yashsingh1/xdaforums huggingface dataset:
[About XDA developers] K.A.:
Completely agree with this, one thread is easier to moderate, plus no spam threads. I carried the idea forward in the SGA forums ( prawn already had a similar thread, but it was dead and now he's mad at me) yet i still see people posting threads with a 'need help' title, even though the Help Thread is right up there.
[About XDA developers] The Archangel:
As its been said before, it's completely dependant upon the mod staff their. You could pm your local mods and talk with them about it?
[About XDA developers] K.A.:
I'm guessing you quoted the wrong post, 'cause that post was regarding UC's idea of having a single HELP THREAD and the removal of the QA section.
[About XDA developers] undercover:
We are talking about Help Threads here. I think you mean OT. Sorry If I misunderstood thought.

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[About XDA developers] Goku80:
people do not tend to read no more....
[About XDA developers] The Archangel:
Actually yes I did. My mistake.
[About XDA developers] Goku80:
well it was OT that i was discussing about not Help Threads.....Help Threads we do have those already and they work well...Well i say 80% of the time but still not as bad as the S3 forum and the S2
[About XDA developers] The Archangel:
I did miss quote, my mistake.
[About XDA developers] Fallen Spartan:
I agree with Goku to an extent, the good old days do appear to have gone....though, how good where they really? Maybe less *****ing, kanging etc, but idiots where still told to go **** themselves iirc. Overall however, the sttitude of the core users has changed. We now have a lot more adolescent teenagers who demand things now and consider XDA to be a Q&A site :(....The difficulty is managing these muppets and steering XDA so it is still developer drivern. Hence why we made Developer own forums, introduced the 10 post rule so muppets couldn't post in developer forums until they read a bit, helped others etc. We have developer programs, XDA-U etc. All aimed at improving XDA for the better, but I still think we have a good bit to go to change these muppets into puppet masters. As always, willing to hear suggestions
[About XDA developers] boborone:
There's also a change in the internet also. Back in about 06 era there was an OT topic that went on for about 250+ posts in which a guy came in and made a thread about how great Islam is and all the rest of the world is bad, 911 was good and all bow down to Allah and such. Nobody took it to the crazy side until about post 240 or so. Calling names and such. Nowadays you would get that thread with that many post after the op in a matter of minutes of people cussing and name calling immediately. Kinda different back then. People posted nsfw stuff and nobody talked about the kids......cause their wasn't any. Times change.
[About XDA developers] K.A.:
It's not about reading, it's like, you enter the Q&A section and right up there in Capitals, is a HELP THREAD(Ask ANY question here) thread, and yet they go and create a new thread.
[About XDA developers] juzz86:
Exposure. The 'quick answer'. Stick it out on its own where it gets all the attention and doesn't get hidden or overrun next post. It gets worse and worse ('bumping' question posts, a trend I see lately).

We don't work for anything anymore, we all just expect to be spoon-fed exactly what we want, and that's what we're entitled to. Unfortunately, that's the reality.

Sent from my Droid DNA
[About XDA developers] undercover:
Hence my suggestion. As I said, its main purpose is to help AND to teach.

So before this gets sidetracked onto how things changed already, can we please go back to how we can make it better? I'm trying and have been doing so for quite a while now.

Not trying to TELL anyone what to do, it's just that this thread tends to go to ponies in a second. :o

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[About XDA developers] AtoZ0to9:
I apologize for coming off harshly at first but let's just sum all my posts up to xda just isn't enjoyable anymore because of the last page of discussion...

Not sent from your phone...
[About XDA developers] K.A.:
Exactly why UC's idea of no Q&A should work. Right now, they have a place to create a new thread and put it out there on its own, but when there is NO such section to do it, they will have to post it in the lone Help Thread to get an answer.
[About XDA developers] Goku80:
there is nothing that you can do...and the 10 post i think is bit lenient...i think it should be at least 20 or if not more to make users start posting in the developer sections..i have seen some great devs leave also due to the fact of others kanging.....and yes there have been investigations but i have to admit the way mods do there investigations kinda beats the whole objective on being fair on some..but i rather not go there

well if it not about reading then what is it about then:eek:...if the user as you say can not READ right up there in Capitals the Help Thread and still goes and opens a new thread, that means he did not READ and just does his own thing
[About XDA developers] K.A.:
Read juzz86's post. He explained it perfectly.

