Forum description to avoid overlap

I'm not sure if this has been suggested before. I notice quite a bit of overlap in the topics posted in the General, Reprappers, and Developers forum. Part of the problem is the lack of clear descriptions of what are supposed to go under each forum. It would be easier to decide where to post if this was made clear if the administrators or the community can come to an agreement and include a better description of what people are expected to post under each of these forums.

... you can make suggestions and we can update the forums - but this is a really complex field, so a perfect solution won't be easy.

And for a 'clean' solution someone has to rearrange a gigantic amount of 'displaced' topics and posts too

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Viktor
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Aufruf zum Projekt "Müll-freie Meere" - [reprap.org] -- Deutsche Facebook-Gruppe - [www.facebook.com]

Call for the project "garbage-free seas" - [reprap.org]

I don't think it will help. The description of RepRappers is very clear "People building or using RepRaps" but almost no one reads it. It clearly says it about people but less than 1% of the posts are about people, instead they are technical questions about machines. My solution is to not answer questions when posted in completely the wrong section because the people asking have clearly not spent any time trying to find the correct answer or section.

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FFF Settings Calculator	Gcode post processors	Geometric Object Deposition Tool Blog
Tantillus.org	Mini Printable Lathe	How NOT to install a Pololu driver

Well you can easily interpret the description, "People building or using RepRaps", as a discussion forum for those people instead of about those people.

I would tend to agree, at no point did I ever consider the Reprappers forum as being about people.
Though after it was mentioned here it makes a lot more sense as to why it exists.

Sorry I know the English language is crap but if you understand it you should know that the subject is "people" and "building or using RepRaps" is the action being taken by the subject. Although the sentence is not a complete sentence and to be "proper" it should read "People who are building or using RepRaps" but then we run into the problem of being to wordy and people not reading more than the first two words.

Your arguments are basically saying that you thought the RapRappers sub forum is for people to discuss building or using a RepRap but that is what the entire Forum is for so why would we have one sub section with that title?

If you transpose "building or using RepRaps" to ""hunting animals" you will see the sentence can only be describing the people that are hunting animals.

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FFF Settings Calculator	Gcode post processors	Geometric Object Deposition Tool Blog
Tantillus.org	Mini Printable Lathe	How NOT to install a Pololu driver

The problem with "People building or using RepRaps", is that it omits the "Discussion about" part and that "Discussion about" could just as easily br "Discussion area for".
I agree that the latter is the purpose of the whole forum, which is why I never understood why both that forum and the General forum both existed.

One of the problems with incomplete sentences like this is that you provide your own context, much of that context comes from the content of the forum and once you provide your own context, you almost never read it any other way.

I'd point to your own point that "less than 1% of the posts are about people" as evidence that it's easily and commonly misread/misunderstood, and it seems like an easy fix to change the description. As an aside is there really be enough traffic to justify a forum about people in the reprap community?

We can disagree about the interpretation of the descriptions here, but it doesn't change the fact that many people are confused. It only takes a few additional words to clarify it and there's plenty of room to do it in.

The same problem exists for the "Developer" forum. There's a mail list that you can join. But it's not clear to me how this forum fits in with the mailing list. But based on the description of this forum, it seems that you can post anything in this forum and so people do.

Reprapers..... can mean many things and is ambiguous, many posts are for help with various things, so a heading
of SUPPORT, or HELP may keep requests for assistance in one section rather than spread around.

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Random Precision

... when the forum structure and the specific descriptions were set up 5 years ago, the idea was different from the actual use.

So if you have some valid suggestions, we can update the structures - but it will be a real heavy task (or not possible at all) to do this for the complete forum, so better focus to the main entries only ...

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Viktor
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Aufruf zum Projekt "Müll-freie Meere" - [reprap.org] -- Deutsche Facebook-Gruppe - [www.facebook.com]

Call for the project "garbage-free seas" - [reprap.org]