BE Communities vs Discussion Groups

The old discussion groups were easy to navigate and find information, the Be communities has so much 'stuff' it takes ages to find anything. Is this the right place for discussion related questions for example? If not, where is the equivalent area to the discussion groups on Be communities?
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  • I was happy with the discussion groups as well. And forums is a pain.

    If you look at the bottom of a forumpage there still is an icon "NNTPavailable" but I don't think works anymore.

    I think it was Bentleys first intent to run this forum in "dual" mode, both forum and discussion group. But the NNTP part of the sytem running this had, if I understand it correctly, unforseen problems and bugs. Personally I could live the bugs as I think NNTP is superior to this forum interface. And I don't know why discussion.bentley.com had to be abandoned. communities.bentley.com can be there without the forum ? - the blog,resources and wiki areas are fine.

    Phil C is probably quite tired of wining in this subject and I have a feeling he really tried get it to work. Yet I think it is OK for people to  post their opinions about this. Nothing is carved in stone and someday we might find a way to go back to discussion groups.

    A parallell route is  to describe in some detail why NNTP INTERFACE was/is! better. And suggest changes to this forum thing.

    Personally I find it easier to get an overview with NNTP. Over groups, number of posts, read/not read, flagged and THREADING.

    Second it was faster to "read" meaning entering the site/page and see unread posts and scan through them.

    You can drag and drop attachments to posts!!

     

    Drawbacks with this present forum is

    - spacious layout - so much space between lines

    - no threading of posts

    - I read this through NOT READ page

    a/ you don't see what group/forum post is in 

    b/ you have to click the link and get to the post, and then back to set the post to be "read".

    c/ no threading

    One idea is if just hovering  a post title in NOT READ-page could give you a balloon with text of post and a few boxes to optionally  check - open, answer, mark as not(!) read, save to "think about"-folder and perhaps a few more. perhaps with key board commands as well. Default if you leave the balloon is to mark it as read. Or tapping tab to jump to next post.

     

     

    regards / Thomas Voghera

Reply
  • I was happy with the discussion groups as well. And forums is a pain.

    If you look at the bottom of a forumpage there still is an icon "NNTPavailable" but I don't think works anymore.

    I think it was Bentleys first intent to run this forum in "dual" mode, both forum and discussion group. But the NNTP part of the sytem running this had, if I understand it correctly, unforseen problems and bugs. Personally I could live the bugs as I think NNTP is superior to this forum interface. And I don't know why discussion.bentley.com had to be abandoned. communities.bentley.com can be there without the forum ? - the blog,resources and wiki areas are fine.

    Phil C is probably quite tired of wining in this subject and I have a feeling he really tried get it to work. Yet I think it is OK for people to  post their opinions about this. Nothing is carved in stone and someday we might find a way to go back to discussion groups.

    A parallell route is  to describe in some detail why NNTP INTERFACE was/is! better. And suggest changes to this forum thing.

    Personally I find it easier to get an overview with NNTP. Over groups, number of posts, read/not read, flagged and THREADING.

    Second it was faster to "read" meaning entering the site/page and see unread posts and scan through them.

    You can drag and drop attachments to posts!!

     

    Drawbacks with this present forum is

    - spacious layout - so much space between lines

    - no threading of posts

    - I read this through NOT READ page

    a/ you don't see what group/forum post is in 

    b/ you have to click the link and get to the post, and then back to set the post to be "read".

    c/ no threading

    One idea is if just hovering  a post title in NOT READ-page could give you a balloon with text of post and a few boxes to optionally  check - open, answer, mark as not(!) read, save to "think about"-folder and perhaps a few more. perhaps with key board commands as well. Default if you leave the balloon is to mark it as read. Or tapping tab to jump to next post.

     

     

    regards / Thomas Voghera

Children
  • You are right, Thomas, this has been brought up before, so I guess it will not hurt to do that one more time :)

    This site has much more to offer than what NNTP services by themselves can (or will ever be able to) provide. There are many abilities that exist with just the Forums that are heads and tails better than what the discussion group provided -- those things (among many others) are why we are going to make the discussion.bentley.com system read-only and use BE Communities -- we will be transitioning other systems over, too, like AskInga.com tips and articles, TechNotes, FAQs, Bentley Library utilities and data, all sorts of things associated with visualization, and the list will go on and on. The ability to be able to find important stuff like that in one location with one interface is HUGE.

    Some of the things that you identify are certainly on the books to be addressed. Why not wait until they are? Well... that would be like waiting for the next best computer system to come out before buying one :). Seriously, we have to start somewhere, and we believe that we are just about there. This has been mentioned previously, but it is worth stating again -- the BE Communities site is like a product... it will continue to be worked on, enhanced, updated, etc. as it moves forward. In the mean time, NNTP access will be restored, but (as also mentioned previously) only until we enhance BE Communities to provide the key functionality (or better alternatives) that NNTP access provides.

      

  • >>In the mean time, NNTP access will be restored,

    GREATE! I have tried to use the forums webinterface for a while - will be interesting going back to NNTP and see if it was that fantastic.

     And to get this perfectly clear - presently there is a problem with the NNTP-access, but it will be fixed in the near future, say days or weeks?

    regards / Thomas Voghera

  • It is being worked on, so it should be soon... when it happens, we will all know :)