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  #21  
02-23-2022, 05:48 PM
mbassiouny mbassiouny is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Hushpower View Post
Get rid of the "Read More" link at the bottom of every quote. It's normally obvious that the person is quoting a post in the same thread.

If somebody is quoting a post in another thread, it's easy enough to simply paste that other post's address.
I agree, it annoys me personally, but, the I think the goal was for when people copy from here and paste on an external website. Honestly even when I copy and paste externally I always remove the read more.

Also +1 for proper guides.

Example:
See these:
http://www.digitalfaq.com/forum/vide...bc-3000-a.html
http://www.digitalfaq.com/forum/vcr-...datavideo.html
and there is a guy who said "I need to figure how to use my tbc-3000" in a post I saw few hours ago and I am sure there are others I did not see.

@ls, in these comments You shared things that are not so well known about these nor documented.

Why people opened threads? simply because there is no proper (dumped down tl;dr) TBC-3000 guide. Ideally a good guide, what these buttons do, what they are good for, different models etc....

A lot still ask for proper "comparison" of what TBCs do and what they don't. (before and after). A guide with few samples (video not only images) will be amazing.

an additional feature (plugin) that I am think about is " user templates". While it is a bit inhuman and commun in helpdesk/support, it is a feature where you save few ready answers and just import them (from a dropdown in the menu). This will simplify the life of mainly you, but other members who contribute a lot.

That way you won't have to repeat yourself for the 1000th time when someone asks "why do I have audio out of sync" or how what is a frame TBC. I don't know if you retype your answers every time, or copy some parts of them, but I am sure such thing will help reduce time wasted on typing. The downside, it introduces mistakes and inconsistencies just like when you edit something you pasted, sometimes you forget a random work in the middle of the sentence from the leftover of the orignal sentence. (not sure if I explained my suggestion properly)

Last edited by mbassiouny; 02-23-2022 at 06:35 PM.
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  #22  
02-23-2022, 08:19 PM
ThumperStrauss ThumperStrauss is offline
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  1. An AI-powered knowledge base that sees the draft post and delivers up some suggested posts to avoid another post on the same topic.
  2. User guides written/edited by the power restorers at this forum, with everyone else being able to simply suggest edits.
  3. Auto-complete for common terms, so that the spelling and short-hand is consistent, which will make it easier to find info.
  4. Some forced nomenclature on subject lines to make them more useful, or categories.
  5. Ability of OP to change status to solved, and pick the comment that solved it.
  6. Ability to type a variable like %myworkflow% that will be replaced by my pre-defined workflow, so that I don't have to type it each time.
  7. Something like up voting (like Reddit) to help users identify useful posts. That's what the Thanks option is, I guess. But hopefully the posts/comments with more ups get found first in the search tool.
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  #23  
02-23-2022, 08:39 PM
mbassiouny mbassiouny is offline
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Quote:
An AI-powered knowledge base that sees the draft post and delivers up some suggested posts to avoid another post on the same topic.
Now you are in my area.

Unrealistic, not any time soon. You do realize there are entire R&D departments in companies just to work on such a thing? and no, copy pasting that tutorial from towardsdatascience does not give you something that works as you expect. These are toy examples.

+ having extra thread on same topic not a bad idea, because people have different tapes, different projects, etc. People may need to ask regardless of the existing of something close. You want to encourage people to ask! and not shut them up by a bot.

2. I agree with giving people ability to submit, but maybe LS does not want too much extra work of moderating the suggestions? idk. But it is a good suggestions

Quote:
Auto-complete for common terms, so that the spelling and short-hand is consistent, which will make it easier to find info.
That is a very invasive feature. It invades your life, analyzes your data, and again, not realistic without using some very powerful engine, which is not free.

Quote:
Some forced nomenclature on subject lines to make them more useful, or categories.
For the love of god, no, let us a be. This is a community after all, not an official wiki, not the army. One thing I hate with a**holes in stackeoverflow/exchange is how they are so damn strict about every single thing. Like dammit I want my question answered, I don't have to study 3 hours the entire lit. to provide motivation behind why I am trying to solve a formula (true story, happened to). The word "force" made me angry here. Suggest? yes, force? no. take it easy.

