EXAMPLE: Sticky Thread - Hack Categories

[Freddie Bingham]

theflow, it seems blantantly obvious to me that you should consider starting a forum of your own to cover this topic. The moderators on this site do not have the time to update lists of topics. If you wish to maintain a thread detailing different hacks and categories than free feel to do so.

[theflow]

Originally posted by wluke
It is even more confusing to me now that there is an example.

Okay, well that was my best shot for one-hour's effort. I'm not interested in an uphill battle. If this is not helpful to the Mods, then let it be. I may continue to work on it on my own. If you like, you can move this thread to the Test forum and I will not be offended.

As for color groupings, they are just differentiators for the eye. Most usability studies show they help people scan, particularly for lists over seven items long. We disagree on the groupings. We disagree on pretty much everything. The planet still spins... Please keep in mind that not everyone processes information like an engineer. Multiple paths & approaches to the same information sets are best practices in usability. That's why Yahoo began with both a search engine and a categorized directory.

Freddie, I will occasionally work on this project, from time to time, and will enlist help of other users who might be interested in a category-based breakdown. Thank you both for your feedback.

-- Richard

[samtha25]

Originally posted by wluke
It looks like you want to provide an index to every thread containing anything to do with modifying vBulletin in any forum.

Although this would be too much and unnecessary, think about technical books without indexes. Not too fun to use.

Hacks are not template changes. Hacks are not questions on how to use a feature. Hacks are PHP code changes, nothing more and nothing less. If it can be done from the control panel it is not a hack.

I didn't look too hard, but did check your sticky threads. If you added this very clear statement to your lead post, I think many people would understand better. Certainly cleared up some confusion for me.

That said, there are two many categories. It should be limited to:

Forum Hacks
Thread Hacks
User Hacks
Administration/Moderator Hacks
Calendar Hacks
Other.

Too many choices are difficult on the user. This is a well known usability issue in Web Design.

That's in a different context. The useability priniciples involved in cataloging and indexing information are quite different. Does Yahoo or the Open Directory have too many categories?

Very generally, there are two broad approaches to organizing information: one is by structure and one is by function. You suggest a structural approach, which makes sense to someone very familiar with the context. However, most people looking for hacks or information on how to do something think functionally, e.g., "I want to do X".

Also what is with the changing colors? This again is non-standard and makes me wonder why people do it. It doesn't do anything to make the readability easier.

I'm not sure what "standard" you're referring to, but it's well-known to assist the reader in scanning a long list.

I still think there is too much maintenance involved. With the number of new threads in this area a day there is going to be hours put in every day maintaining the thread, for something that basically recreates the forum display capability of vbulletin as it is.

It is the typical condumdrum, isn't it? To wit: If we were better organized, we'd save a lot of time, but we don't have the time to get better organized.

The forum display is an unordered, random list. Hardly the same thing at all.

I personally have never had a problem with the search facility here. It is how I find any thread worth while. I can narrow the search if I need to, search for wildcards, find posts by particular users and it only takes ten seconds it not only searches the titles but the actual text of each individual post. It will give me a brief snippet of each post if I want so I don't have to click on blind threads.

You've had much better luck or have more patience than I then. It's not a problem with vBulletin's search facility, but that searches generally are imprecise and very timeconsuming when not looking for something with very specific terms attached to it.

With the sticky thread concept:
I have to load that thread, make an assumption on what kind of hack it is I am looking for and hope I get the right overlapping category Click on a post and load a new window (which can't be changed unless you change the vbulletin code) Start looking at threads that have titles but no other details. Each opening in a new window...

This is somehow more work than trolling through dozens, perhaps hundreds, of messages returned from a search?

Then still for the only way it would work is to force people to read it, which obviously doesn't happen all the time or people would be posting in the appropriate forums to begin with.

There will always be some people who don't read, but if you have a signifcant number of people posting in the 'wrong' forums, you may not be communicating as clearly as you hope.

I have the same problem with people adding hundreds of links to their signatures in a tiny font. I don't want to read all that. It runs together. Makes me just skip over their entire signature whether they have valuable information or not. Give me a link to your site and I'll check it out. Give me links to all sorts of different hacks and threads you are proud of and I ignore it.

I normally dislike long signatures, but I quickly found three things I'm interested in in Firefly's new signature and was very grateful not to have had to spend probably several evenings sifting through forum messages. I've found similar useful information in the signatures of some of the other regulars and moderators. That people are collecting such information in their signatures should be a clue to a need unmet. As a Web useability expert, Wayne, you should know how hard it is to get people to click on external links.

