Ozzu Focus & Category Reorganization

Yeah, I think the differentiation between discussions and questions is imperative.

Discussions are more free form where questions have a very specific purpose. As for the twitter feedback you might want to allow the user to automatically post it to twitter if they are asking a question. THis means it become a matter of creating the question and it posts to twitter in the background (after the user has authenticated themselves of course). What would also be cool is if the user or community votes for the best answer and the accepted answer is posted to twitter

With the amount of data that ozzu now contains, the ability to find what you looking for easily is going to become imperative!

Nothing to add, I am leaving this to the expert's contributions.

Ozzu has always 'worked' for me as is.

Addind a Wordpress sounds good, its a huge community of bloggers.

Suzie

I used to be a Ozzu die hard. I lived on here. Then I started asking tougher questions, and responses would come days/weeks later, and ultimately I stopped finding answers. So I left for a different forum. One that has been gamified, and I found answers to be MUCH faster.

Gameify OZZU more. Add badges/unlockables, maybe? Let users vote up/down the quality of a question/response. I think it'll help get answers more timely.

Don't have Mod's be the first line of defense for answers. Let your users be the first wave of answers. If a thread gets no response for 12-24 hrs. That's when a Mod should jump in, or to corral a runnaway thread.

Drop categories altogether and use tags instead. Have a tag library that as the user types tags into a tag field on a new thread, previous tags are suggested as the user types. Unique tags are reviewed/screened before being added to the library. This will help with your categorization/search.

Let the user find the answer's they're looking for via a kick a$$ search bar. Become the Knowledge Base for Tech/Programming/IT/Hardware/Hosting/Software/Design... Answers.

When someone starts a new thread. Have the title field perform an ajax type-ahead lookup that suggests other threads with titles with similar keywords. If none of those previous threads contain what the user is looking for, then they can bypass the suggested threads and continue creating a new thread. A measure to prevent duplicate threading.

I haven't seen this around, so maybe offer a space for users with a certain number of points (street cred) to post tutorials/widgets with demos and source code.

OHHH...big one. Code competitions. You have photo manipulations competitions. Find a way to host code competitions. With points for: speed of development, # of lines of code (less is better), speed of code, etc. At work, we've started doing the occasional hack-athon and they're a lot of fun, and get the creative/competitive juices flowing. Such a great opportunity for learning by seeing other's methodology!

The problem with trying to get too granular, is that few people will know where to post and it may encourage cross-posting. I've see this on other sites.

May I suggest a sort of sitemap that is at the top of each forum, showing the topic tree and a one line description for each branch. Then you wouldn't have to make major changes and it would easy for visitors to figure out where they needed to post questions or answers. JMHO

John Gaver
"No Limits SEO"

like the layout idea by this213 - but need to add a few areas:
such as...
eLearning development (from captivate and articulate for beginners, to full on IMI3-4 scenario dev)
web trends (newest environments, coding and editors)
HTML5 (latest standards, from best ways to make a scorm compliant course with html5 - to designing interactive mobile apps)
HTML5 editors (like Hype and Edge)

and Oracle servers should be separated from Linux/BSD servers - scorm coding DOES change from ubuntu linux to oracle peoplesoft - as i found out the hard way this last year >.<' - inhouse legacy courseware generator that was recoded by at least 4 different coders - to find out it was coded for ubuntu (and we could see the content fine on our server), but client was using peoplesoft (who kept seeing an empty courseware shell)... do i need to say more about how much of a migraine i was having - daily?

anyways, adding bump outs and then giving narrowed title areas to those bump outs will indeed make it easier to find relevant data faster - i have to admit, the forums had become so bogged down past couple of years, i wasn't even using this site - especially times when i'm in a coding bind and under a tight deadline - i agree with this213 with tagging reply posts under the op would help as well - also voting down negative posts to auto-collapse should help remove unrelated/unwanted trash posts

you might also want to check the wow forums for additional ideas...

Couldn't agree more here. I've seen forums that try to cover everything having to do with tech, and it's far too ambiguous. I would hate to see OZZU become a jack of all trades and an ace of none.

Right now, I'm not for or against the voting system being proposed. My apprehension towards such a system stems from its potential negative impact on new members. A person could post what they believe to be a legitimate answer to a question and end up getting voted down and leaving the site permanently. Another scenario - I've come to learn that the translation engine running behind OZZU isn't the best. It's incredibly hard to understand what some of the members foreign to my country are saying as the english translation is nearly unreadable. Will members end up voting these posts down simply due to poor translation?


Seems most of us are in agreement here. The search could use a bit of tweaking.


Depending on it's implementation, this could be a good idea. Although, it could drastically effect the usability of the site if you only included one or the other. Using this technique would be best suited as an option alongside the sites default categorical structure. Leaving custom-tagging as the only way to categorize posts would get extremely messy extremely quickly if not given a good balance in usability, freedom, and limitation.


Couldn't agree more, there is a lot of activity between moderators and users within the designer areas of the forum. I've seen a significant lack of concurrence on the developer sections of the forum.


I addressed my concerns on the voting up/down of posts. I think it's a good idea as long as it doesn't alienate users. As far as badges and unlockables, these could be a good incentive as long as they're implemented in a way that won't cheapen the feel of the OZZU environment. I could see this being a big asset to getting new members to stick around for a longer period of time, however I don't see it being anything more than ancillary decoration to the senior posters of OZZU. Not much worry here as a badge next to a name for a new person would be exciting, whilst a badge wouldn't bother a longstanding member.

Please check out this topic if you agree with the above.

