Excel Questions Forum Moves at Almost the Speed of Light ??

[T. Valko]

Just so you don't think you're all alone on this, monirg, I sort of agree with you.

If I were to start a forum I would have different subforums like:

Formulas/Worksheet Functions
Macros and VBA code
Pivot Tables
Charting
Misc

 

[Norie]

Biff

I think there's a consideration of what the board software can do and even if it can do something like this how much work it would require.

Plus, what happens to all the existing threads?

Perhaps if you were creating a new forum/board then itcould start off with this sort of approach.

 

[T. Valko]

Biff

I think there's a consideration of what the board software can do and even if it can do something like this how much work it would require.

Plus, what happens to all the existing threads?

Perhaps if you were creating a new forum/board then itcould start off with this sort of approach.

Yeah, that's what I meant when I said:

If I were to start a forum...

This place is already established in this format and a change now would be entirely too much work (trouble).

 

[Norie]

Oops, missed that.

I've just remembered I've seen other conversations kind of similar to this.

It's to do with marking threads as 'SOLVED' and has come up a few times.

Don't have a link, and it might not be relevant, but it had some interesting points.

I'll see if I can find a link.

 

[monirg]

1) Thank you T. Valko for your moral support!
A "change" to the Board current format is certainly undesirable and uncalled for. Besides, "change" doesn't really do justice to the idea!

2) Please let me summarise my suggestion since there appears to be some confusion.
Since the Board requires a "Title" to a "New Thread" to be entered, then why not expanding the requirement to include checking the 1st word of the "Title" against a list of Keywords ??
(The list of keywords may include: Worksheets:, Formulas:, Charts:, VBA:, Pivots:, UserForms:, Dates:, Advanced:, Misc.:)
Is that too much for the board software experts ?? (who're by the way doing fabulous job for free, which is greatly appreciated and acknowledged)
It might well be, I don't have a clue!

3) Existing Threads would remain unchanged, while a New Thread (say, effective 01/01/2012) would have its Title starts with a Keyword.
(By the way, having a Thread marked as SOLVED is an excellent idea, but it is for another user to suggest)

4) If forcing the OPs to select a Keyword from a dropdown list requires tremendous effort by the Board to implement & manage, and requiring such specificity in the Title might unnecessarily cause confusion to the users, as some have indicated, then how about just displaying it as a suggestion in the New Thread page ?
Something like:
"Please Select a Keyword from the List on the Left as the 1st Word in the Title Box."
and leave it to the OPs whether they want to provide a specific Title or not!
This appears to be far simpler than for example compiling the current "Smilies" icons to the right of the Message box, and doesn't represent a "change" to the current format. I think!

Regards.

 

[Joe4]

Just to clarify a few key points.

No one here wrote the forum software we use. If you look at the bottom of the page, it says "Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.8.7, Copyright ©2000 - 2011, vBulletin Solutions, Inc.". It is a software program, and as such, we have limitations to what we can and cannot do with it.

Also, I don't think those ideas are quite consistent with the philosophy of the board, which is to try to maintain a "relaxed, friendly" atmosphere. We do not wish to burden new users with whole host of "red-tape" regulations for posting, nor do the volunteer Moderators wish to spend a lot of time enforcing those sort of measures.

As Peter pointed out, many people are brand new to Excel and have no idea what they are looking for (which is why they are here). The last thing we want to hear is new people complain about our site because they weren't able to post a question because "the were unable to post the question the right way".

I am not saying that some of those ideas don't sound good in theory, because some of them do. But putting them into practice is a whole different thing with different (and often unintended) consequences.

Is this site perfect? No. But I would say that with the number of members who have worldwide, Bill obviously had a good vision and must be doing something right!

 

[xenou]

I believe it's easier to have only one forum to browse. I think I can get a basic idea from the post titles what the "high level" category the question belongs in (formulas, charts, pivot tables, vba, maths, ADO/SQL, statistics, data entry, web queries, security, xml, sharepoint, access integration, vba, etc. etc.). Plus, whenever I log in, I check the "unanswered questions" list from the quick links menu - so the fast pace of the site doesn't prevent me from seeing new questions that aren't answered.

I've been involved in two other forums that have more "categories" - when I visit I feel I have to jump around a lot when searching for topics or browsing recent posts. So my experience is that this isn't as straightforward a solution as it seems (as an old prof once used to say, everything is related to everything). I've learned a lot just logging into "Excel Questions" over the years.

Speaking from the point of view moderating - well, the truth is that people post questions here that aren't even about Excel! Don't mean to be pessimistic, but I'd guess the more forums we have the more we'll have questions that are miscategorized.

 

[SydneyGeek]

The biggest forum I've been to where there are multiple sub-categories is utteraccess.
It works there because it was set up from the start, but I'd be prepared to bet that the moderators spend a *lot* of time moving posts to the correct location.

Personally, I prefer the way it's done here. The search engine works well if you're looking for something, or you can Google. And plenty of the longer term members specifically go searching for unanswered posts when they log on, so the rapid movement shouldn't be a disadvantage.

And it would make no sense at all to change mid-stream here. Who's going to sift 2.5 million posts into their categories? And what will that do to all the posts that the search engines have already indexed?

Denis

 

[monirg]

Hello;

1) I'm NOT suggesting or recommending Additional Categories or Sub-Forums to the current format.

2) For the sake of clarity, if you look at the forum Excel Questions page 1 as we speak, the Titles of the top 10 Threads (which would be on page 23+ in few seconds by the time you retrieve this message!) would have been more specific in my opinion had the OPs used a keyword in the Title.
Something like (assuming they're all New Threads):
VBA: Switching between workbooks
VBA: Macro issue
VBA: conditionally hide/unhide columns
Worksheets: Help with archiving
Charts: Dynamic Chart scroll bar
Formulas: Sumproduct formula required
UserForms: Column Header Sort On Userform
Worksheets: Does anyone know roughly how many sheets Excel 2007 supports
VBA: copy&paste to a new workbook
Worksheets: Easy for mrexcel, but so hard for me - sorting rows dependent on 1 column
Pivots: Table to show total instead of MAX as Grand Total
VBA: Macro To Copy Data

3) As I proposed earlier:

3) Existing Threads would remain unchanged, while a New Thread (say, effective 01/01/2012) would have its Title starts with a Keyword.
4) If forcing the OPs to select a Keyword from a dropdown list requires tremendous effort by the Board to implement & manage, and requiring such specificity in the Title might unnecessarily cause confusion to the users, as some have indicated, then how about just displaying it as a suggestion in the New Thread page ?
Something like:
"Please Select a Keyword from the List on the Left as the 1st Word in the Title Box."
and leave it to the OPs whether they want to provide a specific Title or not!

Regards.

 

[Norie]

Monir

Sorry but I don't agree with you about the titles of some of those threads.

Some of them actually include a 'keyword', eg Column Header sort on Userform

Some don't quite match up, eg Worksheet/Archiving, what if it's a workbook(s) that are to be archived?