A sticky thread is not particularly suited to maintaining an index, but it is the only option available. I run a software support forum myself, so I know how difficult it is to put the questions together with the answers in a Web forum. As we are all end-users, though, and therefore all information seekers at times, we've decided to add a resources directory application to our site, as it's the only reasonable way to catalog and index a plethora of information. vBulletin might consider the same at some point with users able to add to the directory.

theflow has offerred his considerable expertise in this field to design and develop and to help maintain information organization that would assist not only vBulletin's customers, but vBulletin developers and moderators providing support. Other customers commenting in this thread, along with other customers in passing comments in other threads, have expressed at least some degree of frustration with the current "information system" and some interest in assisting in doing something about it. Telling your paying customers, freddie, that assisting them in obtaining the help and information they need to best use your product is not your primary concern and that you are too busy to address their concerns, even if you can't address them as they might wish, is not going to do your business well in the long run. The difference betweeen success and failure in today's business world is customer service.

You all seem rather stressed out to me, perhaps the strains of growing too fast. But, you're not playing around in the 'leet' world any longer. You're in a very competitive, commericial business now and I can guarantee you that "attitude" will turn away many potential customers.

[Wayne Luke]

Does Yahoo or the Open Directory have too many categories?

Don't know I don't use these services it is too hard to find anything. I would hazard a guess that they do especially with DMOZ having 400,000 categories and Yahoo probably just as many. Sites are classified wrong or not at all depending on the whim of a single person. I see very little oversight in the process. Dmoz has the SitePoint Forums under "Social Groups" and Yahoo originally refused to list us because of lack of content. I guess 500 unique articles, over a thousand Flash based tutorials and over 20,000 pages of original discussion isn't enough for them.

Why use them when I can use Google and find exactly what I am looking for in the first minute at the site?

I'm not sure what "standard" you're referring to, but it's well-known to assist the reader in scanning a long list.

The standard that links should be the same color or clearly designated as links.

I never said I was a Web Usability Expert. I do know some and am learning more every day. I agree a better way of indexing available hacks is needed. I disagree with the method of using sticky threads to do so. There are almost 3,000 threads in this forum. You can't make me believe that listing each one in a thread is going to make it easier to find information. Even if you just listed the thread and its title you have megabytes of information to pour through in one thread.

Now let's say I am looking for a hack on encrypting passwords in vbulletin 2.0

I could read this massive sticky list. I wait for it to download (I am on 56K dial-up). It loads. I hate opening new windows so I would have to scroll down to find what I am looking for. Now is this a "User Status", "Registration", "Admin" or "Misc"? I go for Misc first because it changes the way data is stored, it should have no effect on how the end user utilizes the software. Maybe I find it maybe not... Actually if I don't find it in the first screen of information I will most likely hit "CTRL-F" and type in password. If I don't find it in the first 20 or so matches I give up. Most people give you ten matches.

So now I go to use the search engine.

In the box I type in my keywords - Password Encryption. I select the vBulletin Hacks forum because that is what I want. Then I select "Show results as posts" because I like the snippet of text that helps me find what I am looking for. And there is exactly what I want in the first listing of the search in the fifteen results returned. It took me ten seconds (even on a 56K modem) to do this.

I would much rather people post their hacks for release on vBulletin.org. The organization is there. You can have multiple discussions per hack and things would be easier to find... There just doesn't seem to be the support for this. I thought about posting the individual hacks there myself but then I would get more email and ICQ than I get now because my name would be attached to them and people expect support.

[theflow]

wluke, all good points... Some further comments and replies because I don't see this as adversarial, nor as an either/or proposition. We all want the same thing: easy access for users, less strain on Mods. Give this a read, folks, and I'd love to get feedback from others as well. I may go ahead and work on this project alone, as I get time. But if any of you like the ideas here and aren't speaking up, drop a note just to say "I don't care", "decent idea but it needs to be refined", or "an idea that doesn't help at all."

Originally posted by wluke
Sites are classified wrong or not at all depending on the whim of a single person.

I agree. Any directory classification attempt is imperfect. Just like in a video store: is "Planet of the Apes" on the shelves in the "Sci-Fi" section, or the "Action Adventure" section, or did someone put the only store copy under "Directors - Tim Burton" or even "Classics" (the original version of the movie)? Imperfect, but I would argue still helpful. If I don't find it by browsing, I ask a clerk "where is...?" But one too many genre or special categories, for me, is a little better than too few -- like "Color Movies" and "Black & White Movies".

The standard that links should be the same color or clearly designated as links.

