Suggestion for a pinned topic with categories

[Carsten Svendsen]

I am not at all interested in cars, as it's always just another gearbox on wheels with neatly arranged panels.

I want to see interesting contraptions, farming equipment, construction vehicles, artwork and so on.

However, that is really hard to find on here unless you're visiting at least every few days which I'm not.

 

I'm suggesting a pinned thread with a categoric list of all (finished) creations posted on this sub-forum.

That would be a tremendous amount of work to trawl through, and since I have nothing better to do, I'd like to take on this task. However, not unless it would be approved in the first place.

I don't know what kind of admin tools are available, or search functions, but it would be helpful if I could exclude any TC entries, set discussions and WIP threads entirely.

If posted by me, it would be my post/thread so I could maintain it. However, that is clearly not a long-term solution as I can't always be guaranteed to be online, at least weekly to update the list. Maybe use google sheets or something so everyone with permission can edit if needed?

 

Of course there are some logistics involved and formatting concerns, so if Jimmyboy approves, let's have a discussion as to how we can best do this.

 

Edited May 9, 2023 by Carsten Svendsen

[Lipko]

I think this would be a good feature. If I was the programmer of the site I would immediately jump into implementing it, as it doesn't seem to be a hard task and could be implemented in steps.

[Carsten Svendsen]

19 minutes ago, Lipko said:

I think this would be a good feature. If I was the programmer of the site I would immediately jump into implementing it, as it doesn't seem to be a hard task and could be implemented in steps.

Everyone writes their topics differently, so I don't think keywords would work at all.

UNLESS, you're forced to use tags as is already implemented, however, relying on users to correctly label their topics are impossible, unless forced to choose from premade options before being able to post, like Reddit is for instance. Then it would be a simple matter of having admin rights to edit every relevant thread to include the correct tag afterwards.

[Lipko]

25 minutes ago, Carsten Svendsen said:

Everyone writes their topics differently, so I don't think keywords would work at all.

UNLESS, you're forced to use tags as is already implemented, however, relying on users to correctly label their topics are impossible, unless forced to choose from premade options before being able to post, like Reddit is for instance. Then it would be a simple matter of having admin rights to edit every relevant thread to include the correct tag afterwards.

First milestone: Two mandandory fields in the create new topic form. "Category" dropdown and a "finished MOC" checkbox. Then the engine adds two tags for the topic based on the fields.
Plus a pinned topic with simple list of the categoris as a list of links (as the tag search works with url parameters so very easy to create the links manually).

The old topics would all have to be manually tagged though, I don't know if mods can (or want to...) add tags to each topic.

Edited May 9, 2023 by Lipko

[Toastie]

11 hours ago, Carsten Svendsen said:

I'm suggesting a pinned thread with a categoric list of all (finished) creations posted on this sub-forum.

I 100% share this notion. On an even further and different direction, but basically on the same general approach.

As already voiced back then, when the forums "Mindstorms" and "Technic" were reunited: Mindstorms is basically absent - as in drowning. For one, TLG abandoned ship - or will, rather soon. Not the point: That "programming stuff" is not that popular. Nevertheless: EB is essentially a repository of deep knowledge spanning decades (not of posting, of interest and knowledge, e.g., about stuff that disappeared more than several decades ago; I take TCLogo as one example, RCX as another and will add PUp rather sooner than later, as TLG will come up with another electronic "thing").

However, the structure currently is more of a "knowledge dump", rather than a "dictionary". In other words, the forum search function is a joke. Google always finds what I am looking for. >Targeted< that is. A non-targeted inquiry simply does not work, but would, even using Google, when there is a structured content "database".

So I'd propose to not only do show finished projects - when it comes to TC, CodePilot, Mindstorms, PUp and the like, i.e., all programmable stuff, projects are hardly finished at all. But they represent a repository of invaluable knowledge. My perception only, of course.

One example: I did some deep digging on the TCLogo software, wanting to understand, how they did PWM back then, in 1986/7 using 9750 and 4.5V motors. And found out how they did it. Where to post? I will simply add this to my own thread on this forum - and it will be on this forum's page 3 tomorrow and thus dead. It is not about reads, I cannot care less about that metric - it is about 5 people on the planet being able to readily find it, when they occasionally, as you do, visit here.

My 2 cents only!

Best wishes,
Thorsten

 

 

[howitzer]

Catalog of finished MOCs would be nice of course, but I would very much like to see a catalog of useful discussions. Some of the most popular ones resurface now and then (like Axle collection thread) but others get maybe few dozen replies and then disappear into obscurity despite the very useful knowledge they contain. It would of course take a lot of manual work to sort these out and judge which topics are worthy of cataloging, which makes this kind of catalog hard to maintain.

It would also be nice to have a catalog of official set discussion threads and reviews, though if you're looking for a specific set, those are easier to find with search functions or with Google.

[Carsten Svendsen]

I'm just gonna bump this topic for the mods @Jim @Milan

[Berthil]

May be the Hall of Fame can be revived, last edit seems to be from 2019;

 

[Carsten Svendsen]

24 minutes ago, Berthil said:

May be the Hall of Fame can be revived, last edit seems to be from 2019;

I understand what this is and I vividly remember this post. However, what constitutes an incredible MOC worthy of HOF ? So many factors and decisions, many people will get jealous. I understand why it hasn't been maintained.

This is not what I'm looking for though, which you would understand if you read the conversation going on above.

[Mr Jos]

Would be nice to have this. As said before by Toastie, mindstorms / very technical/programmed stuff is being drowned as they get nearly no replies, but to me they are the most interesting to read/watch.

Having this pinned categories topic would make it better to find all these special topics. I was for the mindstorms merging with technic, as I thought there would be more interaction, but it seems to have even gone the other way around.

[lcvisser]

While I support the sentiment, isn’t this readily solved by the tagging? If we had a fixed set of tags instead of the freely chosen tags, then topics would be easily found. Creating new tags could be limited to mods or “high rep” users, similar add to how it works (well, in my opinion) on the various stackexchange.com sites.