumps an old thread..

apart from that I'm 100% happy with this community

OpenLoop

We lost some of our best contributors lately (Dawei,...) , so it's a quieter than it was before. However, you're not to blame for that and I think you're doing a good job (y).

EDIT: hey, where did the thumbs up smiley go?!!

lectricpharaoh

I picked the middle one. Though the forums don't seem to be as active as of late, possibly due in part to DaWei's departure, I don't consider you responsible. Rather, it's probably just normal waxing and waning of forum activity, which all forums go through.

My main, and really only, nit since you took over has to be the main page, and the failure of it to update the thread status properly. For example, I go there, and there are five new threads. I open these up in tabs, and refresh the main page, but unless there has been a new post in the interim, those five threads still show up as unread. I've more or less gotten used to it, but being that it worked properly with the old PFO, I'd like to see it fixed. If it matters, I'm currently using Firefox v2.0.0.12 on WinXP, and have not disabled cookies (though as you pointed out before, it's tracked on the PFO side, not client-side). Beyond that, I don't really have any suggestions at the moment.

One question, though- did you really expect people to vote with the two most negative options? Given that you're a mod and can presumably see what people vote for, some might be understandably hesitant.

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Jimbo

I was tempted to vote for the bottom one, but that would just be mean. Picked the second option, but I have no specific complaints

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grimpirate

For myself I don't know if it's because of the influx of new users or perhaps old users have become discouraged from being as involved as before (with the possible exception of Sane who seems to reply to all my threads lol). However, I have noticed an increase in what appear to be the useless posts (of the lounge). People who just ask questions incorrectly (out of the blue). Responses that have nothing to do with the thread, etc. I'm not saying that's something that can be monitored as this is a forum and it's an open venue for people to post what they like (within the forum rules). I will say that perhaps it was the non-affiliation to Daniweb that seemed to keep the site more quaint and low key, keeping only those who had a more genuine interest in being here to stay here. Whenever something gets more popular well then you obviously introduce a greater slew of stuff you don't want. I don't really think the die down is due to DaWei's absence, but I will say he was more active/effective at weeding off riff raff lol. The sad reality Dani is that your popularity directly tirckles down to PFO and thus the old-timey feeling of innocence is lost. That's not something you can do anything about. Myself, my policy on forums is more aggressive moderating. If a reply has nothing to do with the thread or is just a bunch of moaning and groaning, remove it. A useful site should stick to useful replies and useful threads. To me the overall feeling is that PFO is becoming less and less PFO and more becoming some offshoot Daniweb. I mean just look at the tag "A Daniweb sister site." It was never that, it was just PFO. Recently I've honestly just been posting here because of the good people who've helped me out before. More and more though I'm feeling less enthusiastic about posting.

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cscgal

Thank you for all of the feedback so far. I'm going to try to reply to all of the issues that you guys have brought up.

> I think that threads that haven't been posted in for a while need to be automatically locked either that or people stop complaining when someone bumps an old thread..
This can get very annoying very fast. I prefer our current solution of allowing either moderators or the OP to mark threads as solved, and once they are, a notice appears above the Quick Reply encouraging users not to reply. However, something else that I think will be an even better solution is to default to only showing threads that have been updated within the last 30 days in each forum. In order to access older threads, a user must change the selection from the dropdown menu, or perform a search. Users would also be able to override this setting in their control panels if they so desire.

> We lost some of our best contributors lately (Dawei,...) , so it's a quieter than it was before.
I agree, DaWei was a loss and will be missed. However, he did return ever so briefly to say that I have made PFO better, so I'm rather confused by his departure. Perhaps someone who knows him can encourage him to come back?

> Though the forums don't seem to be as active as of late, possibly due in part to DaWei's departure, I don't consider you responsible. Rather, it's probably just normal waxing and waning of forum activity, which all forums go through.
The forums were very active a little over a year ago, but then quickly slowed down and remained very inactive for quite awhile, resulting in Kyle selling the site. PFO has since been slowly but steadily increasing in activity over when it was first acquired, but I agree, it is no where near where it was a year and a half ago. Slow and steady wins the race though, eh?

> My main, and really only, nit since you took over has to be the main page, and the failure of it to update the thread status properly. This is hard for me to debug because I very infrequently pay attention to which threads and forums are marked as new. However, a DaniWeb member had a similar situation with DaniWeb which I believe they've recently resolved. I'm going to ask them if they could take a look at PFO and see if the problem is similar.

> did you really expect people to vote with the two most negative options? Given that you're a mod and can presumably see what people vote for, some might be understandably hesitant.
When it comes to this thread, I look for specific, helpful suggestions (which you guys have provided me, so thanks!) When it comes to the poll, I look at the percentages. I'm not going to sit there and look up who voted what and then hold it against that member for thinking that I can do a better job. If they provide me with really good constructive criticism in the thread which can improve the site, then I'm grateful that they provided me a way to make PFO better.

> I was tempted to vote for the bottom one, but that would just be mean. Picked the second option, but I have no specific complaints If you ever have any constructive criticism or feedback, do please let me know. Things will never improve unless I know what people want to be changed.

> However, I have noticed an increase in what appear to be the useless posts (of the lounge). People who just ask questions incorrectly (out of the blue). Responses that have nothing to do with the thread, etc.
One of the things I've done since taking over PFO has been to apply my SEO skills to the site to get us much better ranked in search engines. However, especially on technical forums, that can unfortunately lead to more bottomfeeders looking for quick solutions as opposed to members who want to truly belong and will spend the time to read over our Rules and Announcements, etc. I'm not so sure what can be done about this ... back when PFO was at its height, it was well ranking as well, so it's not like this is the first time PFO has seen high search engine rankings. SEO is really the only way to not let a forum die, as it's necessary to always have a constant stream of new members coming in. I will investigate solutions and let you guys know if I come up with anything.

> The sad reality Dani is that your popularity directly tirckles down to PFO and thus the old-timey feeling of innocence is lost.
Things that I have done to avoid this have been to keep PFO lightweight and mostly JavaScript-free, consistent with the same features, that all work the same ways, as its always had, as well as advertising-free. However, in exchange for not showing third-party ads, PFO is co-branded with DaniWeb because DaniWeb is fully sponsoring PFO, as it was DaniWeb that bought PFO from Kyle and DaniWeb that hosts PFO on its crazy fast servers.

> If a reply has nothing to do with the thread or is just a bunch of moaning and groaning, remove it. A useful site should stick to useful replies and useful threads.
Anytime anyone comes across threads like these, please use the Report Bad Post feature (the Red warning icon contained in the left container of all posts). This will bring moderator's attention to it right away. While we can't guarantee that we'll always take action, because the mod team sticks to the Rules page, it's the best way to get a mod to take a look at something fishy.

> To me the overall feeling is that PFO is becoming less and less PFO and more becoming some offshoot Daniweb. I really had no idea that you guys felt this way. It's been quite a few months since PFO has been acquired, and no one said anything. I was under the impression that, aside from a DaniWeb-inspired skin, the underlying community has remained very much the same. Do the rest of you guys feel the same way?

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Jimbo

I don't really feel this way. Aside from a couple people from DaniWeb coming by to check out (or revisit) PFO, we're mostly still the same members, same culture. DaniWeb feels a lot different for me, because of the shift in users. Maybe it's somehow related to my choice to not spend as much time in the development side of DW, so I only see the lounge over there...

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