Reorganising some forums and links

[RGB]

On the ES forums we just finished some changes that I think makes things more easy to new users. I'll list those changes here as proposals for this forum too

- The sub-forums with tutorials were moved as sub-forums for the corresponding app. For example, the tutorials for Writer are now as a sub-forum of Writer. Tutorials that do not belong to any specific app are now on a subforum inside "Setup and troubleshooting".

- The forum Setup and troubleshooting was renamed to "Install, Setup and Troubleshooting".

- All the "forum as links" pointing to the user documentation for OOo on each sub-forum were eliminated: they pointed to old (3.3 or previous) documents. Instead, on the "forum rules" for each tutorial forum there is now a link to a single thread were all the available documentation is listed. That's easier to maintain.

- We merged all Base sub-forums into the main one.

- We merged all "Install, Setup and Troubleshooting" sub-forums into the main one.

That's all... for the moment

What do you think?

[lgusaas]

Keep the sub-forums for Setup and Troubleshooting. The solutions are very often operating system specific. It is much easier for people to look through the OS specific sub-forum to find a solution to their problem.

Also, I do not look at the Linux and Windows sub-forums when providing support as I do not know the OS specific answers to their problems. It would waste my time when providing support if they were all in the same forum.

[Hagar Delest]

- The sub-forums with tutorials were moved as sub-forums for the corresponding app. For example, the tutorials for Writer are now as a sub-forum of Writer. Tutorials that do not belong to any specific app are now on a subforum inside "Setup and troubleshooting".

Sounds good for me too. The tutorials are not visible enough in the EN forum.

- The forum Setup and troubleshooting was renamed to "Install, Setup and Troubleshooting".

+1.

- All the "forum as links" pointing to the user documentation for OOo on each sub-forum were eliminated: they pointed to old (3.3 or previous) documents. Instead, on the "forum rules" for each tutorial forum there is now a link to a single thread were all the available documentation is listed. That's easier to maintain.

I agree a mere topic would be easier to maintain (all moderators could update it instead of only admins as currently for forum links). The link in the forum rules is however not visible enough IMHO, perhaps a sticky would be better. I'm not sure users notice the forum rules area in fact; even with the red background.

- We merged all Base sub-forums into the main one.

No idea. I let the Base gurus comment.

- We merged all "Install, Setup and Troubleshooting" sub-forums into the main one.

I think that there is enough differences to keep the OS variants, especially the Mac and Linux ones. The idea was also to keep the parent forum for cross-platform questions.
So my preference is to keep as it is for that one.

[RGB]

- All the "forum as links" pointing to the user documentation for OOo on each sub-forum were eliminated: they pointed to old (3.3 or previous) documents. Instead, on the "forum rules" for each tutorial forum there is now a link to a single thread were all the available documentation is listed. That's easier to maintain.

I agree a mere topic would be easier to maintain (all moderators could update it instead of only admins as currently for forum links). The link in the forum rules is however not visible enough IMHO, perhaps a sticky would be better. I'm not sure users notice the forum rules area in fact; even with the red background.

Good point! I'll try to think of something...

- We merged all "Install, Setup and Troubleshooting" sub-forums into the main one.

I think that there is enough differences to keep the OS variants, especially the Mac and Linux ones. The idea was also to keep the parent forum for cross-platform questions.
So my preference is to keep as it is for that one.

At least on the ES forums they were not completely used, with lot of questions that should go on one of those sub-forums going to the general one, and some thread that should go to the general forum that were on the particular ones, so instead of moving those threads and getting users asking were their threads ended, we just put all together...

[Hagar Delest]

- The sub-forums with tutorials were moved as sub-forums for the corresponding app. For example, the tutorials for Writer are now as a sub-forum of Writer. Tutorials that do not belong to any specific app are now on a subforum inside "Setup and troubleshooting".

Well, in fact, that's already the case! All applications sections have as a sub-forum link redirecting to the proper tutorial sub-section...
So I'm not sure there is something to change for that point.
But if we remove the links to the documentation, the links to the tutorial sub-forums will be more visible.