Hot Pages

[COBOLdinosaur]

This topic is for the purpose of posting links to pages that are doing well on other sites like Dzone and Digg and could use votes to help promote the sites.

Another one on the front page of Dzone:

http://www.dzone.com/links/tag/standards.html

Currently listed number one in standards.  It could use a few votes to stay on the front page; if anyone is so inclined.

 :^)

[COBOLdinosaur]

We also have Matt's getting nee the bottome of the most popular page on Dzone:

http://www.dzone.com/links/top.html

If anyone has not voted and would like to keep it on page one of most popular it would keep up out in front.

 :thumbup:

[COBOLdinosaur]

Dzone is being pretty good to us.  Matt's piece that went up Thursday hit the front page all weekend.  The piece of mine that I put up Sunday night hit the front page all day today.  Right now Matt's piece is on the first page of the most popular, and mine is on the second page of most popular.

Among the visitors from Dzone, quite a few show an interest in "Harware Rescue 101" by Coral1.  So I just posted it on Dzone and we will see if Craig gets our 3rd front page in a week. :^)

The link to vote for it is: http://www.dzone.com/links/queue/tag/server.html

If I have teh timing right on it we should have another winner; if not we have a lot more good stuff and the ERT logon is starting to mean Quality content.  :cheers:

[nicholassolutions]

Nice :glasses7:
I just voted for Craig's piece...and I found some other cool stuff on dzone I wasn't expecting. More than worth the signup

[COBOLdinosaur]

BOOM!...  It hit the front page 10 minutes ago, and we got 15 clicks in the first 10 minute.  Another winner.  Now let's see if it gets enough votes to make into the most popular listings.

Nice job Craig; I always like that piece.  :notworthy:

[nicholassolutions]

sweet! Nice job coral!  :glasses7:

[COBOLdinosaur]

Not bad....  on Dzone, in the last week I have posted three pieces from three different authors with three diffrent kinds of presentation and hit the front page with all three.  Two are on the second page of most popular, and have been posted as well on delico.us.  Plus the action from them has also generated hits on other content as the visitors from Dzone look around.  I still don't have the timing figured out on Digg, but it is a lot harder.  If you don't get action in the first hour, you are dead. Dzone is easier because of fewer submissions and you have about 10-12 hours to start moving.

The key thing is it has to be good content posted when the users are looking for what you have.  We know we have good content, and Dzone demonstrates it.  A lot of stuff never gets out of the queues, but we are hitting.  Bookmarks are getting set.  Links are getting posted.  A reputation is being build.  I may have screwed up the forum part of things, but I got the content side right, and this past week demonstrates I was right about users responding to good content.  It is just a matter of putting it where they can see it.

AND...  if I am right about that, then the learning center IS the right model for the future of on line help sites.

GREAT JOB GUYS!...  THE USERS LOVE YOUR STUFF!!!!

 :notworthy:  =D>  =D>  =D>  :notworthy:

[COBOLdinosaur]

Now we go with one of Rods...  City and Country from IP, and see if we get a 4 game sweep of front page hits.

 :^)

[nicholassolutions]

pls post the link so ppl can go and vote for it. On a side note, it is probably best if people who go to dzone also try to have a look at other stuff and vote for good content from other sites. We don't want to look like we're spamming, and it's actually well worth looking around -- there is good stuff on there (and some crap...but by voting you help sort that out).

[COBOLdinosaur]

Sorry... It is always this link for voting for new stories:

http://www.dzone.com/links/queue.html

Tha tis where they Queue and if you don't make it by the time you fall off the first page, you are generally pretty much dead.

As for voting, I agree.  I have been voting for worthy pieces, and voting for good content also has the effect of encouraging other good writers who might see the quality coming out of ERT and decide they want to become a Mentor.  Infact I might even try recruiting a few once we have established ourselves as a regualr source for sites like Dzone.

Cd&

[COBOLdinosaur]

Another winner.  Rod is on the ront page. We now have two on the front page at the same time, because Craig's is still there.  Plus Matt continues to get action because he is hanging on to the first page of Most Popular, and even the dinosaur continues to score from page 2 of most popular.

