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Why not just create a "Developer" forum usergroup for all the Android/Winmo developers who create ROMs/Mods/Themes and use that rank to filter out who is allowed to create new threads in the respective "Dev" forums of each phone? It's maddening to see so many [Q]'s among all the ROM titles and would REALLY clean things up, not to mention push all the other Q/A and help traffic into the forum sections they actually belong in, resulting in greater topic exposure, and by extension, potentially expedited help in dealing with problems.
Have a simple process of a message appearing when a non-dev clicks on the new thread button in the Dev section, and have it say "Sorry, you are not a recognized developer. Android/WinMo developers are the only ones allowed to post here, all questions and other discussion belong in the Q/A forum of this phone (Link here). To apply, simply PM (some moderator), tell that moderator you are a Dev, and you will be able to post.
You're not going to have to ask for proof from Devs who want to post, because since the majority of help threads created in the Dev sections are made by people who simply don't know better, are new, or don't understand the difference between forum sections. There won't really be censorship, because no user who needs help with xyz gps issue is going to go through the trouble of trying to fill out a Dev rank request forum when they suddenly realize they are posting in the wrong forum, and will move to the correct one.
It won't even be difficult to implement, just look through the dev forums and start granting people who are already android/WinMo developers the Developer usergroup. It's not even like they need extra permissions, the only extra permission they'd have is being able to post in their Development and Hacking forum.
Love XDA, Cheers!
+1 to this idea.
It won't be hard to implement, but it will be a constantly time consuming job for the Administrators to monitor the boards to appoint certain users to such a 'Rank'.
Along with this idea... why not a 'Community Assistance' rank for those who don't necessarily develop, but rather help users with issues they may have: answering questions, providing tutorials for help, sharing resources, etc..
I'll get straight to the point....
Despite stickys and forum announcements most of us are still finding ourselves becoming terribly, terribly vexed at the amount of [Q]'s cluttering the dev section...
Therefore, from now on, if you do not follow the rules outlined below, you will be infracted. Break them again and you may find yourself unable to post anything at all on any forum!!
[Q]Surely thats a bit harsh aint it??
[A]Not really....
We've tried to be nice about it but that clearly doesnt work.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If you cannot read and abide by the simple rules in this sticky then I dont know how you're going to manage to hack your device without running into trouble.
The Dev section is NOT for asking questions.....
The Dev section is NOT for general topics..........
All threads posted MUST be prefixed with a description of the thread, [ROM] / [Kernel] etc etc.....*
*(Not planning on being particuarly strict on this. You guys (the devs), know how to title a thread.... just a pointer for new devs.)
Basically, unless your thread is to actually release something or discuss something of a very technical and n00b unfriendly nature, it doesnt belong here!
Pretty simple really.....
If you see something that shouldnt be here then PM me....
I will try to check in as reguarly as I can but I have a few sections to keep an eye on and believe it or not, a life outside XDA
Yes thats right, there is life outside XDA
Post What Where:
General - general technical discussion items, news, anything else that does not fit into the other fora categories.
Accessories - any items to do with components and/or accessories relating to your device.
Rom Development - only meant for very advanced technical discussion directly related to ROM development activity and the delivery of actual ROMs and ROM components ONLY. Nothing else goes in here.
Themes & Apps - anything to do directly with the development of themes and/or applications. Nothing else goes in here.
MOD EDIT: BEFORE POSTING ANY THREAD IN THE DEVELOPMENT SECTION, PLEASE READ THE FOLLOWING:
If you have developed a ROM, or are working with others to do so, the development forum is somewhere to discuss and share ideas, post useful feedback and logs or crash dumps, and to discuss a common goal developers are trying to achieve.
It is NOT the place to post your question because it gets higher traffic, or because more experienced users frequent it. Doing this just annoys those who are working on the device, and drives them away. Developers don't want to wade through 20 threads of "Help me urgently" to find their threads for porting and fixing camera issues etc. Similarly, if a thread is designated as discussion for developers say, porting a camera fix, please do not post in there asking "When will it be ready?", "Can I flash this yet?" etc. This is both completely disrespectful to those working on the project (you evidently haven't read the important posts in the thread), and also is making it harder for developers to find comments from other developers or testers when required.
