How are the drupal.org support forums doing?

By DriesK on 27 Sep 2005 at 14:54 UTC

The success of an open-source project such as Drupal largely depends on the quality (and efficiency) of the support that community members offer to each other. Although Drupal offers support through various channels, the Support Forum on drupal.org probably is the most important 'gateway to help' for most users.

My personal feeling has always been that, generally speaking, the support on the forums is fast, efficient, and almost always leads to some kind of solution for the problem being discussed. However, after following this thread, I started wondering exactly how well we are doing in the support forums, obviously staying neutral concerning the actual discussion in that specific thread. One way to express that, would be to calculate the forums' response ratio, being the percentage of topics to which at least one reply was posted. This of course doesn't account for the responses' quality, but it gives an idea of the forum activity.

The following table gives an overview of the response ratio of all forums in the Support Forum (situation on 27/09/2005 at 11.00 GMT).

Forum	Threads	No response	% unresponded	Response Ratio
Pre installation questions	457	91	19.9	80.1
Installation problems	3208	666	20.8	79.2
Upgrade problems	360	96	26.7	73.3
"How do I-style" questions	6342	1848	29.1	70.9
Converting to Drupal	79	21	26.6	73.4
Services and hosting	82	20	24.4	75.6
Module development	1708	533	31.2	68.8
Theme development	797	201	25.2	74.8
Total	13033	3476	26.7	73.3

Considering the fact that all of this support is being offered on a voluntary basis, I would say we can be proud of ourselves!

Comments

I'm not sure how others browse the forums, but...

webchick

she/they

English

Vancouver 🇨🇦

commented 27 September 2005 at 15:32

When I have time to go looking for problems to help with (and/or I'm so fed up/frustrated with whatever I'm working on that I desperately feel I need to do *something* productive ;)), I tend to go to the front page and click all the latest X posts, looking for a question that I know. This means I end up missing a lot of questions, but it gives me a broad overview of the active discussions, rather than me focusing only on the "How do I..?" forums or what have you.

I'd be curious to see if there's a pattern about the time of day for the unresponded questions. It's possible there are others like me and so unresponded questions tend to happen at "peak" times when there is lots of forum activity.

Maybe one way to address this would be to create a link alongside "My forum discussions" and "Active forum discussions" that is "Unresponded topics". Then folks like me with random availability can check that to see if we can lend assistance.

Also, the algorithm as it stands now would actually have counted jcv's intial post under the "responsed" column, with which I think they would disagree. ;) In order to be more accurate, it should probably take into consideration whether the thread has responses from people other than the original author. A faster, though rather less accurate way to gauge "well responded to" threads is to count those that have at least 2-3 replies. Usually someone posts an answer, the original author says "Thanks!", and almost invariably at least one other person will chime in either with, "Thanks, this helped me too!" or, "Hey if you're looking for another way to do this..."

+1 on the "unresponded posts"

bonobo commented 27 September 2005 at 15:59

feature -- As webchick says, this could be a nice addition to tracker.module -- Add a tab -- Recent posts, my recent posts, unresponded posts -- the wording is messy, but the functionality would be useful.

Currently, while you can see posts with no answers by navigaing to the individual forums and sorting by "Replies", this requires that someone who wants to help in the forums go to every individual forum. The tracker feature would show all unanswered posts in all forums in one place.

I also think its interesting that the area with the largest number of unanswered posts is also the area with the greatest traffic. This lends credence to the idea that many unanswered posts fall through the cracks.

RE: other stuff about quality of posts, etc.

I see some of this as expectation management. The support you receive here is FREE. And, much of it is offered by people who do this work as a way to make a living. And, most of it is very good. The people who often seem the most frustrated seem to be the ones who view the forums as the help desk of a company, rather than as the support community of a great open source project. In short, when people demand answers, they are often frustrated -- when people ask a question and are willing to work on a response as they are waiting for help, they tend to get good results. People aren't paid to answer questions here -- they do it to support the project, because they believe in open source, and for a host of other reasons -- but whatever the reasons, it's essential to remember that the people who put useful content on this site are volunteering their time and talent.

It is possible to ask answerable questions and not get any response. It's happened to me. When that happens, I see it as my responsibility to figure it out, and post the answer back to the community. It is, after all, my project I'm working on :)

But, more often than not, the help people get in this forum is both timely and accurate.

Cheers,

bonobo
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I think thats a great Idea

NaX commented 27 September 2005 at 19:27

I would make it another forum under each category. So at the bottom of the General category their would be a forum called Unanswered General Topics, and at the bottom of Support another forum called Unanswered Support Topics and so on.

I know you can order by columns but I never though about using it to find unanswered posts and like you said it means you would need to go to each forum to do this.

If you made it part of the users profile then I would think the user should have control over witch forums are listed under his unresponded Topics tab.

Ether of these features I think would improve the No response count. But that is very good going at the moment. I know I try to help when I think I know the answerer.

That said this topic just shows how important support really is to a open source project and that there is always room for improvement. http://drupal.org/node/32195

+1 here too.

vwX commented 28 September 2005 at 13:52

This would be very useful.

Have fun and check my Drupal Profile: http://drupal.org/user/519

+1 here too.

IntnsRed commented 17 July 2006 at 19:31

I agree.

Absolutely

jo1ene commented 27 September 2005 at 19:04

This feature, called "unanswered messages" in another forum I participate in, is essential. Answers or Replies would NOT include the first poster's "bump" posts and the like.

As a new-comer to Drupal a few years back, I had a devil of a time getting any response in the forums, so I can sympathize with the other individual. I ended up dealing getting help from a colleague.

Advanced Web Design

Another forum functionality ...

eldarin commented 27 September 2005 at 19:08

... is something called "accelerate post", whereby you can prioritize messages which you fell need answering - and are interesting to you and others.

It would demand a continous presence and quality on behalf of the answering party, though.

Unresponded posts

keesje commented 31 July 2006 at 12:03

I was just wondering the same thing, I realy think this is needed for better Drupal support!

Webbased applicaties, content management systemen, websites, webdesign

That's a fantastic idea

BobT-1 commented 29 September 2005 at 03:29

I usually shy away from forums, so "expert" I'm not. I haven't come across an "unanswered" block, yet, but I think that's a fantastic idea.

That would be a terrific feature for any support oriented forum, be it on the front page or in the profile. Bonobo's suggested refinements look very good, too.

_________
bob-thompson.com

I agree Bob I stay away from

JamesBryant commented 12 November 2005 at 20:03

I agree Bob I stay away from forums for the same reason. Bonobos suggestions look like awsome.

Cheers,
James Bryant

http://www.globaladvancedmedia.com

interesting

steve007@drupal.org commented 18 November 2005 at 05:11

It's interesting to see others using the same methods as I do to check the forums out. I too think it would be interesting to have a set of tags that we have specific interest in, so that forums would highlight new posts that match the tag - that would be very cool.

Steve
http://www.liversociety.org

Do these stats also include

drupalguest commented 27 September 2005 at 15:34

Do these stats also include questions that do have replies but no solution? I have found many solutions and helpful examples, but obviously, not everything can be answered. Thanks!

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I never saw the question

sepeck commented 27 September 2005 at 15:56

I never saw the question and even if I did I didn't know the answer to the question so would not have responded. Essentially they waited five days then chastized us in general for not providing 'critical' support to their project.

I don't even know what their project is and Drupal has a variety of other resources available for critical support. Within two clicks from the homepage is the professional services page where listed developers or those who add information to their profile as providing drupal services can be contacted for services.

Over the last year I have seen a lot more people answering questions in the forums with accurate information. While the #drupal-support channel doesn't have people in it all the time, it has several regulars who do an excellent job. The handbook has been getting updated (lots to do there, but that will always be the case) with more information.

From the support forum we have ended up with the custom blocks repository, theme snippets section, my own pet project 'best practices guide' and more information on core and contributed modules.

So for free, scratch your own itch support, I think we're doing ok too.

-sp
---------
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Drupal Best Practices Guide -|- Black Mountain

-Steven Peck
---------
Test site, always start with a test site.
_{Drupal Best Practices Guide}

I never saw it either

kbahey commented 28 September 2005 at 02:52

I never saw the original post either. There are lots of posts that do not see, since there is so many of them.

I only saw the reply a week later, and by that time the guy has made up his mind, and there was no point looking into the issue, since he was so emphatic.

In a volunteer run project, one cannot complain about support, unless he is intentionally ignore, intentionally misled, abused, or something like that.

A sample of 1 can make a bad impression, but it can never give you an accurate full picture.

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Matching expectations

Dries commented 28 September 2005 at 09:06

The problem is that for various reasons, people's expectations don't match the reality. The solution is to communicate what people can expect because changing the reality is difficult, and won't happen overnight. Maybe we should setup a page that explains how the forums are operated, and what to expect from the support forums. If this can be done in one or two paragraphs, I could setup a block that shows up on the forum overview pages.

I wiull see if I can write

sepeck commented 28 September 2005 at 16:36

I wiull see if I can write something up that would work for you this weekend.

-sp
---------
Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide -|- Black Mountain

-Steven Peck
---------
Test site, always start with a test site.
_{Drupal Best Practices Guide}

Drupal Support

holger commented 27 September 2005 at 18:54

If i can help someone i do it and thats why i am also glad that the german www.drupalcenter.de is displayed in http://drupal.org/community

Thanks to all the Developers and the friendly community around Drupal.

with kind regards, holger

www.ebec.net | www.stnetwork.de

What is the difficulty level of the questions or need?

tesla.nicoli commented 27 September 2005 at 19:15

I use the tracker and the search a lot. I find that the hard questions never get answered. There are responses yes, but no satisfying answers. The standard "rtfm" style questions seem to always get more complete answers and a list of suggestions.

I always expect to see a drupal developer to step in and field these. But it seldom happens or maybe I just don't know who is who on the forum. No one has any ranks or anything like I am used to seeing at other froums.

I can relate to that,

jadwigo commented 27 September 2005 at 19:43

I can relate to that, because I don't want to spend too much time on a complicated I just look for a question that's a bit simpler to answer sometimes to take my mind of work.

Yes, this happens to me

Steve Dondley commented 29 September 2005 at 03:25

And it's not even the difficult question, really. Questions that are relatively easy to answer but are known by only a handful of individuals rarely get answered.

