Sort Posts by Manufacturer

Welcome to the forum!
I think that this post (#7) about sums it all up for me. I and a lot of us old guys are retired and are interested in most brands. Hunting thru Sub-Categories would just be a nuisance to me. Most of the posters that have questions identify the brand and model in the subject and that is what I personally look for.

I think you need to think beyond "Old Interests" and think to future users. I understand the liability inherited with helping people out here, it's not like we are in the /. (slashdot) world, we are in the "this can kill you" world.

That being said, I don't understand why having a "post help to XXX" category would be a lot to ask.

...but hey, yup, I am not an Old guy, and not a New guy either. I have seen the good and bad sides of "innovation". The most notable thing I can think of is how ****-poor the AB site is for support. I find it easier to search here than the AB site, that wasn't always true.
 
Creating separate sub-forums for specific brands makes it easier for a person to ignore threads about things you don't already know about. Which in turns means you're less likely to ever know anything about them. Which, over the long haul is not a greatt direction to go.
If you take the time to drill down into threads about things you're not familiar with, you realize that no brand is perfect. While the details vary, every product has good features and falls short in others. You might even learn that some other model has a feature that exactly matches a need in your current project that the brand you're familiar with doesn't address.
 
@Steve Bailey

I guess it depends on perspective. Push or Pull. If I want to Pull information, yup, the site works great. If one wants to Push information or a question, it doesn't.

The reason I end up here so often is that AB just refuses to let google index it's searches, and you need to login every time you have a question. In my google searches, I end up here often enough, that I finally thought I would present the question.
 
I think you need to think beyond "Old Interests" and think to future users. I understand the liability inherited with helping people out here, it's not like we are in the /. (slashdot) world, we are in the "this can kill you" world.

That being said, I don't understand why having a "post help to XXX" category would be a lot to ask.

When I first started visiting this forum, I too thought that the single enormous list of threads was daunting and unorganized. But I soon came to prefer it when compared to "the other site." I think that posting and searching by brand is just too restrictive. Quite a few of the threads here involve multiple brands of equipment. What if my post has to do with communications between a Brand X device and Brand Y device, where do I put the post? Whichever option I choose is going to eliminate a group of people who could possibly help me solve it. With the current setup, the onus falls on me to create a thread title with a good summary of my problem with all important info included. I don't have much sympathy for people who name their thread "need plc hlp" and then don't get any.
 
I think you need to think beyond "Old Interests" and think to future users. I understand the liability inherited with helping people out here, it's not like we are in the /. (slashdot) world, we are in the "this can kill you" world.

Why do you think future users won't like the layout of the site? Or how does that affect liability?

I think you need to understand that there needs to be a balance between people looking and people supplying in these types of forums. The people looking want to narrow down as much as possible with filters so they don't have to dig through tens of posts...
However, the ones supplying the information don't really want to navigate to sub-forums to see questions that they can provide input to. The problem then becomes, if you add too much clicking and navigating, the people willing to help won't do so, or as much in which case you end up losing audience.
 
Why do you think future users won't like the layout of the site? Or how does that affect liability?

I think you need to understand that there needs to be a balance between people looking and people supplying in these types of forums. The people looking want to narrow down as much as possible with filters so they don't have to dig through tens of posts...
However, the ones supplying the information don't really want to navigate to sub-forums to see questions that they can provide input to. The problem then becomes, if you add too much clicking and navigating, the people willing to help won't do so, or as much in which case you end up losing audience.

You just illustrated my point, Push versus Pull.
 
I mean a tech connect contract. At least that was the case the last time I tried to participate. I haven't gone back recently to see if they've changed their practice.

Hmm, not sure. AB is pretty closed source, but they make good stuff, as much as so many people like to hate on them. Siemens does too, but they run under different laws than AB, so apples and oranges I guess.
 
While I don't think that creating subforums is the way to go, I do wish there were a way to filter posts based on keywords, besides doing a search. Brands could be important keywords, but so could other topics like wiring, panel design, communications, "issue resovled", "low effort", etc. You would need to be able to choose multiple tags, as they fit the question at hand, but it probably needs to come from a list that the mods control. If people are freely typing in random keywords, then misspellings and variations will shortly make it unusable.

Down side is this would probably put a fair bit of work on the mods to keep things tagged correctly, and also to keep up to date with new topics that might need to be added to the keyword list. People should be able to tag their own posts, but a lot of low effort posts would require the mods to come in and clean it up.
 
...I do wish there were a way to filter posts based on keywords, besides doing a search. Brands could be important keywords, but so could other topics like wiring, panel design, communications, "issue resovled", "low effort", etc. ....

There should be features like "+1" or "Thumbs Up", etc, like all the linux/programming forums run on, such that the ultimate solution appears at the top of the thread, based on community agreement.

This is something I have thought for years is lacking in this field, and have considered 'building" my own site that addresses this. (note building is a relative term, like Wikipedia runs Wikimedia not something super proprietary, there are solutions out there).
 
@geniusintraining

So you look at this as Automation as a whole, not coming here looking for advice that some of the big guys have made hard to find?

YES as a whole... I am one of the lucky ones that come here to help, once or twice a year I need help and have a lot of friends here that bail me out so its more of paying it forward

I also sell automation equipment so I use this as a support platform for my customers
 
There should be features like "+1" or "Thumbs Up", etc, like all the linux/programming forums run on, such that the ultimate solution appears at the top of the thread, based on community agreement.

This is something I have thought for years is lacking in this field, and have considered 'building" my own site that addresses this. (note building is a relative term, like Wikipedia runs Wikimedia not something super proprietary, there are solutions out there).

This is one thing that I (and several others) agree with

I do belong to a site (nothing related to automation) that has sub categories but you can also do a 'view all' and/or 'new post' so I never dig into the sub's only the new post and it works fine

You can also make suggestions here http://www.plctalk.net/qanda/showthread.php?t=100066

As others have stated this is one of the reason I dont go to MrPLC its to had to look around and find info
 
I think having all the posts in one area encourages people who aren't specialists in certain platforms to get involved in discussions. Sometimes a person well versed in AB will have a suggestion for an Omeron solution that an Omeron specialist wouldn't have considered at first.

There doesn't seem to be any issue with people listing what platform they are looking for help in, and because there's only one area to post there is usually a dozen members at any given time to see and read a new post. If someone needed help with an Omeron solution and had to post in an Omeron only area, I doubt they would get input as quickly as they do with this large single area.

I do like the idea of +1s for good responses and the ability for the OP to select a post that answered the question so that future searches can quickly find the answer. That's always a helpful tool on other forums I use.
 

Similar Topics

I have an unusual task with a PanelView Plus 7 (running v11 firmware) and a CompactLogix. The customer wants to place a version number string in...
Replies
3
Views
591
Hello all, I was looking into different sorting techniques and actually found a bubble/insertion sort sample code file on Rockwell's site. Only...
Replies
20
Views
5,103
Hello all, I am attempting to sort a selection list via 'part-selection' buttons. Ex. a certain type of model is selected, I only want to have...
Replies
5
Views
1,290
I am storing values into an array. I am wanting to find an average of the highs and an average of the lows. Something like this... After 50...
Replies
36
Views
8,776
Hello, I been trying to sort some values in the the Do-more PLC but still have some issues. I have 20 elements from the data view with random...
Replies
9
Views
3,586
Back
Top Bottom