Help! Forum Segregation

[bluehash 1,581]

Hi Everyone,

Not many of you here. In any case I'd like your input in segregating the ARM forums in a more usable manner. What I'm seeing now is that the community is so broad that people are getting lost and may have no feeling of community.

 

I'd like to propose that we have something like the xda forums. This means that each major arm chipset/company gets it's own subforum, with small sub-forums under it. An example layout would be:

 

TI Stellaris Forums

--General

--Projects

--Code Vault

--Accessories/Plugin boards

STM32 Forums

--General

--Projects

--Code Vault

--Accessories/Plugin boards

RaspberryPi Forums

--General

--Projects

--Code Vault

--Accessories/Plugin boards

BeagleBoard/BeagleBone Forums

--General

--Projects

--Code Vault

--Accessories/Plugin boards

 

Same thing would go for freescale/NXP and Atmel.

 

This way people have a feeling of a close knit community and are willing to contribute to their individual forums. It will be a little broken at first as it gets populated, but once it takes off, there will be alot of inter forum chatter.

What do you guys think? If I don't get any response, I might go ahead and try it out.

 

I also need help from you guys to spread the word around. If you are in need of any boards to play with... buzz me.

Thanks!

[bluehash 1,581]

Here is an example STM32 layout. View on the index page.

[bone 0]

TBH, that sounds like a good idea. The arm ecosystem is so vast that new members might get confused. I'd say keep a general banter forum up top and the individual sub-forums down below. The xda forums are actually a good example of this. I'll try to propagate this forum.

Thanks for setting this up.

[bluehash 1,581]

Went ahead and did it. Lets see how this goes. Looks like quite of an activity today morning.

[xpg 127]

While I was initially sceptical about this structure, I actually like it now that it is here. Thanks, Blue.

[igor 163]

I think the structure is too complex. Too many fora. Don't think it will scale well.

 

One of the criticisms I have seen about ARM microcontrollers is that community is too divided.

Split into different little camps (by manufacturer, etc.) Having all of these fora just mirrors that problem here. (If I am interested in projects, why should I have to browse a half dozen different project fora, etc.) Are there good reason for such splits, or is it something that good libraries could protect the programmer from.

 

Would be nicer (if the software supports it) to have the particulars about platform, etc. as subfora or tags, so that I can browse projects in general (without worrying which flavor of processor it uses) or see it filtered to only those using STM or NXP.

 

We are seeing a whole raft of new ARM single board computers and microcontroller boards, and expect more to come. As we get various Allwinner A10 boards (e.g. EOMA 68, "Gooseberry", ARM netbooks, etc.), VIA's APC Android PC, Kinetis KL25Z Freedom Board, SolderCore, ... the current structure seems likely to grow to be unusable. What are the expansion plans to handle this growth cleanly?

 

There are already extensive fora for the Pi, and for Beagleboard, so maybe redundant to have a lot of coverage of those platforms here. (Maybe one forum about each special platform like that rather than 5 about each one.

 

Might be better to divide on lines that aren't likely to expand so much (e.g. operating system - e.g. machines that run linux/android vs. microcontrollers), or at least grouping the fora by some such distinction on the main page.

[bluehash 1,581]

Hi igor, we did have that before, but then we seggregated it so that people join into the community they are most comfortable with. This will change as the forum grows. There has been alot more registrations when the change was made, but cannot say for sure as the community is relatively new.

 

Also, welcome to the Forums!The Forums will change its structure as more people join in.

[MattTheGeek 99]

I wish all of the forums were integrated into one, As it's hard keeping up with the individual forums.

 

How about having a website/fourm called [CoolWebsiteNameThatsRelatedToEmbeddedElectronics] and in that website 43Oh, Stellarisiti, and C2KCentral are subfourms in that fourm.

[bluehash 1,581]

I wish all of the forums were integrated into one, As it's hard keeping up with the individual forums.

 

How about having a website/fourm called [CoolWebsiteNameThatsRelatedToEmbeddedElectronics] and in that website 43Oh, Stellarisiti, and C2KCentral are subfourms in that fourm.

I'm working on a unified login for all three sites. Just waiting on a plugin from ipboard to be ready to do that. Eventually 43oh will also run on ipboard.

 

The sites will still be separate. Having them separate gives a great sense of community. If you put too much into one place, you feel alot disconnected. I feel that way, hence the reasoning.