I've been checking everywhere on how to change this, but I want to remove my real name (not username but "real name" displayed), or if I can't, atleast have an option to alter it

I've been through every setting in the control panel and I don't even see a spot to put your real name and I don't see yours anywhere so not sure on that one.

Just wanted to second this.

I've been away from Ozzu for quite a while now for various reasons, but recently I've been trying to get back into things (I haven't been doing a good job, as I tend to like replying to things more than starting them, and there hasn't been much started around here recently - at the very least, not much I've had anything really to join in on), for two major reasons:

1. I miss Ozzu.
When I first joined Ozzu, my family had moved a considerable distance (me with them) from where I grew up. I didn't acclimate well (it being my last year of high-school didn't help - homeschooled though I was, my friends from work, my town, my church, and our local homeschool group were all back home). I had trouble making new friends, lived too far away from any place to really walk to, didn't drive, and couldn't get a job anywhere. So, I didn't really know a lot of people - at least not really well.

So, I started spending more time reading and online than I usually did. First, it was mostly to keep in touch with my friends back home, then it grew into joining several online communities. Of those, the only I had the best experience with was Ozzu.

The discussion was varied enough to be interesting, while still mostly sticking (at least outside the General forum) to web-related issues enough to be cohesive and retain a theme. The people were great (most still are, I'd expect) - very friendly, helpful, and polite, but not without a sense of humour, an ability to be critical, or the willingness to engage in unrelated discussion every now and again. The moderators and admin kept the place nice and clean (still do) without ever abusing power. All in all, it was the best online community I personally got involved in.

Later, I went to college, met new friends, got into my studies, and suddenly, Ozzu wasn't as regular a stop for me anymore (I expect similar things have happened with many others, and hey - it happens). That said, I came back because I missed it, and because of reason two...

2. Ozzu is one of the better webmaster forums I've found.
I've been around to plenty of webmasters' forums. Some are great. Some aren't. Some focus two narrowly on one subject (a certain framework, for example) to be a go-to for anything but specific questions. Some have unpleasant communities, or ones simply too large to easily get into. Some are aimed to much at a certain level of user (no tolerance for beginners, or beginners only with no higher-level discussion) and thus are only useful to those with/without know-how. Some focus too broadly (again, "jack of all trades and an ace of none"), ending up with either no real in-depth discussion of topics at all or changing their focus entirely and being active only in a different area than was originally intended.

I never had any of those problems with Ozzu in the past. On Ozzu I was able to help others with some problems, and get help with some of mine. Some discussions went over my head (or, at least, ability to comment), while others I could easily get into and learn from (working my way up to those "over my heads"), and still others I could grasp totally and leas (already knowing the matter at hand). Ozzu was/is diverse but focused, open to multiple levels of user, and, again, had an easy to get into, get to know (whole topics were devoted to this), and get involved with community - much more than many other forums.

...

I won't go on any longer with my rambling - I haven't entirely stayed on topic as is, I suppose. But consider that tangent my comments of the "focus" issue, at least. I like much of the way Ozzu is, and would hate to see it lose anything by becoming too broad.


ALL THAT SAID, there is, of course, room for improvement - if the forums could be consolidated down a few, that would be awesome. Combine that with a new design and it'd be seven kinds of fine. My biggest "issue" with Ozzu (organization/site-wise) is that it looks, as others have said, a little "dated." I want to be more specific and say it looks cluttered.

Simplify it a bit - cut down on some sections, ditch or heavily simplify the sidebar, and, as others sort-of got at, switch out the "main menu" pop-out up top for some easy access buttons (maybe a drop down for some stuff, but at least login/out, control panel, PMs, and search should be links - probably FAQ too, so new users can more easily find it).

That much, for me anyway, would be a massive step towards making the site more accessible, both for current members and new ones.

Thanks, I try

I was discussing this very thing with someone a while ago. While we could go back and forth about the pros and cons, having run a couple of my own boards, I know *exactly* what you're talking about with trash posts, linking to bad neighborhoods and so forth. There's no good catch-all for these bingos since they usually crack some wide open windows system on a corporate network to do their posting from. You block that IP and they just grab the next one in line. You block that whole net and they just grab the next one in line. Anyway, this is a summary of what we came up with...

For signatures and profiles:
1. Links must be top level, such as board.mysite.c om or mysite.com, but mysite.com/whatever is invalid. Perhaps you could add rules to allow links to known sites as well, such as to someone's facebook or linkedin profile.
2. Administration should check the links to make sure they fit common sense criteria.
3. If a user changes their link, the change should be queued and not published until verified.
4. Users must post some number of posts before links will show - or perhaps better, must post in so many threads.

For posts:
1. Users must make some number of posts before links can be posted, until then, perhaps they show as hxxp:// subdom mysite com / page - just having spaces will confuse a lot of people and the only way someone might take the time to follow them would be to copy it to a location bar and then replace those with dots manually. This also stops them from being displayed as links in various clients, as they may if you just output the url and stripped the link tags.
2. Only allow images to be attached, as opposed to allowing [img] bbcode tags
3. Posts with either links (even if disabled) or attachments get flagged for moderator approval before they're published until the user has reached a trust threshold.
4. All links in posts should indeed have the nofollow attribute.

On a completely different note: How about getting the ability to subscribe to a daily email showing all of the unanswered posts made in the last 24 hours in a given forum? I know I can subscribe to a given forum, but that's not quite what I mean. Even if I couldn't choose which forums to include in the daily report and it were sitewide, I think I'd find that fairly handy.

So long as it is optional. Some may get bored of having it sent all the time and may want to remain subscribed to a section without receiving the emails.