Structure of this forum?

[Taliesin]

First off, I'm as frustrated as any of you about how badly the microchip forum upgrade has been handled, and I understand the desire to have a better, simpler place to seek help. I'm not sure I'm ready to give up on the Microchip forums yet, but I understand the desire.

Having said that, I think it's a mistake to structure these forums off of what Microchip has been doing for years. I have personally always found the sheer number of forum topics and sub-forums to be ridiculous. I think it just creates confusion for people who are posting as to where they should be posting their issues. Instead, I'd love to see a much simpler structure, with just a few top-level forums like IDE Issues, Compiler Issues, PIC12/16 Programming, PIC18 Programming, dsPIC/PIC24 Programming, PIC32 Programming, and maybe Peripheral Devices. Then just allow some form of tagging so things can be searched by more specific topics if needed.

I don't know how feasible that is, but that's my two cents.

Taliesin

[Tom Maier]

Microchip set theirs up that way because of the high volume of people posting. I don't think this web site will ever get to that volume (this is only four days old), so I agree there is a lot of subdivision without much justification.

I think it would be best to have the home page with a more promient "CLICK HERE TO SEE LATEST ACTIVITY!". There is a click like that right now, but it is a bit obscure.

[jaromir]

I'm reliving this two years old thread - sorry for that, but it has valid points.
After a relatively long time, lot of subforums are still empty. And honestly - do you think we will get at least two-digit amount of posts in subforums like CML, VDI, PIC14000, rfRXD or TSHARC? Lot of subforums could be merged, IMHO - like USART/I2C/USB/CAN into "digital communications", all 8-bits cores into single subforum, as well as all 16-bits into single subforum. ALL development tools should have one subforum, perhaps divided into IDE/compilers/others. Having a lot of near-empty subforums makes this place big, but empty desert - not very attractive for users.

[ric]

Agreed, I've been meaning to go through and weed out all the forums that have never got a post.
My original intention was to show how easy it was to duplicate the Microchip board, but I think I've already made that point

[jaromir]

One more suggestion - don't make the subforum structure too deep, keep flat structure. A lot of phpBB forums admins go crazy about tree structure of forums and I found it very complicated - especially when you are new member, not used to the structure. For easy orientation, the main list of subforums should point to the subforums directly, not via another list. Perhaps I'm not using correct terminology, but I imagine having structure like this

Code: Select all

MAIN > FORUM_A > post1
               > post2
               > post3
       FORUM_B > post1
               > post2
               > post3
       FORUM_C > post1
               > post2
               > post3



Now when I want to post to PIC24, I need to click to 16-bit general, just then to PIC24. I think the PIC24 should be accessible from top menu, perhaps merged with other 16-bit topics.

[NorthGuy]

I agree with this idea.

If the forum consisted of 8-12 sub-forums without further subdivisions it would look much better. There are many sub-forums on the first page, but many of them have the most recent posts dating back to 2014. These sub-forums look abandoned, and people may not post there because they feel abandoned. 8 to 12 sub-forums when each of them receives few posts every day look much more attractive.

Also finding posts when there are so many sub-forums is not easy. Even such a simple task as finding all new posts is rather difficult, and could be made much easier with reduced sub-forum set.

[jaromir]

8-12 subforums is somehow cruel cut, but not unreasonable. Ideally, if the main forum without any further subforums would fit to height of 1080 pixels monitor, it would be awesome.

I can see ric already cleaned-up the forum. THUMBS UP! There is still a lot of dead sections in devtools subforum, but Rome wasn't build in a single day, too.

[JAYDEE10]

There are so many people complaining about the structure of this forum.

[ric]

There are so many people complaining about the structure of this forum.

Really?
Not one comment in this thread since 2016, except yours...