Expand the forum, new category for real-time processing?

[F_Sauce]

Hei all,

Hope this is the right place to address this kind of query, and that no one gets insulted or annoyed

I do find this forum both helpful and well structured as such, however, I would have liked it organised with a bit more nuance, and/or perhaps reconstructed with that in mind. I understand and acknowledge that it possibly may involve some issues regarding administration; issues towards 'where to post?' from the one who makes a request's view, could, if the forum's structure were organised with more sub-categories, consequently involve some more redirection of posts, and, thus, possibly create a lot of extra work for the administrators. As well as, of course, involving an effort to enact it in the first place. I do not know all to much concerning how this is organised! But, what I often miss is to just click into a category/sub-category and read post related to my problem, there and then. E.g. categorise the hardware section with sub-groups as for example: camera/webcam, harddrives, graphic cards, sound cards, ... etc. Or, perhaps, erase the divide between hardware and software, and create a totally different structure in which includes both hardware and software related topics: Video, Audio, Photo, Office, Mathematics, Programming, System, Security (...), and so on. Perhaps with a hardware subcategory of the, latter suggestion, with maybe a subgroup below there again just for drivers and driver issues. Anyhow, narrow it down so it contains more specific content and less in amount.


I have not reflected to much regarding my suggestions so they may seem ridiculous to some, alas, something which they of course also might be, haha. I just feel the need to be able to address a potential problem(problems) in a different way than exist in the forum right now, and I have often problems specifying my search correctly, hence, I do not always find the relevant information easily. The aim is as such to improve the forum as an archive with better taxonomy.

Furthermore, I think that information concerning special features, operations, demands, etc, could, with reconstructing the forum, be better cared for, something which is what I intentionally was concerned about. There might be a potential issue in respect of competence if this should be effective, but if attended and addressed more actively one might, as well, attract those users with those special needs to this forum. Thus, gradually such information is accumulated and made available on this forum. My concern was initially towards audio and I have used, among others, the Jacklab forum a great deal. However, that community is rather small and, understandably, not to vital, but there is a whole lot of nice tips and information stored there. Jacklab is now partially, I believe(?) and anyhow based on OpenSuSE and as such relevant for this forum, incorporated into the OpenSuSE project, and personally I would like to see the Jacklab forum merged with this one. Provided, of course, that a modification in this forum's structure makes it practical. The Jacklab project is, of course, the developer of the JAD release, a DAW for linux, hence they generally work towards improved usability and stability for audio real-time processing, audio apps, audio environment etc. There is not much information, and at least not easily retrieved, regarding these features on this, the OpenSuSE, forum. And that is what I would like it, this forum, to achieve, more special information regarding: sound, audio, realtime capabilities etc.; and stored in a more easily retrieved way. Furthermore, this approach could certainly (well in my view, anyhow) be relevant towards other fields of computer tasking with need for special information as well.

In another perspective, a forum which is well documented, is well structured and has a wide approach topic wise, and which thus provides and/or stimulates to discussions regarding special and smaller topics as well as on common problem solving issues, could have impact on the choice of distribution for those who have special requests. And by which, again, could make the forum flourish. One is allowed to be a bit ambitious, right?

I am not saying that this forum has no interesting discussions or that it does not deal with or has focus on special concerns, as I would not know anything about it, except for some of the things I have tried to elaborate a bit about. I am a happy SuSE user which has some difficulties with audio, and more recently with video editing, importing and recording. And, in general, I find both the forum and document DB very useful.

And, finally, this was just a thought which accidentally became a bit long, probably a bit formal and possibly flawed (in both form and content). My excuse has to be that I'm Norwegian.

Cheers,
Olav

> what I often miss is to just click into a category/sub-category and
> read post related to my problem, there and then.

please do not take this to mean that your's is not a great suggestion,
but:

have you, when you miss the ability to see if someone has already met
and solved your problem, and you want to click down through the layers
to the sub-sub-sub-(etc)-category of (say)

Hardware > Graphic Cards > Nvidia > GeForce > FX > 55xx

have you yet given the advanced search function
<http://forums.opensuse.org/search.php> a whirl?

be especially mindful of the ability to search just subject lines, OR
the entire posting....and, then show either just the posts containing
the searched for words, OR the entire thread..

or, if you really hope to find all the golden nuggets that (say)
oldcpu has written on the topic of YOUR graphics card, you can do that
too!

wanna know if the latest kernel fixed YOUR problem, you can restrict
the date range...and, well....give it a whirl..

