I wonder in these cases where people, have people have eventually go things working, whether they should replace the initial post, with one which shows that things do indeed work, and the responders can delete their posts.
Then at least we would have posts where people can attest that things do actually work, rather than masses of posts where people say stuff doesn’t work, when it actually turns out they didn’t load the drivers, or didn’t connect the power or data lines, or had faulty hardware etc etc etc.
Or should we cull these posts entirely.
[RogerClark – Mon Aug 14, 2017 9:57 pm] –
People have started to comment that it’s very hard to find the correct information, because the forum is cluttered with posts where people have claim things don’t work for them, but in the end it turns out they made software or hardware mistakes or had defective hardwareI wonder in these cases where people, have people have eventually go things working, whether they should replace the initial post, with one which shows that things do indeed work, and the responders can delete their posts.
Then at least we would have posts where people can attest that things do actually work, rather than masses of posts where people say stuff doesn’t work, when it actually turns out they didn’t load the drivers, or didn’t connect the power or data lines, or had faulty hardware etc etc etc.
Or should we cull these posts entirely.
If there was no actual verifiable issue, I think the whole thread should be removed to avoid confusion. When there was an issue with a solution, then the best would be for the first post in the thread to be updated with the solution and the thread title to reflect that too.
There is a large number of posts were the problems or questions have been repeated a million times before, and a simple search shows the solution. If the original poster does not update the post to indicate the solution, perhaps cull the whole thread so someone doing a search doesn’t have to read thru 30 newest threads to get to the 31st one from a year ago that explained the solution or answer in detail.
I.e: http://www.stm32duino.com/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=2450
I dont think we are going to see any new post in that thread that adds to the 150 previous comments in the subject. I would leave it there until the original poster updates it, and if it’s not updated in a few days, delete it.
That’s my 2 cents.
I think you are absolutely right.
The forum can’t act as a useful resource when swamped with these sorts of posts
yes i know how hard it is to read the FAQ
i still haven’t, well the remainder as i found the answer close to the top
if a query is in the FAQ, a single reply saying solely ‘FAQ’ and then lock the thread
to new replies would be my suggestion.
if it isn’t then add it, congratulate them and then as above ?
as to the current over population, lock and/or delete
is it possible to mark a thread as not to be included in searches ?
stephen
Re: FAQ
Some are answered in the FAQ, but a lot of times people just wire it up wrong. We could add more entries to the FAQ, but frankly no one reads it, so I don’t see the point
This is why the fori do exist
..but in the end it turns out..
The road to “the end” could be many posts long
I doubt you can solve it without making an initial review of the new post, while rejecting it (before making it visible) when You (or the reviewer) think the claimed issue is not an issue.
I would recommend as the first step to remove “quote” button, as the people are using it “in a single click mode” too often and the length of the threads is tremendous then..
[RogerClark – Mon Aug 14, 2017 9:57 pm] –
People have started to comment that it’s very hard to find the correct information, because the forum is cluttered with posts where people have claim things don’t work for them, but in the end it turns out they made software or hardware mistakes or had defective hardware
***my personal opinion, take with grain of salt***
I thought that is what forum is for – ie allow users to talk, aften about problems, to socialize and exchange experiences. Only rarely people search for general information on forums, perhaps sometimes specific information about particular issue. Deleting “wrong” questions is somehow negating the meaning of forum, unless it’s obvious spam or something. And if the problem is real and is “allowed” to stay here, what do you do after bugfix is issued? Delete it? In long term there will not be anything. What are we describing here is bugtracker, already present on github – https://github.com/rogerclarkmelbourne/ … M32/issues
Honestly, I was mildly surprised when I found out about stm32duino for the first time found out stm32duino is “just” forum and FAQ is a bit “hidden”. Searching for relevant information in forum isn’t trivial for beginner and will never be, as forum is “live thing” and that is its advantage.
The forums are usually not made to provide first-contact support to product, that what product page/FAQ/wiki is for.
To track bugs, there is bugtracker.
***end of my personal opinion***
[jaromir – Tue Aug 15, 2017 7:41 am] –[RogerClark – Mon Aug 14, 2017 9:57 pm] –
People have started to comment that it’s very hard to find the correct information, because the forum is cluttered with posts where people have claim things don’t work for them, but in the end it turns out they made software or hardware mistakes or had defective hardware***my personal opinion, take with grain of salt***
I thought that is what forum is for – ie allow users to talk, aften about problems, to socialize and exchange experiences. Only rarely people search for general information on forums, perhaps sometimes specific information about particular issue. Deleting “wrong” questions is somehow negating the meaning of forum, unless it’s obvious spam or something. And if the problem is real and is “allowed” to stay here, what do you do after bugfix is issued? Delete it? In long term there will not be anything. What are we describing here is bugtracker, already present on github – https://github.com/rogerclarkmelbourne/ … M32/issues
Honestly, I was mildly surprised when I found out about stm32duino for the first time found out stm32duino is “just” forum and FAQ is a bit “hidden”. Searching for relevant information in forum isn’t trivial for beginner and will never be, as forum is “live thing” and that is its advantage.
