TechSpot - PC Technology News and Analysis

Hi,

I've recently made a post that is a tutorial on how to build a portable hard drive and would like it sticky'd becuase it would be quite helpfull for many people.

Perhaps there should be a thread where members can request a thread to be sticky'd

Please concider this.

Regards,

Korrupt

Any member can ask to have a thread stickied.

However, we try where possible to keep the number of stickies to around four in each forum.

The thread you have created on hard drives is in my opinion worth a sticky. Consider it done.

Regards Howard

I was just thinking, and I thought it may be good to have a tutorial section, where all good quality tutorials are sticky'd. This will save the answering of a lot of questions. And will most probably increase hits to the forums by at least 10% due to many people looking for a step by step aproach to fixing a problem.

Regards,

Korrupt

I agree entirely.

We have FAQs in almost every forum. Hardly anyone bothers to read them. I will point to them everytime someone asks one though.

Let's use what we have.

I don't think a tutorials forum would be of much use, and stikying them would be silly, as then we'd have a forum full of stikies which defeats the object.

I was thinking though that it might be an idea to add a tutorials section to the techspot guides (of the "novice" "intermediate" and "advanced" types - things like a walkthrough xp install (novice) or basic registry guide (intermediate) or advanced registry guide (advanced), but that really depends againn on whetehr anybody would be interested.

The thing is, all the info is out on the web already, and on some pretty famous sites too.

Perhaps,

But what is wrong with it? I would be able to "donate" at least 5 tutorials which - once again - would save a heck of a lot of questions. Some tutorials I was thinking about are:

- How to build an external hard drive
- How to reformat and reinstal windows
- How to remove virus and spyware
- How to use file and settings transfer
- How to fix and calibrate playstation 2 laser
- How to speed up your pc
- How to Build your own pc
- How to choose a pc

I think these would save a lot of questions... I mean probably 30% of all the questions i've answered have something to do with either of these.

I hope admin will seriously concider this,

Regards,

Korrupt

I`m with Spike on this.

We already have lots of stickies. Unfortunately they tend not to be read.

For example. In the security and the web forum is a Read entitled "Follow these instructions BEFORE posting your HJT log."

Yet despite this being plainly visible, a lot of new members with spyware/virus problems don`t bother to read it. I should know lol.

We also have a search feature. Again, It appears it doesn`t get used as often as it should.

Virtually all the information is already here, if only members would try looking for it.

There is also Yahoo and Google search engines, where you can find answers to almost anything.

Regards Howard

At the beginning of the discussion it appeared to be korrupt was talking about stickying "resolved" problems in a separate forum. I would have agreed with moderators that is not the best idea to do something like that (alone), however your idea seems to go way beyond doing just that and I actually like it a lot.

First of all, if we created a new forum for user-submitted guides, there would be no need to stick any threads since it would be a forum for solutions only. This wouldn't need to be a regularly updated forum but something that could potentially grow over time from solutions from the other boards (moving threads that solve a problem could be better than simply leaving them buried), and from guides built by our own members.

Of course, we would need members' contribution but korrupt would set a great example if gets those few tutorials posted. Here's a similar forum from a fellow website, they succeeded it seems: http://www.neowin.net/forum/index.php?showforum=107

This is also a good idea because we can't cover everything on the main site, not to mention it would take more effort to write guides (which btw we don't plan to in the near future) more formally than these which are forum/discussion born.

Well, I suppose it could work as you describe Julio. I hadn`t quite thought of it like that.

When can we expect this new forum to make an appearance?

Do you think it`d be a good idea to have the turorials approved by mods, before allowing them? A little like the Hot deals forum is run.

That`d stop just anyone posting any old crap(just a thought).

I dare say, we could move/copy some of our existing stickies into the new forum, obviously without the sticky bit. This would certainly cut down on the number of stickies required in the main forums, as a lot of these are tutorials anyway. This would be in keeping with your desire to limit the number of stickies.

I must admit, the thought of a new forum makes me a little excited.

I know korrupt has already written a couple of excellent tutorials, one of which I stickied.

http://www.techspot.com/vb/topic53502.html and http://www.techspot.com/vb/topic53474.html

Regards Howard

Three new forums have made it to TS today. How is that for excitement Howard?

Like you said, some of the stickies could be moved and linked to when necessary. Not to mention this could become a one-stop repository of many many useful and relevant things.

The new "Guides and Solved Issues" board will be moderated from scratch, meaning all new threads will have to be approved before going live. Also those threads that were started as a tech support issue and were resolved could be moved here.

http://www.techspot.com/vb/menu31.html

I would like to ask moderators to rename threads when the original topic is not relevant to the solution anymore. This might sound like a very tiresome process but I hope we can upgrade the boards to vB 3.5 soon (coming 1-2 weeks) which will bring AJAX functionality, so that many things like renaming and closing a thread can be done on the fly without any page reloads.

Thanks for your participation and collaboration!

Thanks Julio.

Wow three new forums, these are indeed very exciting times for Techspot.

I have already moved the suggested tutorial

Regards Howard

I have just finished unstickying several threads and have moved them to the Guides and Solved Issues forum.

http://www.techspot.com/vb/menu31.html

I hope this meets with everyones approval.

If anyone has a problem with this, feel free to slap my wrists and complain.

Regards Howard

No problems with that - glad my suggestion is taken seriously. Despite there being no problems, I still wish to slap you *slap*. Just for the heck of it

Also - what does it mean by "The new "Guides and Solved Issues" board will be moderated from scratch, meaning all new threads will have to be approved before going live. Also those threads that were started as a tech support issue and were resolved could be moved here.
"

Does this mean i have to post my new tutorials in another section before being moved? I hope to get at least 2 more tutorials done tonight.

Once again, thanks for taking my input seriously.

Regards,

Korrupt

It means any new threads will go into a moderation queue, before they actually appear in the forum. This is exactly the same as we currently have in the Hot deals forum.

The moderators can then look at the proposed new thread and decide if such a thread warrants inclusion in the Guides and Solved Issues forum.

No. you will open a new thread in the Guides and Solved Issues forum. Then, submit it, it will then join the queue for moderation.


Regards Howard