[Suggestion] Split the dev questions forums in two: Basic / Advanced

[eluser]xwero[/eluser]
If you are going to start a system with abbreviations especially with skill levels I'm wondering who is going to monitor this? There are obvious newbie posts but then it begins to get blurry. Even people with a high skill level can fall over simple things and a newbie can come to rescue.

Maybe there should be a section first questions. The first questions are most of the time about some aspect of CI someone hasn't discovered yet, this would make the other sections a bit cleaner. I think it's a minimal change on the site and in behaviour. I like this forum because it doesn't restrict you, the few programmers forums i've watched and participated on feel like they are being monitored by angry prisonguards.
I feel here is a spirit of we-all-come-here-to-learn and making mistakes is a part of that.

my 2 cents for today

[eluser]CI Lee[/eluser]
Yeah the abbreviations thing was a suggestion to prevent the creation of more forum sections. I personally do not like being bound by structure (*flips the bird to the man!*) and prefer open discussion. However I do know that there are people who get frustrated with answering the same noobish questions all the time...

So there is a balance between being bound by structure and holding new peoples hands...(*not in creepy way*)

I think it is fine the way it is, if anything a forums of FAQs or stickies would be handy...

-Lee

[eluser]xwero[/eluser]
I agree not to create too much sections, it's a specialized forum as it is.

But instead of knocking off the newbies, who can and do bring new ideas, we should knock off the grumpy old men

At the moment i have no problem to answer the noob questions but i'm sure there will be a time i don't feel like it anymore but that doesn't stop the questions. I will only stop answering. Why should it bother you? It is not because you developed more skills everyone on the forum has too.

I like new ideas and twists that ask for solutions that is why i started programming in the first place. If i hadn't picked up programming maybe i invented a coffeeless coffeemaker but i heard people call it a watercooker.

[eluser]Jim OHalloran[/eluser]
Hi,

My concern about creating a seperate forum for newbie type posts is whether enough of the "advanced" CI community will read it to provide answers for the new guys. Unless we can support and encourage the new guys they'll give up on the framework and the community may stagnate as a result.

Is it possible to attack the problem of repetitive newbie type posts via another method? Maybe an FAQ document which is prominently linked from the home page, or bundled into the User Manual and distributed with CI? Some issues seem to come up repeatedly in the forums (Controllers in Subfolders, Controller Inheritance, .htaccess issues, PHP4/5 comaptibility come to mind off the top of my head.

If people think it's a good idea, I'm happy to take a crack at writing the FAQ. What do people think?

Jim.

[eluser]Michael Wales[/eluser]
I see no reason for this, for a resounding number of reasons:

1) We were all newbies like that. I remember when I first started using CI a year ago, I simply couldn't understand and comprehend how the data was passed via an array to the view and how to effectively retrieve that data. After a quick jump over to RoR (where the MVC concept is much clearer) and back again - well, look at me now.

2) Newbies will still post their questions in the Advanced section. It increases the chances of the question being answered (by "Advanced" programmers, oh my!). Also, what defined advanced? Most people around here thing user authentication is a hard topic, worthy of a massive library. I happen to think it's easy as hell and it only took me about 30 minutes to write the first version of ErkanaAuth.

3) It adds another click. A lot of people, myself included, read damn near every topic on this forum. You're adding another section I have to click off into.

4) You don't have to read those topics. If it's from a name you don't recognize or the subject line reads ("anchor() function doesn't work") - you know they probably didn't change their config.php. Just skip it if you don't feel like answering. Which leads me to:

5) You don't have to answer. Even if you did read the topic, you are by no means bound to a contract which means you have to answer.


CodeIgniter needs newbies. We're a relatively young framework that catches a bad wrap from the rest of the frameworks (because we don't do AJAX, User Auth, and other stuff the developer should do himself and not be limited by the constraints of a framework).

[eluser]Alex007[/eluser]
Thank for the replies guys, I really apreciate them.

It's not that I hate newbies... like I said I enjoy helping them when I feel they tried to help themselves first or will learn something from our help.

Nothing is worse than having people drop by here to have us do all their work everytime because they don't (want to) learn.

After thinking about it some more, the problem isn't really about splitting the newbies or isolating them, the problem is that we need to teach them two things: 1- How to help themselves first, and 2- How to ask a question.

I really think we could make the forums much more enjoyable for everyone by adding two simple things:

1- A sticky thread in the "Codeigniter Discussion" subforum, saying "NO QUESTIONS / TECH SUPPORT HERE, use the "Code and Application Development" forum".
2- A sticky thread in the "Code and Application Development" subforum, with all the details on how/where to search for informations before posting, AND how to post a question if they weren't able to find answers.

I'm volunteering to provide some content for thoses stickies.

Does that sound better ?