Similarly, don't make loads of "Thanks for your work here" posts in an active development thread. It's just as annoying to developers as asking when something will be ready. If a ROM is complete, then go ahead and thank the developer if you wish, but don't go into threads for devs only, and interrupt it to post "thanks". It's basically spamming, and is treated as such.
If you are posting in development, you should have read every sticky and notice there, and should be actively developing or helping in the development of something. Developing isn't installing a ROM, or using a tweak, it's creating a ROM or other hack or tweak. If you haven't read for several days before starting out on XDA, you are likely about to ask something already solved. I registered on XDA when I first wanted to post, and that was to join in a discussion on something. Sure, join up and ask a question, but read the information available in General and Q&A first, as your question will have been asked before. Search is your friend here, become familiar with it.
Regarding when to post in development if you are not actually developing something, there is one occasion where it's acceptable. If you find a leak of a new ROM, which isn't already posted, and you verify it's legitimacy via either running it, or based on the source you obtained it from, then this is assisting in development, and should be posted in development. If you want to ask when a leak will be available use search first, then if not already in discussion, open a thread in general or Q&A.
If you have a problem flashing a ROM, this is NOT related to development. It's up to you to determine if it is specific to a particular ROM, and post useful information in that developer's existing thread for the ROM. If it happens on more than one ROM, and isn't a known issue (remember you should read several times more words than you post), then find out what you are doing wrong. Check guides written by others, try to repeat the problem and see if it happens every time. Something needs to be reproducible to be fixed effectively.
Once you have identified what you need help with go to the device Q&A forum (general if device lacks one), and make a clear, informative thread that explains the issue, and what you have tried doing to fix it. Did you re-download the ROM? Did you ask a friend to flash it for you, to reduce chance of user error? What steps (exactly) did you follow? What errors did you see (exact wording)? Did you double check all the steps? Did you do a wipe or hard reset?
If you make a clear, concise, yet detailed post, you will find help forthcoming, and should get the problem sorted very quickly. If someone suggests you try something, report back on what happened, did it work etc. Then, next time someone has this issue and searches, they will find this and have a verified and tested solution.
So remember... before you start a thread in development, ask yourself what you are developing. If you can't answer, then stop, step away from the post button, and think about where you are posting. Would it be better in General or Q&A, or is some more time with your best friend, search, required?
Hopefully this brings some change to the forum, this site is a great place to learn and develop for everyone no matter what stage of the game your in. There are quite a few people here that really put forth the effort to help others no matter how fundamental the question is and it would be a shame to see XDA take a turn like other forums have in the past.
To: conantroutman
You are my Freakin Hero, Thank You!!! LOL
The annoying thing is, people are STILL not following the rules -_-
GazaIan said:
The annoying thing is, people are STILL not following the rules -_-
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
They probably never will but at least now they are being punished so that they either learn from their mistakes or leave...
Sent From My Fingers To Your Face.....
I understand where you are coming from but...yes a bit harsh, so many people come he now and then etc, Just my thoughts. I will post what I deem necessary in what I think the proper thread is. Obviously not going to ask how to flash rom, (which is in developers section) Maybe you should move those topics out to faq or general, it only draws more attention to the dev. section
---------- Post added at 09:40 PM ---------- Previous post was at 09:35 PM ----------
conantroutman said:
They probably never will but at least now they are being punished so that they either learn from their mistakes or leave...
Sent From My Fingers To Your Face.....
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This will only drive people away, ban me and I surely will look for another forum and recomend it to my friends, thats the mentallity, because what you have on these forums is also on 3 others, please dont tick off ppl. I personally dont think this is the right approach. Educate people first. I have been admin for several forums, very hostile ones at that, please take some advice.