Also, look at the recent threads in the OT section. First there were threads for 'Malaysian users here' 'indian users here' and whatnot, now slowly there are '*device name here* users here' '*2nd device name* users here' thread. Agreed it's the OT section, but such threads really are of no use.
[About XDA developers] AtoZ0to9:
I've always been in favor of making this site 18+ only... But of course 75% of the users would be gone and anyone could just put they're 18... It obviously won't work...

Not sent from your phone...
[About XDA developers] K.A.:
There are many young people here who are good developers/themers, there's a 13 year old kid who's already a RC/RT, and not for no reason.
[About XDA developers] AtoZ0to9:
I agree... But the bulk aren't... Perhaps a system could be developed to monitor them more.closely...

Not sent from your phone...
[About XDA developers] boborone:
I was never a fan of the Q&A sections and am a big fan of tinky's all in one help thread. It's friendly, useful, and keeps threads down. I can't tell you how much I learn in just reading those threads, also.
[About XDA developers] juzz86:
Ah. The help thread. A viable option, but will it stop the problem, or just mitigate it?

If you take away Q&A, the threads will tumble over into General and, God forbid, Development. Additionally, your Mods lose their dumping ground for largely useless question threads.

So, a question for you guys who've given this a bit of thought: How do you mitigate (not just move) the problem of questions, opinions, trash popping up?

Remember, where you give people a choice, they will take the easiest, and most likely to yield a quick result.

As much as it may be seen as a waste, the Q&A section is the lesser evil. Close Q&A? It'll move to General. Single-thread 'Help' Forum? It'll move to General. Close General? It'll move to Development. The issue is as adaptive as the fixes.
[About XDA developers] Goku80:
Right i think there is a bit of confusion with what is being written here...all i asked is why there is not an OT thread on each forum...Not a Help Thread or anything else just a OT thread were people can troll as much as they want and just talk about anything they like without the fear of saying anything wrong....That has now been taken away from my forum and a lot of people are not happy about that due to the fact that, it was a place for them to unwind and talk amongst other users and have a laugh and a banter....So my question was why not have it on each forum...That has been answered for me but i think a few here mistook what i was asking and just started making a whole different argument and kinda few got confused of what my whole point was to start with in the first place
[About XDA developers] The Archangel:
I was thinking the same thing also. I'm not positive on how it could be done.

Hey, Pulsar. Any ideas on it?
[About XDA developers] Goku80:
it is a never ending cycle my friend which will go round and round like always
[About XDA developers] undercover:
In fact we are talking about two things in parallel. You probably missed my suggestion post.

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[About XDA developers] roofrider:
Well the OT thing is settled.

People are now discussing undercover's Help Thread idea.

--edit--

Damn I'm slow, requesting thread cleanup.
[About XDA developers] K.A.:
Whenever a thread title is written, a 'is it the same as below' comes up, so along with that, a restriction can be put on threads with titles containing specific word(s) such as '[Q], help, question, save me nao' not being allowed to be created in the other sections.
[About XDA developers] boborone:
this is awesome

and works

http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=871989

that's in the dev area btw
[About XDA developers] undercover:
I disagree.

But this is only an assumption from both of us. I've seen devices without q&a and it wasn't bad. Development questions belong in development anyway. General is a dump as it is anyway apart from a few very very useful threads/stickies. So why not consolidate two dumps?

Or better yet. Why not rename q&a into help forum. Then MOVE all the stickies in there and the help thread and lock opening new threads in there. By not being able to start a thread people will be forced to start posting in the relevant threads and will be subsequently pointed to the right place to learn. If they start a new thread in general it will most likely be just ignored and they will have too seek for their answer in the right place. This way the USEFUL part is consolidated and general can stay being a dump ground.

