Just a thought...

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Poida
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Just a thought...

Post by Poida »

Greetings tuners...

I LOVE what the admin team have done here, without question, the BEST forum exchanging ideas, problem solving about hacking the Delco ECU.

But it disappoints me to see people who ask for help don't always return the favour by following through to let everyone know if the help others provide was the answer to their problem.

Pondering through threads where forum members have asked for help diagnosing various problems, it becomes apparent that many threads start with a "can anyone help me with...." to which numerous people post ideas and diagnostic process then the topic just goes








dead.

No responses to say, "thanks to #### for your response, I tried what you suggested and it didn't seem to change it/fixed it. I'm going to try ****'s suggestion now, let you know how it goes/so thankful I feel I owe you a slab of Jack..."

well maybe that's a little exaggerated, but I'm sure you get the picture.

People give lots of time and share knowledge (for ̶$̶9̶0̶ ̶p̶e̶r̶ ̶h̶o̶u̶r̶ FREE) but the thread becomes a 'dead thread' with no one REALLY learning because the problem was presented but the outcome wasn't shared.


Maybe they don't realise the importance that following through and responding to each suggestion creates a long term learning database so others can learn from the succession of questions and answers. Without their follow up response, not even those offering the potential fixes know if what they suggested fixed the problem, least of all those searching, who are also trying to fix the same problem. No one is any the wiser and the thread sort of dies in the ass. It gets frustrating searching a forum for answers when the searched headings don't appear to have been closed off with a verified answer.
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Gampy
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Re: Just a thought...

Post by Gampy »

Yup, that is very annoying, so are offsite links/images ... They completely invalidate a quality thread.

Cannot control what OP's do ...

Some intentionally invalidate to keep communication flowing, ib for example.

Unfortunately that is the world we live in, suck it dry for everything it's worth and not give back!

Except for a few ...
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Poida
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Re: Just a thought...

Post by Poida »

Thanks Gampy, all good points.

One problem that comes from incomplete communications, is the forum becomes littered with the same old question being asked over and over... that also makes it hard to search for an answer before starting a new thread, because you DID search and got a dozen or so potential thread links ASSUMING the first is going to be the most likely, but read them through and the first dies, the second dies, the third dies, so you give up and resort to posting the question again.

Some information is easy enough to find just by hitting up the library, a book shop etc, but there are other info sources that are less likely to make it to a printed book, hacking Delco computers is one such info source, it's all up here in electronic form and if the index can't point to the page number it can be daunting to find answers from a newbies point of view. It works ok for long termers who are used to the site BECAUSE they are used to the layout. From someone first visiting, it's not that easy to find your way round and the dead threads aren't making it easier. Maybe one of the moderator roles could include chasing up SOME of the more important threads, perhaps message the author and ask what the outcome was and publish the answer. I don't know, maybe that's a bit excessive, but in my eyes, a thread asking for help that doesn't seem to arrive at some kind of result is better off being archived so it isn't heading the search results.
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Gareth
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Re: Just a thought...

Post by Gareth »

That all sounds great, but.... That would take a ton of some ones time and energy, this is only a hobby for most of us.

I spend plenty of time deleting spam from the forum as is.
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Re: Just a thought...

Post by Tazzi »

If only it was that simple.
Most of the time, once someone gets what they need, they will disappear into the night.

The fact that a question was at least raised, means this is something for others to at least google, and see the reponses of that thread to try themselves.

If they are nice enough to say what worked, that would be fantastic, but at least having the entire conversation available is better then nothing.
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Holden202T
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Re: Just a thought...

Post by Holden202T »

i have had first hand experience trying to follow up on some threads, mostly because i wanted to know what they worked out for one of my own projects ....

sadly, usually the said person is long gone and never bothers to come back, or in some cases they take the free info the forum has provided and use it for their own person gains, like said above, sadly that's the world we live in.
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antus
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Re: Just a thought...

Post by antus »

The best Ive found is sometimes you can link a better thread if you in the right place, right time. If something seems good for long term knowledge I add it to the FAQ (if I had a $ for every time I've said green button up near the top right)... But that comes from the facebook generation having no idea what an FAQ is (its frequently asked questions). Often I just link the right place in the right thread where the answer is, and almost keyword spam the question so you can find it on a search down the page. Sometimes we also sticky particularly good threads.

Then there is the organisation of the forums. Its mostly set up as a first best guess back from 2009 but we never ended up changing it. Now I think at least people are probably used to it. I sometimes move a thead but 'leave the shadow topic' in place, so if someone is looking in the wrong spot they'll still see a pointer to where it went.

Beyond that its good to know that often the older threads are better. If you do a search go back to between about 2010-2014 when the most juiciest stuff was first posted.

Some systems are better than others, but they all have their flaws or do some things better than others. This site still works for me, I would like to see the P01 and P59 XDFs sorted better. But like you say, for free in your spare time you can only do so much.... At some point its up to the person looking to spend the time and learn the skills, because it is what it is.

As for off forum pics, I used to move them inline on the forum, and all the mods (green) and gurus (yellow) can edit posts, and move images on to the forum host if they see one and have the time.

The other thing we could perhaps do is delete threads that went nowhere, but that does have downsides - anyone who tried to help looses the post in their count and looks less active than they really are (essentially cuts in to their credability), and its also hard to know if there really is a fragment of info in a thread that someone might need later. So I dont do this unless there are special circumstances.
Have you read the FAQ? For lots of information and links to significant threads see here: http://pcmhacking.net/forums/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1396
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Poida
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Re: Just a thought...

Post by Poida »

Thanks everyone, some of you know me from other forums/Facebook groups and I guess it is just the way people have become, not thinking past their immediate needs. Some people go out of their way to help others and in this forum it really has shown.

Again, lots of thanks to everyone who goes that extra yard/metre to guide people in learning an exciting hobby.
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Poida
Posts: 19
Joined: Thu May 07, 2009 3:08 pm
cars: TE-TG Holden Geminis
JE Camira
Early Holden Rodeos
Early Holden Jackaroos
E12 & E30 BMWs
Holden Piazzas
plus others...
Location: Albury/Wodonga
Contact:

Re: Just a thought...

Post by Poida »

I hear you antus... I thought carefully when setting out the forum index and the permissions for the HG.net site and should probably review some of it.
Main thought was to keep to my plan of ensuring verified info remained in it's own area and couldn't become lost amongst the multitude of opinions that may or may not be correct. I still set up a general chat area where people's ideas could be posted, there are always good ideas out there that need a place to be shared.

cheers!!
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j_ds_au
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Re: Just a thought...

Post by j_ds_au »

What if it were possible for members to up/down-vote a thread, based on how useful it is? Then perhaps one could optionally specify a ranking threshold for search results, so as to only get the most useful stuff. The initial thread ranking would be zero, so in a search, you might specify a threshold of zero to ignore threads with a negative ranking.

Alternatively, the initial thread ranking could equal the number of posts in the thread (some threads are giving useful information rather than asking a question, so the original post should be included in the initial ranking). In this case, each new post in a thread would automatically increment its ranking. Up/down-voting would do the rest.

Joe.
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