big_k105

Hello everyone,

I am happy to tell you that from today forward Programming Forums has a new owner. I personally feel that this person will be able to take really good care of pfo and be able to bring it to the heights that I have always imagined. I know that some of you probably already know her, and for those of you don't I am happy to introduce the new owner/admin - Dani of daniweb.com. Her username on the forum is cscgal.

I have always said that when I finished school I would have more time to devote to improving things around Programming Forums, but that time has come and I still do not have the time to improve everything. Things have been getting to a point that either I could pass Programming Forums on to someone who could bring Programming Forums into the future, or let it slowly die. I really don't want to see that happen, and I am sure that everyone here feels the same way.

I still plan on being an active member of the community. I will no longer be the owner, but I will be an admin helping with the community aspect of the site. I wanted everyone to know that I will still be around on a daily basis helping people out.

As for any changes that will be happening to Programming Forums over the coming weeks/months, Dani and I will be completely open to discussing any of your thoughts and ideas. We will also be willing to answer any questions you may have about the changes that you think the site could use to help grow the community.

I would like to thank everyone for their support of Programming Forums. I hope to see everyone around the community on a daily basis, and to see a warm welcome of the new ownership.

Thanks,
Kyle

__________________
BIG K aka Kyle
Programming Forums
Kyle K Online

Please do not PM or email me programming questions. Post them in the forums instead.

ReggaetonKing

Wow Big K! This is big news! I wish for the best.

@cscgal: Welcome and Congrats!

__________________
I would love to change the world, but they won't give me the source code!

mrynit

Thank you for all your hard work and dedication to keeping this a clean, useable, well organized, helpful forum.

I don't want to see the forum be inundated with intrusive advertising, like the pop-up bubbles when hovering over highlighted words, or be redesigned with "web 2.0" AJAX overkill.

Good luck with your future ventures

__________________
i dont know much about programming but i try to help

cscgal

Hi,

Thank you for the warm welcome. I will start off by answering some questions as far as what will change and what won't change.

There will be no graphical banner advertising on PFO. As of right now, the design mockup includes one Google AdSense ad per page.
There will be no excessive JavaScript or AJAX on PFO.
There will be no IntelliTXT text advertising on PFO. (The green double underlines which show an ad when you hover over them.)

Now for what will change ...

PFO will be given a design overhaul with the general look and feel of DaniWeb. However, it will be much closer to that of a standard, vanilla vBulletin forum than DaniWeb is.

PFO will be adopting the community rules that DaniWeb currently uses. Additionally, the staff hierarchy will be reorganized with new moderators brought on. With all hope, the new mods will be pulled from within the pool of current PFO members.

Some of DaniWeb's custom forum features, such as the ability to mark threads as solved, will most likely be implemented.

- - - - -

Overall, PFO will be migrated into being an uncommercialized, stripped down version of DaniWeb's software development forums. My idea is to give users a choice ...

If you want vanilla message boards aimed at the hardcore programmer that are very quick loading and have limited advertising, there will be PFO.

If you want a richer, more full-featured experience that covers everything related to the IT world with forums, blogs, IT news, a code snippet library, tutorials, resources, social networking, and live chat, and are willing to see some advertising in exchange, there is DaniWeb. However, I want to add that IntelliTXT ads can be disabled by all registered members, and a donation of a few dollars a month on DaniWeb allows you to remove the banner advertising as well.

Narue

I'll admit that this makes me a little apprehensive. I'm a member of Daniweb as well, so this choice you talk about is irrelevant to me. My current settings and browsing practices already give me the "stripped down" version of Daniweb. Also, I don't care about the speed or features as long as it's fast enough and I can ignore what I don't use. I visit forums because of the people, not the forum software.

Here's what bothers me:
PFO is a different beast altogether. I don't feel that Daniweb's rule set is entirely appropriate for a forum that focuses on programming. At the very least, an overhaul of the current Daniweb rules should be looked at, in addition to new programming forum specific rules (ones that got tanked on Daniweb because programming is just one category and not the whole forum). I've made it no secret that I think Daniweb's rules are lacking when it comes to the software development forums, and I don't want to see that happen here.

You said it yourself. One of the draws of PFO is that it's more hardcore. The rules should reflect that if we want to maintain a high level of quality.
What's wrong with the current staff? I hope you're not planning on a Daniweb-style laundry list of restricted moderators that can only cover one tiny area. I think that there should be two categories: admins and super mods. This gives the moderators enough power to really do their job (how many times have I had to report a post on Daniweb because it needed to be moved outside of the forums I moderate?), and it removes a lot of confusion about who can do what and when it can be done. I'm of the opinion that absolute power used judiciously by trusted people is much better than any hierarchy you can come up with.

The whole staff hierarchy thing smacks of distrust, and trust is the very thing you need if you want people to moderate your forums.

__________________
Even if the voices aren't real, they have some pretty good ideas.

Jessehk

First, big_k: Thanks for all your work on PFO! This is the place that allowed me to pursue my programming interest/hobby over the past 2 (?) years and I contribute that to the great people and administration.