Given the numbers already today we are on our way to a record day, and it is possible that we are going to have our first day with over 1,000 page loads.  How happy do you think all this makes me. :^)  :^)  :^)  :^)  :^)

content... content... content

no ads [-(

[nicholassolutions]

:^) this makes me pretty darn happy too....at the risk of breaking up the celebration a bit, I think the forum is actually an important PART of the learning center. Nothing we're doing here is new, it just isn't usually done at online help sites. When I was an undergraduate, I read text books and handouts prepared by my professors. If I needed more information, I went to journal articles. Try learning physics by just asking questions without any structure provided by the teacher - it's not gonna work.

But the *good* professors held discussion sections, and in the best ones, students could ask questions related not just to the problem sets or text books, but regarding any area of a given topic that they did not understand. These teachers answered questions, and often modified the curriculum as a result -- they recognized, among other things, that by the time you've become an expert, you often forget all the points of difficulty in your own learning -- it all seems obvious to  you after a while. This is the forum. They avoided the problem of answering the same question over and over by telling students who asked questions that were directly answered in the course material to go back, read, and return with questions.

Other professors assumed that because they knew the subject matter, they knew exactly what people needed to know, knew what was interesting and what was not, and knew exactly how to teach it without any input from the students. Some of these people were decent teachers, but they missed the opportunity to learn from their students.

The learning center model is a powerful one....it's far more powerful if it contains a forum for discussion that may not be directly related to the lesson plan.

[COBOLdinosaur]

The learning center model is a powerful one....it's far more powerful if it contains a forum for discussion that may not be directly related to the lesson plan.

Which is why the ERT model included a forum, and why we have struggled to try and generate the discusssions.  If things had worked the way I expected, the forum would now be an active busy place with discussions related to content and to things that might become content. I don't know why that connection failed.  If I did I would fix it because ERT does not have long term potential if we do not have a place for round table discussions.

The challenge is to find a way to connect the pieces in such a way that the discussion area; in whatever form it takes is alive active and productive.  The straight up forum like we have does not appear to have much future.  There are very few straight forums doing well.  Many have developed content sections; or are trying to do so.  Some have become subsidiaries or been incorporated into other sites.  Some have gimmicks to try and not be "like a forum".  

However forums are not going away, they are just changing in character, style and format. Much less organized; much less formal; and much less focused.  A good part of that is in response to what conventional forums have become...billboards full of ads, run in some case by pinheaded admins; or front ends for selling services and content that used to be free.

There are links to the forum on every page of ERT.  There is encouragement and inducement to register.  There is plenty of traffic and the visitors are from all appearances interested in not just the link they clicked on, but other content;  but it appears they are not interested in the kind of conventional forum we have to offer.  So we have to connect with them in a different way.  Instead of inviting them to join a forum, we need to offer something different.  Join our community?  That is overused and often is in conjunction with a site where there really is no community, just a lot of commercial crap to sell things.

We are building a learning center based on discussions led by Mentors. We need to connect discussions with the content that users are eager to access.  We need to do that by way of invitation, not to register and become part of a conventional forum, but to join in a dicussion or start a new one.  Then after they are participating is the time to let know about the advantages of being a member of the round table.  For that we need the Mentors to actually be supporting the forums they said they would support by building discussions instead of waiting for questions.

To meet the challenge we have to solve three problems (and we are actually working on all three to some degree).

• Problem 1.  The look and feel of the forum is ... its a PHPBB forum.  For most users that is a negative image.  We have to work on that.
• Problem 2.  There is a lack of broad participation.  Many have said they want to help, but mostly they have wanted to make the forum a more comfortable forum, when what we need to be doing is building something different.  Participating in topics is good, but we need to be stimulating participation by opening topics as a place of discussion of content or other things of interest and have activity going on.  Ghost towns are a little dull to visit.  The other area of participation is content building.  Got an idea?  Write an article, then open a topic or journal about it and you have created a classroom or lab.
• Problem 3.  Expectations.  It takes a minimum of two years for a web site to get really established.  Anyone who is looking for a big time establsihed site should come back in 2 years, but don't expect it to look the same.  For those with the imagination to see where we can go:  it is time to cut the crap about wanting to do things.  Mentors teach, build and lead.  This is not grade school where you have to raise your hand to get permission to take a leak. If all you have done is talk then it is time to get off your ass and do something; or just shut up and stay out of the way.