We can now assume wherever it will work or won't, but why don't we just try it in one device forum? Preferably new, as teaching from the start is easier than making people learn a new way after they are used to things in their current device forum.

Sent from my fridge. Make:LG Model:N4
[About XDA developers] conantroutman:
Does nobody remember what it was like before the Q&A forums were added? To be blunt, it was chaos.

Removing Q&A, no matter how many threads you replace it with is not a viable solution. Human nature dictates that people will automatically feel their issue is important enough to warrant it's own thread and not use a dedicated help thread.

Sent From My Fingers To Your Face.....
[About XDA developers] K.A.:
Restrictions on creating new threads could be done, maybe? :eek:
[About XDA developers] juzz86:
Good man. That is a good addition, but it doesn't appear to be mitigating the questions in Q&A or General. Is it a worthy inclusion in Dev sections? Absolutely. Will it cut down the questions? It will for those diligent enough to read which, as we know, are the minority.

Q&A into Help? Yes. It's simple, it's one-word, and people understand it. You'd be surprised how many PMs I used to field asking where the best place to ask a question is. Q&A must be an inherently English thing - at least 'Help' is almost universal, and almost everyone needs it.

Combining the two? Nah. If Q&A were to become 'help', you'd move all the Tutes, Guides, How-Tos etc. across. Implement a mandatory [Q] thread prefix, add the 'solved' button, and she's done. You need General for the rubbish, if you hope to turn Q&A into some semblance of a resource.

The forum cannot exist without a dedicated place for people to ask questions. Look around your forum and tally the threads as they come in. Questions dwarf everything else. As much as it might tick us off - they need somewhere where they are easily posted, outside the main scope of the site (development), and easily ignored should you choose to do so.
[About XDA developers] undercover:
General is chaos with new devices anyway. And once device is mature q&a or not, it will stay mature.

Then a question. Does Help Thread really make any difference? What's the point of it? If it doesn't (and it seems so judging from answers), WHY BOTHER?

Again, ctm, I believe this is an assumption. A lot of users think it's helpful, so why not trial it?

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[About XDA developers] egzthunder1:
Heh... do me a favor. Go into the htc vogue wm development forum, or the blue angel wm development forum, or the herman (cdma touch pro) one. You will find these q&a threads from me. I took care of those and maintained them for a very long time. The issue with that approach is that questions need to be transferred or merged with the main thread or else it will become very messy as far number of threads being opened. Q&a areas are meant to be a place where people can ask questions without getting flamed.... the influx of questions to these areas is far too large for us to consider this idea again. Forums will become a monumental mess filled with questions all over the place, which has proven time and time again, to piss people off beyond belief...

Thanks for the idea and the trip down memory lane :)

Sent from mALL GLORY TO THE HYPNOTOAD!!
[About XDA developers] roofrider:
And sometimes a separate thread is needed, logcats in a dedicated thread will be a mess.

But a Help Thread in the Q/A will greatly help in reducing the number threads that are being created there.

Example is kidcarter's device suggestion thread, i don't anyone creates a 'Sony zyx' or 'Sammy abc' thread anymore.
[About XDA developers] conantroutman:
There will always be somewhere a thread can be posted though and that's exactly what people will do.

It's an opinion based on precedent. There were such threads before the Q&A forums were added and we still needed to add them.

I'm not discounting your suggestion, it's implementation is not my decision to make. I'm simply offering my opinion based in what I've seen in my time here.

Sent From My Fingers To Your Face.....
[About XDA developers] Fallen Spartan:
hmmm, a system to monitor over 4 million users, 2/3 of which are probably teenagers.........good luck with that

^^this

I think we need Q&A sections tbh
[About XDA developers] Sleepy!:
That just fails the purpose of having an XDA.... There's no practical way of doing it, and no concrete reason to make this an adults only site...

One thing... try making the registration process more stringent, so that a new user would be confined to lurking and only posting in the General forum till they fulfill a minimum post requirement, and/or a mod skims over their posts... only after mod approval would a new user be able to post to the Dev section...

It'd take more manpower, but it's a simple thing to do, at it's essence, and would lead to less fake, spam or idiot (I don't mean noob) accounts...

