Considering upgrading this forums or platform into the 21 century ?

[SpreedsheetCrusader]

Hi.

I was wondering if there are any plans to upgrade this forums? is that considered here by this forum management ?

wonder how this forums can be improved to facilitate collaboration and ease of access.


my frustration with accessing the forums sometime that it does not pick your password or username correctly (some bug) and after a couple of trails you end up thrown away for 15 min or more and you cannot access the forums or post which cause UBER frustration especially if you have something you are very eager to post on time.


my frustration with the collaboration aspect is that people post problems and they ask for solution, models ..etc you start working on helping them and you finish, you come to post the stuff and you find someone who already have reach a solution and post it there. I see wasted time here that can be improved by adding some live collaboration tools to the site (like GitHub perhaps) but i wonder if that is even possible on the current forum tech platform.


what Ideas do you have to improve the forums platform? are there any better layout, techs, tools that can serve this forum in a more efficiently?

 

[mole999]

personally if you muck up your password (or if someone was trying to deliberately hack in) then an auto lock out for a period of time is worthwhile for the safety of the board and not for the individual

solutions to peoples problems, we all face that, but I learn more by seeing alternatives and can exercise you mind into other possibilities

we all have the opportunity to go elsewhere

 

[SpreedsheetCrusader]

will mole you make a good point when it comes to the passwords.

regarding the 2nd part, i Disagree with the fact that we have the opportunity to go elsewhere. dunno this is the only Excel community that is live and people post at fast rate (like 10 threads every min or so).

i still see a necessity and a compelling case to upgrade it and add some collaborative tools, ofc we all learn from alternatives but to see these being created live will help save time from waste incase a guru is present and solving the case posted, we can discuss with him live while he is solving the case and contribute with a thought or another while he/she is building it, instead of building a solution end to end and then refreshing the thread to see that someone else have created a solution that is picked as a winner.

 

[RoryA]

You may see the necessity but I'm afraid we don't. We try to keep the forum as close to the out of the box software as we can and, as you acknowledge, it works very well for us based on the number of users and questions we have. This is a Q and A site, not a project collaboration site.

 

[SpreedsheetCrusader]

very strange...

i see this view or approach as a limitation for a potential untapped in this site, dunno but my take is that this view is old fashioned.

what is the harm of moving toward the project collaboration spectrum too ?

i mean we should look at other sites for inspiration too in particular GitHub.

just my opinion.

 

[Macropod]

It's a user forum - just like the dozens of others out there. And, like any good user forum, it attracts a lot of traffic from people needing - and receiving - help. Project collaboration might be useful for those undertaking large-scale projects such as those GitHub is aimed at, but that isn't what is done here, or at any other forum I'm aware of. And, given that we all live in different parts of the world, collaboration across multiple time zones on small projects just isn't going to fly. Sure, efforts are duplicated sometimes but, in the grand scheme of things, that's a small price to pay and would be just as likely in a collaborative environment.

 

[RoryA]

just my opinion.

Indeed, which you are welcome to express but equally we are free to hold other opinions.

Also, as you've only been here one day, you may want to get a feel for the place before you start trying to redesign it.

 

[Joe4]

We prefer to keep it a free, working site rather than a pretty site which you have to pay money to join.

As you mentioned, there are other sites that people can choose from too. I think the sheer volume of users and posts on this site speaks to people's preferences.

 

[SpreedsheetCrusader]

well i believe at least we need to add some kinda of a project collaboration tool, mechanism, window that is live and allow chat like discussion with tools for collaboration like camera feed and screenshots for example.

for instance i am currently working on helping someone on his thread, i DO NOT know whether someone else is working on the same case, I CANNOT communicate with that potential someone who is working on parallel on the same problem.

now imagine if there is some window chat style or something like that, that display who is currently viewing the thread they can have a live discussion share screenshot ideas etc LIVE.

i hope you got the picture Joe. i believe that adding collaboration tools will exploit a positive potential for the site, it will definitely increase the number of viewers and subscribers even more.

 

[RoryA]

I don't think you're getting the message. That is not going to happen.