Second: I do like daniweb (I've posted there a few times), but I do agree with Narue when I say I'm apprehensive. Good look anyways, and I'll definitely stick around to see what happens.

__________________
Dr. Zoidberg: [ecstatic] I'm going to a movie... with FRIENDS!

cscgal

Hi Narue,

When I had said that we're going to bring on DaniWeb's rules, I was thinking more along the lines of the user infraction system and the style and organization of the rules, such as the way they're divided into Keep It Clean, Keep It Organized, etc ....

Big_K has told me that he had wanted to implement the user infraction system here in a similar way to the way it's set up on DaniWeb, but didn't know exactly how to go about doing that. So I'm going to work with him to set up what he had been wanting to do anyways.

An overhaul of the actual rules will definitely happen during their migration from DaniWeb to PFO. A lot of the DaniWeb rules will be tailored towards the fact that this is an entire programming community. A lot of DaniWeb's spam rules won't be applicable since those rules are targeted towards our Internet marketing categories, for example. I will also take suggestions regarding programming-specific rules.

Regarding an overhaul of PFO's staff ... I had asked Big_K if he could tell me a little bit about the mod team here at PFO, and his response was that they were largely nonexistant right now. After a more in depth conversation, the overall impression I got is that most of the mod team visits very sparsely and that new people definitely need to be brought on. Therefore, I'm going to work with him in doing this by recruiting members from within this community.

The goal of DaniWeb is to unite everything under one roof related to the IT world ... in essence, I am trying to create 5 subsites each with its own subculture. For the most part, a user is an expert in only one (or maybe two) of DaniWeb's categories ... Not very many people are expert C++ programmers as well as being guru Internet marketers. For that reason, I felt that the best way to grow and manage each of the mini-communities was by having leaders who were passionate about the topics covered in the corner of DaniWeb that they are mod for.

Because all of PFO revolves around the world of programming, I would assume that moderators I bring on will be able to have a general idea of what's going on in most, if not all, of the forums. Someone can know C++ and not Java and still very effectively be able to lead the Java forum from a moderation standpoint, even if they can't answer most of the actual questions. (In contrast, one of DaniWeb's software development moderators cannot completely and effectively moderate, guide, and mold the Internet marketing community. It's not necessarily a matter of not knowing the answers to the questions as much as it is the fact that there are very different subcultures involved and different mentalities among members of each of the mini-communities across DaniWeb. That isn't an issue on PFO - everyone is much more on the same page here than across DaniWeb.)

In any case, that's why even on DaniWeb I don't have separate mods for the C++ and the Java forums, for example. The mods reign over entire categories, such as all of Software Development or all of Site Management.

Now that I've successfully gone off on a tangent, since everything on PFO effectively falls within the realm of programming, the current plan is for all moderators to oversee all forums. However, at this time, I do plan on bringing in DaniWeb's hierarchy system of checks and balances among moderators, super moderators, and admins. How this will exactly be set up or played out is yet to be determined.

However, what I am passionate about is that there is a Rules page that is set up in such a way that all members and all moderators are always on the same page regarding what is and what isn't acceptable, and that moderators don't use a lot of their own personal feelings when moderating but instead are all adhering to the same guidelines and enforcing them in the same way.

With all that said, PFO will not be run in the same way that DaniWeb is. It is a very different community with a very different personality, and that will be taken into consideration with everything that happens.

cscgal

I just want to add that Kyle (Big_K) will not be going anywhere. He will be staying on as PFO's admin and will help guide the entire migration process. He has already been very instrumental in the mockup of the new DaniWeb-inspired style. Moving forward, things will be very much a joint effort with regards to what is being changed. For those of you who are very familiar with DaniWeb, his role will be very similar to that of happygeek on DaniWeb.

Unfortunately, he has indicated that once things settle down, he's not sure if he will continue to have the time to dedicate to remain in such a prominent admin position (preferring to settle down as a mod), but only time will tell.

big_k105

Like Dani (cscgal) has stated, I don't plan on going anywhere ever. I personally plan on staying around pfo to help people out, as I do love this community. I will be helping dani by giving my feedback and giving dani my vision of what I have always see for PFO and what I believe works really well when it comes to the community aspect of everything. We are both completely open to any ideas that anyone has on what shouldn't change and what should or could be changed.

__________________
BIG K aka Kyle
Programming Forums
Kyle K Online

Please do not PM or email me programming questions. Post them in the forums instead.

Jimbo

I also spend way too much time on Daniweb (though I go by Infarction over there), so this doesn't directly affect me at all. What I'm worried about is that the culture of PFO might change and we might lose some of our more knowledgeable yet rough-at-the-edges users (I'm thinking fairly specifically of DaWei, who admittedly is one of the reasons I keep coming back). Also, I would certainly rather that the off-topic areas of PFO don't end up like the Geek Lounge of Daniweb...

Just my $.02, and I'm not sure how to expound on them well...

__________________
<insert disclaimer here>
<insert shameless plug for Visual Studio here>