This area is currently experimental and was set up by the XDA Administrators for development discussion. The idea in this section is for developers (not only recognized developers, but all developers) to have a place for discussion threads to "talk shop." What kind of talk? Some topics (that I'm making up as I type this) might include (and are certainly not limited to):
Overriding the power widget in the notification dropdown
Considerations of using gcc versions other than 4.4.3 for compiling the kernel
Tegra3: discussion on working around the SOC wake from sleep delay
This isn't a Q&A forum. However, developers might kick off discussions with a question. The difference? This belongs in Q&A: "My phone wakes up slow, will it go faster if I take my sdcard out?" On the other hand, the following might belong in this new section: "Has anyone tried adjusting the mmc detection timeouts to see if there's an impact on the SOC wakeup delays?" The assumption here is that the person asking the latter question actually knows what a mmc detection timeout is, how they'd change it, and has started to play around with it before posting the question.
As well, this section is not for posting finished products or "advertising" of kernels, apps, etc. This section is to discuss the process, not for the end result.
The hope (at least my own hope) is that developers can discuss things here instead of resorting the various other methods of communication we've used. At the same time, newer developers and even non-developers can LEARN from the conversations and eventually participate.
Depending on the reception (and difficulty moderating, probably) this experiment will either be expanded for other device types, completely shut down as a failure, or adjusted. Obviously, if we developers don't use it, it might be considered a waste of time and dissolved.
This section will be very closely moderated by moderators who are also developers and non-development discussion will be harshly dealt with.
Let's do development.
So normal users arent to post here?
For example, could this be used for devs to talk about S-off etc?
yes it can be. ANY user can post here as long as it's dev related.
Great Thought
Wilks3y said:
So normal users arent to post here?
For example, could this be used for devs to talk about S-off etc?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
newer developers and even non-developers can LEARN from the conversations and eventually participate
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
just don't fill this thread with rubbish i'm not referring to you :good:
There are a lot of posts such as
[Q] Windows RT port of WinUAE
Windows8 downgrade to Win7 lost os
webcam rt
work around for 3rd party vpn for remote desktop
Disabling windows hardware button
is there any way to setup program like MediaMonkey on Windows RT ?
that have absolutely no business being in a developer forum. I got all of those off of only the first page of topics, they continue at that rate for the first few pages, at least.
There is seemingly no moderation going on in that section, unless a post is reported. Since I personally feel that reporting each and every one of those posts is too tedious for end users, and would spam up the moderators inboxes too much, I haven't been reporting them.
So, what I'd like is to see either the moderators take a more active interest in the section, or to appoint someone who is active there (My suggestions would be myself, or GoodDayToDie, though do note that I haven't contacted him about this)
I should also note that there's also a problem with users asking the same questions over and over a lot too, it's been asked to port OpenVPN, for example, at least 3 or 4 times, by users who have obviously not even attempted to use searches.
There are also a lot of threads that one of the previous moderators, chrisd1a1, made and stuck which aren't important or helpful at all, or just contain wrong info, including:
Goodbye from me Pointless
hello from your new forum mod Pointless
IMPORTANT - PLEASE READ!!! Contains some outdated info and is pretty much just a reminder to read the rules
THREAD STRUCTURE - IMPORTANT!!!! Erroneously implies that this is a phone section
Thanks.
As part of the team of moderators responsible for that forum, I'll take the blame for letting some things go for a bit too long.
With that said, a lot of moderating is based on the feedback and reports from those active in the forum. If you see an outstanding issue there, I would encourage you to utilize the report post button. If you need to point out a larger set of issues or have some suggestions, my PM box is always open to you.
I've taken care of all of the problems you've pointed out in your post and I'll be looking at some more maintenance items in the next couple of days.
Thanks for your post.
Thanks. Just for clarification, you don't mind if I report every one of those threads/posts?
Edit: I went through the development subforum, here's what I came up with. A lot of these are old enough that they've been pushed way back and aren't in the way anymore, but I posted them all for completeness sake.
