Tabbed interface for other forums

[002]

Hello Deskthoritarians,

As you may have noticed, webwit has been busy updating the Marketplace forum to use a new tabbed interface which has been received pretty well judging from the replies I see there.

It has since been suggested that we adopt this interface for the other forums to make it more consistent. Originally I thought about putting this to a vote first with a simple "Yes" or "No" to adopting the tabbed interface but I think it's pretty obvious that we should go for it at the very least to trial it and see how it goes. This is your chance to have your say on whether or not you think this is a good idea (and why), or whether I've jumped the gun and that it should go to a vote. I am happy either way.

So to kick it off, we're obviously going to need sub-sections for some areas that don't actually have them yet, and we've come up with a list to at least kick off the discussion. Please do offer your suggestions and comments. Items with square brackets are proposed labels for the tabbed interface. Items in green are to indicate that the tabbed interface is already in place (and thus a good place for you to go check it out). Everything else is potential and this is where we want your feedback. Keep in mind that we can go deeper than one row of tabs (e.g. Marketplace > Member to member > ...) so if you feel that it's appropriate to divide sections up further, please do suggest it. I'd ask you to think about this carefully though as we really do want to avoid having tabs that lead to slow-moving or empty areas.

Some other points:
- If you don't like the tabbed interface, that's fine, you can still use the 'All' tab which will exist in all tabbed interfaces and give you a more traditional view.
- I suppose there is potential for this to explode with a million suggestions which is great. If there is a particular hot point of discussion such as how to label the German tabs, we can take it to another topic or poll.

Input device discussions
Keyboards
- [Keyboards] [Keycaps] [Switches] [Help] [Other]
Mice & other input devices
- [Mice] [Trackballs] [Other]
News and reviews
- [Product news] [Reviews] [Contests] [Other news & events]

Knowledge base & media
Deskthority wiki
Deskthority wiki talk
Photos & videos
- [Photos] [Videos] [Photos & videos]
Workshop
- [Keyboard construction] [Mods] [How To] [Help]

Marketplace & other
Marketplace
- [Member to member]
-- [For sale] [Wanted] [Trade] [!For sale] [!Wanted] [!Trade] [Other]
- [Group buys]
-- [IC] [Taking Orders] [Collecting Money] [Production] [Sorting] [Shipping] [Shipped]
- [External]
-- [ebay.com] [ebay.de] [ebay.co.uk] [ebay.it] [marktplaats.nl] [Taobao] [Other]
- [Vendors]
- [Try before you buy]
- [Help]
Other languages
- [En français]
-- [Achats groupés] [Le souk] [Bidouilles] [Trouvailles] [Other]
- [German discussions]
- [Other]
Off-topic
Archive

Deskthority club
About deskthority
- [Deskthority talk]
- [Club & forum team]
- [Support team]
-- [Secretary]
-- [Software]
--- [Software talk] [Task ticket] [Defect ticket] [Enhancement ticket] [!Task ticket] [!Defect ticket] [!Enhancement ticket]
-- [Hosting & system admin]
-- [Finances]
-- [Chairman]
- [Help and contact]
Club member talk
- [Club talk]
- [Club votes]

[Muirium]

Nice setup. One important pointer would be for newbs who have questions about what keyboard to buy. I arrived here asking that myself, and every week or so someone does. How about a section?

If The Oracle is not to be slighted, we need some pointer for new folk to go to him. I was oblivious to his thread's existence for my first several weeks here.

[webwit]

[Help] tab under Keyboards?

[002]

[Help] or maybe something like [Buying] or [Introduction]?

Edit: Help probably better because it could cover more stuff actually.

[Muirium]

Yes, I favor Keyboards>Help too. Less intimidating than introductions, and clearly on topic.

[7bit]

[Help] or maybe something like [Buying] or [Introduction]?

Edit: Help probably better because it could cover more stuff actually.

[Help] under keyboards is best. Most people today post their questions there anyway.

[7bit]

Input device discussions
Keyboards
- [Keyboards] [Keycaps] [Switches] [Help] [Other]
Mice & other input devices
- [Mice] [Trackballs] [Other]
News and reviews
- [Product news] [Reviews] [Contests] [Other news & events]

Knowledge base & media
Deskthority wiki
Deskthority wiki talk
Photos & videos
- [Photos] [Videos] [Photos & videos]
Workshop
- [Construction] [Mods] [How To] [Help] <----------------------- [Construction]

Marketplace & other
Marketplace
- [Member to member]
-- [For sale] [Wanted] [Trade] [!For sale] [!Wanted] [!Trade] [Other]
- [Group buy] <----------------- [Group buy]
-- [IC] [Taking Orders] [Collecting money] [Production] [Sorting] [Shipping] [Shipped]<---------- [Collecting money]
- [External]
-- [ebay.com] [ebay.de] [ebay.co.uk] [ebay.it] [marktplaats.nl] [Taobao] [Other]
- [Vendors]
- [Try before you buy]
- [Help]
Other languages
- [En français]
-- [Achats groupés] [Le souk] [Bidouilles] [Trouvailles] [Other]
- [German discussions]
- [Other]
Off-topic
- [Fun] [Flame] [Weblog] [Sports] [Politics] [Religion]<-----------------------Off-topic categories
Archive
...

Keyboards construction: Why not just Construction so mice etc. cat be included.

