Linear Motion Precision

To me these forums are so split apart and things get moved so often it drives me crazy already. Why is it so important for a project that seems driven not to have official leadership to be so obsessed with staying on topic?

My preference would just be a single list with all the post going back and forth in a singular forum, to me there isn't enough volume as is to warrant the dozens of subforums. Just my take.

aka47, sorry I didn't get around to responding.

We're about to install this:
[www.phorum.org]
which will enable mailing lists.

This will enable much more user contribution, but at the same time
make it harder to keep threads on topic. I think it's a net gain, and
worth the extra work to enable it. 10x more noise, 100x more signal,
to make up numbers.

Also, I've learned that I really hate policing other people's actions,
and I'm not really keen on empowering other people to do so.
"Argument Kills Uploads", and all that.

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Things get moved so often it drives me crazy already.

It seems tidier to me this way, and I'm careful to make sure that
there is a note where the thread ended up.

For example, someone just added posted to this thread,
[dev.forums.reprap.org]
and once I noticed it, I moved it into Shape Deposition Manufacturing
Working Group where it belonged.

there isn't enough volume as is to warrant the dozens of subforums

There's enough that good things get buried fast. If it was one forum,
we'd have a huge number of people trying to police each other's
contributions: "Why are you fucking around with extruded aluminum? We
can't reprap that.","Excuse me Julie, your contribution regarding
Mechanical Computing is fascinating, but we're busy designing
fabrication machines, so please restrict that to your blog/flag that
'OFF TOPIC'/etc.", or "EMC2 is not the official RepRap control
software, so go away".

And that is not the type of community we are building here.
Ditto the wiki. e.g. [objects.reprap.org]

I've created dozens of forums in able to create tolerant spaces for
folk to contribute and chat, and also make stuff with RepRap.

If this was a tight commercial team, we'd have one chatter-free
mailing list, and everyone would know that they were allowed to use
the wiki.

We're actually supporing a huge range of small research groups and
individuals working on just about anything, including RepRap
related-stuff like extruded aluminum RepStraps, Clay deposition, gear
cutting, etc.

Plus, mechanical computing or Robo-One will drive RepRap development
via idea and parts-file cross-talk. And it's fun.

(I wish we had no forum/mailing list. Then everyone would use the wiki for
comms, and start creating new wiki pages and uploading files there
rather than here.)

But all those seed forums I've created should come in handy once
mailing lists kick in.

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If I have one request, it's that we not mix the political with the
technical, or vice versa. It leads to zero progress on either front.

I guess what seems to happen a lot is that interesting threads get moved out of general and then die almost immediately... Maybe that will work better when people can just merge their mailing list boxes.

I guess what seems to happen a lot is that interesting threads get moved out of general and then die almost immediately... Maybe that will work better when people can just merge their mailing list boxes.

I hadn't considered that. But if it was all in the general forum, good threads would instead get buried 40 threads down in the general forum, so we're in a resource allocation issue either way, the resources being user eyeballs and how far up the page threads are.

Email will help in a bunch of ways. I'd list them, but I should go work on stuff rather than talking about working on stuff.

Bye for now.
-Sebastien

have you noticed that forums don't get the 'new' marker unless you've visited it at least once? there seems to be no way to edit these subscriptions in the control panel. maybe that's why moved threads die?

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Wooden Mendel
Teacup Firmware

Well, email will fix that too. Plus, once email is on, I'll stop shuffling threads around. Because I won't be able to.

Instead, I'll let the community sort out what gets posted where. But no cute-cat videos in the main development threads.

Why do we need email?

Since the forums went from about half a dozen to lots I stopped reading them in the forum and just follow the RSS feed in Google reader. That flattens everything into one time ordered stream where I can read each post simply by clicking on it. Anything else is more clicks and as the volume of posts increases becomes impractical.

I don't think it is far from the point where I will stop using this forum because the volume is becoming too great and the points raised too repetitive.

The discussions move to people's blogs where you only need to subscribe to people who's views and work you are interested in. In the forums there are far to many "why don't you do x" whereas on blogs it is "I did x and the result was y".

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[www.hydraraptor.blogspot.com]

Having taken a break from reading the forum in March I have been trying to catch up over the last two weeks Nophead is right it is becomming quite repetative in places.

Fortunatly I am now only 1400 post behind now in General discussions. Im caught up in all the other sections.. Im not using RSS feeds.. Yet so it takes a while to catch up..

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Bodge It [reprap.org]
=======================================

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BIQ Sanguinololu SD LCD board	BIQ Stepcon	BIQ Opto Endstop
BIQ Heater Block PCB	BIQ Extruder Peek clamp replacement	BIQ Huxley Seedling
BIQ Sanguinololu mounting	BIQ standalone Sanguinololu or Ramps mounting	Print It Stick It Cut it

My rep strap: [repstrapbertha.blogspot.com]

Buy the bits from B&Q pipestrap [diyrepstrap.blogspot.com]
How to Build a Darwin without any Rep Rap Parts [repstrapdarwin.blogspot.com]
Web Site [www.takeaway3dtech.com]

There is gmane.org, a cool gateway between the web (or nntp clients) and mailing lists. It is very comfortable and has a chronologically sorted blog-like interface as well as a thread-like interface. I use it frequently when I want to peek in some mailing list archive.

I don't know if it's applicable here.

I the degree of repetition is something that most groups get.

If you have been around any particular group a while (and we have) then as new folk come in and ask the questions that have already been asked, they will of course get replies that have already been given, and attempt to have arguments over viewpoints that have already been done to death.

I see it as being very much a function of the learning process. It can be incredibly tedious though getting dragged back in to the same old arguments (this processor versus that, servo versus stepper etc etc etc)

I guess this is why many groups put together FAQ's and as a matter of good protocol ask folk to read them first. Following that, persistent question askers can be referred to the FAQ, Unless of course they have something new, novel and extra to contribute. (new contribution is always welcome, of course)

Perhaps there is an argument for education (bringing newer folk up to speed with the same-old, same-old) versus innovation folk who are already up to speed and want to focus their limited resources on doing or progressing the state of the art.

I think comparing and contrasting Education versus Innovation. Educators generally rely on a body of written understanding that says what the status quo is. Innovators are busy trying to understand things and are not always gifted documenters of the status quo (Which would be an unwelcome diversion).

Not sure I have any ready and useful answers here other than an FAQ, which will be contentious to produce given so many widely differing viewpoints.


Thoughts

Cheers

Andy Kirby (aka47)

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Necessity hopefully becomes the absentee parent of successfully invented children.