[IcarusFalling]

Personally I'd like to see a section for member created guides.

I've seen quiet a few people make up some very good guides on how to do certain things and I think a seperate section on the forums would be a good idea. It would make it easy for someone to find out if there is a guide for something they are interested in doing.

[UnseenMenace]

Although this is a sound idea, the section actually is already in existence.. its called the front page. Any person can send in a guide or any other item of interest to the overclocking community and the suitable ones are usually published with the best efforts usually recieving a prize !!

[IFMU]

Originally posted by UnseenMenace
Any person can send in a guide or any other item of interest to the overclocking community and the suitable ones are usually published with the best efforts usually recieving a prize !!

Interesting idea.

The only thing I see wrong with your point there is "and the suitable ones" I can understand the front page not needing every single submission being posted, even some would not be quite up to it. I know myself I would have troubles writing something up that would sound good for the front page.

But, Somewhere that people could put this up, with help from others, could get editting help, grammar help etc. Then, once complete, and if needed/wanted for the front page, bamb... there are some submissions they could look at there.

A good example of this would be ~ How to build a computer ~ This is something that several people I think have contributed to, and have helped update, add minor details to, etc etc.

Something that would be good I think is to Set it up, then the thread starter would be the one to give the credit to in the front page posting. If put there. And inside that, a link to the Forums thread that it was in, and there, anyone who did contribute could get some credit there.

I think this could have some serious possibilities here. Some minor tweaking and ideas could come from this.

But, just my 2 coppers.

IFMU

[RedDeathDrinker]

The front page guides are pretty good, but I noticed a lot of them related to older equipment.

IMHO IMFU has a rather good point.......


We need some more up-to-date stuff there, as the price of a modern system is rather cheaper than it was in "The good old days" , and is more within peoples reach.

Articles on p4's and XP's, with all the relevant ancilliary equipment are more "In Vogue" these days, rather than OC'ing a P166 to 200MHz........(although still relevant!)

[Shadow ÒÓ]

As you know, we're always open to suggestions and we're always willing to hear what the masses want.

Lets get some feedback on this, then propose it to Skip. Personally I like the idea with one exception. I think the forum should be closed to open posting and rather everything submitted to a senior for posting (with credit given to the writer of course) to avoid multiple entries. This would also help prevent that forum from becoming a chat forum.

Say for instance I write an article on cooling with kool aid, I'd give the article to a mod for posting (not for editing) who would post it if there wasn't already an article on it. Someone has a valid question or brings up a good issue, have em pm it to the writer of the article, and the writer updates his article, resubmits it to a mod, who would post the update.

If there are 2 good ideas on cooling with kool aid but different methods, they could go under the same thread. This would also help the forum become pages and pages of redundant articles.

This cycle shouldn't take more than a few mins since there's generally always a mod on.

How's that?

[RedDeathDrinker]

It's a workable idea Shadow, but wouldn't it detract from the guides on the front page?

Having the guides there keeps them all in one categorised place, and articles there stand the chance of a wee prize if they're good.........

[nihili]

Ok, as I see it there are already two systems in place to take care of this sort of thing. The first is the guides on the front page, the second is stickies in specific section. But each of these methods is lacking in some respect.

The guides on the front page are a bit of a hodge podge at the moment. I sifted through them when I started building computers (less than a year ago) and had a difficult time extracting the information I wanted. Furthermore, it has been pointed out that many of the guides are out of date. This results from the relatively static nature of the guides - they’re put up and largely forgotten. Finally, the forums nave grown to such an extent that many people come here directly without ever seeing the front page.

Stickies have the advantage of being current, but most stickies fall short of being guides. Something may be stickied for a variety of reasons, without it being suitable as a guide in a specific area. Furthermore, stickies are active threads, so they are subject to tangents and polemics. While tangents and polemics are a good thing in a thread, they are less desirable in something that aspires to be a guide.

So, a guide should be current and relatively authoritative. While there is room for difference of opinion in most matters, a guide should stick to the tried and true and avoid the speculation and experimentation that is the lifeblood of the rest of the forums. Guides should be located in an easily accessible place, likely to be found by newbies just entering the forums. Guides should be organized so that information can be readily found, especially by someone not already familiar with the topic.

With that basis, and building on what Shadow has already said, here’s a proposal.

A new forum area is to be opened called “Guides” or something similar. The forum may be viewed by all, but posts may only be entered by a moderator. When someone writes a guide, it should first spend a bit of time as a sticky in it’s respective area. This gives it a chance to be “peer reviewed” if you will. As a sticky, people can comment on it etc. This let’s the author work out the major bugs and also gives us a chance to determine whether it’s really worthy of being put in the guides section. Something should be moved to Guides on the basis of the recommendation of a sizeable number of people (perhaps a panel of Sr. Members could be appointed as an editorial board?). Upon approval, the author should be given the chance to make what changes are appropriate based on comments from their peers. Then the post (not the whole thread) should be moved to the Guides forum.

The Guides forum should be organized with one thread per topic. Multiple guides on the same topic would occur as posts in a single thread. Thus the “How to Build a Computer” thread might have several posts, each a guide. Threads should be created as appropriate at the discretion of whoever is empowered with editorial decisions for the forum. So Shadow’s guide on Kooling with Kool-Aid might be a post in a thread on “Alternative cooling fluids” or might merit it’s own topic. In either case a second guide on Kool-Aid would go in the same thread.