Quote:
Ability of OP to change status to solved, and pick the comment that solved it.
I made a similar suggestion. But this is a forum--> discussions, it is true they end up eventually solving issues, but in a lot of situations it is collaborative effort, not 1 answer. This is not a Q2A website. These are properties of a Q2A platform.

Quote:
Ability to type a variable like %myworkflow% that will be replaced by my pre-defined workflow, so that I don't have to type it each time.
not to dissimilar from the templates idea I suggested. Just it always remain the same, no possibility to edit once on the go if needed.

Something like up voting (like Reddit) to help users identify useful posts. That's what the Thanks option is, I guess. But hopefully the posts/comments with more ups get found first in the search tool.
The thanks button exists. You are looking for a search tool that perform weighted search in every comment?. In the massive DB of this website, you will spend as much time looking for info as the time you will spend digitizing.

The cost of your suggestions (if you want them functional, not just there to say hey, these are implemented) is few thousand dollars and crazy amount of time. The sites you see these features at are multi-million companies. Not broke hobbyists spending spare money on video.

Your suggestions are creating a hybdrid sof, reddit with gmail editor, netflix search and good only knows what else: the meme in attachement really describes the outcome of these suggestions. Attribute SOF, reddit, etc, to the animals (at random).

Get off the internet a bit. You seem to very attached to those (un)fancy things Microsoft and google keep throwing in everything.

Let's keep the wishes feasible. It's LS/dfaq wishlist, not santa Wishlist


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Last edited by mbassiouny; 02-23-2022 at 09:00 PM.
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  #24  
02-25-2022, 02:05 AM
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lordsmurf lordsmurf is offline
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All good stuff, replying to all...

Quote:
Originally Posted by Hushpower View Post
Get rid of the "Read More" link at the bottom of every quote.
I need to see an example. I never get that. However, I know what causes it (Tynt Tracer), and have (at least for now) removed it. It's somewhat of a byproduct of a different 'net era.

Quote:
Originally Posted by mbassiouny View Post
I agree, it annoys me personally, but, the I think the goal was for when people copy from here and paste on an external website.
Correct.

Quote:
@ls, in these comments You shared things that are not so well known about these nor documented.
Ideally a good guide, what these buttons do, what they are good for, different models etc....
A lot still ask for proper "comparison" of what TBCs do and what they don't. (before and after). A guide with few samples (video not only images) will be amazing.
Time. Easy to ask it be spent -- especially when it's not your own. Thus is the nature of free online help. We form communities, do what we can for others. What we can.

Quote:
Why people opened threads? simply because there is no proper (dumped down tl;dr) ... guide.
To an extent, this was by design. Less so now. Curation needed. But still, new threads wanted, engaged two-way comm wanted.

Quote:
an additional feature (plugin) that I am think about is " user templates". While it is a bit inhuman and commun in helpdesk/support, it is a feature where you save few ready answers and just import them (from a dropdown in the menu). This will simplify the life of mainly you, but other members who contribute a lot.
This was always planned, just not implemented. But it really needs to be now.

Quote:
That way you won't have to repeat yourself for the 1000th time when someone asks "why do I have audio out of sync" or how what is a frame TBC. I don't know if you retype your answers every time, or copy some parts of them, but I am sure such thing will help reduce time wasted on typing. The downside, it introduces mistakes and inconsistencies just like when you edit something you pasted, sometimes you forget a random work in the middle of the sentence from the leftover of the orignal sentence. (not sure if I explained my suggestion properly)
Copy/paste often. But the biggest issue is when newbies get confused. Or hostile, or stubborn, which also happens. Why confused? Because the info has changed. I've been online for decades. New items came along, some decayed badly. For example, the HR-S9600/9800 were some of the best VCRs, period. In the 1990s, and the 2000s. But as the 2010s wore on, those started to break down, the infamous DD problems. The mid/late 2000s also saw some of the EOL decks that are discussed far less (because many, many posts were made before those existed). So, again, curation.

I don't get tired (as much) to re-explain why both TBCs are needed.
But I do get tired of having to tell somebody (for example) that "no, not any AVT-8710" and "yes, great, but what you're reading is from the 2000s, not the 2010s when the black models existed".
New info came along.
That in turn, makes folks that that the opposite of new=old (NO! LEGACY!), and thus anything old = poopy bad.

