quote:

ORIGINAL: JimBlake

I've got a thick skin

quote:

ORIGINAL: klrspz

I come from a technical world, so forgive my criticism and over-attention to details:
I agree with most of everyone else's comments as well, so I'll leave the repetition down to a minimum on those.

- Wiki: A wiki that people can update and contribute to (can be permissioned, and/or monitored). The HowTo section is great, but I feel it lacks user input (modern/updated content, etc), as well as categorization (much like the "Your Ride" has). If at minimum, the HowTo's can be split amongst the sections as sub-forums

- Overall forum: The forum here seems really outdated; most of the features you get on today's forums are missing, or incorrectly implemented. Search being the biggest! It treats each post as a complete thread (the posted by and last posted by are always the same person, and time, although 10 ppl could have replied to it).

- RSS: I love RSS, and would love to get a feed that just tells me which are new posts.. At this point, I don't care if it's (sub)forum specific, but it wouldn't hurt if it had support for that as well.

- AutoSearch: I like the idea of the autosearch... Basically changing the post to a 2 step process. 1) Fill out title and click submit... searches for you and display results. 2) If you didn't find what you wanted, you can continue with the body. Having said this, there should be a thresh-hold of when to stop that.. Say at like 20-30 posts, it shouldn't require this.. As people get used to the forums, they generally will start to search on their own, mostly because they've been forced, as well as we generally tell people to :)

- Top Menu: Dumb it down.. to many links, and some go to the same page (Honda Accord Recalls & TSBs for example). Also, a categorization is a good start too.. Put stuff that's highly un-used in a dropdown menu or something (Calendar, Member list, etc).

- Car Profile: I think one of the larger successes of CarDomain is the ability to put a profile up for you and your car. Maybe something that ties the user to the forums to identify who they are. It wouldn't be hard to implement, and would avoid the whole "Put your Yr, Make, Model in your sig" posts. Make this mandatory on signup, and once finalized/release, force it on anyone who hasn't done so. It'd also be a great place to tie in the gallery, since most of the galleries here are directly related to mods and what not done to a specific person's car

- Chat: One thing I've found useful since being on this forum is talking one on one with another member (thank you btw guys, you've been great help). I for one am not intimidated by asking people for help, and feel ok with seeking out individuals this way. Some people don't like to be bothered on their personal IM's either... so this helps there as well. Others however, would probably feel more accepted if there was a congregation of people talking together. This would probably also cut down on the stupid questions already asked like "why are air intakes good", "cai vs sri", etc. Bots can be useful as well as you can merely say something like "!search <person's question>" and have it return 1-5 result links, and prove to the end-user the power of searching. Of the 7 forums I run (gaming and development driven) the Chat has been the most successful mod to any of them. Without saying, this also helps provide immediate results for end-users seeking help, which I believe the sole purpose of the internet.

- People: Actually, I just wanted to point out that the people on this forum are extremely helpful, and knowledgeable. A recognition page would also be nice; maybe based on points. There's a site that techies use called ExpertsExchange (can be misread as expert sex change :)) that completely relies on a point system. Now I'm not suggesting that, but if a thread is long running, it's sometimes crucial/important/desired to quickly identify which reply was the most accurate and positively influential. I hate reading threads where someone answered justly about 12 posts in, but the thread is like 6 pages long. You generally start from the beginning of the thread, or the end to jump to conclusions. This would quickly identify a post that says "Hey, this really helped me out." Of course, this comes to play with how people need to be responsible and actually apply points/votes for these things. And it could also turn into another administrative consideration when mods peruse forums (in one of our forums the mods will post something like "Please identify a user that helped you in your problem" [this also leads to the next point]).

- Enforcing useful thread titles: I hate, repeat HATE, when people have thread titles like "How do i...", "What should i do??", "is this right...", etc. They are by far the most useless titles known to man. A descriptive title can really help in searches as well. On top of that, a good standard of supplying modifier labels to threads would help as well. For example, if I need help, i put "[Request]" or "[Help]" (actual descriptors can be defined later) followed by the title ("[Help] Can't identify piece on CAI"). Once satisfied, the descriptor cahgnes to "[Solved]".

This is all I have now, I'll add more as I think of them.


[EDIT!]
Oh, and I'm completely against separating by generation... As ppl have said, there is some useful generic information scattered through those if done that way.. It might be up to a mod to identify these and move as needed, but that's just more work.

quote:

ORIGINAL: klrspz

Right now I am a Senior Enterprise Software Developer...

I'm a computer geek at heart :)

quote:

ORIGINAL: klrspz

- People: Actually, I just wanted to point out that the people on this forum are extremely helpful, and knowledgeable.