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Get better help (but not from ERS)

Heine commented 30 September 2005 at 10:06

I think it would also be a great idea to have a "howto ask effective questions" on the Drupal support page.

Some questions on the fora suffer from wrong subject ('HELP!!!'), bad attitude or insufficient information. Having sufficient information is very important when answering a question (or even consider answering)

The link in your signature points to How To Ask Questions The Smart Way from Eric Raymond. Because I have a Livebox problems section on my site, I wanted a guide on asking good questions. I actually did a partial Dutch translation of ERS's guide, but never published it. I would be embarrassed to have it on my site. Although it has some good points, it's attitude is horrible.

Greets,

Heine

It's tone could be softened a bit

Steve Dondley commented 30 September 2005 at 12:11

However, since it's not a Drupal page, that really doesn't matter.

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The thread in question seem

tamarian commented 27 September 2005 at 20:24

The thread in question seem to be related to development, module and/or coding support, not general help. So it's safe to assume that only developers familiar with Drupal code can provide an answer. General questions only require some experience using Drupal.

I'll also second the "unanswerd posts" suggestion, and would like to even refine it. Would be extremely useful to have such tracking based on the forum area, so one could view unanswerd threads in X forum.

I also have have an unanswerd developemt question from Sep. 23rd, ahem, but I will survive :=)

I'd say thost numbers are kinda meaningless

Toe commented 27 September 2005 at 20:55

There's a world of difference between getting a single reply to a thread and getting a useful resolution to a problem. There's quite a few things that will inflate those numbers:

The original author 'bumping' their thread because they never got a reply
The original author replying to his own post, maybe adding a little more info
Someone replying with something to the effect of "I have the same problem."
Replies that don't really address the problem, like "RTFM" or "use the search", when there's a good chance the original poster has done both
Threads that wander off topic and stop discussing the problem
Threads that get some discussion on the problem, but never really reach a useful resolution.

I would disagree

bonobo commented 27 September 2005 at 21:42

These numbers, like many numbers, represent an attempt to quantify a situation.

As DriesK says,

This of course doesn't account for the responses' quality, but it gives an idea of the forum activity.

Do they give a comprehensive view of everything that is happening in the forums? No, and that is not their intent.

They do, however, provide a great starting point for providing some concrete, specific feedback on how the forums can be improved.

All of the suggestions you make would be welcome additions to the work DriesK has started, but to dismiss his numbers as "meaningless" misses the intent of his work.

Cheers,

bonobo
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Tools for Teachers

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My point is that the

Toe commented 27 September 2005 at 23:06

My point is that the original post seems to be patting people on the back a bit too much - far more than this very crude and incomplete 'study' of the community would warrant. Taking time to actually read over threads - including ones that express a certain disgust with the level of support to be found in this forum like the one linked in the original post - would give a better idea of what it's like.

rss and google answers

pamphile commented 29 September 2005 at 13:47

I think we are missing two tools...

1. Something like Answers.Google.com and
2. Full RSS feeds of everything new on Drupal.org

Scripts like Answers.Google.com already exist. Yes we can build it but , but why wait when there is AskPert... Just a thought
see http://www.w3matter.com/products/askpert

Full RSS feeds attract quicker answers and feedback.
A Answers.Google.com service would encourage freelancing right on the Drupal site, where all the action starts anyway.

Marcel
http://01wholesale.com
http://businessletters.com
http://drupalthemes.com - (coming soon)

Unanswered forum topics

Dries commented 27 September 2005 at 22:27

Are you sure you want the "unanswered forum topics" feature? It sounds like a good idea, but at the same time, it only takes me two clicks to find unanswered forum topics ...

I can commit to implementing this, but I'd like to know if this would be the most effective change to increase the quality of the forums/support. Anything else?

I like the idea and..

NaX commented 27 September 2005 at 22:35

I really like the idea of having a central place to look for topics with no replies. It would be like a summary or status of the forums. I would prefer it to be part of the forums rather than part of the user profile but ether way it would serve its purpose. (http://drupal.org/node/32356#comment-56444)

Since we are making suggestions. What I also think could make things easier and probably makes more sense for the "How do I"-style questions forum is being able to set a status to a post and so if a solution is posted then the person posting can set their post status to being a solution and then that post can be flagged. Maybe the same way new posts are flagged. And then in the topic list topics can also be flagged. In this way somebody that is hunting for a urgent answer to a question can find the solution to there problem faster and reduce repeat posting of the same questions.

Well, I know if I see my post there

tesla.nicoli commented 27 September 2005 at 22:40

Well, I know if I see my post in with a hundred or so unanswered topics I will be pretty upset by it. It is kind like being put at the back of the que.

huh?

jo1ene commented 27 September 2005 at 23:42

An "unanswered post" feature would just be a filter. The post would still reside where it was originally posted.

Advanced Web Design

No, but newcomers will not

tesla.nicoli commented 28 September 2005 at 12:15

No, but newcomers will not know this. They will think their post has been moved. Since most do not use the "recent posts" tabs as Dries said , they may see it as moderation of the post rather than a helping hand. New users are delicate and don't necessarily react as thought.

Then more info is needed.

robertDouglass commented 28 September 2005 at 12:52

+1 for unanswered posts tab/link.

If it seems confusing to people, there needs to be a more thorough explanation:

Posts that nobody has responded to yet. They are listed here to assist helpful people in finding them and to better assist those who are seeking help.

- Robert Douglass

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Is it not the same feeling

NaX commented 28 September 2005 at 15:43

Is it not the same feeling as seeing your Topic get no replies and slowly move down the first page till it is on the second page. And putting your post on a unanswered post filter page would make it more likely that it gets replies. It should not be seen as the punishment list rather a productivity tool.

I am not convinced this will

killes@www.drop.org commented 27 September 2005 at 22:50

I am not convinced this will help, but it doesn't look like too much effort and we just can try it. If it leads to people adding nonsense comments just to get questions out of the queue we should remove it again. :p
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or worse

moshe weitzman commented 28 September 2005 at 15:46

i actually am afraid of the opposite - people will start new threads much more often just to get into the unanswered queue. i don't think this is a good idea. the best way to get support for your question hasn't changed:

- write a thorough post in the correct forum and use a descriptive title. this thread is an example of a poor title - "How are we doing"
- if noone answers after a few days, it is acceptable to send private email/contact to the persons who are most qualified to answer.

We could do a better job at search and FAQ, but thats a separate issue.

That's not correct ...

eldarin commented 28 September 2005 at 16:22

I think you are dead wrong.
Getting better visibility to the unanswered topics is what it's about. So, I can't see how improving support topics visibility by tagging, taxonomies or Drupalish OO-techniques extending the basic node with the Drupal hooks can do anything wrong at all. Please explain ...

As it is now, the unanswered topics gets muddled into the tracker.module "recent posts" or the forums. Sometimes the fluke of running HEAD with drupal.org and other issues seem to make project issues get updated and to the front of the recent-tracking even though there are absolutely no changes - but that's a separate issue - perhaps because of manual dba-work.

If further improvements like collating open support topics - as flagged/extended/tagged etc. - into categories when properly identified and given statuses like resolved - if all this is not an improvement - and you claim drupal.org already manage this in a better way - I think you are completely wrong.
;-)

So you advocate we start

sepeck commented 28 September 2005 at 16:33

So you advocate we start locking forum threads?

-sp
---------
Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide -|- Black Mountain

-Steven Peck
---------
Test site, always start with a test site.
_{Drupal Best Practices Guide}

No locking, just flagging "resolved"

eldarin commented 28 September 2005 at 17:09

If you recollect, many topics which goes unresolved by the drupal.org community gets a "do a writeup" or "be sure to tell us how you did it" from some veteran of drupal.org.

Well, if you put this in system - and flag topics as resolved (preferrably the topic starter flags it when found satisfactory), then a lot of others can find solutions more quickly - especially if support topics are collated using tags, taxonomies or similar.

Also having an intelligible way of displaying this - preferrably tabulated and with filters, ordering - would help even more.

There are problems finding information on drupal.org. I have resorted to Google a handful of times, but I admit it's not straightforward finding the issue or topic I remember sifting through some weeks, months ago etc.

Updated title

Dries commented 29 September 2005 at 11:21

I renamed the title from "How are we doing?" to "How are the drupal.org support forums doing?".

Some forums ...

eldarin commented 27 September 2005 at 23:01

.. use a feature like "solved", which the thread starter can tick when they have closed or resolved their issue. Then idle threads get's auto-marked after some weeks. The timeframe could be whatever fits on drupal.org - but it's nice for those who ask a question to take responsibility and see the thread through, or perhaps mark it as "unresolved".

I know it seems a lot like the project-issues, but isn't it really a bugzilla/knowlegebase/ticketing-system we're talking about anyways ? At least the functionality starts looking like this. Add some emailing etc. and you're getting into CRM territory too.
;-)

He have support requests for

killes@www.drop.org commented 28 September 2005 at 00:18

He have support requests for Drupal and module related issues. Sadly, people don't use them often.
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I agree

eldarin commented 28 September 2005 at 00:20

There should be a mechanism to move forum nodes to support-issues, right ?

Bingo

sethcohn commented 28 September 2005 at 01:36

There is an alter type module, and if it doesn't do the job correctly, someone should write one, to do exactly that: refile forum requests as Support requests in the project system.

If a handful of users were given a role which allowed them to recategorize posts like that, we'd have a much clearer idea of what the areas are, based on open support tickets.

+1 to what eldarin

beginner commented 30 September 2005 at 04:55

+1 to what eldarin says.
Unanswered topics are not the ideal way to go, for all the reasons already explained in this thread (reply not satisfactory, or the thread was simply 'bumpped' up by original author...)

The best is to do something along what eldarin says, also combining the forum functionalities with the support request/issue tracker...

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Unanswered forum topics

Gunny-1 commented 28 September 2005 at 03:00

Unanswered forum topics sounds to be good. But from all responses i feel one thing is missing ie., time frame.

Say i post a question and set a time frame (maximum hours/days) for a reply, if the question doesnt get a reply with the time frame then the forum topic is automatically closed.

Why should we close a forum topic automatically, well i feel most of the questions are unanswered because they are either not properly framed or repeated question (may be similar type of question posted elsewhere in drupal, user got to search in this case).

Its a rare case for a question in a forum going unanswered unless every user is adamant to not to reply for a particular question (well it can happen if the message is spam ).