I prefer [Group buy] but I know that for a header [Group buys] is better -- a fatal dilemma!

[Collecting Money] is against the rules.

Some alternatives:
[For sale] [Wanted] [Trade] [Sold] [Got it] [Traded] [Other]

2 more: [Sellout] and [Sold out]

Off Topic:
- [Fun] [Flame] [Weblog] [Sports] [Politics] [Religion]

[Daniel Beardsmore]

Is it just me, or are the number of subcategories outstripping the creation rate of new topics by an alarming margin?

Even now, most tabs show no active posts. I see no logic in viewing anything but the default of "All" as that's the only tab where you'll actually get sufficient posts (not topics, posts) to warrant inspection. Besides, I sold someone a keyboard a while back not because I wanted to get rid of it (I should have kept it — there are lots of photos I should have taken but didn't) but because it came up as wanted.

I am not sure if this is an example if "if you build it, they will come" (create an ordered schema for scalability up to hundreds of new topics per day, and everyone will descend on the forums in droves and post like there's no tomorrow) or an attempt to create order out of nothing?

[wheybags]

I just use the unread posts button on every forum I use. Categories are pretty redundant :p

[webwit]

That's why we kept it simple in the beginning. There's a difference between classic subcategories where you have to go in each subcategory to view posts, and the prefix system used here, where you don't have to go in, but have the old mixed view on the All tab. What this adds is the ability to filter and to search on prefix if you want to. Like people, *cough*, who don't follow the exact same flow as you do.

[Daniel Beardsmore]

See, my view is that we have this thing called a "wiki", and by putting data in there, you get rid of huge amounts of the trouble caused by not being able to find some topic filed somewhere by someone where someone may have taken some photo or written something you think you may have seen at some point in time.

Finding old topics is extremely hard even when you know what's in them, let alone if you want to find something that may not even exist. Mostly I find them by accident — I'll be scouring Google for something and unearth a completely unrelated topic from the past about something else that I happened to want to know (for example, that's how I found that Devlin magnetic valve keyboard, and started the process of unravelling Devlin). Sadly I'm still "solving" problems that were already answered in the past in topics that have been lost, but the knowledge was never aggregated in any useful way.

Filtering for new topics and new posts seems a rather odd thing to do unless the actual activity levels significantly exceed a manageable amount, and the one place where that is indeed an issue is Marketplace.

Still, sometimes it's more entertaining to watch people tangle themselves up.

[webwit]

Why does the wiki have categories? Is it waiting for droves of pages? It has on average one new page per day, can't it be a flat view? For my workflow this is best, so it has to be everybody's flow. Please make it flat so it's hard to find something, because that makes me sad (?). I think categories seem odd. I'm entertained. <-- Mindless rambling

[002]

It's true that for some of us this change won't really impact them. wheybags uses unread, Muirium uses the forum spy, John Citizen has a naked woman transcribe posts to a clay tablet.

We're not taking anything away here, simply trying to organise sections a bit better and maybe open the door to new workflows. Thinking about it myself, I can see value in selecting a tab in the Workshop for guides or something like that. It might not even be necessary that a particular section moves fast. If there's a lot of old content there already collected over time, it could still be beneficial.

[Muirium]

Absolutely.

Also, I must pay Mr. Citizen a visit. I've been meaning to learn cuneiform, if you know what I mean.

[Findecanor]

As long as
- this is a tag
- and there is a "All" category in each forum
- you are asked for a tag when creating a topic.
- changing a tag does not create a new topic
I'm OK with it.
Otherwise it is overcomplicating things.

A better user interface metaphor might be like they have on some forums that the tag does not look like a tab, but is a word that you can click to filter on.

[Daniel Beardsmore]

Why does the wiki have categories? Is it waiting for droves of pages? It has on average one new page per day, can't it be a flat view? For my workflow this is best, so it has to be everybody's flow. Please make it flat so it's hard to find something, because that makes me sad (?). I think categories seem odd. I'm entertained. <-- Mindless rambling

The wiki is designed to allow content to be found again easily in the future. That's why pages each get added to large number of categories: they function as a multi-dimensional system, exactly like tags. A single page can be approached from a number of angles, unconstrained by a traditional rigid hierarchy. Wiki content can also be retroactively reorganised by anyone as the categorisation system is improved, and such changes can be made globally using intelligent search and replace. Likewise, wiki pages are all interlinked forward and backwards ("What links here") and this network is also editable by anyone.

I don't honestly care how many forum subcategory tags get created — I can just ignore them.

[7bit]

What is this "Topics awaiting approval" good for?

[webwit]

There was some bug or database error this morning, which ate the vendor forum and set some flags wrong. I'm currently checking the backup to restore it. Backup was from this night so I don't think anything will be lost. Still trying to track what caused it, there was a user report about a mysql error.

[bpiphany]

I added a quick reply (including an image) to one of my threads in the Marketplace. I also edited the first post to set the topic as "Member to member", and "For sale" Here is a link to that thread http://deskthority.net/for-sale-f55/qfr ... 93-30.html

I also edited this post, but I may have forgotten to select a new category http://deskthority.net/unsorted-f54/mis ... ml#p156810

I believe I saw both threads in my bookmarks for a while at least before the first one disappeared...

[webwit]

Topics were restored, let me know if this problem pops up again.