(and EVEN if the original poster thought it was a 64 bit problem and
YOUR 32 bit system needs the SAME fix, but you never looked for it in
64...well, the advanced search will turn it up...)

--
Conficter

[kgroneman]

Hi Olav,

Thank you for taking the time to make the suggestion. Obviously you have put some thought into it. I'll take your suggestion to the staff and see if it gets any traction. When we first organized the forums there was a lot of discussion to come to the current layout. We wanted it to be simple to use and easy to navigate without providing too much complexity. I understand the idea behind your suggestion and it does have some validity.

I, personally, also want to say "thanks" for the way you made the suggestion. Often we get somthing like "The way this is is just stupid, you folks should change this....I can't believe you don't do this differently" which doesn't give anyone on the staff the warm fuzzies nor entices us to look seriously at the issue raised.

[F_Sauce]

Hei Conficter,

Yes I have used the advanced search options, though it's possible that I have missed some details (and I think I have) which would have helped me out on various occasions. Actually I wrote my post a bit on impulse, not that I didn't meant what I said, but it wasn't to complain about anything. This morning I was looking for information on Cinelerra and other application, Kino, Kdenlive etc. running on SuSE, I just wanted an impression of what experience users had with these apps. Of course I can go to the various home pages, which I also do, but in my experience there often is a variation of how the different apps work and run with the various Linux distroes. And more often than not, (when googling) I end up in one of the Ubuntu family forums which for that matter is helpful enough, though it isn't necessarily the same config file, location (directory) or similar, which, hypothetically, needs a modification. And I am fully aware that me ending up in the Ubuntu forum is more a cause of the amount of users using the different distroes than the quality of the forums themselves. But I still think it is possible to organise things differently on this forum, though I don't mean it's poor as it is. I think it's good.

And yes, I too think the posts by oldcpu are very useful and good, especially concerning resolving sound card issues. He obviously is a very helpful chap

I haven't read your post, which you refered to, Conficter, but I will do it now.

And, thank you kgroneman!

Cheers,
Olav

[F_Sauce]

I haven't read your post, which you refered to, Conficter, but I will do it now.

Sorry, I misunderstood.

i'm sorry if you thought i was saying that the forum as laid out is
perfect....clearly it is not....because i too find it extremely
difficult to use by just clicking on a topic (like software) and then
browsing around looking for Cinerella, for example..

but, a quick search using the forum's search function, using the term
cinerella and looking in the entire post, and returning posts (not
threads) turns up 17 posts...i avoid wading through thousands of
subject lines to find very little..

and, to try to cut down on the Ubuntu hits, try a google search like this:
suse cinerella
which returns 500 hits, sure some may be all about Ubuntu and SUSE is
mentioned somewhere else on the page, but but ...

suse kino
returns almost 95,000

and
suse Kdenlive
over 9,000

i'm sure that the forums can benefit from thoughtful inputs like
yours, but i'm also pretty sure it won't get so much better that you
still can't find what you need easier and faster by searching with
software rather than your eyes..

--
Conficter

[swerdna]

I use this form of search quite often: cinerella site:forums.opensuse.org - Google Search
And of course if I add in some of the advanced search functions available in Google, it's much better (at least for me) than the on-Board php search function.

Which is just an aside, not having anything at all to do with the merit of F_Sauce's proposition, which I find worthy of thought, thankyou F_sauce.

[1michael1]

Originally Posted by kgroneman

Hi Olav,

Thank you for taking the time to make the suggestion. Obviously you have put some thought into it. I'll take your suggestion to the staff and see if it gets any traction. When we first organized the forums there was a lot of discussion to come to the current layout. We wanted it to be simple to use and easy to navigate without providing too much complexity. I understand the idea behind your suggestion and it does have some validity.

I, personally, also want to say "thanks" for the way you made the suggestion. Often we get somthing like "The way this is is just stupid, you folks should change this....I can't believe you don't do this differently" which doesn't give anyone on the staff the warm fuzzies nor entices us to look seriously at the issue raised.

@kgroneman

You got a very good point and I agree with you

Cheers

Mike