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Suggestion - Building up quality forum

Clark Kent, modified 12 Years ago.

Suggestion - Building up quality forum

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James Falkner, modified 12 Years ago.

RE: Suggestion - Building up quality forum

Liferay Legend Posts: 1399 Join Date: 9/17/10 Recent Posts
Clark Kent:
Hello Liferay team,

I have been using Liferay for sometime, and from time to time I have been looking up forums for help. I feel that there is a lot of knowledge base in forum but off late I have been seeing misuse of forums. I have seen lots of quality forum like java ranch and dynamicdrive. In liferay many are spams

1) People posting spams - which are of no relation - here


I think there is some improvements we can do here - for example a simple blacklist of phrases or a more fancy junk detector similar to those used in email clients (there are internal and external tickets open for this), or a better captcha to prevent robot signups. For now, we've turned back on the "Flag" feature and actively manage spammy posts. For example, the one you cite above was taken care of by me, earlier to day - I deleted the post and banned the "user". Probably won't stop them but does help to keep the boards clean.


2) People posting just for increasing their post count - I dont want to take name here but see here and here(i loved the comment made by David emoticon)


Again, we rely on the community to police this as much as we police it ourselves - so continue to mark these and we'll take care of them as needed. java ranch and dynamicdrive have their fair share of spam too, its not like Liferay attracts an unusual amount of spammers emoticon


3)Stop posting welcomes, give it a try, anytime as replies in forum posts. If a post is useful mark it as answer and finish the chapter.


This is a more difficult choice - politeness is a good thing, and its nice to have someone thank you for the time you take to answer someone. I personally don't see the problem with a simple "thank you" reply. But I do wholeheartedly agree about your "mark it as answer" - I am using this data to give out awards next year, so the more you answer, the better!


Improvements
1) Search needs to improve. I normally use google search instead of forum search to find answer


In my opinion this is more important than all your other points - a good search engine will let you find what you are looking for right away without having to read "thank you" posts and spam. Can you show me some examples of where our search engine has failed you (and google has not)?
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Hitoshi Ozawa, modified 12 Years ago.

RE: Suggestion - Building up quality forum

Liferay Legend Posts: 7942 Join Date: 3/24/10 Recent Posts
I've mentioned before about marking a thread as a question, but it seems there aren't too many people picking up on it. I've recommended marking a thread as a question by default but that seems to have been turned down by Liferay.com.

I've also been complaining about the search results - it's just terrible. I've suggested replacing Lucene with Solr but it seems Liferay.com doesn't want to. Search on Japanese text is just terrible! Jorge replied sometime ago about separating English and Japanese searches but I haven't seen any changes.

I don't think people are "just answering to improve the post count" because there actually isn't any benefit to doing it now - there's no point awarded on these forums.
Instead of giving awards to number of forum answers, I'll rather see awards based on wiki pages. Answers in forum should be transfered to wiki pages - people should first be able to search wiki pages for an answer rather than on a forum.

I don't think a simple "thank you" message at the end of the thread isn't going to do much harm because people aren't going to search on it. What does is posting questions that has repeatly been answered and cross posting on the forums. Even with Google, these comes up as search results and it makes finding answers more difficult.

Questioners should read Forum Guidelines before posting. Search if their is an answer in blog and wiki and then seach the forum if there has already been a similar question answered. When asking a question, state which version and which bundle of Liferay is being used in which environment. Attach error messages. People can't answered on a posting that only states Liferay doesn't work or there was an error. Read the Guideline before posting!

IMO, there would be much less noise if the questions are written as accordance with the Forum Guideline and stop letting people who do not use their actual name from posting. Wasn't there an agreement when signing up? If people have something real to say, they should post using their real name. Most of the garbage in this forum is coming from those using alias names - they usually hang around in the forum asking question and answering in different alias name and complaining but I haven't seen too many wiki pages written by them.

I think some of people are misunderstanding - this is a "community forum" and not a support forum. It's to build Liferay community. There are other sites on the net to provide free technical support and I've seem some Liferay questions there too. I think it would be better to let these alias users move to these forums because they really don't contribute much anyways. I haven't heard from any people who are really contributing to Liferay forum complaining about post counts - I think it's because they DO instead of complain.