Like project issues we can also have forum topics to be closed within a certain period, well it can't be done manually though as forum has a significantly high traffic for any given day that's why i suggest automatic closure of a topic. We see this feature in experts-exchange.com ...

Too many recent posts

pz commented 28 September 2005 at 06:43

Often when checking recent posts there are just too many which tends to hide some interesting ones. There should be a simple way of filtering for issues, drupal-issues, contrib-issues and it would be great if you could see what type of issue/forum post it was, indicating for instance what module the issue belongs to.

For forums it would be great if you could see recent posts for just forums and also just for the group "General" or "Support".

Unanswered forum topics not ordered by date?

anj commented 28 September 2005 at 10:52

I just tried to look up unanswered forum topics on the busiest forum: 'How Do I...'. I ended up on this page.

The problem here is that topics over a year old are mixed in with ones a few weeks old. Maybe there are some a few days old, but I can't find them in this huge, apparently disordered pile.

If there is a way to view unanswered forums topics, ordered by date (or some other rational ordering), then we probably don't need an special unanswered topics page - maybe just a block.

Cheers,
Anj

Bug

Dries commented 28 September 2005 at 11:37

That would be a small bug; maybe report it using the issue tracker, or fix it by uploading a patch.

Issue added, patch hopefully on the way.

anj commented 28 September 2005 at 14:37

I've created a feature-request issue for the forum module here. I'll try to follow it up myself, but it may be a week or so before I get time to create a patch. If you can point me to examples of good practice for Drupal code when ordering by multiple fields, that would help. I'm a competent developer, but I'm always slightly worried that my code will be too hacky because I don't understand Drupal as completely as I'd like.

Cheers,
Anj.

Works now!

Dries commented 1 October 2005 at 13:38

Patch tested and committed.
Drupal.org updated.

phpBB Style and Features

holger commented 30 September 2005 at 18:17

I think a good example for various features and a better look through single topics can be found at phpBB forums. I think the phpBB Style is more useful as the comment-style in drupal.
flatforum is a solution but just in alpha. I hope there comes more solutions like this soon.

with kind regards, holger

www.ebec.net | www.stnetwork.de

open/closed

silverwing commented 20 November 2005 at 02:32

(Late to this party, I know)

How about an open/closed option on support forum threads. The original poster and site admins would have the ability to close threads when there seems to be an appropriate answer given, with the option of the original poster re-opening the thread?

Then create a filter to get the open support threads.

silverwing - thinking aloud
www.misguidedthoughts.com

Issue opened.

beginner commented 20 November 2005 at 05:34

http://drupal.org/node/38265

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improving support: an asker's point-of-view

dtabach commented 27 September 2005 at 22:48

Before discovering Drupal, I could not even imagine someone like myself (I'm an architect, without any technical background on web developping or programming) could create sites with such powerful features as Drupal's.

It wouldn't be possible without the help from this community. I'm the live proof that the support is doing fine! The simple fact that a topic like this was created and enthusiastically responded is a confirmation that this community honors the best spirit of open-source, placing Drupal one step ahead of other CMSs, apart from comparing their functionalities.

My personal statistic of answered questions is similar to the overall one: I get 3 out of 4 questions answered. And this is enough for me to keep going. For the missing answer, either I find solutions in other people's threads, or I find other ways to make things work (because Drupal always offers alternative ways of doing something).

That being said, I'd like to add my 2 cents to improve the efficiency of support forums:

Implement Subscription module or something similar for the forums. As chromatic said, "too often do I not have anything to say but would like to follow a conversation. I don't want to post something like 'just following this thread' all the time, nor do I tend to follow it from a bookmark as I would hope to do. I think it would be nice if the user profile kept track of 'bookmarked' posts, or subscribed posts, whatever". This would avoid some of the 'bump' and 'me too' posts.
Split "How do I-style" questions into more specific sections. Create a "Newbie" forum. Newbies tend to send everything to "how-do-I" section, that's why it has almost twice the amount of posts than the second biggest forum (Installation). With a Newbie section, people like myself - not a professional web developer, but with a bit of experience in doing basic things - could find an easier way to retribute some of the free help early received. This way the 'pros' could then concentrate in more complex issues, that others couldn't help.

Durval Tabach

Forum Posts that belong in issues..

jo1ene commented 27 September 2005 at 23:49

A couple of comments ago, someone mentioned having statuses on forum topics a la "issues". Could we say that many posts that appear in the forums are far too technical, complicated, whatever for that arena and would be better addressed in "issues"?

I would lump THE thread in question in this category. I can also say that a few of my unanswered posts had belonged in an issue, but I was unfamilliar with the issues system at the time.

The forum title is "How do I..." not "Technical Support" after all. Is this something that should be addressed?

Advanced Web Design

At least one reply

syawillim commented 28 September 2005 at 01:30

As a relatively new Drupal user I feel that the support forums are an invaluable tool and I do appreciate that the help provided is given free of charge, but do find it a little frustrating at times trying to locate information or gain a response.
The statistics provided on the ratio of replies to posts are very encouraging given the fact that no one is getting paid. I was wondering if perhaps a better indication would be given if the calculation was the percentage of topics to which at least one reply was posted where the reply is not by the original author, as I have come across a lot of posts where people have given up and posted a reply to that effect.

www.slickfish.com.au

Overall, IMHO I think you all are doing an great job!

stevryn commented 28 September 2005 at 02:06

I for one am very grateful and happy with the amount of support given freely here. The support to the drupal project is amazing. The one thing I find annoying and perhaps this has been addressed elsewhere is, for example when I posted to this issues thread:

http://drupal.org/node/26268

It doesnt show up in my "recent posts". So I end up not only reading thru the ones that DO show, but also having to bookmark those that dont show, to see if there are responses. This is time consuming and frustrating.

I also find that often when I have posted, within literally minutes my post is shuffled to the bottom due to the amount of people posting. So often people bump their posts for that reason.

With regard to the "unanswered posts", a post unanswered for a day or two doesnt really bother me personally all that much, with so many its bound to happen. Priority should be given obviously to posts unanswered over "X" days.

Overall though, you all should be very proud! Thanks for the great work!

A Proposal: Question Module

kbahey commented 28 September 2005 at 03:50

We do have something called Question Module in the contrib repository, by Jeff Robins..

It creates a questions queue where designated people can answer it. We can try to use that with some of the most active people in the forums as a pilot, then if all is well, we can expand that to all authenticated users.

This way questions are things that require answers, and there is a defined queue.

The answers become available to those who search for them later a s well, so they can be a defacto Knowledge Base.

Forums will stay, but can be for more general discussions things, not Q&A.

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Give people karma points

Gunnar Langemark commented 28 September 2005 at 06:42

There may be a need for some motivation. An incentive to answer questions would be to gain karma points for doing so (in a community this size there need to be some indicators of who's who. I bet a lot of new user don't even know who Dries is...). As in: "was this answer any help to you?" and then if users answer "yes" - add one karma point to the guy who gave the answer.

Once karma points were in the loop one could do things with them - Swagg lottery etc.

Just an idea...

Gunnar Langemark
http://www.langemark.com

Java forums at Sun

robertDouglass commented 28 September 2005 at 12:55

I don't know if they still do this, but I used to love it: Sun would award everybody with an account a number of "bucks" to spend on getting their forum questions answered. People could say "5 bucks for the answer" and award them to whomever provided the needed info, even splitting it up between multiple helpful people. It was lots of fun! I definitely answered lots of questions for a while, just to get the bucks.

- Robert Douglass

-----
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I recommend CivicSpace: www.civicspacelabs.org
My sites: www.hornroller.com, www.robshouse.net

I always hated sites like that.

vwX commented 28 September 2005 at 13:54

Because I believe that knowledge should be free and freely provided.

Have fun and check my Drupal Profile: http://drupal.org/user/519

Well, it was still free.

robertDouglass commented 28 September 2005 at 14:02

But it was more fun than if the "bucks" hadn't been there.

- Robert Douglass

-----
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I recommend CivicSpace: www.civicspacelabs.org
My sites: www.hornroller.com, www.robshouse.net

-1 karma points, probably

laura s commented 28 September 2005 at 15:13

I've gone through an evolution of thinking on this. At first I liked the idea after seeing them on several scoop-powered sites. But I've also seen discussion get skewed or even taken over by mojo obsession. A very active and large political site actually ends up with mojo-boosting threads where people uprate each other in a big, ah, self-reinforcing endeavor having nothing to do with the topic focus of the site itself.

That's not to say that couldn't happen here. But I can see threads getting off-topic while debate gets into, "Why did you rate my reply a 1?" and can lead to tit-for-tat ratings, which seem to get a life of their own despite the best intentions of others.

Used responsibly and sparingly, ratings for posts and karma points could be useful. But perhaps this site is too big and membership too diverse for that to be useful.

However, perhaps thread ratings could be helpful, where people can rate a thread that proved to be particularly useful. I suppose such ratings would be attached to the nodes, but in this case would not lead to any karma for the original poster.

Anyway, as someone who's spent a lot of time on rather large community sites, I thought I'd share my feelings on this.

Laura
===
pingVision • scattered sunshine

_____ ____ ___ __ _ _
Laura Scott :: design » blog » tweet

I don't find user ranks helpful.

BobT-1 commented 29 September 2005 at 04:36

Even on forums that I frequent and frequently contribute, I pay little attention to user rankings or the number of posts listed under their nicknames, mostly because the escape my notice.

After reading for a few hours I generally get a feel for "who's who". Certain nicknames stand out because of the number of their replies I read, the quality of the post, etc.

I'm not really arguing for or against Karma points. This is just my personal take on rankings. I am a newcomer to these forums. I picked up within a few hours that DriesK is pretty important around here :)

_________
bob-thompson.com

Having a topic/post status

NaX commented 28 September 2005 at 08:10

Having a topic/post status can already be implemented using the Smileys module. Maybe not using Smileys but pictures that has a meaning. I have not used the Smileys module so I am not sure how it works because you dont want the picture in the post it should rather be part of the title of the post or topic. So maybe with some small modifications it could be implemented. Rather than duplicating the project section. But some sort of indication if a post is useful or resolves a problem would help me.

I like the idea of having a filter for unanswered posts, but only if it is for multiple forums otherwise it would be pointless.