So I propose a new rule for submitting complaints and problems.  It has to be submitted in three parts:

• A statement of the problem.
• Your proposed solution, and how you intend to implement the solution.
• A list of resources you need to complete it.

Ain't got time to help?  Then don't waste the time of others who do by creating noise and getting in the way of the Mentors building the future.  It is especially time to end the nonsense posturing about how you are going to help, for public consumption; with no follow through.  Waste someone else's time please.

If anyone is offend by this; don't look for an appology.  The handful of people who actually helped are not offended and probably think it was about time to tell the dead wood to contribute or find park bench for your naps; you are in the way here.

[nicholassolutions]

I agree with all of that...with one addition:

The people who currently are working on things should ask for help more often. You and I both work on tasks that could be completed by others, if they gave their commitment to work on them. I'm not just talking about coding: Sandi has been a big help to us both, and hasn't written a line of PHP for the site. As we get more content, anyone who knows English (and maybe even a little HTML) has an opportunity to help. I think we should consider making a job posting board, perhaps separate from the forum (or maybe just a new topic area). When we tried this type of thing earlier, it worked well.

My point is, there may be some people here who don't know which jobs have to get done, but would be willing to do them if they knew what they were. The important thing is, if people sign up for jobs, they have to commit to seeing them through in a reasonable amount of time. Otherwise, despite the best of intentions, as you said, it starts to be counterproductive.

[COBOLdinosaur]

Perhaps I sounded a ungrateful.  I'm not. There are some people who have busted their ass trying to help us both. They are gold; and I also am not just talking about coders.

When we tried this type of thing earlier, it worked well.

Yes if did... for forum related tasks. When I have asked for help on the content side I mostly get A: tasks taken on and not followed through on; B: debate and discussion of the right way to do things C: no offers. Of the three C is prferable, because at least I know it is on my plate to complete.  I don't mind doing things myself but I am not real thrilled when I end up having to do things that someone else said they would do or at least help with.  

Are there things I could use help with sure.  The content database is not done.  I still have not written the sort for alternative presentation of the content listings.  There is no advance search options.

I am working on a wire frame layout for that includes all the pieces I think need to be in the full roundtable interface.  It is composed of a series of independent widgets and the user will decide what they want, where they want it on the screen and how it will be rendered.  When I put up the prototype I will include a list of the components and anyone who wants to take a piece on can contribute.  Given past history there will be one to two weeks debate about it.  Followed by a few agreeing to take on part of it.  Followed by most of those commitments resulting in me arguing about how it needs to be done, giving more detailed requirements that will be rejected. Other commitments will be dropped and never done, and one or two pieces might actually get done.  Of course, I am still going to put it up and go through that process because becasue getting one or two pieces done is still more than if I don't put it up.

In the meantime the next phase of change on teh content side will add a rating, and possibile a comment possibility; both of which I can't implement until I get the database work done.  I will then add an invitation to join a discussion of the article with the Mentor who wrote it and a link to the topic.  That link will only get added to articles where the Mentor sets up a thread for the purpose of the discussion.  There is no value in directing a user to a ghost town.  To connect up content with discussion, the discussion must exist, be active, and be support; otherwise it is not just a waste of time, it may hurt the reputation of site.

If we have a better format for discussion threads setup and usable that great, but if not then the forum as it stands can still be used.  For my own articles, I will open the thread and use alter ego accounts to get a discussion going, and to keep it going so when a user opts in they don't end up alone in an empty room.

We can talk about doing things or we can do them.  The folks who want to sit on the sidelines talking about it are safe from making mistakes.  I would rather just do it.  That means I might make mistakes.  I might screw it up 5 times, but when I get it right the sixth times, I get something the sideliners will never experience. Winning! Beating the odds! Coming out on top! Doing something that has not been done before! Babe Ruth struck out a lot... would you change the way he batted?

Maybe I am too rigid about what I want to do, but I'm right more often than I'm wrong. So overall it is a net gain.
 :glasses7: