How about a better forum?

[Muzik 4 Machines]

btw @Tarekith i didnt mean to talk about you specifically nt answering my questions, i was just using you as the example of really knowledgeable people here, and reading it back i sound like i am telling you you didnt help me, when in fact you've been really helpfull to me in lots of places in the years, so i really feel bad if you thought i was picking on you

and I too come here for fun and relaxing times, but i'm like it's the biggest concentration of ableton live users and power users on the net, our collective intelligence can make miracles sometimes

[sporkles]

"Becareful who's toe's you step on today, they may be attacched to the ass you kiss tomorrow"

Uhm... What?

[ze2be]

"Becareful who's toe's you step on today, they may be attacched to the ass you kiss tomorrow"

Uhm... What?

His name was Joey StepOnToe
guess where he got the name
Kissing ass and acting badly
never seemed to give him fame

[Warrior Bob]

I actually think a "better help forum" would be a pretty good idea. The current forum format is nice for discussion but has a few problems as a source of help:

- It's hard to tell when a question is answered. So a question fell off the front page. Did it get answered or was it just kind of lost? How successful are people at answering questions? Who are the top askers/answerers, and can you use those people to help?
- No real "frequently asked questions" feature in the forum threads. There's Ableton's FAQ but it's dense enough to be more of a mini knowledge base than a real FAQ that people who came to the forum with questions would notice.
- Incomprehensible questions. Many questions are too vague to really answer, not really a question, or so muddled and rambly that it's hard to tell what's even being asked. Frequently there's a follow up post in the same thread about how nobody's answering the question ("bump? Anybody?"). The forum format doesn't actively help these people improve their questions and get answers.
- Derailings. This is a problem with any threaded-discussion format.

Now we've got Ableton Answers, which is a great Q&A format idea, but it's got some growing pains too:

- UHE is easier to use. Just ask the Answers thread.
- People expect a forum. Lots of "answers" are posted that are really just discussion. That's not how it's supposed to work, that's what the comments feature is for. But the threaded-discussion thing seems to be baked into the users' mindsets right now. I see this on StackExchange's audio (+video) site too.
- Low visibility. You can glance at UHE when you're already visiting the forum. Answers requires a separate trip with fairly specific intent. Hey Tarekith, you're kind of the local expert here. How often do you visit Answers?

It's pretty clear to me that there are many needs that neither UHE nor Answers is currently meeting, but could. I know I talk about Stack Exchange every time these Q&A threads come up, but I think a lot of tricks they use (but not all of them) would be really helpful here.

memes_33 points out that:

there's a new "which USB hub do you recommend" post every week.

So none of those posters searched. What if the forum searched for you? On StackExchange, when you type in a question title, it pops up a list of questions that it thinks might be relevant. Half the time I start asking a question it turns out it was already asked and I wasn't using the right search terms. And for people who post duplicates anyway, you can get rid of them and have the closed questions redirect to the original question. It's half wiki.

Muzik 4 Machines, you've had the opposite problem:

maybe, but i asked some questions that got ignored even tho there is no results in the search, and not even an answer at google 20th page, so people seems to just snob any questions in the help exchange forum

Could you link me to one of these? I'm willing to bet that something about the question didn't attract a lot of people reading it. If it was a bad title, or a difficult-to-read question, it would've been cool if there was some way for people to suggest this to you (comments? up and down votes? wiki-style edit proposals?). I'd be curious to see if it was something that would've gotten more traffic on another Q&A site with a different format (like SE or Quora or something).

[peter181]

This place could use a tagging system in addition to a search system, I think that would help a lot with feature requests and questions about specific features. But honestly I think there's always gonna be some difficulty because so many people use Ableton. Try comparing this place to the Plogue Bidule forum.

Also, re: incomprehensible questions: just ban people from posting for the first year after purchasing Ableton. Then they'll actually learn something before asking.

[Tarekith]

This forum would be better if it had Siri.

[Der_Makrophag]

This place could use a tagging system in addition to a search system, I think that would help a lot with feature requests and questions about specific features.