Maybe we need to improve the amount of reposting. This could only be done by improving the way people look for answerers before posting. The status idea might help their. But what about searching. I think the site wide search functionality in drupal is one of the best I have seen, but what about a advanced search maybe using the SQL Search module. This way a person can search in a specific forum or just in the handbooks. The reason I am proposing this is because I often find topics that have 1 reply with a link to a page in the handbooks. We should maybe try to reduce this.

You could also implement the unanswered topics idea this way making it a filter to your search as check box.

Where do you want to take this. Do we want to improve support or are we ok with the way things are at the moment. Maybe drupal has gotten big enough to have payed for support. That is a big step and probably would only come when the foundation stuff is sorted out. But I know if had a urgent job I would pay for support and then just bill the client accordingly. But it is a big step and maybe some people dont want to see drupal go commercial or offer commercial services. If that is the case then maybe bryght could offer support for people that are not already clients. Maybe they do already and dont know about it.

Just thinking out load.

Unanswered forum topics

Dries commented 28 September 2005 at 13:02

I'll implement the 'unanswered forum topics' feature.

Before doing so, I'd like to know how you see this integrated in drupal.org, or the forum system in general. Where on the screen/page would you look for such feature? How would you navigate this list? What do you expect to see on such a page? What is the most important information and how should it be presented? Should this be an aggregated list, a per-forum list or both? How to make it generic so it's useful for other websites too? In short: what are your expectations?

Let's talk GUI, interaction design and usability.

Blocks .. support-table functionality

eldarin commented 28 September 2005 at 13:32

There is a block for "active topics" which is immediately visible on the front page, perhaps a "open support topics" could be a block below that ?

Would it be possible to "tag" or categorize support topics, so that they could be could be filtered and easier identified ?

In my opinion, the "recent posts" / tracker.module is fine as it is - a new menu entry for "open support topics" would serve better than mixing into "recent posts".

A tabulated page showing dates, user names and a possible "resolved" status would be nice ... combine this with some tagging or categories, and newcomers could even find their answers quickly.

That way newcomers could browse the support topics and look for "resolved" topics under a possible category/tag.

I think this could be implemented as additional fields to a normal node - i.e just include node-ids in a separate "support-topics-table" with status etc. for whatever functionality could be included.

Then the open support topics would be listed from a node-table join support-table on nid/vid .

When topics are created - e.g any (thread-)starting forum post - the form could have a option with a description of how a support topic may get priority in the forums.

That way, the forums still include the topics - nothing is filtered away - just extra functionality is added.
Moderators/siteadmins could enable the option of "support topic" if they see one missing.

Resume:

"open support topics" block on frontpage under active topics
support-topics-table with status field "resolved", "unresolved"
categorizing/tagging support topics within technical categories (taxonomy/freetags?)
support-topics menu listing unser "recent posts" - i.e it's own "tracking feature"
tabulated support-topics page with subject, status, replies, date, category/tags
filtering capability so that sorting on tag/category, date, user, status would be possible

This way, you could even expand with "goodies" or rewards by including table-fields with lists of those who resolved topics like Robert mentioned about Sun Java forums... well, it expands well anyways.
;-)

A few suggestion!

chanh commented 28 September 2005 at 14:01

I would love to see a few feature add in this forum such as:
. The last 4, 8, 12, 24 hours, 1 weeks, 2 weeks, 1months posts when click it will show just posts that meet that criteria.
. Whatever filter post should let me navigate only post that meet the criteria nothing else.
. Mark all post as read so I can catch up with post and will only see any new post
. List all post since my last visit
. Top 8 thread, Top 8 posters, lastest 8 thread, random 8 thread or post etc
..etc

If I think hard enough I might list some more.

Thanks
________
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http://opensourcecms.com
http://chanh.blogdns.com

This could be done in many ways.

NaX commented 28 September 2005 at 14:48

My ideas

In the main forum page in the dark blue can be link to Unanswered Topics. On that page is a page that looks just like the other forums just you cant post new topics.
Title = Unanswered Topics (eg. Unanswered Support Topics)
Columns = Forum, Topic, Created.
Their could be a Forum at the top or bottom of all Main Categories. That function the same as another forum just you cant post new topics.
Title = Unanswered Topics
Description = So sort of description explain the it function so not to confuse new users.
The only problem is what should the columns be you cant have Posts or Last post.
At the top of any forum page there are filter options maybe under the Post new forum topic link. And if in a Main category like support then when you filter it must list posts of all the forums.
Columns = Forum, Topic, Created.
You can add a tab to the users profile next to track. And that can look and function very simmilare to the track tab only their should be a link to settings, so the user can select what he wants to be in his Unanswered Forum Topics Tab.

Here is my idea:

webchick

she/they

English

Vancouver 🇨🇦

commented 28 September 2005 at 17:43

/forum looks exactly the same, except with the addition of an "Unanswered posts" link:

http://www.webchick.net/soc/unanswered-topics/unanswered-forum.png

That leads to an "unanswered posts" tab of the tracker, like so:

http://www.webchick.net/soc/unanswered-topics/unanswered-tracker.png

There's no neeed for a "replies" column, since that' obviously going to be 0 for all of them, and instead of "last reply" which will always be "n/a", switch it with "created" to determine when the topic was created.

Even this tiny little thing would help matters, at least from where I sit.

However!

What would actually be better here (and this goes for the "active forum disucssions" link as well) is if tracker accepted arguments indicating the type of unanswered posts it should display. I eventually quit using the "Active forum discussions" link because it was too cluttered with all the issues, book pages, etc. stuff, and only view the "active forum discussions" block on the main page because that does what it says. "Unanswered topics" as outlined above will have the same problem.

To give some examples on how this would go:

http://www.drupal.org/tracker/forum

Would only yield active *forum* discussions.

http://www.drupal.org/tracker/issue

Would do the same for issues.

However! ;)

Even better would be if this list could be further refined, though. For example:

http://www.drupal.org/tracker/forum/18

Active forum topics from all Support forums (test to see whether category is a parent)

http://www.drupal.org/tracker/forum/20

Active forum topics from only the "Pre-installation questions" forum.

The same for unanswered topics would be:

http://www.drupal.org/tracker/forum/20/unanswered

Each forum view generates a link to the tracker anyway, so "in theory" it doesn't seem like it would be too hard to alter this to pass in details about itself.

The top of the tracker UI could be altered slightly to include two drop-downs, auto-populated by the querystring to filter by type (forum, issue, book page, etc.) and "section" (for lack of a better word), which would be a particular forum in the case of forum topics, a project in the case of issues, or a book in the case of book pages, etc.

Here's an example for "unanswered support forum topics" (http://www.drupal.org/forum/18/unanswered):

http://www.webchick.net/soc/unanswered-topics/unanswered-tracker-filter.png

The "Type" field is stripped off except for the [all] [all] view, since this is now redundant. An additional column is added at the right-hand side, titled either "Forum", "Book", "Project", etc. along with the links to the node's "parent" container.

This would be my vote. It would be relatively easy to do since all the data is already there, unlike adding scoring or categorization of posts, etc. but also very functional, imho.
The functionality also would be applicable across all generic Drupal sites, rather than specific to Drupal.org

potential drawbacks of 'unanswered questions'

dtabach commented 28 September 2005 at 20:18

The 'unanswered' status of a question can only be trustworthy if assigned by humans, not an algorithm.

Otherwise, putting 'unanswered' questions on the foreground may lead to more problems instead of improvements.

What if an user does get a reply , but not an answer? His question will be removed from the 'questions-to-be-answered' folder, then he will think "damn, nobody will see my question now, and I'll never get a REAL answer". Then he will probably post the question again, so that it moves back to the 'to-be-responded' queue, hoping that nobody shows up just to say 'hey, I have the same problem here', which would take the question out of the queue again...

Notice that most questions receive more than 2, 3 or 4 replies before they actually get answered.

Durval Tabach

Yes, human considerations needed

eldarin commented 28 September 2005 at 21:23

If you see the suggestions, user input as to tagging and the status would be required. I think you also are right, when considering similar solutions elsewhere.

An automated tagging of "unresolved" could be used to call to attention support topics which are being abandoned so they can be huddled together by someone, possibly offering references or topical tagging (e.g technical area concerned).
;-)

Yep...

webchick

she/they

English

Vancouver 🇨🇦

commented 28 September 2005 at 21:13

I fully agree with those potential drawbacks. In the future, human-assigned algorithms are the more "complete" way to address this problem. I'm shooting for something more short-term which can immediately help address the rate of response on support questions, as opposed to something which likely would need much more thought put behind it in order to build an effective mechanism for "rating" posts (for instance, do we stop at just "answered/not answered?" Do we rate posts from 1-5 according to their helpfulness? Do we assign karma points? Who votes on these ratings? How do we deal with abuse? etc.)

It seems to me that most of the questions that are getting answered are the ones near the top of the "active forum discussion" list (or, alternately, at the top of their respective forums). This is because they're "in your face." Those questions that are receiving 2, 3, or 4 repllies before they get answered will still be getting answered, same as they do now.

This option merely provides us with yet another view, which is to catch those questions that are completely falling through the cracks. In contrast to the questions that are actively receiving responses anyway, these topics would otherwise be pushed off into the ether, never to be viewed by a developer or user again. It's important to catch these questions and offer *some* attempt at response, even if it's not a complete solution. This in turn will push it to the "recent posts" queue where it is likely to receive attention from other people.

Hope that made sense. :)

I am a little confused ...

eldarin commented 28 September 2005 at 21:31

You are saying "don't change any code, but use the tracker.module/recent posts as it's good enough for now", and " 'someone' really need to get a grip and answer (even a nonsense answer will do fine) those posts going unanswered so they get to the top of the recent posts listings " ?

So, in effect - do nothing to improve drupal.org - but make sure no topic gets lagging by browsing all the unresolved topics as far back as possible/time permits and bumping them to the top ?

I hope you take that up on the next drupal.org infrastructure discussion as an important point.

?

webchick

she/they

English

Vancouver 🇨🇦

commented 29 September 2005 at 04:47

No? What I'm saying is, "Despite criticism about the methodology used in DriesK's initial report, it did highlight the concrete fact that 26.7% of posts overall receive 0 replies. Here is an idea to help address that problem, by providing an easy way for users who wish to provide support to find unanswered topics easily."

Discussion about how to gauge quality of responses is an entirely separate issue, and one I am not trying to address here. It is quite a complex undertaking and would involve a great deal of discussion and planning, trial and error, and so on in order to do properly.

