Death of Playground?

Forum 2005-2010 (read only) Hardware Interfacing
1

At...

... we are told that the forum and the Playground are going to be frozen, left as static archives.

We're told that a new Forum is coming, and that we WILL like it. But that old answers will only be available if readers do a separate search. It is hard enough to get newbies to search for the multiple previous discussions of their question as it is! But that's what They have decided.

I posted a question in the "Responses to “Forum Migration Scheduled for Jan 24th” about whether the new Playground is going import all the work everyone has done over the years, in contrast to the stated intentions for the forum. My question did not survive the moderation process, nor did any answer arrive via the genuine email address supplied in the "required" field.

Forgive me posting this here, but maybe it will survive long enough. If any of you have valued the work I've done, I'd be grateful if in the new forum you will recommend people to the various "getting started" things I've made permanently available at...

The response to my question at the "Responses" page makes me wonder if I'll get a logon to the new forum and playground. I'm all for a moderation process that removes spam and obscenity... but Big Brother shouldn't be afraid of reasoned debate, should he/she?

Bye, guys. It's been fun.

2

Censoring is out of character for the Arduino folks. Are you certain your post was removed / blocked? Is it possible that your browser failed to correctly post? Or that the webserver failed to process the post? Or that your valid email address contains characters that the blog software finds objectionable (I've had this happen)?

3

I think that there will be a bit of flexibility in what happens - from the other thread about the forum migration - David seems to be listening to ideas.
The forum is most likely going to be in an 'archive' section so it can be searched by a standard forum search with the option of moving threads to the new topics on request.

I'd just wait and see what happens.

Mowcius

4

I'd just wait and see what happens.

Me too. But if I don't like it I'm going to demand a total refund.

Lefty

5

Me too. But if I don't like it I'm going to demand a total refund.

Well I'm going to demand double whatever your refund is :wink:

I'm gonna be rich on nothing ;D

6

Retro: Your's is the best reply so far, and exactly right. In fact, I said something along those lines in the comment I tried to post.

Re- "Am I sure"....

Well... for a time, I could see my post, with "Your comment is awaiting moderation. " alongside the name I'd given. That whole post has now disappeared.

A subsequent post from me, about something else, posted January 18th, 2011 at 20:40 is now showing (on my screen, obviously, and for good reasons, not "publicly") in the "awaiting" state, and, subsequent to that is Robert's post (January 18th, 2011 at 22:15).

Email address: I use Shortkeys... wonderful Windows utility, which I commend to you all, details at...

It comes in a "Lite", "use it free" version, no time limit.

Because of that, I only ever type q-n-g (without the hypens) to "type" my eddress, which not only saves me keystrokes, but prevents typos. The eddress was the same one my Arduino forum and Playground registrations are tied to. (And due to Shortkeys, q-d-a ("date/time) provides "19 Jan 2011, 10:18" from my system clock any time I want it, but that's another story!)

===

David seems to be listening to ideas.

Hard to "listen" if the people affected haven't spoken because they haven't heard of what's going to happen before a week before the event. And hard to change what is going to happen at that last moment.

Yes, it was probably discussed in the "Site mgmnt" forum, or whatever it is called, and no, I don't want to hear of every tweak and twiddle in the Hardware Interfacing forum, but if a major forum of the site, and the Playground, are being frozen, restarted empty, that seems to me worthy of a bit of in-advance cross-posting.

I still don't know, by the way, whether the Playground is being "scrapped" (to indulge in a little hyperbole). Of course I have no "right" to know... but as someone who's spent HOURS "cleaning up" things (alphabetizing pages of entries, for instance), I would have deemed it a courtesy to get an answer to my question.

===
Thanks for the ideas about ways things could explain the result which I have taken as censorship... it would have been nice if I could have seen one of them as a possible alternative explanation.

===
I DO LIKE the forum, playground! Why else would I have sent suggestions to the people who provide them?

7

it is unfortunate someone (apparently) took the decision to ignore an import script for the new forum software.

How could that be a good idea?

8

How could that be a good idea?

Depends on the formatting of the data (posts) in the old forum software and that in the new... although in CHOOSING the new (we still don't know why an change was deemed desirable), an import option might have been a high priority, I'd say.... for the FORUM threads.

Not bringing forward all the work to date in the Playground, if that's their choice, seems very foolish and offensive... to me. But it is their site.

9

it is unfortunate someone (apparently) took the decision to ignore an import script for the new forum software.

How could that be a good idea?

Well that's not quite true.

Please read through the other thread fully.

Mowcius