The forums are usually not made to provide first-contact support to product, that what product page/FAQ/wiki is for.
To track bugs, there is bugtracker.
***end of my personal opinion***
It depends on the signal to noise ratio imo. I’ve been moderator of a game forum, and the technical section was basically the same 3 question repeated forever and ever and ever and ever >_<…. (yes, literally: how do i set up a server (open the right ports on router), i lost my key/password, who do i contact?, shadows aren’t working properly on my ATI card. That was basically 80% of the technical help forum)… I think as a community (certainly a more technical and informed community like this one), it can be fair to say “whenever someone ask again why the code size of the stm32 projects is so much larger, to just lock the thread, point them to the existing knowledge, and don’t waste anyone’s time with it anymore”.
I would prefer this forum not to end up like the arduino forum, where you’ve got
– the guys who know nothing, but are determined that their project of landing their walking lego robot on mars is perfectly possible to do in a month, and just need someone to help them out on the tough parts
– the endless stream of questions that basically boil down to “i want to do 2 things simultaneously, but i’m still using delay”, and then someone for the 10000th time tries to explain blink without delay.
I like this forum here because there are mostly fresh and interesting discussion, and if we get many duplicate threads, i think we should work on avoiding that, and dare to ask from those users to search for their question first (and teach them how), and also take action, if they don’t.
[Pito – Tue Aug 15, 2017 12:56 pm] –
Remove the quote text button..
You are joking about removing quoting? Yes?
[Rick Kimball – Tue Aug 15, 2017 1:22 pm] –[Pito – Tue Aug 15, 2017 12:56 pm] –
Remove the quote text button..You are joking about removing quoting? Yes?
I think Pito wants this function removed (the one I just used), where I click “quote” and copies everything from the previous quote, but leave the quote tag, so you can copy part of a previous post and quote with the quote tag.
So people replying has no option to copy a 100 lines post just with a single button click.
On the other hand, that feature alllows the original poster to be notified he was quoted. That would not happen if manually copying text and tagging it as quote.
I would delete threads if they add nothing whatsoever to a subject, because they are just like spam, but just locking them up as racemaniac suggests would be a good option too.
Leaving everything in place no matter what will just get wrose and worse the more users register and post, and make it someway unusable.
I would not precensor posts though, let people post their questions, and everyone else can point out if the issue is already resolved/discussed, or add anything new to the discussion if there is anything new.
Can we make the FAQ button much larger, or place like as big as the thread title and on a line by itself, so hopefully gets more visibility?
[jaromir – Tue Aug 15, 2017 7:41 am] –[RogerClark – Mon Aug 14, 2017 9:57 pm] –
People have started to comment that it’s very hard to find the correct information, because the forum is cluttered with posts where people have claim things don’t work for them, but in the end it turns out they made software or hardware mistakes or had defective hardware***my personal opinion, take with grain of salt***
I thought that is what forum is for – ie allow users to talk, aften about problems, to socialize and exchange experiences. Only rarely people search for general information on forums, perhaps sometimes specific information about particular issue. Deleting “wrong” questions is somehow negating the meaning of forum, unless it’s obvious spam or something. And if the problem is real and is “allowed” to stay here, what do you do after bugfix is issued? Delete it? In long term there will not be anything. What are we describing here is bugtracker, already present on github – https://github.com/rogerclarkmelbourne/ … M32/issues
Honestly, I was mildly surprised when I found out about stm32duino for the first time found out stm32duino is “just” forum and FAQ is a bit “hidden”. Searching for relevant information in forum isn’t trivial for beginner and will never be, as forum is “live thing” and that is its advantage.
The forums are usually not made to provide first-contact support to product, that what product page/FAQ/wiki is for.
To track bugs, there is bugtracker.
***end of my personal opinion***
just my 2 cents as well:
i do agree to a good degree, this point of view, in that a forum tends to be about threads and discussions rather than solutions / Q&A or specs / details / tutorials / guides which would be more appropriate in a faq or wiki. or to an extent such ‘newbie’ questions which tends to add to clutter in part because truly new users to the specific boards stumbles into problems. one of those rather common posts are when a new user who started with a maple mini (clone) or blue pill struggles with initially getting a blinky sketch to install and run along with all different variations of struggles (e.g. that the sketch can’t upload, doesn’t run etc), but the possible reasons for why ‘it doesn’t work’ are numerous. it may have do with the usb drivers, misunderstanding of how the upload would work, that possibly there is no installed boot loader, invalid installation of the core etc, the (invaild) use of those boot pins, boot buttons etc. and even faulty hardware. there are probably even people who are completely new to arduino and mcus let alone stm32 who are trying to get their hands dirty playing with stm32 maple mini boards as their very first mcus and arduinos.