Absolutely, according to the Bible of Jakob Nielsen. I, for one, though, am not a regimented purist like he is. I believe in context-sensitive usability. Which is to say: If presented with a list of 13 Items -- whether in vB's arguably non-distinctive "black" link color -- or in groups of color -- I would bet money that 99% of users would attempt to click on the item with a predisposed view that they are probably links in this context -- and they would be right.

As more and more types of users flock to the web, they are learning a slightly evolving language from 1994's specifications. Some people can't stand to see underlines for links, and they turn off underlines in their browser preferences. I assure you, if developing engineers had their way, this option would not even exist -- witness Netscape 1x, 2x. The reason that option does exist in 3x and higher browsers is based on users saying "I don't like seeing a page full of underlined text". And the world has to now adapt to the user. MS and AOL are not making money based on telling the user what is appropriate and what isn't. yet, because I choose to turn link preferences to "hover" vs underline, I find all of vBulletin very un-link friendly -- because someone decided that text colors and links colors shall both be black. See it works both ways.

Does that mean flagrantly mix & match at will and just create a rainbow of confusion, for decorative sake? No. But color for both emphasis and classification, as well as for managing groupings into scannable chunks of information that can be absorbed in one view, is a long established principle in multiple media publishing formats.

The real test is, have I helped the user, or disabled or confused them. And we disagree on this one. Fair enough.

I agree a better way of indexing available hacks is needed. I disagree with the method of using sticky threads to do so. There are almost 3,000 threads in this forum. You can't make me believe that listing each one in a thread is going to make it easier to find information.

To clarify, I have never advocated listing each one. What would you guess is the ratio of unique requests (threads) to redundant requests (threads)? I don't know myself but I see a lot of repetiton. If anyone would know better than me, it would be a Hack Forum moderator who's been scanning redundant requests for the past 6 months to year. What I have been suggesting -- and I'm not saying this is a walk in the park -- is that a group of volunteers, me included, take a stab at cherrypicking the best-of-breed threads on any given request... i.e., how many different ways have you seen "when is karma hack going to be ready?" presented here? But if one clearly marked thread titled "Karma Requests" were included in a cherrypicked list, all those redundant ones wouldn't matter, since the answer is the same each time.

Many people write very vague and non-specific subject lines for their requests. But in the sticky thread categorization scheme, the title of the "best of breed" thread for any given specific request could be changed to a more descriptive one. Before you object with "that's even more work, what do you expect from us?", my reply is: It's an option, not a mandate. And if volunteers want to helpt do this, they do. If they don't, the whole idea withers on the vine, and so be it, nothing ventured, nothing gained.

Now let's say I am looking for a hack on encrypting passwords in vbulletin 2.0. I could read this massive sticky list... (or) go to use the search engine. ... It took me ten seconds (even on a 56K modem) to do this.

. Absolutely right. And this principle applies to every system of stuff in life. When I know exactly what I want, with great precision, like the letterboxed widescreen Anniversary edition of the original "Planet of the Apes" movie, in DVD, releaesd in Spanish language dub, then hopefully I can access the video store's search engine, and find out in 5 seconds, do you have it, yes or no. Where is it? Thank you.

However, maybe it wasn't entered into the system that way, maybe someone never included the tag "Spanish language dub", so the system doesn't even know. Maybe they have it but it doesn't say whether it's in DVD or VHS, maybe they have Planet of the Apes, part 2, but not part 1, and so on. Maybe even the video store's staff is not so familiar with the more esoteric facets of their 3 different copies of "Planet of the Apes". Point is, in this scenario, I will get out of the store a lot faster by looking up at the store's genre signs, walk over to Sci-Fi, scan the shelves for "Planet of the Apes", and then inspect the 3 copies to see for myself.

Continued next page, next post

[theflow]

continued from prior post:
What we're discussing should not even be an issue. Search is great for many types of scenarios, and for others, it's more helpful to Browse. When browsing, it is most helpful to browse categorized groupings -- whether it is genre based movies or "New Arrivals". Ever try to browse the "used videos for sale - $3.99" bin? Totally uncategorized, and simply arranged by the happenstance way the video clerk happened to grab them out of the box and throw them onto the shelf or table for display. Much like the happenstance way that thread requests show up on a chron-view in a forum. I'm sorry, it's almost pointless to debate this point.

Search may indeed be faster 95% of the time (though it usually is not as crystalline as your "encrypted password" suggestion above). And for those times when it's not, an organized browse capability is essential -- not just desirable, but essential... if you're into customer service.

