yashsingh1/xdaforums huggingface dataset:
[About XDA developers] grants04:
I think that this change would be helpful in that in the case of ROMS, for example, it might cause the creation of two threads for each ROM, one a Q&A for n00bs and new adopters, and the other for more advanced developer questions and solutions. The only potential problem is that without the "advanced developer" types reviewing the Q&A thread, no real answers would be given.

I have been running Myns TwoPointTwo and LOVE it. The problem with that thread is that it might as well be 10,000 pages long right now. When I try to catch up with it each day, I have to wade through n00b questions like "do I have to wipe before I flash" to get to posts regarding any bugs in the betas, etc. It makes the thread dense and tough to get through. In that case, it would be great to have a n00b thread and a dev thread. But again, only if the devs also are willing to review and answer in the Q&A.

On another note, I've been a member here since 2005 and the PPC6600 days and run custom roms, but I've only posted 15+ times. I've always tried to read/search before I asked so I never really had to post--answer was always findable. Forums now, especially after Android, are getting too dense and diluted with non-advanced postings to effectively search. As a result, my postings have gone up since Android. Causing a bifurcated thread sounds like a good idea.

Just my thoughts.

Kim
[About XDA developers] sergiopi:
I am an "old" xda devs member, not so many posts, still lurking 90% of the time spent here.

The problem is to have a forum for DEVELOPERS and FOR NEWBIES.

Donate isn't the main purpose of developers, they stay hungry and foolish, as Steve (guess who) suggest, and the customer care isn't the main purpose, the knowledge EXCHANGE is the developer's main purpose...Developer's forum with high number of repeated question is just noise. When the S/N level is close to 1.... there is nothing to moderate.

If your purpose is just to download and install a new ROM... sorry, you don't need a developer's forum, rapidshare is your forum. If you want to increase knowledge about your devices, exploit the maximum power.... then use search, use it again, test your solution, test it again, suggest an application , find a bug in the software, suggest a fix, THEN ask in the developer's section :)

This is the philosophy of the new rule... , pleas ADD knowledge before asking support, bring value into discussions before asking customer services to the chefs, check for solutions and share it!
[About XDA developers] sushovande:
I agree with the majority sentiment here that this is a bad idea.

I have 6 posts. (well, 7 with this one), all of which are in the development forum. My post showing how to re-unlock a win7 phone device got several thanks and several quotes and essentially jumpstarted the thread again. I made that post when I was 2 posts into this site. With your new rules, that would not have been possible.

I am proposing a radically new idea: Have users vote on individual posts, so that those that are relevant to the discussion stay in the thread, those that are irrelevant or are asking for spoonfeeding help get pushed into the sidebar where benevolent users can reply to them.
[About XDA developers] AllGamer:
Yay! finally, it was about time

the amount of stuff that get moved out of the DEV forum in the daily basis is incrementally proportional to the amount of new users we've been getting.

this chance should make people realize the DEV forum is not the section to ask "How do i do this" or "I think i bricked my phone"
[About XDA developers] swiss420:
Unfortunately I dont have the time to be extensiv but a couple things that come to mind.

First couple of Posts in a Thread should always summ up what is being discussed within the Thread. FAQ Style etc by a Moderator see my Threads or HD2 Energy Thread. When Searching, those posts should show up above the others results.

Secondly being around here for a while I realized that the new Users around here (Android Users especially) have a different style in communicating then I do. Maybe its their age or maybe its because Android Users are more about socializing but I have a hard time accepting Android at XDA-Developers.com.

I wonder if different levels of access would be possible. Support levels. First level support (Newbe help), Second level support (elevated Problems), third level support (Development). How you would design this in a Forum I have no idea.

Ok as I said this was just some random ideas. Have to go offline again. So hopefully it motivated someone else to take the idea further.
[About XDA developers] pulser_g2:
Valid point. I will raise this particular case with the admins, as I think this is a good point...

Either that, or perhaps you make a specific "support thread", which isn't necessarily in a development forum (does such a forum exist just now?), and direct users to it. Then, you can have all development stuff, and updates, in one thread, and questions in the other. I've seen this tried before and it worked quite well for those involved.
[About XDA developers] pulser_g2:
Well, I know what you mean there. I'll leave it at that, despite being a 100% android user. Feel free to check my posts, but I don't think I've used the ? symbol, except for sarcasm, in a long time :D

But yes, you raise valid points... I guess you could argue that "newbie" help is addressed in existing threads, and via searching ,as ALL new user stuff that I've seen is written already...

Elevated problems would be a thread in Q&A, and development threads for "geeky" (as some people see them), or technical, issues.