Quote:
Originally Posted by ThumperStrauss View Post
An AI-powered knowledge base that sees the draft post and delivers up some suggested posts to avoid another post on the same topic.
Auto-complete for common terms, so that the spelling and short-hand is consistent, which will make it easier to find info.
This is somewhat already implemented in the new setup.

Quote:
User guides written/edited by the power restorers at this forum, with everyone else being able to simply suggest edits.
Editing isn't allowed. Why? Because people will maliciously destroy conversations, by effectively deleting the content. I've seen this on forums, where a person edited 100s of posts going back years, and good info was lost. They had a meltdown or temper tantrum of some sort.

Quote:
Some forced nomenclature on subject lines to make them more useful, or categories.
I wish. I hate having to read a post to know what it's about. "Help me newbie plz" is a terrible worthless topic. Even with big warnings and rules, people don't heed it. What will happen is members won't answer it.

Quote:
Ability of OP to change status to solved, and pick the comment that solved it.
In theory, great idea. But the problem is most people never mark as solved. So it'd fall on Site Staff, me, to mark as solved. Just extra busy work. This has been tried in other places, and it never worked.

Quote:
Ability to type a variable like %myworkflow% that will be replaced by my pre-defined workflow, so that I don't have to type it each time.
Probably not. If you allow users to dump in variable text like that, it can be misused by spammers.

VH used to have a profile spot for computer/misc specs, where you could leave those details. But it was never used, or became dated. Very often, a person fills it out once, then never revisits it.

Quote:
Something like up voting (like Reddit) to help users identify useful posts. That's what the Thanks option is, I guess. But hopefully the posts/comments with more ups get found first in the search tool.
That's the thanks.

The problem here is that it's gamed. So often times, downvotes are removed, merely tally upvotes for the best threads. However, another problem occurs: only the oldest posts are "best" even if not at all best anymore. It also gives the users too much control over "liking" stuff they may not understand, or "liking" for a nonsense reason ("he has a great username!") Again, this is a curation issue, and curation needs some expert hands.

Quote:
Originally Posted by mbassiouny View Post
You want to encourage people to ask!
Correct.

Quote:
LS does not want too much extra work of moderating the suggestions? idk.
Correct. I want to use the site too, not just be the janitor.

Quote:
This is a community after all
One thing I hate with a**holes in stackeoverflow/exchange is how they are so damn strict about every single thing.
I can't stand that site. The rules are ridiculous. They actively try to shut down conversations. I don't understand the point of even having a community. But what we ask isn't so draconian: concise, decent question, aka Jeopardy style questions. Not "VCR help plz, newbie here". I already don't care. You suck because now I have to edit it to comply with searching. So my free time will be spent fixing the post, not answering it. I'll circle back around later, maybe.

Quote:
The cost of your suggestions ... is few thousand dollars and crazy amount of time.
And FYI, that's already having to be spent. Specifically my time, my money.

Quote:
Get off the internet a bit.
Let's keep the wishes feasible. It's LS/dfaq wishlist, not santa Wishlist
Now, now, be nice. I did ask for all users to give their wishlists.
Some wishes may be granted.
Some not.

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  #25  
02-25-2022, 07:54 AM
mbassiouny mbassiouny is offline
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Quote:
Time. Easy to ask it be spent -- especially when it's not your own. Thus is the nature of free online help. We form communities, do what we can for others. What we can.
Sorry I did not mean it in a rude way as in ordering you "give me your time, write me a guide". I know it takes time, I just meant it is already gonna be spent, so maybe spend in a more organized way (more organized -> in terms of readability)

For example the PAL/NTSC switch thing was mentioned few times. I am certain. So maybe instead of writing an answer in the forum. Create a page/wiki entry/glossary page or whatever it is called depending on the platform, edit quickly when someone asks for a new information. and just reply this wiki entry : <url> has been edited to answer your question.

