A suggestion for the Noob Forum!

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JayOneSeven

Jr Member
Alright, genuine feedback here.
After spending a month or so on the 405th, learning how to build a helmet from absolute scratch, and having zero previous knowledge, I have had a somewhat unique trial run of this forum and feel as though I can now give my one biggest opinion safe in the thought that I have some idea of what I'm talking about now. So here it is.
Let's delete the stickies!
Alright before you go nuts, I don't want them gone forever, but here's the deal
23Magnum (the mod who made them) hasn't been active in over a year. Every single one of those Stickies starts out with a Tutorial section, and an FAQ section, that are entirely wasted. So why not remake the threads with the relevant information in the front? It would be a community effort and it would take a lot of time from a few people, but I'm sure we'd all be willing to help.
The biggest problem I have is that 99% of people using these stickies simply drop by and ask their question. In the 600+ pages of the sticky that question has probably been answered many times, but who wants to drag through 600 pages to find the answer? Now were the answer to be displayed in the first page, in the FAQ or Tutorial section, the question may not need to be asked. This could also save bandwidth.
So what do you think? Terrible idea? Why?
 
Once you delete the stickies, you'll have the kids who are too lazy for doing any reading, their own research, or using the user-unfriendly Search tool, dropping their redundant questions out here in the main forum (many do now, despite their question having been already answered in a sticky) and things will get very crowded very fast. I totally agree that the stickies are MUCH too large in size, contain outdated information, have the same questions answered dozens of times, etc. The FAQ you mention is even blank in some of them. I'd say, rather than delete the stickies, clean them up! Delete all the fodder. Keep the stickies for the purpose they were probably intended for in the first place instead of trying to be like some sort of Twitter feed. The questions that people ask over and over again - well, answer them - on the first page - done. If a question gets asked that's already been answered, delete the post and direct them to the answer's location. (Yes, moderators who really do moderate...)

The Noob forum has 501 pages of threads, many of them simply containing questions which are already answered in a sticky. Stickies have the same questions repeated over and over. The litter exists because nobody is cleaning it up, so it just grows, and grows, and grows....
 
What I think he is suggesting is that we do clean them up, delete the current stickies and replace them with an updates list with common questions in the first few posts.

Many of the stickies have so many posts to clean them up and remove the fodder will take days if not weeks to go though with just one thread. I agree with the op, the stickies at this point are too large for many to even bother reading beyond the first page and sometimes questions in them are simply glossed over. I for one have asked a question in the Bondo thread and it was glossed over because the thread at the time was being used as a general chat thread.
 
Site admins and moderators are in discussion regarding the future of the site, as well as the above mentioned stickies. We are painfully aware that many of them are out of date, and hear about it often. Talks of restructuring the forums have been underway for some time (a dedicated FAQ section, as well as an updated database is being discussed), members will be selected as new moderators to moderate specific forums so it runs more efficiently, etc. However, it's a huge undertaking, and we want to get it right.

I appreciate the suggestions and understand that there are aspects of the site that may not work as well as they should. They are not being ignored. Keep in mind that the admins and moderators are not employed in any way by the 405th, and have lives outside the forums, exactly as you do, so progress may seem slow, but it's still in the works. Having been a member here for over 4 years, I've personally seen these forums advance quite a bit, and every six months or so, I see a new member come out and tell everyone how he/she thinks the site should be run.

As for now, the "Help!" stickies are there to prevent the forums from being flooded with single-question threads, taking attention away from builds. They may have started out as something different, but over the three years of their existence, they've changed. However, I would rather a question be asked over and over in those threads than thread after thread being created to ask that same question, taking up valuable space on the forum. To go through three years of questions to generate an FAQ post at the beginning that, likely, very few people would bother to read through anyway, would be daunting, to say the least.
 
...who wants to drag through 600 pages to find the answer?

Not me, that's why I use the 'Search Thread' tool to find the information I want in each stickied thread.

It's still cumbersome, but if you can come up with a key word for what you're looking for, it's relatively simple.
 
Site admins and moderators are in discussion regarding the future of the site, as well as the above mentioned stickies. We are painfully aware that many of them are out of date, and hear about it often. Talks of restructuring the forums have been underway for some time (a dedicated FAQ section, as well as an updated database is being discussed), members will be selected as new moderators to moderate specific forums so it runs more efficiently, etc. However, it's a huge undertaking, and we want to get it right.

I appreciate the suggestions and understand that there are aspects of the site that may not work as well as they should. They are not being ignored. Keep in mind that the admins and moderators are not employed in any way by the 405th, and have lives outside the forums, exactly as you do, so progress may seem slow, but it's still in the works. Having been a member here for over 4 years, I've personally seen these forums advance quite a bit, and every six months or so, I see a new member come out and tell everyone how he/she thinks the site should be run.