Not sure we want too many forums, as we get more trouble with "is this grade 1 or grade 2...?", but fair point.
[About XDA developers] pulser_g2:
Forum Specific Moderators are those who applied to take on the role in certain fora, helping move topics, sort out flaming, and generally fix things quickly, by keeping their ear close to the ground. It's not decided by postcount primarily, as I've seen plenty of people with over 1000 posts who wouldn't be ideal for this, yet many with significantly less who do outstanding jobs.

It's about helping people, and keeping things in line, and the job already exists...

As for de-activating accounts, might not be ideal for people who just pop in occasionally to browse and perhaps post the odd question in a ROM Q&A thread (I started here and gained only 20 posts in about 4 months or so...)
[About XDA developers] pulser_g2:
Yep, it is possible to change.

Thing is, there are many times where I can give a one word answer to a simple question someone answers. If I'm in a rush and see someone asking "can I use XYZ to do ABC", then all I need to post is "Yep. 10char", and they know the answer, without me writing an essay, repeating the question back.

Nonetheless, posts like "+111oneone111" are probably more what you are targeting. And couldn't agree more.
[About XDA developers] pulser_g2:
Replied in-line above. :)
[About XDA developers] pulser_g2:
You could PM the forum section mod, and they'll move it to the section if it's development. I will raise this again with the admins so we can see if a contingency will exist for this.
[About XDA developers] Dissenter:
I second that idea. I think that you can enhance the purpose of the change by adding a support forum that is separate from the developer forum. I ran a support department for a software company about 10 years ago and learned a few things. One of the most key problems is that most programmers are not good with people. "Office Space" was right ;-)

Let's be honest. There are people here that are developers and are not interested in support. It can be tedious and takes from their development time. Developers that don't want a support thread can opt not to make one. Maybe the thread topics are [Support] [Application/ROM/whatever] [Developer] or [Support] [Application/ROM/whatever] [Community] so that the appropriate expectations are set. Developers could even designate someone to be the point man for communication so that the minor issues are filtered out. The key here is to allow developers to keep developing rather than have them always working out user errors...

Post limits ensure new people are discussing the possible bug in support (where there is no post requirement) before they are posting to development (where there is a post requirement) which is a good way to learn. This will keep the support questions out of the development area. People with more than 10 posts will hopefully have learned the difference between a bug and support and will post accordingly and if someone new does identify a bug, the developer can add it to the bug list in the developer forum.

It's a hard pill to swallow especially for a forum this size. I used to run a forum of about 2,000 users and it was brutally hard to keep things organized and keep people happy. I applaud XDA, the moderators and all of the developers and community members that provide support. It is all of you that have made this site such a huge success. Keep up the good work and this will all work out for the best.
[About XDA developers] paul13243546:
Dumb

Here is why this is a bad idea:

Now I have 2 posts.
[About XDA developers] Biofall:
Waaaaay to many people for that to be feasible. The site is growing. Even if it wasn't, many of the forums have so many posts per minute that if you are in the bottom three of a page, the post will not likely be read.

The rule about ten posts is a good one. If you (not targeting sushovande) are serious about wanting to help people/contribute/receive help, then you shouldn't mind having to find ten other legitimate things to post about. The way I see it, under the new rule, there are those who clog the forums, and there are those who can somehow manage to post ten decent things (sarcasm, ten isn't really a lot).
[About XDA developers] klaus27:
I personally don't agree here. I think this encourages users to post really dumb stuff in other forums just to gain access to "the real" ones. And sorry, XDA is a development forum mainly for custom roms. This is why the users constantly visit this site.

To lock them out is in no way helpful. I see lots of stupid posts from people with more than a hundred of posts. How do you plan to train them?

I think you should not aim to forbid stupid questions, but make the relevant information more visible and easy to find.

I suggested before to let the user mark helpful postings in a thread which then will be shown directly below the first posting. You already have the possibility to thank users for a posting. Now you just need to create a new view / alter the forum software to show these postings on the front page.

This will encourage users to read the first couple of pages with all the relevant postings and avoid stupid and repetitive questions, without pissing off new users with a posting quota.. I personally hate this kind of restriction and usually leave these boards immediately.
[About XDA developers] boborone:
That's my point. I if you want to contribute, dev or user, you will be willing to wait. Like you I read the forums before I joined. Joined, then waited till I could contribute. A dev that has a rom shouldn't need to post it right now. A wait time just gives him time to make it better.
[About XDA developers] z3r0d3vil:
I am a new member (I even hesitate to call myself a member. I'm not a dev, the last coding I did was on a Commadore 64 in the 80's) I value the resource that XDA is and its good to know that all the devs and mods are doing what they can to maintain this knowledgebase.
[About XDA developers] tdavis42:
Great idea XDA team. The only thing I would do is actually up the post count to 25 or 50 and force the new people to use the general help section and/or use PM to talk to dev's. I know it would spread the rom threads out to two different sections of the forum's sub-section's but getting people to use the forum's help threads for help and the dev section for mods and general development. There is a huge difference in these two parts of a roms support and I really wish they were separate.