Lastly, I think the quality of forum has greatly improved since the beginning of this year. :-)
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David H Nebinger, modified 12 Years ago.

RE: Suggestion - Building up quality forum

Liferay Legend Posts: 14914 Join Date: 9/2/06 Recent Posts
Clark Kent:
1) People posting spams - which are of no relation - here


Hmm, that example didn't really seem like spam to me. The way I read it, a new Liferay developer had a mismatch of SDK w/ the Liferay version he's using. In fact I just got done posting a reply because I wanted to help get him on his way...

Clark Kent:
2) People posting just for increasing their post count - I dont want to take name here but see here and here(i loved the comment made by David emoticon)


Hmm, I looked at those posts and I didn't see any gratuitous posting to increase their post count... One question followed by a "this is how you could do it" followed by a "this is how far I got" comment, to me it seemed in line with what other question threads look like.

The comment I made (which I think is the one you were referring to) was completely in jest w/ the recipient. Admittedly I am hoping to reach the magic number to have the "Legend" label, but I truly only post replies on either topics I'm very interested in (such as the Vaadin threads right now) or in posts that have no replies that I think I can help with.

Clark Kent:
3)Stop posting welcomes, give it a try, anytime as replies in forum posts. If a post is useful mark it as answer and finish the chapter.


I don't mind these so much myself. The community is growing, but only one person at a time. All too often in other forums you'll see the new guys getting jumped on for questions which they really have but experienced folks see as rediculous. Sometimes the answer has to be RTFM, especially if an answer is truly covered somewhere else in detail.

But if we can deliver the typical RTFM response wrapped in a welcome message, or encourage someone to give it a try, or even occasionally joke w/ the recipients, I believe it ends up being good for the community as we are welcoming in new folks and providing encouragement.

Clark Kent:
Improvements
1) Search needs to improve. I normally use google search instead of forum search to find answer


This is a big one for me, too. Google is, however, a search engine and they put all of their experience and knowledge into delivering the best results for a given query. If they didn't, they certainly wouldn't retain the top search engine position very long.

Liferay is not about making search engines, they're about making a portal product and providing necessary tools to make it a really darn good portal product, too. While I wish the search engine returned better results, I'm glad they are putting their experience and knowledge into building a better portal instead of trying to become a better search engine too.

Hitoshi Ozawa:
I've mentioned before about marking a thread as a question, but it seems there aren't too many people picking up on it. I've recommended marking a thread as a question by default but that seems to have been turned down by Liferay.com.


Hmm, that would seem reasonable. Most first posts are actually questions. I've seen a few announcements or general statements, but I think most people come here to ask questions.

Hitoshi Ozawa:
Questioners should read Forum Guidelines before posting.


Boy, if I had a dollar every time I've heard variations on this (i.e. RTFM)... emoticon
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Hitoshi Ozawa, modified 12 Years ago.

RE: Suggestion - Building up quality forum

Liferay Legend Posts: 7942 Join Date: 3/24/10 Recent Posts
David, never mind this guy. He's the person who was making similar remarks earlier using a different alias name.
I think most of us already know who he really is but not mentioning it just out of politeness.

I'm also very sure that it's not his employer's stance on the matter but entirely his own.

2) People posting just for increasing their post count - I dont want to take name here but see here and here(i loved the comment made by David emoticon)


The strange thing is the links both points to the same post and David's post in made on the 21th and this thread was started on the 19th. The only reply to the linked post on the 19th I see is Ravi's. emoticon
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David H Nebinger, modified 12 Years ago.

RE: Suggestion - Building up quality forum

Liferay Legend Posts: 14914 Join Date: 9/2/06 Recent Posts
Hitoshi Ozawa:
David, never mind this guy. He's the person who was making similar remarks earlier using a different alias name.
I think most of us already know who he really is but not mentioning it just out of politeness.


Clark Kent is an alias? Here I thought maybe we were going to find out that Superman is moving his homepage into Liferay... emoticon
Clark Kent, modified 12 Years ago.

RE: Suggestion - Building up quality forum

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David H Nebinger, modified 12 Years ago.

RE: Suggestion - Building up quality forum

Liferay Legend Posts: 14914 Join Date: 9/2/06 Recent Posts
Clark Kent:
David sorry never meant to hurt you.