As for now, the "Help!" stickies are there to prevent the forums from being flooded with single-question threads, taking attention away from builds. They may have started out as something different, but over the three years of their existence, they've changed. However, I would rather a question be asked over and over in those threads than thread after thread being created to ask that same question, taking up valuable space on the forum. To go through three years of questions to generate an FAQ post at the beginning that, likely, very few people would bother to read through anyway, would be daunting, to say the least.

If the Mods and Admins are talking about restructuring, you may also want to consider a stick about using the forum's codes for signatures and such, I am still having a tough time figuring this stuff out, and I've been here for about 6 years, the change from one type of forum to another didn't help much either :/ Not complaining though, change happens and it's always for the better.

Also, consider new ranks and badges, that would be cool :)
 
The way I see it is that it's the noob forum. You're gonna have noobs who know nothing asking questions anyways, but isn't that what the noob forum is for? And as far as the tutorials go, why not just create a new subforum solely for people to post tutorials without the option of commenting? That'll clean up the noob forum quite well I think.
 
The noob forum is meant for new members to post their buildlogs, and also for starting threads on deeper questions or topics ("Here are my findings on Aqua Resin, did anyone have X reactions blah blah", "Show your halloween costumes"). While people do have questions, flooding the buildlogs with threads going "How 2 pepakiru!?!?!?", "were R the classifieds!?!?!?" can quickly reduce the quality of a forum, as it reduces the focus on people's works (The main reason for the site) and shifts focus to constant Q/A threads. It's much better to have the two separated which is why there are the HELP!!! threads at the top of the page. Those are there so people CAN ask those questions in a safe environment. Questions that may seem stupid, asked before, or obvious without being picked on or ignored (as the questions can easily get lost in the flood of buildlogs too, I just posted to a few question threads that got NO response today).

There are some things that could be done to better streamline the forum, but it's a lot of work and could disrupt the site as there are a ton of active builds that might be lost in any major shakedowns. The last attempt to restructure was catastrophic and left the site down for a few weeks.
 
There are some things that could be done to better streamline the forum, but it's a lot of work and could disrupt the site as there are a ton of active builds that might be lost in any major shakedowns. The last attempt to restructure was catastrophic and left the site down for a few weeks.

I see... I just wish somebody was able to take over those FAQ sections in there and somehow keep them a little more up to date. I know when I first showed up on this forum and I was looking through those help threads, the first question in my mind was "Why aren't the FAQ's completed?" Of course I don't want the stickies gone, just updated and made to run how they were intended to. It would streamline the threads greatly and (in my opinion) cause much less of the one-question-threads popping up.

every six months or so, I see a new member come out and tell everyone how he/she thinks the site should be run.

I see.... I'm glad that's how you view feedback and suggestions.
 
I see.... I'm glad that's how you view feedback and suggestions.

There's feedback and suggestions, then there's the arrogant "You should do this..." attitude. I see the latter much more than the former. I'm not saying this is what you're doing, but I see it more often than not.

I just wish somebody was able to take over those FAQ sections

Don't say I never listened to a suggestion...

http://www.405th.com/showthread.php/40607-FAQ-Papercraft-amp-Pepakura

That's just the start.
 
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I know when I first showed up on this forum and I was looking through those help threads, the first question in my mind was "Why aren't the FAQ's completed?"

When I first arrived here and was spending each evening reading the hundreds of stickies pages, the question in my mind was more along the lines of "Why is this question being asked yet again?!", because the exact same question (sometimes worded slightly differently) was asked dozens of times. Subsequent visitors to the site apparently could not simply read the existing answers. (If that was too much work for them, then how do they intend to complete a set of armor....?)
 
I agree, although I also read til my eyes hurt, I must admit I didn't read everything. Carpathia has begun to really hone in on the FAQs which is awesome.
I, for one, don't have the time to spend looking through hundreds of pages. I have 2 jobs, full time school, and a family. It's taken me a month to get to the point I'm at on my first helmet, it will probably take over a year to do my Ironman. It is what it is though... I understand that some people don't have the time, but some of the threads on here are just pure lazyness.
I can understand someone asking an in depth question, because they lack the time o look for it, but some people ask "where should I start!?" and that is the big problem.
 
As a side note, I've been slowly trying to build up a wiki format of information as well:
http://405th.wikia.com/

There is also someone trying to modernize the file management system, so between the many efforts to modernize the site, hopefully we will get something good going.
 
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