Phoenix Posts in Mozilla Forums

[david55475]

Hi all,
I know this has been discussed before, but I thought I'd raise it again .

Despite the 'sticky' posts at the top of the Mozilla forums, there still seem to be many Phoenix users posting their questions there. AFAIK, it's usually a first-time-poster type of thing, and once they get the message to post in the correct forum, they're fine. (Excuse the use of 'they' in this context - I've used Phoenix myself before, and like it, but I use Moz almost exclusively these days. Please don't take offence.)

Personally, I don't have *that* much of a problem with it, but it offends my sensibilities a little that people still do this sort of thing (ok, so I'm easily offended ). I tend to be a fairly careful sort of person, and I usually double- and triple-check that my posts are going to the right place, and that they make sense (and that my spelling is correct ).

Maybe we need to re-examine ways of getting Phoenix users to post in the correct forum (and Mozilla users, too, if they post in the Phoenix forum), as the sticky posts don't seem to be working. Or maybe there are far fewer wrong-forum posts than before, and I just haven't noticed ?

The first thought I had was that maybe the Subject lines of the stickies relating to Phoenix posters could be emphasised in some way, maybe with a (gentle) pulsing of color, or a little pulsing icon next to them ? Nothing too frenetic or distracting, just enough to catch the eye when the page first appears ? The human eye/brain is drawn to movement (especially if you're male ), so this might help.

Or maybe some stronger indication when creating a post about where the post will be going ? Maybe something like "This message will be posted in the 'MozillaZine General' forum. If this is not where you intend it to go, please go back to the correct forum and post from there" in big bold letters at the top of the page.

Does anyone else have any thoughts about this, or am I waaaaay off base and I should just sit down and shut up ? I don't want to re-open a can of worms if people think I'm wrong.

Dave
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.3b) Gecko/20030220

[old jasonb]

I made a few suggestions here.

[Alex Bishop]

I say we execute anyone who makes a Phoenix post to the Mozilla forums. That would be a suitable deterrent.

[johann_p]

human error and stupidity.

I think the sticky posts have cut down the amount of misposts to an acceptable level. Anything more (like automatic filtering etc) would make the forums less enjoyable for the rest of us.

[jgraham]

I say we execute anyone who makes a Phoenix post to the Mozilla forums. That would be a suitable deterrent.

Maybe we should execute anyone who ever makes a mistake? Surley there's no need for bias against Phoenix users?

[david55475]

Maybe we should execute anyone who ever makes a mistake? Surley there's no need for bias against Phoenix users?

Heyyyy, now there's an idea !

Dave

[tve]

just put the Phoenix category at the top of the board index ;)

or edit the forum description:

General discussion of Mozilla topics. <b>Post your Phoenix questions in the Phoenix forums below!</b>

must be bold, too ;)

[wget]

I'd change the posting/reply page to this:
http://mozillazineuser.netfirms.com/pos ... -rules.png (cut/paste to a new window)

The benefits are that it wouldn't require special scripts, nasty autofilters or other big changes. It also wouldn't require huge paragraphs of text in Verdana 36 bold added to the index page.

Besides adding the small text blurb, I also made the textarea bigger. I changed rows="15"> to rows="20", which I feel looks better.

EDIT:

Changed imagehost since tripod.co.uk seems to have died. My replacement is dumb too, which means that you'll need to do the old cut/paste thing to trick their referer (sic) script.

[marc00s]

There's a "forum" link on mozillaZine's main page. Maybe there should be an addiditonal link below "Phoenix forums", taking the user to the right ones?