What is it that you want from us?

If you’re a reader of the Community Crier, some of this might look a little familiar, but cutting and pasting saved me 5 minutes of typing, which is invaluable right now because there is so much going on over here that I’m flat out.

In those immortal words of Bob Dylan, The times they are a-changin’. They perhaps apply more here in the SitePoint community than ever before. February saw the departure of a couple of special people over at the forums, and March dawned with the introduction of … me.

After approximately 9 years (it’s too long for anyone to actually remember) we said farewell to Sarah as Administrator. At the same time, Raena left her role as Community Manager. Those ladies are leaving rather a big hole to fill and I’m hoping I haven’t bitten off more than I can chew!

While we’re on the subject of change, the first task I’m going to attempt in my new role is a change of ‘energy’ here. The staff here have spent the last year or so working their butts off to get the spammers and ‘fluff’ posters under control and now it’s time to start channeling our energy into making this place somewhere a bit more stimulating! We have a few activities on the go behind the scenes and it won’t be long until you guys start reaping the benefits.

I’d really like to hear what it is that you’d like out of these forums. If you’ve been gone for a while, what can we do to entice you back? If you’re relatively new, what is it that you do or don’t like about this place? If you’re an old faithful - thanks, we love you guys and it’s always good to hear from you.

Sarah,

We’ve welcomed you back in the staff boards but this is a good, general announcement.

Yes, Sarah (HAWK) has hit the ground running and that promises to make the SitePoint forum even greater than ever. The staff is ready to go to support her initiatives and you members will all benefit.

Regards,

DK

One of the things I will give sitepoint credit for is their approach to criticism.

I have on 2 occasions not liked 2 of their books and I have really given them some stick over it when on the forums and to my surprise all my feedback, however harsh has always been displayed. I have to commend sitepoint on that.

I stopped using sitepoint forums because I got fed up of the one word (or one line) responses I started getting from users. It became clear that many of these people were putting their feedback on here just to get their signature on the site(and in turn get a link back to their site). It also became apparent to me that the forums were not being moderated efficiently as some of the posts are clearly pointless and some users really need penalising/removing.

I did post something recently on the forum and I got the same thing back again so I stopped using them again and started using webdesignersforum instead. With them its clear that that forum is monitored more closely and time wasters are quickly removed.

Hope that helps, oh and welcome back.

I think that a contest, not just because of any price but the challenge above all, could spice things up and increase participation from members that have been away for some reason.

At least it’s one of my ideas :slight_smile:

According to Mythbusters, this implies Sarah has hit the ground stumbling uncontrollably. Hopefully she can look beyond that and get the essence of what you said…

On a more serious note, one thing I’ve noticed with Sitepoint is that it’s home to a lot of noobs which stimulates unintelligent discussions. Sure, everyone has to start somewhere and I don’t mind helping these people who are still in the midst of understanding core concepts, but it would be good if somehow sitepoint could promote higher quality discussions. The “Application Design” sub-forum of PHP is a good example of higher quality discussion. That’s all really I’d like to see changed at sitepoint. A complete design refresh would also be welcome, the current design is like so Web 1.0.

Technically my absence is only due to being very busy and when I do need help I usualy turn to the modern day oracle Google first and end up wherever the answer is. So I guess more answers to my questions atop the Google results will get me to the forum more often.

Although I can add that I usually don’t post questions in forums, in general, because of experiences in the past where I either never receive an answer, get a rude what are you stupid response or my question is time sensitive and I can’t wait a day for the first reply. But that’s true of all forums and Google is usually immediate satisfaction as long as you ask the right question…but I do post as a last resort.

I do like to help out and answer posts myself from time to time too…but never have time lately.

Other then the forum I follow sitepoint tweets and love the articles and blogs on sitepoint. I bought the web design business kit and it was awesome…saving up for the web marketing kit next.

Welcome back to the boards Sarah. I eagerly anticipate this “change of energy” you promise.

C

I’ve been out for a long time, because of my job.
I usually use forums to resolve some doubts about things I’ve been doing.

Thank for you help.

well,… I need this forum more active on respon for thread or post,… my suggest to make it that your should create adsense revenue sharing,… :smiley:

Just create a section to answer and vote on answers on questions like StackOverflow does, sorted!

Whoa…I really hope the post above mine is a spam-bot…

I only came to the forums late last year at the invite of Raena, and simply don’t have the time I’d like to dedicate to spending more time here.
I’m excited to see what you’ve got planned with this place Hawk :slight_smile:

This forum is very helpful for newbies. I learned a lot of useful information in this forum. I just want to say thank you to the admin.

Hello Sarah and everyone,

Thanks for the email Sarah. I will be coming back for a whole lot of information all the time.

My main thing is learning how to actually create a website then also include a back end onto it so clients can manage certain parts of the website i specify. (CMS) not using drupal joomla or anything.

But yeah im always on the look out for that information would be good if sitepoint offers this information in a book as i have bought SIMPLY SQL and Build your own database driven website using PHP and MYSQL. and a lot of other books but them two regarding databases

Thanks

Justin

just busy, doing scrum on a project that doesn’t really get folllowed. having a boss as the project owner doesnt make it easy at all.

i have to agree with chris_ward and his idea. the trouble with forums is that you need to read every post to determine which was the best answer to the problem. if you could do something like that of stack overflow, then that will be very helpful.

and, how about adding a new subsection under javascript “jQuery, mootootle etc”.

It’s not the reason of my absence but that annoys me too. I have seen many times that a users reply is just one line (or rather 4/5 words) but their signature is about 4/5 lines with 2/3 colors …

I will like to see some new rules regarding that.

I have been a silent reader for all those years but I will try to be around more often.

Hi,

I tend to use Google for questions, its faster, and you get more results/responses.

I find forums a bit clique’y and it takes you a lot of effort to build up a “rep”,
but most of the time people just want answers.

Also, personally speaking, I dont like the ego massaging badges that some users have, surely post count would seve as a good indicator of their involvement.

Sorry guys and girls I havent been around much this has mailnly been due to being really busy with rebuilding our mainsite that goes live in two week, buying another site and comming to terms with the recent Google update which impacted on us more than most sites, due to the fact we had lots of high quality links from high PR sites but in real terms a shortage of links. Things seem to be

Anyway be around a bit more at the end of the month when our new site goes live.

In answer to the main question more analysis and threads about Google updates and what there doing would be good

This would be a great feature to have! Especially when a new member answer conflicts with a more experienced forum member post as I feel it can be a little hard to get your voice heard if you haven’t been posting here for a long time.

I’ve been reading these forums for a good year or so and have recently began posting. Its great for keeping up with the latest standards and tech and is pretty much my goto site if I have a few spare minutes at work :slight_smile:

When I come here I have the /forums/ bookmarked, the first thing I notice are the Featured Posts. Usually I don’t have anything to say but I’m curious about what’s being said, so If there is anything interesting featured that’s what I look for. I think you should try to feature more than 1 a day if possible, or if anything interesting was said.

I don’t come on as much as I used to because I am working a lot more, I think that’s the story with a lot of people. I like the forums a lot still and I think the staff here is better than any other forum I had in the past.

Actually I don’t read the Articles here much, It would be nice if you Featured a Post about an Article on SP, or just a Post about Industry news. I know a few articles are very feature rich so they are worthwhile to read I just never scope that page much since Im fixed to the forums and a perma-bookmark.

Thanks for inviting me back. Being an amateur I found sometimes it is not easy to have an opinion on my changes as I should do special reviews and so on. Perhaps you can ease that requirement? Anyway thanks so much for being there as a wonderful source of info.

Warmly.

Michael.