I am willing to take some time, gathering up the information you wrote in various threads on TBCs (Like don'ts and DO's, use UPS, tbc-3000 generations, some photos of the inside, etc) and compile them in some organized articles (one per specific device) or something, I can do it as draft for you then you can approve it, edit, publish it yourself. if you want me to do it let me know
(though this might end up making you the " janitor" as you said in the previous comment lol)

Quote:
This is somewhat already implemented in the new setup.
Interesting did CMS already have it? or did you invest in it as a plugin/add-on?

Quote:
Now, now, be nice. I did ask for all users to give their wishlists.
Now that I read some of my comments, I realize maybe I sounded offensive a bit, @ThumperStrauss I am very sorry, I did not mean it, suggestions are ofc welcome, as LS said. But I just meant to be realistic a bit as some are really demanding as I explained. People having such features do generate huge income from their websites, dfaq is the opposite, it does not generate money, money is spent on it...

Quote:
I can't stand that site. The rules are ridiculous. They actively try to shut down conversations. I don't understand the point of even having a community. But what we ask isn't so draconian:
Lol, thing is, they have "how to ask a good question" guides on most SE network sites. I commonly heard this sentence from a couple of good teachers/professors I had "If you have a question ask, don't be afraid, there is no such thing as a bad question". These professors were right imho. SE approach is not the most pedogeological, but it works to build some searchable and well structured knowledge base entries, but it is flawed imho.

There is a learning curve to just ask a question. Video has already a huge learning curve. Imposing another learning curve just to ask the question, to be able to access the second learning curve about video will make things complicated for users who are barely trying to keep up with TBC, analog video, post-processing, too much to unpack.

Quote:
And FYI, that's already having to be spent. Specifically my time, my money.
Sorry to hear... Sad... No one ever suggested to sponsor the website or something?
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  #26  
02-25-2022, 08:02 AM
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lordsmurf lordsmurf is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by mbassiouny View Post
Sorry I did not mean it in a rude way as in ordering you "give me your time, write me a guide".
I know.

Quote:
I am willing to take some time, gathering up the information you wrote in various threads on TBCs (Like don'ts and DO's, use UPS, tbc-3000 generations, some photos of the inside, etc) and compile them in some organized articles (one per specific device) or something, I can do it as draft for you then you can approve it, edit, publish it yourself. if you want me to do it let me know
Nice. Do it.

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  #27  
02-25-2022, 12:49 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by mbassiouny View Post
This is a community after all, not an official wiki, not the army. One thing I hate with a**holes in stackeoverflow/exchange is how they are so damn strict about every single thing.
I've been on both sides of that issue. SE tries to be a true knowledge base where every question has a single, definitive answer, so duplicate questions are necessarily culled. Often the moderators get it wrong, and often they will close an exploratory-type question before helping the submitter get on the right path. Sometimes they care a little too much about curating that knowledge base to perfection. The perfect is the enemy of the good, so often the moderators are their own worst enemies.

Of course the extreme opposite of the "knowledge base" philosophy are forums where users are banned for resurrecting old threads when new information becomes available.

I think the art and science of video digitization has progressed to the point where a little more knowledge curation would be beneficial. So I like the wiki idea.
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  #28  
02-25-2022, 04:49 PM
mbassiouny mbassiouny is offline
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Dynamic mentions. I assume the new platform already has it?

"@X", X becomes a url to profile + user gets notified like when getting a PM ("userY has mentioned you in thread: <url of thread>")
But with this features, you (lordsmurf in particular ) will get +100 new notifications daily. So it would be great if there is a per user setting that allows each user to disable getting notifications when mentioned.

Also, It does not bother me personally, but maybe other users want WYSIWYG editor? I personally like it this way. It does not get messy when I paste here something I copied from outside (no weird grey background is kept, etc) + I can write drafts anywhere with any editor. WYSIWYG is a bit less portable/universal. Format is not always copiable, at least not outcome may not be 100% similar.
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  #29  
02-26-2022, 03:31 AM
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Yes on the @mentions (@lordsmurf, etc), and I need that especially. You also get notified of likes, which can help alert you to a conversation you may have forgotten about. I've wanted these features for years, but the vBulletin plugins were too buggy. It's core to XenForo. Notifications are separate from PMs/Conversations, so I wont go nuts.