Making it so you have to post some things that will be scrutinized before getting approved to full membership would also make new users read more, as the mod can see if they're spamming or flaming.

If the mod feels that a user is genuine, then they could waive the minimum post requirement by themselves in such a system.

But as I said, manpower would be a huge, huge issue in implementing such a system.

Now, I'm new to the HTC Sensation forum... I have lots of questions, some obvious, some not so obvious, and I found undercover's Q&A thread very helpful. In fact, I've stopped looking at the Q&A board... all I read is that thread in the whole Q&A section, as a lot of the other threads in Q&A tend to be rather unintelligible, to say the least.

With such a thread, one of the senior members/ RCs is always around to help, and lots of things have already been asked and answered... moreover, the issue of BUMPing threads that ask the same question as you do gets solved by default in case of such a thread. So does the issue of people starting whole threads asking the same, obvious questions...

In short, I feel that Q&A boards should be closed, and a Q&A sticky thread should be put up in all General forums with a mod or a responsible member as the OP... it'll help reduce the clutter...

Sorry if my post is a bit broken and disjointed... please ask if something I suggested needs clarification...

EDIT... Ah, I see I'm late to the party. Again. :rolleyes: Reading CTM's post soon...
[About XDA developers] undercover:
As I've just learned... I didn't know such threads existed before.

Thanks for the explanation guys.

Well, I still believe it could work, especially the HELP forum, but hey, now it up to you if you want to try it or not.

In the current state, such threads help, but I feel not enough is done to tell people there are such threads. If there was one in each q&a at least that could be pointed out upon registration.

Sent from my fridge. Make:LG Model:N4
[About XDA developers] Sleepy!:
People don't read what they're told when they register....

Also, even after reading most of the new posts, I still feel that a tighter control on approving new members would go a long way towards making the site more productive and help attract more interested users as full members... letting the non-productive members stay as junior members, posting only in general, Q&A and App boards...
[About XDA developers] K.A.:
Yup, along with the you are a noob video ( :p ) an option can be added for the user to select which device(s) he/she owns and based on that, a list of 5 or more useful threads can be put up for them. The threads would obviously be decided by mods. Could be done to soften the impact of the video :silly:
[About XDA developers] Goku80:
for me this guy is what i call king and i wished he could rule XDA :D he would get rid of most i bet if he had his way...all the noobs would be scared and any kanger would be looking over his shoulder
[About XDA developers] K.A.:
Kinda agree, with the 10 posts attained, any user can post in the development section, but it'd be very difficult determining whether a user has been productive or not, and that should be over a specific period of time. Agreed some usually spam dev sections, but then there are people who don't actually dev, but can give useful feedback to the ROM/kernel/etc's developer or the other users.

---------- Post added at 04:44 PM ---------- Previous post was at 04:43 PM ----------

How 'bout M_T_M and CTM? :D
[About XDA developers] egzthunder1:
@undercover,

Trust me that what juzz said is not just an assumption. .. I experienced it in the flesh. Plus, there is yet one other caveat to this... you will have tons of repeated questions in the same thread, which leads to flaming which is harder to moderate in a single thread than it is on multiple small ones.. plus you will need a mod to constantly carry threads over. Either that or do what I did before I became a mod: copy the op onto the qa thread, make a closing post on the new question thread and report it to have it deleted or closed by mods. You do all that and you still have not even begun helping the user. ..

Take it from me.... qa areas are better, easier to handle, and easier to search through.

Sent from mALL GLORY TO THE HYPNOTOAD!!
[About XDA developers] undercover:
Why not limit first 10 posts to Q&A only?

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[About XDA developers] Sleepy!:
That's what I meant... giving feedback, asking sensible questions, etc are pretty easy to spot by skimming over a users posts...

And if they aren't productive, they can always stay Junior Member, post in General and lurk the dev fora...
[About XDA developers] Goku80:
i heard about M_T_M....Vicious guy i heard and gives holidays to a few if they cross his path:D
[About XDA developers] jugg1es:
He's a big softy really :D

Education is what remains after one has forgotten what one has learned in school.

