The Exhibition should be the first section of the forum.

Community Website and Forum
1

There has been a dramatic decrease in Exhibition postings since the new forum was created. People are still coming to the forum for help on their projects, but fewer and fewer are posting their projects in the Exhibition once their project is completed. I believe this is because the Exhibition page is now the 30th choice on the page, rather than the 4th like it was in the old forum.
This is bad news, because projects in the Exhibition serve as inspiration to beginners. Other popular websites are entirely project-oriented. (Hackaday, Instructables, Make).
This forum should also be project-oriented. The Exhibition should have its own separate section at the very top, with all the “Using Arduino” topics below it. This way inventors looking for help will be more likely to notice the section and post their projects afterwards.

I have crunched some numbers to show that of the people working on projects, fewer of them are posting those projects to the Exhibition. I compare the number of topics asking for help, to the number of Exhibition topics.

of Old Forum topics

interfacing: 13,333
programming: 5,417
frequently asked questions: 5,062

total: 23812
1860/25672 = 7.2 % of all posts are Exhibition posts
exhibition: 1860

of New forum topics

Project Guidance: 1274
Programming: 1713
All the other Other ones, (gen. electronics-interfacing with software): 3179

total: 6616
180/6796 = 2.6 % Less than half of the original forum.
exhibition: 180

Answer the poll above with your opinion.

2

Ok - I voted "yes", and I agree with you (and have kinda noticed the same thing); I didn't "run the numbers" like you did, mainly because this new forum is much younger than the old one, which might skew the results some. Perhaps if you re-ran the numbers for a period of time on the old forum that is the same length of time as for this new forum being around, your numbers might change.

But I do think the projects/exhibition should be "up top", perhaps with some of the other discussion areas that are geared toward FAQs, general electronics and design, with the specific stuff below.

I'd probably put this section up as:

  1. Exhibition
  2. Installation and Troubleshooting
  3. Project Guidance
  4. General Electronics
  5. Interfacing w/ Software on the Computer
  6. LEDs and Multiplexing
  7. Motors, Mechanics, and Power

Basically - the top section needs some re-ordering, but Exhibition (and maybe some of the other "community building" sections) need to be in their own area "up top", then a section of "how to and FAQs" (which is kinda the top-section right now - but it needs some re-ordering). Basically - it needs a re-order to be in the order of the most likely thing people are having trouble with, to the least thing (not sure how this can be decided).

:slight_smile:

3

I am ambivilent about this. There are so many sections, I just browse the unread stuff frequently and follow up on stuff where I have posted.