No problem, Clark, I'm actually pretty thick skinned... emoticon

James must have removed the spam portion of the one thread before I happened into it. He's always quick to react to those kinds of things. So quick, in fact, that I usually don't see spam at all in the forum.

Otherwise I thought my first response to your post was a pretty accurate evaluation, I think, at least from my perspective...
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Hitoshi Ozawa, modified 12 Years ago.

RE: Suggestion - Building up quality forum

Liferay Legend Posts: 7942 Join Date: 3/24/10 Recent Posts
James must have removed the spam portion of the one thread before I happened into it. He's always quick to react to those kinds of things. So quick, in fact, that I usually don't see spam at all in the forum.


There were some spam being written into wikis recently. These were quickly removed.

As for the links to the threads, someone may just have changed them.
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Hitoshi Ozawa, modified 12 Years ago.

RE: Suggestion - Building up quality forum

Liferay Legend Posts: 7942 Join Date: 3/24/10 Recent Posts
This is already an old thread but just to pass my time away.

Look at the November 10, 2011 10:45 PM posting. He's telling us that his real name is Clark Kent. emoticon

http://www.liferay.com/community/forums/-/message_boards/message/11414644

Well, coming to look at it now, he is helping the community because he's comments are really creating a lot of responses.
Clark Kent, modified 12 Years ago.

RE: Suggestion - Building up quality forum

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Hitoshi Ozawa, modified 12 Years ago.

RE: Suggestion - Building up quality forum

Liferay Legend Posts: 7942 Join Date: 3/24/10 Recent Posts
I don't think Liferay.com is trying to make this forum into another java ranch and dynamicdrive - they are not in the same business. There are more people involved in the forum here now answering and exchanging ideas to make Liferay better. I think the concept of users ask questions, experts answer them isn't applicable here now. Users ask questions and try to help others who have questions they may be able to offer some advice and gain knowledge from this process is probably the right concept now. I think there are more people involved in forum these days and more people are writing up wiki pages, and I think the overall technical level of users has greatly increased.

If you want to be the "limited all knowing guru" or just want a quick answer, it may be better to go to java ranch, code ranch, or dynamicdrive to answer questions there.
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David H Nebinger, modified 12 Years ago.

RE: Suggestion - Building up quality forum

Liferay Legend Posts: 14914 Join Date: 9/2/06 Recent Posts
James Falkner:
In my opinion this is more important than all your other points - a good search engine will let you find what you are looking for right away without having to read "thank you" posts and spam. Can you show me some examples of where our search engine has failed you (and google has not)?


I've got a perfect example... I wanted the syntax for using jquery in my velocity-based theme, so I did a forum search for "theme jquery src" (the 'src' I stuck in there because I wanted to get the syntax and figured I'd get hits for "<script src=..." rather than just discussions about themes and jquery).

The answers from the forum search are terrible.

Do a google search for "liferay theme jquery src" and the first result has the syntax for exactly what I was looking for...
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James Falkner, modified 12 Years ago.

RE: Suggestion - Building up quality forum

Liferay Legend Posts: 1399 Join Date: 9/17/10 Recent Posts
David H Nebinger:
James Falkner:
In my opinion this is more important than all your other points - a good search engine will let you find what you are looking for right away without having to read "thank you" posts and spam. Can you show me some examples of where our search engine has failed you (and google has not)?


I've got a perfect example... I wanted the syntax for using jquery in my velocity-based theme, so I did a forum search for "theme jquery src" (the 'src' I stuck in there because I wanted to get the syntax and figured I'd get hits for "<script src=..." rather than just discussions about themes and jquery).

The answers from the forum search are terrible.

Do a google search for "liferay theme jquery src" and the first result has the syntax for exactly what I was looking for...



Ok, well I think my question was a dumb one emoticon Of course we're not as good as Google ($8B in profit last year? Are you kidding me??). Perhaps we should just redirect our searches to Google emoticon

Seriously though. I'll do some more testing and see if we can improve it.
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Hitoshi Ozawa, modified 12 Years ago.

RE: Suggestion - Building up quality forum

Liferay Legend Posts: 7942 Join Date: 3/24/10 Recent Posts
Well, just improve it here and don't improve it too much OOTB. I'm contributing to an Apache project nowadays trying to improve the search. emoticon