Something that doesn't exist on XenForo, which I really need for my sanity, is the ability to curate PMs. Merging, splitting, like posts/threads. Nothing exists here, nothing is core. There have been many requests for it. Perhaps this is something you can help focus on? Care to learn XF? Now, PMs are threaded in XF. But when you import, folders are lost (OMG!!!), and the imports are not threaded. I lose track of stuff too easy (9 times out of 10, if you don't quote earlier PMs, I have no idea we're talking about anymore), as my PM and email boxes are flooded. I literally have more PMs than every other member on this site combined.

XF is WYSIWYG.
vB was WYSIWYG as well, until Chrome. It's still WWSIWYG in Firefox.
But note that extra formatting like fonts is disallowed.

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  #30  
11-29-2022, 02:51 AM
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This is progressing as planned.

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  #31  
11-29-2022, 11:15 AM
MrPete MrPete is offline
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As a re-new member here, working on my AG-5710 restoration project, I've found a few challenges that probably could be repaired with some forum improvements:

1) It's incredibly hard to find certain things, if you don't already know they exist.

Here's an example: Quasipal created a half-hour training video on addressing Panasonic K Mechanism issues. I didn't know that existed. And just now, I went looking for it and had a hard time (because I didn't remember his user name among other things)

FYI, the link is buried in this post: https://www.digitalfaq.com/forum/vcr...e-loading.html

* What if we could auto-collect all links to youtube and youtu.be and other video sites?
* What if search included date ranges (including "before mm/dd/yy")

2) Some posts and threads and comments have great value. A voting system allows readers to highlight such content... and a search that prioritizes such things would keep those in the limelight.

3) In this very thread are valuable links to lists of great guides, workflows etc... those lists have never made it into the FAQ or Guides section. Let's do it

4) I've been around online communities for a VERY long time (1985 )... I'd suggest that this site is a great example of a community that would benefit from BOTH user-contributed discussion and best-practice archives/content. Implication: besides the forum system, some kind of user-editable wiki system or other way to maintain indexed, searchable, editable content would have great value.

On another topic: if you still are struggling with SSL, two things to consider:
- ACME SSL certs are pretty nice. Set up properly, they auto-update and are no cost.
- HAproxy is an open source gateway that presents a uniform SSL interface to the outside world, while forwarding a wide variety of traffic to internal systems that may range from outdated-SSL to not-SSL-at-all. VERY nice even internally -- I no longer get complaints from my web browser when accessing the web GUI for my old switches and such.
- (CloudFlare has already been mentioned. Yep, it works.)

Final thought: anybody who runs a non-profit (501c3) ought to consider DreamHost for hosting. They donate one high end account to any nonprofit. Unlimited space, domains, sites, databases, etc etc. Includes cloudflare, SSL and more. And great tech support. I gladly moved there from HG... and pay for a personal acct as well for all my other stuff.
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  #32  
11-29-2022, 12:36 PM
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Thanks for your input.

The new site will use ElasticSearch 2.0, no more Google, no more weak site search.

Curation will fix the FAQ/guides situation.

A wiki is part of the update, but the content adds will be by Site Staff only, maybe a few other members that are granted permissions. It will require too much moderation otherwise. A goal of the new site is less admin work needs, not more.

SSL seems to be working fine now, but it was a huge PITA. Some stuff is still broken, but nothing essential. The new site should be fine.

DreamHost was one of the worst hosts out there for at least 15 years, until a few years ago. Now it's really neither good nor bad, very neutral. We have mixed feelings about donating hosting, it skews reviews on quality of services, and hosts too often use the freebie recipient as a reference of why they're a good host. Very circular, very shady, dupes the masses. In fact, all the reviews you see online are the standard fake "top 10" hosting reviews, pure affiliate sites.

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  #33  
11-29-2022, 07:59 PM
MrPete MrPete is offline
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I get it on the "skews reviews" thing. In this case, they NEVER ask us to do a review. They simply donate the account. And in fact, we've never done a review. This is one of my only public mentions

BTW, the link you provided doesn't do what you think. Went to a marketing site?!!
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  #34  
11-30-2022, 12:04 PM
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It's an older auto-link, and probably broken. Since new site coming, not worth fixing.

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