Thanks for all you guys/gals do to keep this a daily place that I can come and connect with other people with the same problem I have. ORD!!
[About XDA developers] Dissenter:
FYI, I'm pretty sure a quick ban on those accounts and the problem is solved.
[About XDA developers] jngox3:
Good Move

I think this is a good move, and I have yet to post on the forum. I think it's important to have relevant good information and to help people develop and understand their technology better.
[About XDA developers] oddeyes:
Self management

Allow the users to manage posts. A # of positive votes per post keeps a post in the thread and a # of negative votes deletes it thus cleaning a thread of irrelevant posts and Adm, Mods and Sr. members can do the same on threads ther positive or negative votes will keep or remove, duplicate, irrelevant, ect. threads out of the forum.

Forums were supposed to be an open source and not an exclusive club.

Therefore, not restrictions but better tools to manage it are the solution.
[About XDA developers] jcollierdavis:
It's a two part issue

This issue really breaks down into two parts. Creating a minimum post count before posting in the dev forum is a solution to one part, keeping the “noise” out of the dev forums. I think another good solution might be to create a “driver's license test” of sorts. Passing this test could grant rights as well. It would also prove someone has knowledge enough to post along with understanding proper etiquette.

The other part of the issue is the “noise” itself. You still have to provide somewhere for this noise to go. Making XDA's content more accessible to the general public will help. While XDA's core readership is familiar with the processes and comfortable with a linux shell, the general public looks at this and may as well be reading Greek.

Since I submitted a pilot episode for XDA TV, I think this in an ideal way to bring the content to a wider autience without asking readers to search through pages and pages of forum posts looking for a simple set of instructions and troubleshooting guidelines

Ultimately it just may have to be accepted that the majority of the world will never understand how to work Google, how to determine what is the purpose of some new development, how to read instructions carefully before doing something, and what is proper forum etiquette. This might just be the price paid for XDA's high profile and strong reputation.
[About XDA developers] klaus27:
Come on guys, is this really what you want to achieve? A locked down XDA where people need to post stuff like below 10 times before they can post to develop forums? And how should 10 posts in other forums educate people to not post stupid questions and not search the forum first? This is is no way helpful. The only thing you achieve is that you piss of new users who might have something really important to tell. Imagine someone from another forum (MIUI for example) develops something really great and want to share it with XDA. Do you really think he will try to find a thread just to write 10 smart posts before being able to what he originally planned to do? I definitely think no, he won't.

XDA looses it's open and free character which made it a really nice place in the past for smartphone addicted developers and their fan boyish consumers/users.

My vote for making the relevant information more accessible instead of cutting down XDA for new users - which in my opinion makes absolutely no sense.

BTW: no offense guys ;)
[About XDA developers] AllGamer:
Do not count post, postings in Off Topic, General, Market, About

Here's an idea

I frequent many forums in a daily basis

and many of the Other forums i frequent, they don't usually count (don't add to the total post count) the post posted inside general areas like Off Topic, and other places they deem not Technically Valid
[About XDA developers] boborone:
+1 for team lama
[About XDA developers] pulser_g2:
Well, it's a valid point, and it is just a first step, to see how it goes.

Regarding information being easier to find, we have stickies, with stars and exclamation marks, and all capital letters saying "READ THIS FIRST BEFORE YOU POST!!!!!******", yet people still go and make a new thread, ignoring the information contained within.

A view to highlight useful posts is an interesting concept, but pretty hard to implement as far as I know...

Users with >100 or 200 posts should know better. If they do it, their posts will be moved as per the current situation, and warnings issued if it continues. Users have been banned for repeatedly asking the same simple, addressed in sticky and wiki, questions repeatedly in development. That will happen again if needed.
[About XDA developers] pulser_g2:
Well... I agree other than the PMing developers. I don't like that, as it keeps knowledge out of the public view. An answer to a question should be in Q&A. Then, if I have the same question, a search will find it. If it were in PM, devs get full inboxes, don't reply to them, and other users can't find the answers as they're not posted.

Agreed on two threads per rom. It's been done before, and I've suggested it to people in the past.
[About XDA developers] pulser_g2:
Bans aren't always the solution to first-time issues, but if people are blatantly spamming, and then abusing development to post some question, then they would be dealt with accordingly...
[About XDA developers] Madnessx9:
I believe it will open XDA up to more spam on the general forums whilst these newbie trolls build the post rate of 10 just to post crap in the development forum.

