Feedback & comment to the Administrators and Moderators

[mpack]

I notice that some visitors are creating their own utility applications, scripts etc to help with some vbox issue or other. Currently people are either embedded scripts in their forum message or providing links to external filesharing sites. Both methods allow the information to get lost in time. Are there any plans to have a "Files" section on this site? Obviously the VBox official downloads would be there, but I'm thinking that unsupported user provided files could be there also.

Other PHP sites do have file areas, so I know it can be done. I doubt that disk space or network bandwidth would be an issue for the small files I'm thinking of.

[TerryE]

We need to upgrade to pbpBB V3 which allows file attachments -- though using them would require a change of forum policy that the Forum Admins and Mod have yet to finalise.

One trouble is that maybe 80% of posts are of the form "Ask some Q that has been asked before" + "repeat answer" or "see post XXX answer". Of the 20% perhaps a quarter are true gems of knowledge. Within any forum we have maybe a couple of dozen themes which dominate the vast majority of Qs. What I was thinking would be an README FIRST in each forum which contains a brief overview of how to use the forums for the beginners, an FAQ for that forum and a list of "recommended posts" (just a brief heading and link) to help new users to browse the forum.

[TerryE]

There are frequent releases of VB which is a good thing. However, this causes some problems in the forums. There are lots of discussions going on here, but it is not always clearly stated which release the thread is about. Say that v2.0.2 has just been released, and there are lots of threads active. Which of them are about v2.0.2 or are older? You cant tell.

Therefore I suggest that in the Subject there must be a version number added. Or something else to make it easy for us to know which version the thread is about.

An alternative would be to create subforums for each version, but that would be less optimal. Therefore, an version number in the subject would be good? Or what do you other people say?

Sorry, but I really think that this sort of structure won't work. We've stated in the FPG that you should always state the VB version and we ask this when omitted. I just don't think that stricter policing will prove effective. The answer is date and context or telling the original poster to read the FPG and supply the info.

BTW, sorry for trashing for OP. (Can't move posts cross topic in phpBB2). I saw no reason to start a new topic for an existing sticky.

[mpack]

I see that a visitor was just reprimanded for posting a bug report in a forum. See here: http://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?t=11808.

Is this wise? It seems to me that raising a potential bug in the forums first is a good thing. That way discussion with other users can help weed out the false reports, duplications, and old bugs already fixed, before bothering the developers with it.

[TerryE]

I don't think that the wording was a reprimand, honest More a simple statement: don't post here; use the bugtracker. To be honest there is little point in posting bugs to the forum since the only dev team members who bother to come here now are Frank and Sander, and their visits are quite infrequent -- a regrettable side effect of having an effective group of community supporters taking the load of answering Qs.

However I will have a look at the FAQ and see if the wording here needs massage.

PS. Were you happy with my response?

[mpack]

I have no problem with Sasquatch's wording, and your response was fine. It's the policy itself I was surprised at. Yes, bug reports should of course be raised using the bugtracking system... eventually. But, that there should be no discussion of the issue prior to raising a ticket? And we're encouraging novice users to hit the bugtracker system as a first resort? Both of those seem wrong to me.

The OPs wording did suggest a formal bug report, and the proper place for that is the bugtracker system. But IMHO the correct response would be to address the meat of the issue first, then perhaps one of the experienced volunteers could have raised the formal ticket (if that turned out to be required).

[TerryE]

Yup I agree with what you say. If we are discussing what seems to be a geniune VBox bug then once it is clear that it is a bug then it should be raised as such. I've even got a Ff clipping that tells the reporter how to log onto the bugtrack, etc. Also as in this case it helps avoid false bugs being raised which in turn reduces the unnecessary load on the development team.

[sparticlevbox]

There are so many differences between major distros that trying to find help in a single Linux Host or Linux Guest forum is very hard.

Can you break the Linux Host and Guest forums into major Distros?

Cheers
Spart

[TerryE]

Spart, it's always a subject of debate at setting the granularity of the forums. The issue is that often Linux problems are the same for Ununtu, SuSE, etc. and sometimes they are distro specific. If you do the split then you loose out on this first category. Besides we have enough problems with users posting in the wrong forum anyway.

Given that google indexes the site daily, I think that the forum structure is a minor issue as I always search the forum using google rather than the phpBB search, hence if I am looking for issues around kernel upgrade on SuSE then I just google kernel upgrade SuSE site:forums.virtualbox.org.

[virtualmike]

OMG Do you get a lot of spam or is this a one off attack , a few seconds ago this site was full of nasty spam links

[Perryg]

It happens from time to time. We put up blocks and they figure a way around them.
But we do our best to clean it as fast as we can.

Sorry for any inconvenience that you have experienced.

[virtualmike]

It happens from time to time. We put up blocks and they figure a way around them.
But we do our best to clean it as fast as we can.

Sorry for any inconvenience that you have experienced.

[domfox]

Reading the forum posting guide, and looking at other posts on the forum, I can see that the emphasis here is on technical support and discussion - touting for business is strongly discouraged, for example, which seems reasonable given how disruptive this can sometimes be.

However, I'm in the position that I'd like to find some people who would be able to do short snippets of paid consultancy on VirtualBox - in other words, I'm not selling but looking to buy (that is, looking for people in the community who might be able to assist on a paid basis). Sometimes one wants the kind of assistance that it would be unreasonable to expect volunteers and community members to provide gratis (i.e. more in-depth, and with an agreed turnaround), however generous people often are with their time! But it doesn't seem that it would be in the spirit of the existing forums to conduct that kind of conversation there. If this isn't the place to ask, then where might be better? Would the forum administrators consider an additional forum for requests of this kind?

[TerryE]

We've debated about this in the past without coming to a sound conclusion, so the whole thing has been left hanging. We haven't a specific forum where VBox users can ask to be hooked up to someone who is willing to offer fee earning support. Nonetheless some of us are do undertake fee earning work, so why not just post a specific request in the suggestions forum?

The difficulty here is that most of us offer this support pro-bono, but if we did want to charge then I suspect that most would want a reasonably competitive contract rate reflecting our level of expertise and that is something that only enterprises could afford.

However, why not post what you want? At least this will spark a debate amongst the Volunteers to establish "case-law" on this issue. From your perspective, you might just end up getting some free help, or paid help at a rate that you feel is reasonable.

[plino]

To Sasquatch

You are clearly confusing me with some kid/troll.

I did search the forum *before* I registered. It was because I couldn't find an answer that I had to register and post.
(BTW the search engine does NOT accept 3.0.6 as a keyword)

Thank you for assuming I didn't search and for pointing me to the Forum Rules instead of the "Discussion topic of the 3.0.6 release"

Back to 3.0.4