Another Project Elf SPAM?

goetz · wrote on 10 Dec 2010, 09:09

Hi,

is this going to be another Project Elf SPAM for the Weekend?

http://developer.qt.nokia.com/forums/viewreply/12920/
http://developer.qt.nokia.com/forums/viewreply/12916/
http://developer.qt.nokia.com/forums/viewreply/12901/
http://developer.qt.nokia.com/forums/viewreply/12895/
http://developer.qt.nokia.com/forums/viewreply/12893/
http://developer.qt.nokia.com/forums/viewreply/12891/
http://developer.qt.nokia.com/forums/viewreply/12889/

It's just a plain list to API docs of various classes. Some of the threads are solved already, some are quite old.

Come on Bradley, you wrote a real bunch of good comments, do you really need this to gain points?

? This user is from outside of this forum · wrote on 10 Dec 2010, 09:34

Bradley, I agree with Volker, everyone has Qt assistant
This could be helpful in certain specific threads, when user actually asks for doc, or if you want to point out the user to use specific api, but not for every thread in forum.. so pls stop!

giesbert · wrote on 10 Dec 2010, 09:42

This makes reading the forum really hard. If you wait half an hour you have 150 changes, and none are really new. Is there a possibility to prevent such things? (I'm afraid no :-( )

stukdev · wrote on 10 Dec 2010, 10:10

Yes, this is not useful for the forum

mgran · wrote on 10 Dec 2010, 10:29

I'll ping Bradley, I'd like to hear his thinking. He did a lot of posts in 15 minutes, too much coffee?

kamalakshantv · wrote on 10 Dec 2010, 10:51

Even I had posted a reply to one of his threads, but still no comments from him. Everyone here I think is capable of locating the Doc tab on the top right of this page and search for themselves.

stukdev · wrote on 10 Dec 2010, 10:52

[quote author="QtK" date="1291978267"]Even I had posted a reply to one of his threads, but still no comments from him. Everyone here I think is capable of locating the Doc tab on the top right of this page and search for themselves.[/quote]

You have to include in a comment a qt object, so he can post new comment with a reference link of the object :P

anselmolsm · wrote on 10 Dec 2010, 10:54

Unfortunately it's even worse, while reading the new posts from the last night (UTC-3) I found more of those 'doc link' posts. Come on guys, I'll start listing links to dictionary for each relevant English word, so people don't need to search anymore.... :-P

Another fact: Some guys stopped using the edit function to amend information to posts just published, so instead of 1 new post you have 2 (and they double the points...). IMO it's impossible to write 2 good answers in less than 1 minute.

mgran · wrote on 10 Dec 2010, 10:57

In the end I think we will have to delete the doc link posts, the people here and the moderators on IRC are all in agreement. I had hoped that Bradley would get a word in though.

kamalakshantv · wrote on 10 Dec 2010, 10:59

I am sure administrators will warn the forum member and take the required action.

Wolf P. · wrote on 10 Dec 2010, 11:01

Sometimes this kind of comment is useful. But the thread should be read and understood first, not only scanned for class names. So,

What about enabling auto-linking for forum and wiki: whenever source is provided between [at] chars classes beginning with Q could be linked to the online docs? Good Idea? Start a Tread/Poll about this?

? This user is from outside of this forum · wrote on 10 Dec 2010, 11:05

cleanup in progress ...

giesbert · wrote on 10 Dec 2010, 11:06

This idea is good, but I think, it's not too easy to implement, is it?

kamalakshantv · wrote on 10 Dec 2010, 11:12

[quote author="Wolf P." date="1291978915"]Sometimes this kind of comment is useful. But the thread should be read and understood first, not only scanned for class names. So,

What about enabling auto-linking for forum and wiki: whenever source is provided between [at] chars classes beginning with Q could be linked to the online docs? Good Idea? Start a Tread/Poll about this?[/quote]

Thats a good idea, but then that would be too much of linking. I always have my documentation open for reference so never felt the need for one. Another issue would be to link the doc to which version of Qt.