You say this is more for the community so how about this

If enough forum users rate down a post or hit a report button for example it will delete that users post automatically (after a threshold has been reached say for example 30 users) or flag it for a mod to look at ASAP (depending on how automated you want this process).. this way the forums do not need to be manned my mods 24/7

Perhaps a 3 step warning process in place as well. if the community rate down and delete 3 of your posts you get a temp ban of 7 days and so on

To build more on this you could add that only users with a 3+ month registration date be applicable to use this function and that would reduce abuse by new accounts.
[About XDA developers] klaus27:
Good point with the stickies. That's absolutely right. Sticky threads is a nice feature of a forum, but this should be handled with care to be useful. more than 3 sticky threads will discourage users from reading. This is too much information and they usually head over to their favored thread.

I give an example: I am a Desire user and followed AdamG's Oxygen2.0-RC6 thread for quite a long time. This thread now has over 15000 replies and it has the same questions over and over again. Searching the thread for "trackball" gives me 169 hits. However I have posted a solution to the problem and another person thanked me for that. This post was immediately superseded by other "trackball wake not working" postings.

Adding another "Display Mode" is quite easy, because the thank-feature is in place and actively used. You just need to consume this information from the database and create an additional "Display Mode". I am myself a developer and have written several modules for phpBB some time ago. I don't know vBulletin, but I know that it has a very well designed extension-system. To be honest, I am pretty sure that this can be achieved by changing one SQL query in the script.

And additionally there is the hurdle of a 30seconds search limit. Sorry, but forcing the user to use the search and then restricting it is quite inconsistent.
[About XDA developers] electrified:
tbh, i like the new rules

And, as you can see, this is my first post, I just registered recently.

I've been on a lot of forums, so i know how silly and stupid it is when people ask in the wrong section.

I'm sure that this will help to increase the quality of xda.

Only one more thing I would add:

If you change the rules, than add the option that every user has to read and accept the new rules before making his next post (a countdown of 60 seconds before being able to post)

also, maybe to add that every new user (with <10 posts) has to read & accept the rules before he posts (every time on his first 10 posts)

And don't worry, i won't start filling my post count ;)
[About XDA developers] missparker76:
I would like to point out 2 things:

- When you're not a regular you don't easily understand where you have to post as there are many sections. If you are not used to the site, you are easily lost. The summary below each subforum title is not detailed enough IMO (for example, I now understand the difference between General and Q&A but this was not obvious to me at the beginning - due also to the fact that people post the same kind of posts in any of the sections so they look similar.).

A way to reduce the number of threads in wrong sections would be to describe in a FAQ & a flowchart (that would be in evidence - If you have to search all over the site it'll lose its utility) the structure of the forum and explain with several examples what should & shouldn't be posted in each forum. I'm sure lots of these people who shouldn't post in the Development Forum (or any other wrong section) don't even know that they are in the wrong section. The best way to avoid that is to help them know they should have posted elsewhere and understand where they should post.

For the other people who don't care if they post in the wrong place they will continue posting in wrong forums. I don't think you can do much to stop them... Posting 10 messages in other sections won't prevent them from posting in the bad section after that and this may encourage the spamming of other sections.

- This is an international forum. Probably more than half members don't have English as native language. And I think this makes it harder for us to understand all the subtilities. So I really feel it's important to explain people what they can or can't post in each forum.
[About XDA developers] kkevin94:
I am all for this. I am not a developer. I have no knowledge on development of ROMs, Apps, or even themes. The DEVS on here are awesome, do an awesome job and help out along the way. I personally am getting tired of people begging for things and they have 3 posts, all about someone making something for them. Of course, there are many users that are nice, polite, and helpful. But people need to stop being lazy and start to read. As said before, I don't know any of this stuff. However, after reading here, searching on Google, and watching some videos on Youtube, I set up Andoird SDK and am about to root and flash my Optimus T. Great job XDA team, and hopefully the site keeps going.
[About XDA developers] frea:
Dear XDA Team,

i´m still new to this board but i allready learnd very much about things of my interest and i also saw "dumb" threads and posts

but what really really impressed me was that there are no harsh or offending answeres to this posts - everyone is trying to help the "noobs" finding their way arround

in other boards every noob gets flamed to the ground for asking "stupid questions" and i really appreciate the quality and the friendlyness of people on this board

my first post in this forum was intended to help someone find the app he was looking for

unfortunately my english is too bad to really explain things that take more than just simple frases and i think this is what will stop people (like me) from doing the 10 needed usefull(!!) posts

what i mean is, that it doesn´t take good english skills to report bugs in dev related forums or help in other ways but it takes good english skills to post other usefull(!) things

thanks for this high quality site and board!

and pleeeaaasee excuse my bad engish :o
[About XDA developers] Frazzy:
This is a great thing to hapen to XDA. I don't post alot but I read almost everyday. The only problem left is the search function. I use about 10 forums regularly. and this is by far the worst search engine there is. I think if this will be looked into you'll loose a lot of reposted questions.

Thanks for the constant innovation.