This idea, on the other hand, is something that could be implemented much sooner because it uses existing tools, and would have an immediate effect on lowering the number of unresponded topics by bringing them to the forefront, the same way active topics are now. And note that the rate of unanswered topics is a problem that needs to be addressed regardless of what sort of human post quality measurement system eventually is or is not put into place.

As a side benefit, it would also add some additional features to the tracker module which could be useful for providing this "view recent" and "view unanswered" functionality across all node types, not just forums. These additions are also generic so that they could be used at sites everywhere, not just here at Drupal.org.

Hopefully that clarifies my point.

Yes

eldarin commented 29 September 2005 at 12:55

Bumping questions is a well-proven way of getting attention. So it would help, if someone takes responsibility to do so.
;-)

I think you got some thing their

NaX commented 28 September 2005 at 22:53

Looking at some other forums around it does not seem like a unreasonable feature considering phpbb has had this feature for some time. I think the way you are preposing to do it is much better than their implementation. It is just a link to a page listing all unanswered posts across the whole forum. I am not one to talk about MS but they have a Unanswered Posts section http://forums.microsoft.com/msdn/UnansweredQuestions.aspx.

A interesting thing I also found was the Gentoo "The adopt an unanswered post initiative" http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=119906. I don’t think DriesK was expecting this type of response, but I think this has been a positive discussion.

A forum is one of the most important features in my opinion to any community. So discussions on improving it are alway well spent in my opinion. My vote goes to webchick’s idea. It is well thought out. Looking at the pics it makes a lot of sense and I don’t think their would be much abuse. And if there is a little abuse but it improves the situation then its worth while to me.

If some thing is implemented then I would like to see a followup on this with more stats. I also like the idea of trip search or some sort of advanced search to reduce repeat posting.

One way to do it

bonobo commented 28 September 2005 at 20:33

could be to add another tab that appears when a user is at the /tracker page. Currently, the user sees "All recent posts" and "My recent posts".

I recommend adding a third tab: "Unanswered posts".

The posts that would appear in this area would be all posts from all forums with no replies. This also has the added benefit of discouraging users from bumping their posts.

In a different comment in this thread, Moshe mentioned the possibility that people will post multiple requests for help if they don't get a response to their original request. While this is annoying (and probably will happen), I think it's less annoying than people sniping about how difficult it is to get support on the forums. Also, if people who post multiple questions on the same topic are gently reminded about how annoying this is, perhaps we can reduce this type of annoying behavior. But hey, I'm an optimist.

Cheers,

bonobo
-------
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Tools for Teachers

-------
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I don't want to be picky, but...

bhagman commented 28 September 2005 at 17:14

I'm betting those figures in the table are based on threads which have "0" responses.

I would like to see the table with consideration where the responses are NOT from the authors. I.e. responder != author

PSEUDO-SQL:
"Select count(*) from responses where responder_id != author_id"

What tends to happen is that authors will post a reply to their own thread because they made a mistake, or they are trying to bump up the thread (see unanswered post priority discussion above).

Unfortunately, I think that we are beating ourselves to death with the content on the site - there needs to be better initial documentation for users to reference.

1) search categorization (eg. only forums, only books, only particular books, etc)
2) an example populated database - I still think that someone could whip this together really quickly, and it will answer 95% of newbie questions.

I'm still learning myself, and I can put together a quick database, but I still have a bunch of questions to ask. Unfortunately, they are going unanswered because of the sea of other unanswered questions. I'm trying to find solutions in other ways, though, by using other resources (good old Google).

unanswered? Everyone of

sepeck commented 28 September 2005 at 17:48

unanswered? Everyone of your questions has been answered. The one you submitted two hours ago I just saw and answered. The handbook also contained the answer.

-sp
---------
Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide -|- Black Mountain

-Steven Peck
---------
Test site, always start with a test site.
_{Drupal Best Practices Guide}

Please don't be short with

bhagman commented 28 September 2005 at 18:52

Please don't be short with me. I'm struggling just like everyone else. I've spent a good number of hours over the past couple of days perusing drupal.org for answers to questions I have.

Thank you for answering my questions, sepeck.

This is text. I am not

sepeck commented 28 September 2005 at 19:24

This is text. I am not being short with you, I was indicating that your questions had been answered. No tone was implied.

If I hadn't, some person three months from now would have sent me another nasty email about how people on Drupal.org are mean and such and sited your post as yet another example of how no one cares.

Support forums are not now and will never be a garunteed method for getting an answer. They are for asking your fellow folks for assistence. Sometimes that falls through and your request gets missed.

I am trying to develop some configuration guides for people, hence my Corporate Brochere site on the front page that has some phenominal information in it on setting up sites from a lot of people. With this, I hope to add to the handbook and post another challange soon.

-sp
---------
Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide -|- Black Mountain

-Steven Peck
---------
Test site, always start with a test site.
_{Drupal Best Practices Guide}

A better solution

Hosting Geek commented 28 September 2005 at 18:36

I beleive such a solution would be way better... basicly adding metadata to each thread/node.

1. The aurthor of the thread get to pick status for his thread (e.g. Answered, Unanswered, During answering proccess, Moved offtopic ...) these status are shown in thread list possibly by an icon or the color of the background/text when browsing the thread list/a forum.

1.1 a group with permission to can also give status to the thread if he see that its aurthor doesn't understand this feature yet or forgot about it.

1.2 You should be able to browse through threads that only have certain status...

2. The aurthor can tag posts which answer his question(s) so when people searched up this thread can find the answer again quickly.

3. Anyone that has been marked an answerer to a thread may give the thread a better wording for the question if he sees the aurthor didn't word it correctly/in the best possible way so a database of question could be made that can be browsered and searched... like an FAQ...

Hope this made sence its 4:30AM if I rememeber I will edit it when I am more awake.

Confusion over where support questions go

Toe commented 28 September 2005 at 19:04

Reading the posts above, it seems there's a bit of redundancy in where support questions should go. If I open up a page like the one for Flexinode, I see links to its issues page, and also a link to 'support forum'. On the issues page, I can filter it down to only show 'support requests'. Now where is it that I'm supposed to go to post my question about Flexinode, 'support forum' or 'support requests'?

As it stands now, I would say that the issues system is the better equipped of the two for handling support questions. It already has the resolved/unresolved tagging that was requested above, as well as the ability to filter and show only requests that are still marked unresolved.

The ideal solution might be a hybrid of the forum and issues systems. I would move all support discussion to the forum, and leave the current issues system for for bugs and feature requests. Meanwhile, the forum could be improved to take advantage of the features of the issues tracker. One solution might be to change the forums system so that any node type can be used on the forum, and then make the support forum use the issue node type.

Yes ...

eldarin commented 28 September 2005 at 20:08

You are so right in my opinion. There are fundamental flaws with current Drupal forums - where the comments are inferior (or feature-closed) types - not powerful, extendable Drupal nodes.

If forum posts were nodes, they could be more easily moved around, improved with better moderation etc. I made an alternative forum system which works like this - but with some unresolved performance issues yet (I have a lot of "security checking" and "tagging" which need better caching and duplication schemes).
;-)

devils advocate post

Dublin Drupaller commented 28 September 2005 at 21:31

Hi Dries,

Sorry to be the one to put a spanner in the works...but those statistics are very misleading...here's a devils advocate take on those stats...

how many of those responses were "I have the same problem" reponses?
based on my experience of surfing the forums, I would imagine that number would be very high
how many of those responses were "RTFM"
should we be all jumping for joy when installation problems are so high?
how many of those (installation problem) questions are repeats of existing questions?
It strikes me as remarkable that there are over 3200 installation problem questions and based on that, am I the only one to deduce from those stats that the forums are fundamentally flawed?
i.e. it's easier to post a new question rather then search. Which defeats the whole idea of a support forum.
Is this post just a blip on the landscape or genuine frustration on the part of a user with the forums?

I'm not disputing that the forums and drupal community is great and there are some very talented people on here..but, I am getting increasingly worried that we are hiding behind "well these are voluntary" excuses for flaws, lack of depth or general laxidaziness.

Dub

Currently in Switzerland working as an Application Developer with UBS Investment Bank...using Drupal 7 and lots of swiss chocolate

another slant..

Dublin Drupaller commented 28 September 2005 at 21:59

A Snapshot of the installation problems forum 28th sept at 22:00 (I chose the first page of messages):

summary

number of posts: 25 posts.
number resolved: 9/25 or 36%
number unresolved: 16/25 or 64%.

Topic	Replies	Type of response	Resolved
"The directory 'files' is not writable"	0	none	NO
Blank page for pri/sec links	11	I'm having the same problem	YES
1. Duplicate Entry Error, 2. Permission Errors, (Migration/Database)	0	4 hours 34 min ago by danilo@www.aria...	n/a
help with basic installation.	1	Good answer	YES
Help!! Aggregator, Ping, fsockopen() & PHP 4.4.0	1	Same problem or a bump	NO
PostgreSQL: nodes fail to insert on Drupal 4.6.0	2	I have the same problem	NO
location module problems	1	Same problem bump	NO
blank screen when opening drupal	3	Solved it himself and posted reason	NO
Drupal Mysql on xp	14	Pointers to other threads	YES
File permissions and ownership	2	good answer	YES
Themes not working on 4.6.3 - clean install or fantatico install	0	no answer after 13 hours 3 min	n/a
Even a Drupal newbie could help me tremendously by testing something and giving me feedback...	0	Beginner pleading for help	NO
favicon not working	1	good answer	YES
Menu and Book modules conflict	1	Good answer	YES
query failures: LOCK TABLES sequences WRITE	30	No answers after 2 years 32 weeks	NO
No menu on administer page after otherwise successful install	28	Same problem Bump
Book Review Module	1	Good answer	YES
PHP Errors	1	Same problem Bump	NO
Changing administer:settings gives internal server error	1	Same problem Bump	NO
Civicrm giving CRM_Contact_BAO_Contact::$_importableFields error	2	Same problem Bump	NO
(n00b) block only displays php code	2	Good answer	YES
Any way to "expire" a user by setting an expire date?	2	comment after 1 year	NO
XMLRPC Problem - Converting apostrophes to #039	2	same problem bump	NO
what does this mean?	2	Same problem bump	NO
Drupal and SqlPlus	1	good answer	YES

Currently in Switzerland working as an Application Developer with UBS Investment Bank...using Drupal 7 and lots of swiss chocolate

Wow, nice overview!

webchick

she/they

English

Vancouver 🇨🇦

commented 28 September 2005 at 22:43

If I could make a suggestion though, I'd go back at least 2-3 pages to pull your stats. Most of the questions on the front page were probably asked within the last day or two (some probably within the past X hours/minutes), which may not be enough time for proper resolution to occur (particularly on that forum, where issues can be varied from OS/web server config to Drupal config to conflicting modules, etc.)

