RepRap forum organization

A suggestion that maybe the forum could be organized around activity... This is far from perfect, but a general example of forum topics:

Darwin 1.0
Arduino McWire (next gen development)
Experimental Materials Research
Experimental Movement Research
Extruding Objects (RepRap output)
Project People, Administration, Promotion


Goal
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I assert that as more and more people try to assemble an actual RepRap, it is a bit hard to figure out what is 'adopted for the project' (intention of fully documented) vs. feedback from various ongoing collaborative research and development.

Stephen Gutknecht

those are some good suggestions. i think that creating forums for each of the major designs (Darwin and McWire) would be a good idea, as well as a materials and printing forum. its important that we dont let the forums bloat up... otherwise they become less useful.

let me mull over these for day and see if they still make sense. (thats how i handle getting tattoos, except with a longer timeframe... i only have 1 tattoo and i still love it after 4 years.)

RoundSparrow:
I damn agree! Call me obsessive compulsive, but a little order in these forums would do a lot of good and your scheme seems to make a lot of sense.

Zach:
Tattoos, really?? What is your tattoo about? I design tattoos for the love of art, that's why the interest. For now, I have only made some that were tattooed on others, girlfriends mostly. I have one for me all thought up: a Prometheus bringing down fire to mankind....

[www.flickr.com]

Can we hierarchify (is that a word?) the forums?
Thus: Level One Hardware, Software, General/Theoretical
Level two under Hardware: printheads, movement stage, circuits and wiring, etc
Level three under printheads: thermoplastic, syringe/pump/paste, subtractive/milling, sintering/fusing, etc
and so on.

The current divisions of People, electronics mechanics, and software are also valid.

Where is the RepRap logo going??

Bruce

Zach, there has to be a tat shop in Williamsburg

i've thought about it... and here is my response: i'll get the reprap logo tattoo'ed the day someone creates a tattoo gun head for the reprap machine.

get crackin, guys!

Wow you realy trust us...... Humm

Bruce

anything to motivate the community... =)

I'd hold out for a tatto gun head made on a reprap machine, myself, and I'm not getting a tattoo.

I agree on the forum idea while we all hate structure as projects grow you have to get structure or you will get chaos, and with the complexities this project will definitely get into, chaos would really slow development.

Then Zach may never get another Tattoo! (how big will it be?)

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Ian
[www.bitsfrombytes.com]

Zach,

Go for the full-back tattoo! don't whimp out on us!!!

Demented

*gulp*

seriously though... if we achieve our goals, i'm willing to do it. if nothing else it would be a great publicity stunt.

Zach, if you're into body modification, it would be dead easy to rig up a soldering iron or drag knife. :p

I'll do some forum re-arranging tomorrow, btw.

Hi Sebastian,

If you move things significantly could you leave the old stuff (down to say the message list level) in place as hyperlinks to the new locations for a few weeks?

Thanks

Ahh a Tattoo Repstrap could be less see......

Placement head can be a Sewing machine with the bobbin base removed hung from an 2,000 lb. chain hoist. (Don't want it to fall down). XYZ base is Motorcycle lift on casters moved by 9 LARGE Norwegians on voice command ( need one extra to pump the lift for Z movement and 2 per side for precision movement control, voice controls is a megaphone because of all Zachs screaming). Also requires about 50 straps on lift so that Zach can not move around and ruin the tattoo. Also please ignore all the screaming we are adjusting the penetration depth.

Just trying to further the REPRAP world down the road.

Bob Teeter

I've made some changes, what do you guys think?

BDolge, if people starting fussing, and wanting messages filed in their new homes I'll move them promptly. Otherwise, in a few weeks. No promises, sorry.

Sebastien,

I'm good, I just didn't want existing threads to jump about without notice. I like the new format, one suggestion; how about a forum for general or universal issues with printheads such as how to talk to the software and tool changer tech?

Also are you planning to breakout the software and electronics forums?

Thanks for all your work,
Brian D

Sebastien,

Very nice. I like the new arrangement but I would like some sub-catagories so that things come closer to fitting on a single page. I think it's time to put the RUGs on a sub list.

Demented

BDolge: Also are you planning to breakout the software and electronics forums?

Think so. I'll probably do it thusly:

*Software:
**RepRap driver software.
**3D Design tools, Art of Illusion, Blender, CAD tools, etc. (note: this probably belongs over in the object libraries folder.)
**Software off-topic. Perl vs. Python, Eclipse sucks goats, why does anyone still use vi when emacs is clearly superior?, etc.