Author’s should be allowed to update and amend their guides as desired, though they should, as noted, stay to the tried and true rather than speculative. The editorial board (or whatever) would also be empowered to retire guides that become out of date etc.

As for the relation with the guides on the front page, I don’t see any reason why the two can’t coexist. A link could be established from the guides section of the front page to the forum guides, etc. Appropriate forum guides should be eligible for publication on the front page and receipt of the “wee prize” if they win. Guides written by forum members for the front page should (with the author’s permission of course) be posted in the Guides section of the forum. This allows the author’s to continue working on them and updating them, something that is not doable on the front page I believe.

Hmm, I think I’ve run out of steam. But it sounds like generally a good idea, I’m all for it in some incarnation or other.

nihili

[Gandalf]

Sweet idea nihili!

But I feel that his would open a large door to people who just say "Did you read the Guide for that?" to people with basic questions. Maybe thats what we should start doing, pointing them towards the guides if they are just general questions.

But I feel that this Guides board would be an excellent idea.

[donny_paycheck]

This system of making a sticky in a particular section, polishing it up and then moving it to this "guides" section of the forums sounds great. Then this "guides" section could be linked to from the front page of the site. This way it would be up-to-date since the forum residents would constantly be referring to it and making inputs, but it would also be visible via a link from the front page. The best of both worlds, really.

And Gandalf, I hear you but your guess is also right IMO. I think it'd be great to have some beginner's guides available to answer the recurring questions that always seem to pop up (ex. 'how do I unlock my P4 multiplier' or 'registered RAM on ____ mobo?') It's not a rude dismissal of a novice nor would it be a smart-aleck answer. The guides would hold a great deal of valuable information and pointing a new member to them would be doing everybody a service as it would alleviate redundant threads and also ensure that a new member didn't get bogus information compared to another guy.

[IFMU]

IMHO ~ Alot of people come in and want a quick fast simple answer. Well, if they really want to know... they need to do alot of reading!~!

I know before I started activlly posting, I spent days.... reading...

I was actually curious as to how much time in 1 weeks time I spent doing this stuff, so I figured it up....
Rough estimates here ~
working ~ 47 hours
sleeping ~ 42 hours
reading ~ 73 hours
everything else ~ 6 hours

This was an average week for me when I started this stuff... and IMHO ~ Alot of people should spend more time reading for the basic questions then posting and asking. Once they havent been able to find that... then ask.

This, IMO, would be a great way to help do that. It would make things slightly easier to find relavent topics that people are looking for help with, and odds are, have the answers as well.

Another thing as far as this goes, I think the posting the links on the front page to here would be a great asset as well. I cant say how much time I spent reading the front page and all that it had on it. Without ever stepping foot in here. Once I ran out of new stuff there to read... I came in here... granted, that wasnt my plan, but that is what happened.

and yes, I have no life

[donny_paycheck]

Originally posted by IFMU
and yes, I have no life

d00d, that's like, a prerequisite to posting here!

If this is going to be done then our first step would be to figure out how to gather the information for the FAQs in the forums. There are some FAQs out there already but pretty much each forum could use one (or more, even) FAQs to answer the questions that are...er...frequently asked! (genius, I know)

I know SickBoy started one in the SMP forum and a bunch of us added to it but it never got stickied so it's back several pages in there by now. But that kind of autonomy amongst the members/senior members would be the best first step to getting together the info that we need. Then once it's substantial it could be stickied, polished to perfection, locked and moved to this new "guides" forum. The thread titles in there could all begin with their originating forum for example, SickBoy's SMP FAQ:

"SMP - Basic Questions Answered"

Then they could be sorted so all the SMP FAQ threads were next to each other, all the cooling threads next to each other, etc. Speaking of cooling FAQs, check out the cooling forum; there are several awesome stickies in there that would be deserving of being a "guide". I think Joe even used Maximus's cooling guide on the front page already because it's rich in facts.

As for the front page, they would post either one link to just the "guides" section of the forum or many links, each to a different FAQ. These would be stuck on the front page like a sticky themselves, not pushed down with the arrival of new articles. Right below the SETI/Folding recruiting links comes to mind as a good spot.

[Tismedt]

This is a great idea. As stated before there is a lot of out dated material on the front page and this would keep the oc lifeblood up to date and flowing. Moderating this section would be a monumental task at first but once the basic structure is in place and stable it would not be so tough. New overclockers would have a place to easily find answers to FAQ's therefor not flooding the other forums with repeat questions, creating more challenging questions and problems that we love to read about and try to solve. I say again Icarusfalling has a great idea here that would make the Overclockers Front Page and Forums that much better.

[donny_paycheck]

I started one in the SMP forum. This is what I had in mind myself...take it FWIW:

Thread.

[RoadWarrior]

I hope people are just saying we need more new stuff, I for one would be very annoyed if the older front page articles were deleted. I have been very dissappointed in the past when other sites have dumped older stuff for the sake of a couple of megs of storage, or because "it didn't fit the new site style and we couldn't be bothered to reformat it". (Who cares about pretties, I wanted it as it was) So please don't make it sound like you are bitching about the mere existance of the old stuff.

If it would be good to tidy up the front page some, then just put the older stuff in a retro area or something.
This idea about having a guides forum is sounding good though. In the most active topics you could probably go through them and find 20 or more posts worthy of stickies, but sticky space is limited (otherwise we'd not see new posts without going to page 2)
Road Warrior