Fair point, oh famous one..

Dublin Drupaller commented 28 September 2005 at 22:52

Hiya webchick..

Hows U?

(Am deliberately avoiding the irc channels coz I'm calling for them to be closed down and only used in drupal.org outage situations)

Good point and I did think of doing just what you said..but, I thought that the first page was full of the most active posts, which would give a better indication of whether stuff actually gets resolved or not.

It took me blinking ages to go through that...I just wanted to make sure the earlier devils advocate post wasn't posted with dark tinted glasses, as opposed to the rose tinted glasses that dries original post tends to be coming from.

I'm not knocking what he's deduced, I just think he's forgetting that just because a post has a response, doesn't necessarily mean it's a resolution to the initial question..

Anyways...oh famous one...nice to hear from you.

Dub

Currently in Switzerland working as an Application Developer with UBS Investment Bank...using Drupal 7 and lots of swiss chocolate

I wonder what percentage of

pamphile commented 29 September 2005 at 14:02

I wonder what percentage of the 64% would be willing to pay for support... I was many times.

Sometimes I wish I could place a bounty on a request, and automatically award the best answer with $25 - $200.

The idea is simple and used by http://answers.google.com

I would gladly pay $200+ for a really good theme or module.

Marcel
http://drupalthemes.com - soon
http://drulalhacks.com - soon

Payment

eldarin commented 29 September 2005 at 14:22

Would you pay US$200+ for the use of a really good module/theme ? Or would you pay US$200+ only for a module/theme tailored to your specifications ?

The problem about the former one, is how modules really gets under the GPL, and some themes too. So unless there will be no distribution and you as the client get the copyright - it's really hard for someone to make Drupal modules and sell them repeatedly - since anyone could re-distribute them gratis.

Of course, most will probably refurbish a module they already have got (possibly programmed themselves) to fit the client specifications and sell that as part of "consultancy work". Having a library of routines and techniqes helps a lot when you are working/programming with budget constratins (a fixed quote) or deadlines.

That way, opensource is great, since you can draw upon a lot of work done by others quickly - but still get paid for the hours laid down.
;-)

time to reply

DriesK commented 29 September 2005 at 14:37

I'm not knocking what he's deduced, I just think he's forgetting that just because a post has a response, doesn't necessarily mean it's a resolution to the initial question..

I think it's time to reply here. I've been following this discussion with great interest, and I think some really useful ideas have come up to improve the support offered through our forums. And that was exactly the intent of my post, although it may not seem so at first sight.
Really, I agree with all the points you raised concerning the 'misleading nature' of my statistics, and I was very much aware of that when I posted them (I'm a scientist, dealing with 'real' statistics every day). However, those statistics were the only (semi-automated) means we had (and still have) to try to evaluate the forum efficiency. That's also why I wrote

This of course doesn't account for the responses' quality, but it gives an idea of the forum activity

I was aware of the fact that the 'I have the same problem'-type of responses (and the others you mention) were not taken into account in my statistics, and that the actual percentage of 'problems solved' is much lower than the numbers I reported.

I deliberately restricted my post to just reporting the numbers without attaching any big conclusions to them, in an effort to open a broad, unprejudiced discussion, of which I hoped it would lead to improvements in the way the Drupal community works. The 'rose tinted glasses' you mention were actually meant to be a little provocative, but at the same time, I meant what I said: we are doing ok, but that doesn't mean we can't do better.

Looking at the number of comments, the support forums' working is something a lot of people care about, and can certainly be improved...exactly what we're doing right now.

a recent poll found that 80% of polls are reputedly flawed

Dublin Drupaller commented 29 September 2005 at 17:53

Thanks for the considered response DriesK.

I think it's great that this is being discussed at the moment...I get the sense that Drupal as a project is going to move up a few gears soon...with so much development going on and so many ideas bouncing around, I think it's vital that a cultural shift towards using drupal.org as the defacto community hub and the defacto knowledge base for support, development and discussion.

At the moment it's scatterring and being diluted.

I'm aware that there is an initiative to improve the forums, which is great..but, I think it needs more consideration than just switching on blocks or experimenting with this or that. Much more.

As regards the drupal project, as I get a sense of the project moving up a gear and nudging over that "tipping edge" that makes it one of the most popular and most used portal CMS on the planet, I also get a sense that drupal.org is pushing away ideas, contributions, knowledge and skills unnecessarily.

So as Drupal moves up a gear, I think there should be a cultural shift up a gear with the core community. At the moment, there's a hint of a core-founders/developers comittee making the decisions and the rest have to follow, regardless. "shut the door on the way out" regardless.

This is more a philosophical or community-culture discussion rather than a "what can we do technically?" discussion and probably should happen in a different thread, but, in the context of what we're talking about, I think it's appropriate to voice it.

I'm not suggesting radical changes. I'm just suggesting there's a bigger picture re-think about how the new emerging drupal community is evolving and how best to approach it in such a way that avoids mambo style situations or the crazy scenarios we have at the moment, which is scattered, un-coordinated development and a detrimental fragmentation of the drupal knowedge adn skills base. It's already confusing, wasteful (duplicate modules, duplicate and scattered development) and frustrating.

I suppose what I'm trying to say is that drupal is brilliant. I love Drupal. But the building blocks or foundation stones below the drupal community are very shaky and as the drupal project grows it runs the risk of collapse under the weight of it's own success.

I'll probably get flamed to death for saying that..but, I genuinely would like to see this area addressed and volunteer to outline some plan-of-action suggestions that will make it easier for people to hang their coats on.

I've been lurking and playing with drupal for just over a year and would like to continue..but it worries me, long term that I maybe investing time and effort into the wrong community.

We should never ever forget that the strength of drupal is in the community..once that starts diluting, gets scattered and fragments....well...nuff said.

Dub

Currently in Switzerland working as an Application Developer with UBS Investment Bank...using Drupal 7 and lots of swiss chocolate

Hear, hear ..

eldarin commented 29 September 2005 at 17:57

A lot of people agree with you. We know from the forums by those who have dared to post their pitiful opinions. Maybe we will see voting polls in some future, like in older drupal.org times.
;-)

just to qualify that post

Dublin Drupaller commented 29 September 2005 at 18:07

Sorry..as an addendum..

I am very aware that I'm still very much a newcomer to Drupal..and it's not myplace to say what I said. But I have developed an affinity with the community over the last year or so and preferred to speak up, rather than sit on my hands and stuggle on.

So please take that on board before the traditional flamefest that some discussions tend to descend into on here .

Dub

Currently in Switzerland working as an Application Developer with UBS Investment Bank...using Drupal 7 and lots of swiss chocolate

Dub, Let me clear up a few

sepeck commented 29 September 2005 at 18:21

Dub,

Let me clear up a few misconceptions.
1. You are not a newcomer anymore and have not been one for some time. You are an active contributor with a name and reputation as someone who does work (at least with me tho I am just one more voice on the boards). :)
2. Anyone can contribute. You had an excellent idea and presented a solution that you would work towards and now we have the custom blocks repository and theme snippets areas.
3. webchick outlined the method in which anyone can contributes. If you go back, you will see how the UI improvements we currently have all came out of forum threads with mockups and long drawn out discussions. Some of those ideas couldn't be implemented then, but the foundations to allow them were built in and becoming realized and matured in 4.7.

The community is open. You merely have to participate. You are doing so very effectively.

There is an initiative to improve the forums. So here's another chance, write the 'formal' outline. Make the rough image mockups. Post the idea in the developers section. Take feedback on what is and is not reallistic or posible. If it is not posible, then what might need to happen to make it posible and how to get there. That's how the UI imporvements happened and that's how this will happen.... unless someone just starts submitting patches with work.

All it takes is someone's very real time, and other people seeing someone actually able to work on it and doing so for them to provide constructive suggestions.

-sp
---------
Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide -|- Black Mountain

-Steven Peck
---------
Test site, always start with a test site.
_{Drupal Best Practices Guide}

Largely correct but not totally

Steve Dondley commented 29 September 2005 at 20:04

What you say is largely accurate, but it also takes decision makers to coax and sway individuals to pitch in and help out and kind nudge people in the right direction. If I were Dries, I would pick ask someone willing and competent enough to decide which 3 suggestions here are both effective and relatively easy to implement and which might go on a wish list because they are too complex to solve immediately. That person could also be in charge of coming up with a strategy to get these tasks accomplished.

--
Get better help from Drupal's forums and read this.

He has asked for volunteers

sepeck commented 29 September 2005 at 20:21

He has asked for volunteers to work on the forums module before. When I say we need people willing to do work and reliable enough to actually do it. I am not making light of it but we have a lack of volunteers with the time to do the work, so, anyone going to actually raise their hand and get started?

-sp
---------
Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide -|- Black Mountain

-Steven Peck
---------
Test site, always start with a test site.
_{Drupal Best Practices Guide}

Set specific goals

Steve Dondley commented 29 September 2005 at 21:14

I know he has asked for volunteers. I think he should also work with the volunteer to set specific goals. Like settle on 3 improvements mentioned in this thread and carry them out. That way, definite progress is made.

I could be wrong, but sometimes I get the sense input gets solicited but there is never any closure to the process and people feel like they are just spinning their wheels. Even if their idea goes to the bottom of a very long to do list, at least they know someone has heard them

--
Get better help from Drupal's forums and read this.

I get the sense input gets

Toe commented 29 September 2005 at 21:37

I get the sense input gets solicited but there is never any closure to the process and people feel like they are just spinning their wheels.

Yeah, I know that feeling...

What are your expectations?

webchick

she/they

English

Vancouver 🇨🇦

commented 29 September 2005 at 22:29

I really hope you don't that as argumentative, because it's honestly not meant to be. You've done a very excellent job in creating a single point of reference for developers to use when someone has time to revamp the forums. I'd just honestly like to know what you expect the next step to be, because I think this could really help pinpoint where some of this frustration and 'wheel spinning' feeling is coming from.