Wolf P. · wrote on 10 Dec 2010, 11:15

[quote author="Gerolf Reinwardt" date="1291979160"]This idea is good, but I think, it's not too easy to implement, is it?[/quote] I started another thread:
"[Suggestion] enable auto-linking of classes in quoted source to the Qt Documentation":http://developer.qt.nokia.com/forums/viewthread/2319/

baysmith · wrote on 10 Dec 2010, 16:51

[quote author="chetankjain" date="1291973659"]Bradley, I agree with Volker, everyone has Qt assistant
This could be helpful in certain specific threads, when user actually asks for doc, or if you want to point out the user to use specific api, but not for every thread in forum.. so pls stop![/quote]

Everyone has Assistant, but not everyone is familiar with it. A good number of the members here are very experienced Qt developers, but since this is a resource for newbies as well, I thought it would be useful to have links to the APIs. Although I am an experienced Qt developer, I find them useful as well as quick reference. Sometimes I'm reading the forums when I'm not on a development machine and don't have Assistant available.

[quote author="Gerolf Reinwardt" date="1291974147"]This makes reading the forum really hard. If you wait half an hour you have 150 changes, and none are really new. Is there a possibility to prevent such things? (I'm afraid no :-( )[/quote]

Yes, that was an unfortunate side-effect of going back to provide support to older posts. It won't always be that way.

[quote author="QtK" date="1291978267"]Even I had posted a reply to one of his threads, but still no comments from him. Everyone here I think is capable of locating the Doc tab on the top right of this page and search for themselves.[/quote]

Sorry, but I am probably not in the same time zone as you are. I think newbies are not as capable of locating the docs, because some of the forum questions are regarding simple things found in the docs. Plus why should the extra effort need to be made.

[quote author="stuk" date="1291978377"][quote author="QtK" date="1291978267"]Even I had posted a reply to one of his threads, but still no comments from him. Everyone here I think is capable of locating the Doc tab on the top right of this page and search for themselves.[/quote]

You have to include in a comment a qt object, so he can post new comment with a reference link of the object :P
[/quote]

I haven't posted these comments to every forum topic. Only to ones that discuss a significant portion of Qt classes or uncommonly used areas. Thoses are the posts where I think the links are
helpful.

[quote author="mariusg" date="1291978640"]In the end I think we will have to delete the doc link posts, the people here and the moderators on IRC are all in agreement. I had hoped that Bradley would get a word in though.[/quote]

Sorry, but I am not in the same time zone as you are. Please have a little patience.

[quote author="QtK" date="1291979558"]
[quote author="Wolf P." date="1291978915"]Sometimes this kind of comment is useful. But the thread should be read and understood first, not only scanned for class names. So,

What about enabling auto-linking for forum and wiki: whenever source is provided between [at] chars classes beginning with Q could be linked to the online docs? Good Idea? Start a Tread/Poll about this?[/quote]

Thats a good idea, but then that would be too much of linking. I always have my documentation open for reference so never felt the need for one. Another issue would be to link the doc to which version of Qt.[/quote]

See I'm not the only one who finds it useful.

mgran · wrote on 10 Dec 2010, 17:13

Good to hear from you Bradley, I hope you understand that the flood of those posts got the moderators worried. They had a scripted feel to them, several posts per minute, some as necroposting.

Without getting into the content of the posts (in theory it's not a bad idea), I think it would be good to bring up this idea with the people here beforehand (statistical it was a major event on the forums today). That would probably have gone down a bit better :)

Lets bring up your core message of accessibility to the docs for new users and experienced users alike. To me this is the interesting thing here and I'm keen on finding the golden feature for this.

baysmith · wrote on 10 Dec 2010, 17:31

The posts were not scripted. When processing data (even manually), I find it useful to work in parallel. For this I find the tab features of the Chrome browser to be very useful. I work with multiple tabs for editing and then once I've created the content, I process and close them in a bunch. The "Close tabs to right" feature helps make this a efficient workflow.

Besides, I thought stress testing the system was part of the goal. :)

mgran · wrote on 10 Dec 2010, 17:36

[quote author="Bradley" date="1292002311"]Besides, I thought stress testing the system was part of the goal. :)[/quote]

That is true :) and this turned out to be a good test of our moderation process as well.

CPU and database-wise it didn't even register on the graphs, you would have to try harder next time! (but then please, do it on our stage server ;))

But are you on board with my points about bringing experiments up with the crew beforehand?

baysmith · wrote on 10 Dec 2010, 17:41

[quote author="mariusg" date="1292002575"]
But are you on board with my points about bringing experiments up with the crew beforehand?[/quote]

Yes, of course.