This sounds good. A long time ago, I already complained about the weak search functioon we have here, that is so simple, that it often does not find what you are looking for, even if you know that it exists. See here:
http://forum.ableton.com/viewtopic.php? ... rum+search

This double (multiple) posting is also massivly happening in the wishlist forum, but I think this is just because people are lazy and just want to trough their idea into the net (hence my singatur FYI).


The call for a "better forum" is quite coarse, and what the OP complains about is really more social stuff and nothing about the forum itselft. But technical improvement of the search and more functions to increase oversight and motivation could really lead to a better help, I think!

[Grant Carlisle]

"Becareful who's toe's you step on today, they may be attacched to the ass you kiss tomorrow"

Uhm... What?

It's just an analogy.

[Machinesworking]

I'm not obligated to help anybody here, period.
You can sometimes get free help here, but the real way to get answers? Ableton support.
Sorry that you think it's somehow required people answer questions, I'm grateful when they do and not upset when they do not.
Not a soul here is paid beyond the Ableton workers, who hardly ever post. To expect people to give you MORE of the FREE service you get here, or to improve their attitude when they reply etc. is patently ridiculous. You cannot control he who you do not own.
Good luck with your attempts at regulating the unpaid help services forums supply, you'll need it.

[H20nly]

^ yeah!

on the other hand, if you want to go back and forth about politics... Machinesworking is your man.

now stop whining and make a thread about when Live 9 will be released. we need more of those.

[Forge.]

http://ableton.com/blog/

http://www.ableton.com/support <- that is not just an email form, it's a wiki type thing where people ask questions and get answers, which is what you're asking for. Neither have been around that long, so they aren't as full as the forum.

But yeah to echo the other guys - some of us have been posting here for many years now and as nice as we all are, no human can stand to keep answering the same questions daily as thousands more users jump on board! And I mean that in the nicest possible way!

This is why we often start our own blogs.

[Der_Makrophag]

Maybe it is a good idea to cancel the Technical Help forum then, in favour of more content for Answers?
It does not look like a very good idea, having 2 ways of asking for help....

[dokx]

Maybe no one knows the answer?

maybe but honnestly i doubt it, i read most of the forum and there are really knowledgeable people here (like you) who do ALMOST the exact same thing i needed to do(as per their posts) but still answer joke threads but give no answers in the help forum, maybe nobody reads it actually, my last question had 14 views in a week and another joke thread had 1000, so maybe nobody actually reads the user help exchange except people needing help, ie, people who know stuff rarely browse the help forum and concentrate more on other parts of the forum(actually, last question i posted NOT in the user help exchange was answered promptly and had many many views)

I used to rely heavily on Internet forums with general Computer problems, then I realized that with a little help from Google I had been able to solve all my problems on my own. So I am not dependend on other peoples' help, though I must admit that it's comfortable.

If you don't get an answer, go help yourself. It's easier than you might think.

[Muzik 4 Machines]

Maybe no one knows the answer?

maybe but honnestly i doubt it, i read most of the forum and there are really knowledgeable people here (like you) who do ALMOST the exact same thing i needed to do(as per their posts) but still answer joke threads but give no answers in the help forum, maybe nobody reads it actually, my last question had 14 views in a week and another joke thread had 1000, so maybe nobody actually reads the user help exchange except people needing help, ie, people who know stuff rarely browse the help forum and concentrate more on other parts of the forum(actually, last question i posted NOT in the user help exchange was answered promptly and had many many views)

I used to rely heavily on Internet forums with general Computer problems, then I realized that with a little help from Google I had been able to solve all my problems on my own. So I am not dependend on other peoples' help, though I must admit that it's comfortable.

If you don't get an answer, go help yourself. It's easier than you might think.

do you think i'm a moron? do you really think i havent googlebinged the shit out of my question? how many people reack page 100 of google results to try to find an answer? I do before i even post on a forum, which means if i post here, i'm just desperate for any answer and ableton will never help someone hack their remote script, hell, they make everything to break custom scripts on every update

[camil0]

this is still alot more information on this forum. i like to search some older articles when i get bored of the current stuff. like a new perspective from the past