Do you need additional help speccing things out and prioritizing the list (as in, top 3 things that should be implemented first, then...)? Do you want one or more of the core developers to provide feedback to the thread? Do you want Dries to comment personally on the issue? etc. Some of these will be feasible, some of them won't, but at least this way we'd be able to try and pinpoint where some of this disconnect is happening.

For whatever it's worth though, improving Drupal's forums is something that's been on my personal "pet project" list for a couple months now. I had that post bookmarked for when my calendar eventually clears up. It just won't be until fairly far into the future, with my various other Drupal (and not) projects. I'm still a newbie too so it may be a LONG time before I am able to help at all. :) But I think you did a very positive step with what you've created so far, and your post will make it very easy for me to go down the line and work on things which I do know how to do when the time comes.

Well like I said in that

Toe commented 29 September 2005 at 23:52

Well like I said in that thread, I wasn't exactly expecting to see instant results or anything. It was more typing up a pretty good-sized report like that, only to have it met with complete silence for so long...

LOL you dorkus.. ;)

webchick

she/they

English

Vancouver 🇨🇦

commented 29 September 2005 at 14:57

I'm good, thanks. :)

> (Am deliberately avoiding the irc channels coz I'm calling for them to be closed down and only used in drupal.org outage situations)

Well then of course it only makes sense for you to come on IRC! That way you can tell all the people asking for help in #drupal-support to go post to the forums instead! And I get to bug you, too! You see? It's win-win. ;)

> It took me blinking ages to go through that...

Yeah, I can see that! What I might do is post a follow-up to your post in another day or so revisit your post again in a day or so that shows exactly the same table, but updates statistics where the "NO" questions are changed.

One other thing that I find very encouraging about the statistics you posted, is there were *no* "RTFM" responses. It's nice to see that's not as prevalent a problem as some people might make it out to be.

I have almost never seen that here personally... any "This answer is in the handbook" responses are normally is accompanied by a link to the correct section. This is a good thing, because it both helps fix the initial person's problem, it points anyone else who might be interested in similar things to where this stuff is in the documentation (they might find additional help in pages around that section), *and* it might just help motivate someone to contribute to the handbook if the page they're pointed to doesn't have all the information they're looking for. :)

Anyway, good luck with your crusade. I still think you can conduct it just fine from IRC though (if nothing else, come to #drupal). ;) I'll catch up with you later.

what time you guys sign in?

Gunny-1 commented 29 September 2005 at 16:17

what time you guys sign in? (pacific time or ...) i tried drupal and drupal-support (irc channels) but no one was available in both these channels.

whenever we have time

gnat commented 29 September 2005 at 16:46

i am almost always logged into #drupal-support, as are several other people. but i'm busy. i pay attention to it when i can, and help where i can, but in general find people to think IRC should mean instant support, and it doesn't.

if you leave the channel in less than an hour you are expecting too much of people who are offering their support often while doing other things.

there are other problems i've noticed with people's practices in IRC (perhaps this would be better served as a different thread), like addressing all new questions to the person who may have helped them in the past. this leads to people joining the channel and looking for someone, instead of asking the question so that anyone can answer.

but i have to say compared to other F/OSS irc #drupal-support is one of the best i've ever seen. it is prompt, the help is top notch, and people are rarely made to feel like their lack of knowledge makes them unintelligent which is rampant in other channels.

this is my first attempt

Gunny-1 commented 29 September 2005 at 17:23

this is my first attempt using irc hence i was trying to find it anybody is available by typing "hello anybody there" as my client (mIRC) doesnt show if others are online. Not sure if this is the way irc works (i thought it was a typical chat system like aol, msn, yahoo). But no one responded so far, hence i wanted to know if there is a particular time if people login.

Anyway gnat if you are online now 10 AM pacific time, can you just respond giving a reply message, atleast i would now that i am at the right place.

Updated:
Arrrgh! i have chosen the wrong irc server, ooooff. Now i can see fellow druplians

This is why I think setting

Toe commented 29 September 2005 at 17:29

This is why I think setting up something like PJIRC might be a good idea for this site. That way you only have to type in your nick and hit connect. Much easier for those who are new to IRC.

nested comments in forums and searching the forums

bluecobalt commented 28 September 2005 at 21:38

I find the nested comments in the forums to make it really difficult to locate the latest additions to a thread when it is a long one. I have to scan the entire page and look at the submission dates and times just to be able to figure out which are the new postings since I last looked at the thread.

And, the search function for the forums makes it really challenging to find what you are looking for. It pulls up all kinds of unrelated posts, many of them completely out of date. I've asked this before, but it was never answered. Is there a reason why the trip search is not being used on drupal.org?

---
Blue Cobalt
Theurgy Foundation
http://www.theurgyfoundation.org

Blue Cobalt
http://livingparadise.org
Conscious living for a better world.

Flat vs Threaded

Toe commented 28 September 2005 at 23:13

It's a tradeoff, really.

Threaded: As you noted, it's a pain to find new posts quickly. The formatting is often awkward. And it tends to be less-understood by those who are new to forums in general.

Flat: Quoting earlier posts (using blockquote and such) becomes much more necessary when replying to earlier posts. This leads to a lot more cases where you're reading the same thing again and again. Flat-style also tends to discourage people from revisiting earlier posts in a thread, whether they're worth replying to or not.

Personally, I prefer flat in most cases.

Why aren't we able to switch?

lilywhite commented 29 September 2005 at 00:31

On my drupal site, users can choose how they want to view the forums.

Yes why aren't we allowed to switch?

tesla.nicoli commented 29 September 2005 at 11:18

The long expanded threaded topics are not fun when on a dial up. Even going through the vpn and hitting the broadband makes for a slow page load and then having to hunt through takes even more time.

Every drupal installation I have seen has either flat turned on or allows the choice. Drupal.org is the only expanded threaded forum I know about.

Another thing is that if my connection fails for a moment and I have to refresh to get the dns again then all new comments are no longer marked. So I have to read through the entire thread and try and decide what is new to me.

Of two minds

BobT-1 commented 29 September 2005 at 15:06

The conversation thread style is new to me, and at first it confused me. After spending time with this rapidly lengthening thread, I'm getting used to it, and I actually enjoy finding replies in their context as opposed to having to scroll back a page. In long, flat threads, I find the repeated quoting really bogs me down.

It wasn't until today, since I'm only a member for a couple days, and only started posting yesterday, that I realized how the handy new tags work. Because they are both a special color and in a special location, I can scan for them easily. Either or would not have been so effective, as I have poor color vision.

Although I might prefer to switch back and forth depending on the length of the thread, or whether I'm looking for the latest reply and want it at the bottom, I'm coming to like the threaded discussion better after just a few hours of adjustment. Perhaps sorting by date of last comment is a feature we can add in future?

_________
bob-thompson.com

Collapsing

eldarin commented 29 September 2005 at 15:16

Imagine if the older replies at least 1 post above and below threaded answers were collapsed, so that only the new answers and their immediate parent and (new) child(ren) were visible ?

Now, that's efficient threaded forum browsing for you ...

Of course it would be most efficient with javascript, than some cookie, URL variables or server-session - but seeing as AJAX is getting very popular it would not seem too out of place. Getting it to degrade properly for those without javascript would mean default every post would not be collapsed - but set by javascript as collapsed, as well as maybe employing server-side collapsing like I mentioned for those without javascript enabled/available.

I use collapsible threaded forums myself, but have not gotten the final dynamic loading of posts with AJAX or similar in there yet (could use a deftly crafted iframe as well).

Trying to find news posts in 150+ long drupal.org threads when having replied one place, and then all the "new" tags gets blanked when returning to the page is quite frustrating. Then one needs to resort to searching, quick browsing, but sometimes content gets edited - so timestamp-searching don't hold the solution alone.

Agreed.

lilywhite commented 30 September 2005 at 11:24

<<>>

Just happened to me for the first time. Grrrr!

Oh, don't get me wrong --

lilywhite commented 30 September 2005 at 11:20

I adore threaded discussion -- the first message board I ever posted at was threaded (though collapsed threaded (subjects only), and it's my preferred way. I've even implemented threading on my phpbb boards, and let me tell you that was no picnic. :-|

But when a thread is really really long like this one I sometimes like to switch to flat mode just to read the new 10 or so replies. If I was confused about a reply, I could always switch back to find the context, you know?

JMO, of course. But I'd love it if we could switch on the fly.

A Scoop feature that might be nice

laura s commented 28 September 2005 at 23:23

A way to track your comments you've made that have been responded to. At present, all you can see is that something got commented on in the entire thread. It's a feature on Scoop I've long envied for busier websites. If I had the code familiarity, I'd work up a module or patch to the comments module. If....

Laura
===
pingVision • scattered sunshine

_____ ____ ___ __ _ _
Laura Scott :: design » blog » tweet

I knid of like it this way.

lilywhite commented 29 September 2005 at 00:30

I want to know if there's conversation in the threads I've participated in -- not just responses to me, per se, but any continuing conversation.

I do wish we could easily track threads in which we have NOT posted, though.

Support Forum vs. Forum

Jon Pugh

he/him

English

Newburgh, NY

commented 29 September 2005 at 04:34

I think that forums are great for support, it can sometimes be hard to get results for a few reasons:

1. I find it difficult to find solutions in the forum that relate to what I am experiencing. I'm not sure how the Drupal search ranks items, but rarely do I find what I am looking for at the top.
possible solution: freetagging support posts... ie. "taxonomy", "forums", "event.module", etc.

2. On top of difficulties finding the right information, i don't know what posts have solutions, and what don't. I think the development of a knowledge base type module could display problems and their solutions simply, as well as relevant comments. Also, in a support forum, it would help to be able to tag comments as "Accepted Solution", etc. kind of like www.experts-exchange.com does it. they also keep a list of "experts" in many categories that get points for helping out others. I think an incentive of some kind for the most experienced drupallers to come back and help us newbs would really help out.

So i would say the solution would be to create a dedicated support module, with specialized forums and a knowledge base-type feature. I think moving from just standard forums to something like that would benefit a lot of people.

If no one else wants to push this kind of module with some kind of expediency, I might give it a shot; it would be my first, so it could take a while, but it seems like it would be simple enough to customize the forums module for something like that.