the trouble is that in this forum here, there are various posts here which are ‘achievements’ and many of them of true value, e.g. successful ports to different boards / new drivers e.g. for sd cards, new lcd screens, new hardware etc. and some of these started initially as threads and discussions but end with a developed solution along the way. example of such successes includes the support for stm32f40x boards which today there are at least 3 different ‘cores’ that one can choose to play with stm32f40x boards (libmaple, stm32generic and st’s own stm32duino implementation). however, as this is a voluntary effort, few of those info has made it into a more ‘formal’ wiki or faq. as other posts cumulates, they get ‘snowed under’ by other ‘clutter’
my thoughts and possibly suggestions are that if possible a link to the wiki and resources should be made more prominently accessible on the www.stm32duino.com front page. so that users can click on that link right at the main page and that jumps directly to the wiki. it is probably not apparent to many new forum members / users that the wiki is simply at wiki.stm32duino.com and that the main libmaple core is at https://github.com/rogerclarkmelbourne/Arduino_STM32. it would probably help if on the main page www.stm32duino.com a link to the wiki (wiki.stm32duino.com) can be prominently placed
my guess is that whose wiki links would encourage new users to first browse the wiki prior to perhaps posting a question which may well be repeated asked over and again by different (new) users.
As such you get the kind of questions you typically don’t get.
I see no fix to that.
When I started with the STM32 here I stumbled in a lot of problems because many things are not working in the same way and the STM32 Arduino implementations often have some errors.
I avoided to use the professional STM32 development tools because I worked with so many microcontrollers over the years and i wanted to skip the usual start up problems.
But in retrospective I would have been better off starting with the usual tools.
I tried to contribute a little bit in the STM32Generic repository to lower the limits for beginners.
So the answer is: quality improvement !
Make more and easy to read examples. Take effort to make the examples simple, not complicated.
The most core developers loose the ability to reduce things to “simplicity”.
E.g. if an STM32 Arduino framework has the ability to support multiple hardware SPIs or I2Cs make !simple! examples which show how to to it.
Read you examples code after a few weeks again and try to simplify even more. A second person should read the example and give some comments how understandably the thing is.
No good deed goes unpunished on this site. Just check out the recent thread that advocated adding a simple sketch to the bootloader so that the USB Serial port is instantiated. No less than a month after Roger completed that feature, some guy is complaining about it not working. Turns out that other person grabbed the wrong bootloader. So all that effort to create something that was supposed to help newbies doesn’t really help at all.
Give me moderator access I can clean this pile up : )
[Rick Kimball – Tue Aug 15, 2017 8:43 pm] –
(well aside from the st guys on the new port however they are focused on the nucleo boards not the maple mini) I
Not only focus on Nucleo
If I can help on other topics I answered but it’s not often the case 
Manage a forum is not simple… I understand your trouble Roger. And probably we brought some trouble with stm32duino github with “official” ST arduino core. 
I don’t think STM have added any confusion. There have always been multiple Arduino cores, as some people have been using Koduino and perhaps the MakerLabMe core.
I will do a manual backup, and then work out how to make you a moderator.
If anyone else would like to moderate please let me know. Please do not be offended if I decline your application
You and some others have been added as moderators.
i.e I added some of the other founder members or those with large number of positive posts as moderators.
So, I’ve lit the blue touch paper and I will now stand back and wait for the fireworks
[Rick Kimball – Tue Aug 15, 2017 8:43 pm] –
…
Give me moderator access I can clean this pile up : )
+1 for Rick
I just went to the control panel and looks like Rick is starting a coup… 
Arduino is not just a core or a brand. It’s a way to make electronics and programming accessible for people without years of training. Making mistakes and asking stupid question is called learning. You cannot learn if you are not allowed to make mistakes. The question that is asked shouldn’t be relevant. What is relevant is the amount of effort someone put into asking the question. The amount of effort someone put in making a posts on this forum should be relevant. I have asked countless stupid question. But I’ve always try to put an effort into my topics and to search before asking.
My first STM32 was the STM32F103 Blue Pill. I had to learn after hours of searching that the usb was not working by default because of a wrong resistor value. I had to upload a bootloader, change IDE and after trial and error I manged to make the usb work. I couldn’t have done it without the help of this forum even if the question had been asked many times. Sometimes all the information is just to much and you get lost even if the answer is obvious.
I now bought an STM32_F4VE. Exited I was I started on the tour of getting the board recognized by my computer. I still have not managed to do so. I found out that there are three cores with Arduino implementation for the F4. The information about the board is scattered around the forum. I can find information in these sections about the STM32F4:
– General section
– STM32F4 Boards
– Cores
– STM Core
– STM32generic
Believe me that I spent many hours trying to read everything there is about the F4. But it’s extremely hard to understand why some info is posted somewhere if you are not an experienced programmer.
That was also my experience even for an experienced programmer like me.
The problem is that the people in this forum ( probably 10 developers ) are reading and posting regular. And they know where the things are and what is working. For the others which are just starting it is difficult.
I’ve going to me more proactive about locking and deleting duplicate threads
If someone posts a question that is effectively a duplicate because they have not used Google to search the forum first, if someone can reply saying its been covered before, and possibly add a link to other threads.
The thread can then be locked and eventually deleted as a duplicate