I would much rather people post their hacks for release on vBulletin.org. The organization is there... There just doesn't seem to be the support for this. I thought about posting the individual hacks there myself but then I would get more email and ICQ than I get now because my name would be attached to them and people expect support.

I went there a few times, I believe, in following a link from Ed Sullivan's sig. I don't remember it specifically other than to say it seemed great -- just not kept current, as you already note. Maybe that IS a great solution. I think you guys at vB should discuss that. As someone noted earlier, it sounds like you guys are all working your asses off, are very over-taxed, and trying to deliver the best possible service. Believe it or not, we do appreciate it more than you are understanding. So please don't mistake constructive criticism as dismissing the tremendous job being done by vB support staff.

In the end, I guess for me I'm saying this: I'm trying to proactively make an acknowledged flawed situation a little better -- but from a non-techie user's perspective, not from a vB Developer's or Moderator's perspective. It's fine that we disagree about solution approaches. I've never liked the "love it or leave it" approach to life, nor do I like the "bitch, bitch, bitch but you never get off your lazy ass to do anything yourself" approach. In my case, I'm trying to rally support to make the user experience here better. If no one but me and 3 other people cares about that, then okay. We'll do our thing and you can leave us alone. I would ask that you not mistake, however, the number of people who reply to this "sticky thread" concept as indicative of the number of people who might actually appreciate such a solution once implemented. It is a well known fact that most people in all areas of life don't even take the time to lodge a complaint, nor take the time to say "yeah, I agree with that". So unless you scientifically poll a representative samping of vB users about their receptivity to such a proposed categorical grouping of requests and solutions, you really should not rule out this suggestion based on thread reply numbers. That said, it is useful, probably, to note the number of page views for the "explain the information design of this forum" thread.

I hope this long dissertation is useful to someone other than me. I do try to help. And that's the spirit in which I offer this reply and my overall suggestions.

[samtha25]

Isn't Google great? I love google, but just yesterday I was hunting for an office quality table, 24" wide and 60" long, for my computer room. Entering computer table turned up a mess, a lot of pages dealing with some electronic table. I tried table 24"W 60"L. HA! One actually did turn up, but not suitable. Finally, I clicked on the Google category that was turning up. Something like office furniture> computer furniture. That gave me a very nice list of leads and after a bit of browsing, I found several possibilities. Both approaches have a place.

theflow, I would limit such an indexing effort to released hacks, hack solutions that never make it to full blown "released" status, such as freddie's excellent events hack, and perhaps a few very frequently asked questions, such as "where's the karma hack?" I think it would be too much otherwise for the format and probably more work than anyone will want to tackle.

[Wayne Luke]

Originally posted by samtha25
Isn't Google great? I love google, but just yesterday I was hunting for an office quality table for my computer room that's 24" wide and 60" long. Entering computer table turned up a mess, a lot of pages dealing with some electronic table. I tried table 24"W 60"L. HA! One actually did turn up, but not suitable. Finally, I clicked on the Google category that was turning up. Something like office furniture> computer furniture. That gave me a very nice list of leads and after a bit of browsing, I found several possibilities. Both approaches have a place.

Hmmm possibly. I just would have gone to Staples (the brick version) or McMahan's or Woody's (local furniture stores) and seen what they have. If I had the time, I would have gone to one of the many furniture warehouses located in the San Fernando Valley where you can get custom made furniture at Wal-Mart prices.

[samtha25]

Trust me, tables that are 24" wide and 60" long that are also strong enough to sport a commercial-grade keyboard tray, a 19" monitor, a PC box, and a printer are not easy to find. Unfortunately, I don't live where custom-made furniture can be had for anywhere near WalMart prices, or at any price for that matter. But, it's interesting that people bring different personal resources and different preferences to the task at hand.

[sysmom]

I think an index of the hacks is a great idea. Requests, well, I am not sure they belong in *with* the hacks.

Just the other day, someone had left a message in the requests area for something I *knew* I'd read about a week or two ago.

I searched in vain for it, and could not locate it.

I finally found it by going over the thread subjects one by one, page by page until I recognized it. Then I replied to the guy's message. The message I searched for didn't have a subject line that was useful, and the key terms that *I* would use to locate it didn't appear.

It's one of the issues with the Web and keywords, whether they're user entered or not, whether it's VB or somewhere else, though. And every time it happens to me I wonder if I've left off synonyms in my web sites that are keeping potential users away because they didn't use the same term that I used for something. Alas!

Anyway, that's my short little story. I had time that day to do the search. I don't always.

deb