Albert Einstein
[About XDA developers] K.A.:
Vicious? Lol wtf!!

That'd be too restricting, maybe? There could be an issue in General the user could solve or help out on too..
[About XDA developers] undercover:
I got it. I assumed it was an assumption :D

Regarding flaming on repeating questions. Nah, not happening. Read my OPs again. They are in fact allowed there. I believe it's worth suffering them for the good of educating a person. I'll answer a repeated question with an instruction how and what to do next time and where to seek for the info (read, learn, profit).

My main goal is EDUCATING user how to do things next time, not telling him off for what is already done.

Sent from my fridge. Make:LG Model:N4
[About XDA developers] egzthunder1:
Not flaming by you but by others coming into the thread... trust me, it does happen. And yes, educating the user was my primary goal as well... teach a man how to fish kinda thing.

Sent from mALL GLORY TO THE HYPNOTOAD!!
[About XDA developers] undercover:
It simply does not happen in my threads. Just stating a fact. We a all noob friendly there :)

"hug-a-noobie" and all that :)

Btw, i'm very proud of what guys are doing there. :thumbup:

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[About XDA developers] Sleepy!:
You have a point. However, a dedicated sticky Q&A is good in the sense that people who are subscribed to it would be more ready to help out...

I've heard quite a few users refer to Q&A as the 'Thanks' hunting ground... with a Q&A sticky, people who are interested in guiding inexperienced users have a more convenient and more amiable place to do so.

Maybe just the Q&A sticky on the Q&A board is worth a try...
[About XDA developers] egzthunder1:
We have other projects in early stages to try and address the questions, dont worry...

Btw, wouldn't a qa sticky thread in the qa forum be a tad redundant?

Sent from mALL GLORY TO THE HYPNOTOAD!!
[About XDA developers] undercover:
It has not been, so far...

I believe by Q&A stickie he means Help Thread

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[About XDA developers] egzthunder1:
Hmm.. fair enough.

Sent from mALL GLORY TO THE HYPNOTOAD!!
[About XDA developers] pulser_g2:
Any kind of close monitoring of large numbers of people is effectively impossible unfortunately. Not with that number of people.
[About XDA developers] Sleepy!:
Go visit it. See for yourself.

http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=1443587

---------- Post added at 05:12 PM ---------- Previous post was at 05:09 PM ----------

What about the oversight of new users that I suggested?

Is that doable?
[About XDA developers] roofrider:
Lol i created a very similar noob friendly thread in android forums looong back, didn't really maintain it.:angel:
[About XDA developers] pulser_g2:
We talked about this sort of thing before actually, again from user suggestion.

The problem is that yes we can technically make a "beginner sandbox", but we worked out the number of users joining per day. People have to EVENTUALLY be able to leave the sandbox at some point, or the system won't ever work, as "full members" won't venture to the sandbox. In the end it will breed more frustration and flaming, PLUS a need to deal with tens of thousands of registrations per day...

We cannot review every new user account, it will never be possible. It might have been on the second day after XDA was made... But now it's just not an option.

One Q&A thread will just end up moving too quickly, and nobody will get answers, as they will either lose the answer, or the question gets lost... I think a forum for questions will work best, given the level of traffic in them.
[About XDA developers] Sleepy!:
I read that, Mr :angel:... I meant, go see if it's redundant... :cool:
[About XDA developers] undercover:
It's self maintaining really. You just need to build a good relationship with other guys that follow it, which is not hard as it happens by itself.

Sometimes people get carried away a bit with spoon feeding, that's all you have to worry about.

Sent from my fridge. Make:LG Model:N4
[About XDA developers] pulser_g2:
Totally infeasible unfortunately. The number of "new users", even if we ONLY counted people who join today, is just not going to work. We have a huge number of staff. But we would need about 100x more to actually deal with the number of new registrations. We can't do that, it won't happen unfortunately. Look at the number of registered users now. Then look again in a day or two... Then you'll see the issue.
[About XDA developers] conantroutman:
I wouldn't trust those two with anything more complicated than a ball of string.... :rolleyes:

Wait.... :mad:

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