__________________________
Jon Pugh
ThinkDrop Inc
https://devshop.support
https://thinkdrop.net
https://twitter.com/jonpugh

Experiment

Dries commented 29 September 2005 at 12:51

As an experiment, I replaced the 'active forum topics' by a 'new forum topics' block.

I think having both active

Jon Pugh

he/him

English

Newburgh, NY

commented 29 September 2005 at 16:47

I think having both active and new topics blocks would be helpful.

For topics that are not support related, the most active topics are what I look at to see what topics have lots of discussion going on, and therefor are usually the most interesting to read.

Having the latest topics helps encourage quick responses, tho.

Thanks for starting this discussion, dries.

__________________________
Jon Pugh
ThinkDrop Inc
https://devshop.support
https://thinkdrop.net
https://twitter.com/jonpugh

Let users choose

DriesK commented 29 September 2005 at 16:55

Why not enable both blocks (set 1 to 'show by default', the other to 'hide by default' for example, or show both by default), and 'let individual users show/hide it'?

Unofficial Drupal IRC is

pamphile commented 29 September 2005 at 22:24

Unofficial Drupal IRC is launched see: http://drupal.org/node/32621

I have a suggestion. Why not

venkat-rk commented 30 September 2005 at 16:01

I have a suggestion. Why not a block on the drupal.org home page featuring random useful section(s) from different handbooks?

The general attitude seems to be that forums are better than the handbook, but while the forums are mostly helpful, there is a ton of valuable information in the handbooks, especially after the recent efforts by Amazon and others to upgrade admin help for core and contrib modules. I just printed out the 'Customization and Configuration' handbook and it is 112 pages long!

A block on the home page displaying random entries is likely to do two things- bring the handbooks to people's attention and encourage them to explore further.

Once people find solutions, this might even have the unintended effect of encouraging people to contribute to the handbooks.

Edit: That should read as "Configuration and Customization Handbook"

Simplicity suggestions

jibbajabba commented 30 September 2005 at 16:24

I rarely have time to read the site any more, but it's occurred to me that as Drupal has grown, the methods for finding information to solve problems -- multiple forums with sub topics, support list -- have become more and more complex and thus harder to use.

When the community was smaller, the problem of finding and providing answers seemed to be more manageable. It may just be a matter here of making the volume more manageable. The problem we're addressing with that original thread is "how do people find the questions to provide support" rather than "how do i find an answer", so that's what I'll address.

Last year I worked on a project that used a weblog for training. Was basically a forum for asking questions/getting answers to technical problems. We were using TractionSoftware and used its ability to automatically tag a new blog entry "To do". These entries could all be viewed on one page by the subject matter experts who handled answers. They would answer and retag "Done". So the experts could go to a page to view only the ToDo items and not bother with the ones already answered. Worked exceedingly well, with this small community. Didn't even neccessitate an assignment function.

But with the larger community on Drupal, we have different problems related mainly I think to handling/viewing a large volume of posts.
We also don't have pre-defined roles for who answers questions and thus don't have an idea when a question is answered unless the asker indicates so. This is not as simple as the problem dealt with in the project I mention, which is similar to a trouble ticket system. The support is based on the community's willingness/ability to respond and that's what will always make responsivity inconsistent. Contrast this to how we handle items posted to the project Bug/Feature area where questions are probably responded to with greater frequency.

What could help in terms of display is to provide a view that supports the answerers as much as the askers. I personally don't think the "New forum topics" block is enough. Consider perhaps making the More... link go to a page that lists a paged view of all forum entries in reverse cron. Make this list a table view with one of the columns being Status (for sorting by ToDo or Done) and it would be more usable for someone coming to answer questions. Provide a link to this list from forum page as well, e.g. "View all recent topics in all forums".

In terms of the tracker display, http://www.macosx.com has intrigued me. They have a for free support that seems to work and might be worth looking at. It's not that they do everything perfectly. I do like the tracker page you get when you go to http://www.macosx.com/forums/. It shows the questions you've asked and the questions that were answered. The "New" link also shows the reverse cron list of all recent entries.

To step back a bit. What might also help is a different approach. Removing the levels of subtopics and keeping a handful of main headings. Then tag each entry using the same types of headings used as sub topics. To say it more simply, just change the display the support the ways that people use the forums. 1) Simple posting and tagging after writing the entry. 2) Looser browsing to support both askers and answerers. I realize this is a big shift, but it may help you to think of this in terms of how you might support the 2 different roles better.

Sorry if these things were already said. This is all I can think of now. I'm more of a user than someone who provides answers here, so I haven't been able to put myself well enough into the role of answerer to provide more solutions.

Very interesting analysis

nsk commented 1 October 2005 at 04:37

Very interesting analysis. I have written about it here.

--
NSK, Founder of the Wikinerds Community. See my Drupal site, the Wikinerds Portal.

Support issues, not forums

Bèr Kessels commented 1 October 2005 at 14:12

Some time ago, I got pointed at another of those angry 'customers' whose issue was not responded to in a few days.
Since it concerned a contrib maintained by me, I was mostly the one to blame.

But I, just as numerous others, have no time to monitor the forums closely to see if someone has trouble with one of my projects.

So, I normally just tell everyone whith specific issues to post a support issue.
Those reamain "open" or "unresponded", you can list all solved isseues, open issues, duplicates etcetc.
Forums are far too stateless to give support.

IMO support in forums should be removed completely, and replaced by support by isseus. Though I guess that will never happen, unfortunately.
---
if you dont like the choices being made for you, you should start making your own.
---
[Bèr Kessels | Drupal services www.webschuur.com]

On the right track

BobT-1 commented 1 October 2005 at 23:26

That's a great suggestion, Bèr. One comment I'd like to make about that is that I would definitely not post a "how to" question to support issues. I would associate support issues with something that is broken and needs to be fixed and not with my inability to use it.

For "How To" type issues I'm going to search the forums to see if my problem has already been addressed (I use google "keywords site:drupal.org" to work around shortcomings in the built in search). Beyond that, I would prefer to exchange notes with peers regarding how to use a module than to take your time away from bug fixes and new development.

I would suggest adding a forum that is lighter than the others entitled, "Using the Forum - Before You Begin." All topics in this forum should be locked to replies. Topics should include at a minimum:

"How to Get Help," which explains the difference between a "How to" question and a support issue and where to go for help with each, how best to search the forums, which forums are used for what type of question, etc.
"How to Give Help," which gives instructions to tools mentioned above that I didn't know where available and still don't know how to find and use, such as how to find unanswered topics, how to contribute documentation and code, how to donate money, etc.

The goal is to help the user help himself, teach the user how best to get help when he can't help himself, and show the user where to give back to the community that helped him by helping someone else.

A side effect is that once these topics which are rehashed over and over in the forums are stickied and an expectation set for everyone to read them before posting, then we can hold them accountable to having read them before posting, and focus our efforts on the help, and not continually defending or trying to revamp the mechanism for that support. I think this mirrors your point, Bèr.
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bob-thompson.com

HowTo use drupal.org effectively

NaX commented 2 October 2005 at 16:29

I like the idea of helping users help them selves, that would free time up for developers and mountaineers to do what they do best. Maybe what druapl.org needs is a handbook, “HowTo use drupal.org effectively”, and this handbook should guide people through using drupal.org. From posting in the forums, to asking for support, to contributing and donating.

This handbook could be used to point people that want to get involved in the right direction, so they dont get frustrated if they not sure how to go about things.

A lot of what I am talking about is part of the About Drupal handbook. Maybe it could be grouped into a sub category in this handbook or moved to a new handbook. Then this handbook needs to be advertises maybe in a link that gets sent to people when they register and in the footer of the newsletters.

A support forum per module?

jkirkwood commented 18 July 2006 at 00:13

Hi everyone,

As a newcomer to Drupal (still working through my first implementation), my impression of the Drupal community is very good.

Back on topic... I like Bob's suggestions very much, and the separation of 'issues' and 'support' is important. So, why not maintain the module categorization across the two areas, so that there is a 'support' forum for each module? It would hopefully encourage people to 'look for their own answers' in the right area of the forum, as most people at least know which module or area of Drupal they have an issue with.

Posts could still be viewed in 'latest' order (to maintain a high response rate), but as it is now, most questions have already been asked and answered several times - often within a month, and often over several years.

Searching the forums seems to work fine, as I have been able to find all the answers I wanted, but I had to read a whole bunch of posts to finally get the 'whole picture', as lots of people were slowly retracing paths taken by others over several years and always finding new turnings or pitfalls.

Also, it seems that if nobody actually posts an 'issue', problems can sit in the forums and keep cropping up for ages without ever being flagged to the developer community (user awareness issue partly - one for the 'how-to' handbook) and if the support forums were categorized, it would be easier for developers to give them a once over during a development cycle. (I have now resolved my 'event calendar width' problem and posted the solution as an 'issue', as it hadn't found its way into a release in 2 years).

Another important metric (to go with the 'response rate' type measures) is the rate of creation of new threads (rather than simply posts), which, ideally in a support scenario, should begin to go down once a sufficient knowlege base has been built up (albeit with spikes around releases). I think there is enough 'information' in the support forums, but turning it into 'knowledge' is required to improve the overall 'Drupal user support experience'.

I'm a seasoned techie (although new to getting hands-on with CMS and PHP) and I have managed to get by, but it has been a lot harder than I imagined (maybe I was just lured in by the sexy Drupal theme...) I hope to contribute my experience (to handbooks, etc.) as soon as I get this first project signed off...

Many of my support questions

iraszl commented 2 October 2005 at 21:12

Many of my support questions never got an answer, but I understand that free resources are limited. I try to answer any question that I have knowledge or experience about, but I don't have time to do it often. I have given less answers than the number of answers I got, so I consider myself lucky. The community is great.

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http://creativebits.org

not very well

yngens commented 19 July 2006 at 21:31

doing not very well. could any of drupal gurus take a look at http://drupal.org/node/73667 it might be too simple for you but for me it's headaiche and i can not get any reply in support forums

Another problem needs attention

yngens commented 2 August 2006 at 00:18

Hi everybody,

Last time I posted my cry for a help in this thread and only after that got couple responses and finally had solved my problem. Probably I am offtoping and misusing this thread, but again no response for another important problem. And absense of any response has direct link to the subject of this thread.

Could anyone look at: http://drupal.org/node/76516 I believe solving the problem described there would contribute to generally Drupal project, since I found some very uncomfortable issue in one of the most used Drupal module.

Thank you in advance!