*Electronics:
**Microcontrollers - firmaware, microcontroller programmers, talking to, etc.
**The Rest of the electronics. - motor and head driver circuitry, Eagle issues, soldering tips, etc.
**Electronics off-topic - talking to lasers, interfacing RepRap controllers with random motor controllers, neat Arduino tricks, theramins, etc.

Note that these aren't perfect divisions, there have many topics that could belong in more than one subforum, but that seems to be inescapable.

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Demented Chihuahua, agreed and agreed, the forum front page is getting busy. I'll do what the forum software lets me, although we may trigger a minor bug or two.

Umm I think it's all fine.

The actual forum/s themselves may be more symptomatic than causal. (Said in best Frank n Furter style)

The situation you have is that there is an awful lot of contribution going off. Whether you spread it all out thin and wide for folk to get to grips with or whether you stack it up tall and thin the situation remains the same.

This is'nt a problem it's the sign of a very succesful project that you aquire so much and have and get so many contributers.

As a recent newbie I struggled to get to grips with whether the input I had to give was:-

1. Going over debates that had already been done to death.
2. Getting an accurate feel for the state of play. ie where exactly is the project at the moment.
3. Who was who in a universe of who do I approach to offer help to that is going on so as to take it further forward.

There is an awful lot of useful contribution in the forums that isn't IMHO in the Wiki.

As the Wiki is the first point of call for folk newly encountering the project I think there's more that needs doing there, more so than here. (Although here is very much a rich feedstock)

Information in a forum has an inherently high noise to signal ratio and short shelf life.

Information in reasonably structured documentation however must have an inherently high signal to noise ratio and long shelf life.

The two are directly complimentary and entirely unsuitable for each others area of capability.

As an anarcho syndicalist I like a certain level of disarray it feels good (thats the anarcho bit) to syndicate we need to firm up some of the organization without in any way disrupting the anarchy.

My thoughts for what they are worth.

Cheers

aka47

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/09/2007 03:28PM by Andy Kirby.

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Necessity hopefully becomes the absentee parent of successfully invented children.

Sebastien,

Aw, you are a are a vi hatting emacs lover too! Now, if you would just express a clear affinity for Python over Perl and Java I think you could be "In the club."

Demented

Demented Sir

You are sick

Vi is the best ever, along with make, grep, awk and sed.

man is your friend.....

perl and indeed php are the muts nuts but absolutely nowhere as good as C and Assembler.

sick sick sick

java..... sick

Write once run for ever.

Grin

aka47

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Necessity hopefully becomes the absentee parent of successfully invented children.

Andy,

A wise man once told me that vi sucked...I think it was me! Make and man I agree with. The rest I have no preference on.

Down with Java and Perl.
Say no to PHP.
And C?...Times have changed I think.

But opinion is as opinion does. It isn't worth much and few people generally want mine!

Demented

Hehehehe

No C = No Linux and a shortage of reprap firmware.

Viva la C.

Still very much current and doing the job it's good at.

Cheers

aka47

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Necessity hopefully becomes the absentee parent of successfully invented children.

Write once, and run forever? You better hope you're still alive when year 10000 rolls around. Heck, I figure a lot of calendar dependent apps will fail in the year 2100. Sometime between February 28 and March 2, I think.

Edit. I originally wrote 2400. They should work fine in 2400.

Edit 2, spelling error.

Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 12/11/2007 02:06AM by Sean Roach.

Sean

My apologies for being a little opaque.

By run forever I meant it takes too long to execute anything, being semi interpreted the processor has more to do and therefore works harder than if code were fully compiled.

I remember star office (Write once, run anywhere, run forever) being a bit of a dog and not very snappy.....

aka47

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Necessity hopefully becomes the absentee parent of successfully invented children.

Andy,

Sounds like a "hardware" problem if it runs forever. I say just upgrade. No need to be cheap and slow. Be _fairly_ cheap and run scripted languages!

Also, why do things the hard way--read assembly--if you don't have to. Place assembly in-line if you need things to run faster or just write a given module in assembly. Don't do all your front-end work in such a hideous mess.

Demented

... with some evolution in compilers and hardware-capability the developing of software should change to a self-optimizing path with self-evolving algorhytmics ...

Maybe some of you remeber the 'Meme-volution', where a japanese professor tried to use an open-source-approach and the time/interest-span of users to evolve sniplets of code like genetic information to evolve software over time and eliminate unused code over time.

So a simple painting program should with time and (user-) effort evolve to a capable CAD-system or even further ...

As not enough users come together, the idea died - but it's a good point, to make software every more efficient by updating, so why not with a 'genetic-style-evolution'-approach?

Viktor