Asking questions that should be in general/googled first
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2094857
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1866298
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1931088
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1879803
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2119201
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2093525 (Did have a bit of indepth stuff, though)
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2099016
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1967974
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1983457
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2079290
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1862956
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2029817
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2089545
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2090055
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2082984
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2001630
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2003384
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2060413
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2032271
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2033316
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2112689
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2111530
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1844275
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2105996
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2104073
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1960034
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2021973
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2014708
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2018097
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2014782
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1999506
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1996897
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1993884
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1927909 (A development related question)
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1978987
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1975449
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1964909
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1953831 (Totally offtopic, also starts with "This isn't relevant to hacking...")
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1934709
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1914323
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1921347
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1916765
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1886139
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1884365
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1889911
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1832775
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1871891
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1809111
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1778235
Asking for app ports (we have a thread for that)
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2109121
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2101379
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2094167
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2093543
Just plain stupid threads
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2011767 (This one was locked, and I believe the OP was warned)
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2045170
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1836344
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1965335
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1957858
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1879394 (Was about a crack, previous moderators removed the links, locked it)
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1818902 (Was about a crack, previous moderators removed the links, locked it)
Threads relating to piracy that still had contents intact
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1888003 (Pirating Windows 8, asking for cracks to be PM'd to him)
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1881678 (Asking how to activate Server 2012)
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1843586 (A mod locked this because it was relating to piracy then left the contents intact)
netham45 said:
Thanks. Just for clarification, you don't mind if I report every one of those threads/posts?
<snip>
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That's fine if you want to report problems in that forum. I or one of the other moderators will take a look at it as they come up.
As for the list you gave me, I'll have a look later on this evening and work through them. If you have any more concerns, I think PMs would be better than posting here. This forum is more for general, site-wide issues. If there's a forum issue, it's usually better to contact one of the moderators directly.
This site when I downloaded Windows Mobile ROMs for friends was well structured and organized.
Now its a ****ing mess. Too many sections and too many sections inside sections inside subsections.
The visiting audience for this site has nothing to do with the original purpose of the site now. Times change and the site needs to evolve.
First, all "old" devices/discussions/etc. need to be in a archive section (maybe even read only). If people want older information, they can search in there. Hell maybe even a "http://archive.xda-developers.com" site is neccesary.
XDA born projects (such as Xposed) should, with time, be given their own section as well.
Next, the general sections need to be cleaned up. They (Android, iPhone, Windows Phone) should have a General, Apps, Q&A, OS tweaking and thats about it. Also a "Classic section" might be in order: Blackberry and other OS (not based on Android) should be there as well
After that, all devices, with a 1 user base to a 10000000000000000000000 user base should have their own section. Users should be able to generate that section against a bot, or, XDA should read off some site (gsmarena) and generate a section off that when a phone is added. Later, XDA can decide to hide or read only that section (example, something gsmarena does a lot is if they hear a rumor, they add it like the Galaxy S9 is already on there problably. That section should be read only and/or hidden)
The site has become a horrible unorganized bloated mess and needs to be cleaned up.
The visiting audience for this site has nothing to do with the original purpose of the site now. Times change and the site needs to evolve.
First, all "old" devices/discussions/etc. need to be in a archive section (maybe even read only). If people want older information, they can search in there. Hell maybe even a "http://archive.xda-developers.com" site is neccesary.
This is already implemented. All older forums go into an archived section, but still accessible for users.
XDA born projects (such as Xposed) should, with time, be given their own section as well.
Already in place, have a look here: XDA Community Apps Popular sections like xposed have their own development section., Even Popular ROMS can have their own forum Custom ROM Central
Next, the general sections need to be cleaned up. They (Android, iPhone, Windows Phone) should have a General, Apps, Q&A, OS tweaking and thats about it. Also a "Classic section" might be in order: Blackberry and other OS (not based on Android) should be there as well
We dont currently support iphone, but do have general places already:
Android General
Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting
Android Software and Hacking General
Windows 10 Mobile
Just to name a few examples.
Considering we are the number one site for all things android, with a 6 million user base. We are setup very well. We do have a team of moderators to run the site, but we like users to help out and report things that are breaking our forum rules, or threads that are not in the correct sections, eg: questions not being put into Q&A forums.
Moderator Information,
Thread closed as member has posted this more than once.