How can DiyDrones surpass RcGroups!?

To the Diy Drones Community from Joshua Johnson:

Which proposed improvements do you like? Which ones do you dislike? Do you have your own ideas on improvements that would put Diy Drones ahead of Rc Groups and add more resources for the community? Please share and collaborate this is a perfect time for the community to help shape and evolve this community in something even better!!!!

My List of Proposed Improvements for DiyDrones.com:

Change background to black to fit in with the top banner and make the website more appealing but keep the very bottom of the website that displays the copyrights, who created the website, etc just a plain background. Editing the color text scheme so that links don't get lost will take 30-60 mins to fully sift through. )
Add eye catching content to the home page like the High Tech Revolving Visitor globe that I embedded into the Diy Drones News Center! (Members will have access to website statistics to use for personal and business purposes)
Add a Poll Center page and HTML embed a 3rd Party polling encoder to allow the community to vote on key issues and hot topics ( Maintain this section constantly adding new polls that the community will find useful and interesting at the same time )
Instead of Video's add a Menu called: Diy Drones and the Drop down menu should include Options such as: Facebook(Linking members to the Diy Drones Facebook), Twitter (Linking members to the Diy Drones Twitter), News(Linking people to the Diy Drones News center I created), Groups(All Groups Link), And Rules(The Diy Drones Website Rules).
Setup schedule to change 100 photo carousel (Same Day each month) at the top of the home page with 100 new photos and maybe even set up a contest where we take a poll and embed in a Diy Drones Poll Center and allow the community to vote on a winner and the winner each month will receive a prize based on the highest number of votes
Video's and Photos should be pulled off the menu list and put into the Members drop down menu. Also the Members Drop down menu could be decked out with tons of features that can assist the members in different ways of engaging ( Could be links to the Diy Drones Skype Chat Group, an IRC Chat could have its own page and link in the members drop down menu which won't cause any lag for the website and will allow members alternative ways to engage. )
Change Store to 3DR Store ( When someone is brand new to a website and they click on store to check out products getting sent to a different website usually makes people uncomfortable or people sometimes assume they got sent to a fraudulent website so changing the name to 3DR Store will give people a pre warning on where you intend on sending them )
Getting Started Menu should be renamed For Beginners and should include like 10-15 drop down options ( This drop down menu should include a link to the website currently being developed by a Diy Drones Member that is map based that allows people to implement their local legislation's and laws concerning drones to a map. Also links to websites like the Academy of Model Aeronautics and any other useful Diy Drones or non Diy Drones pages that beginners would find useful )
Forum drop down menu could have some important forum topics added and changed each month of discussions that the community deems important ( If something like the 3DR IRIS is a hot top that month create a page or link a current page to a new drop down menu option under Forum )
Blogs Drop down menu should be the same thing as the Forum with links directly to important Blogs that are still hot topics or are of importance to the community ( Use this drop down menu to showcase the top blogs/news of the month that members would deem important. This could be updated weekly or monthly. )
ArduPlane, ArduCopter, and ArduRover drop down menus should all be jam packed with useful links to pages, discussions, blogs, or website pages that are important or pertain to these menu subjects. ( The drop down menus could have minor schedule updating by a member of the Diy Drones Team with new links that members would deem important. )
MyPage drop down menu could include links to MyGroups, MyFriends, MyDiscussions, MyBlogs, Etc

Generally speaking, the 'internet forum' layout is clunky and obsolete... Threads can quickly & easily get sidetracked and out of control, they grow insanely large, and the content (and its quality) change ( & conflict) rapidly as the thread progresses. There's no structure to contain a forum thread, no closure, no clear resolution, no evaluation of its quality, so it can become just a winding, messy stream of info with no clear definition. There are no indexes, bookmarks, or 'landmarks', other than those that some users try to implement themselves as a makeshift form of thread indexing/navigation.The only way to make sense of it is by reading through all or most of it, which is extremely inefficient and a huge waste of time.

Just take a look at the 800+ page 'threads' that exist on RCG; its ridiculous and just plain retarded IMHO. Forum searches for a specific topic are near useless with such a scattered mess of data. You really have to dedicate yourself to being a 'forum troll' that sits around & invests massive amounts of time and energy into keeping track of & filtering through a constant stream of changing info. If you're looking for a quick answer to a question/solution to a problem/advice on a specific item, you'll be SOL unless you have a weekend to kill in order to scour the forum for the best-fit answer (good luck with that).

And, to top it off, people get really pissed off when you end up redundantly asking a question or starting a thread about a subject that's been previously discussed... You'll get the cliche "hey NOOB!, that topic has already been covered a thousand times before here on the forums! learn how to do a forum search...", even though the information that you're seeking is actually buried on page #736 of some obscure forum thread from like two years ago, and there's no way in hell that a forum search would ever lead you the nugget of information that you're after....

Forums were fine in the 90's for people looking to randomly chatter, flame each other, or exchange feedback on misc. topics, but there are better formats in today's world, or at least improvements on the old-fashioned forum layout.

Over @RCG, there are a ton of 'old dudes' with lots of time on there hands that seem to enjoy spending their weekends reading through & piling onto the massive jumbled stack of info. These are the true 'forum gurus/librarians' that can quickly drop a link to some random thread that will reference whatever subject you're interested in (even though your own searches will turn up zilch).

I would think that most people come to DIY looking for answers to specific problems, quick advice on how to do 'xyz', examples/inspiration based on other users' layouts/accomplishments, and all of this mostly related to the APM family of hardware/software. As a side bonus, you might get a kick out of reading some drone/UAV-related article, but the main focus is on APM/3DR stuff.

For problem solving & advice, nothing beats the 'stack exchange/ stack overflow' structure. It's pretty damn awesome, because its compact, specific, and the quality of the solutions can evolve over time based on user rating & feedback... The answer to 'whats the best ESC for a 1kg hex?' will be quick, concise, reliable, and always up-to-date...

If DIY were to implement something like this, it would blow RCG away...

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Comments

Joshua Johnson November 11, 2013 at 2:43am

It would essence be a human powered search engine because I pre-program it to show certain articles,blogs,discussion, etc that pertain to certain questions or keywords. This search engine could be just DiyDrones based or could also be Multi Website based were I pull articles from both RCG and DiyDrones. Like the idea?
Joshua Johnson November 11, 2013 at 2:39am

I could build a search engine from scratch that does exactly that but it would take me weeks to set up and 20+ hours each week to maintain...
p.r. November 10, 2013 at 6:44pm

Generally speaking, the 'internet forum' layout is clunky and obsolete... Threads can quickly & easily get sidetracked and out of control, they grow insanely large, and the content (and its quality) change ( & conflict) rapidly as the thread progresses. There's no structure to contain a forum thread, no closure, no clear resolution, no evaluation of its quality, so it can become just a winding, messy stream of info with no clear definition. There are no indexes, bookmarks, or 'landmarks', other than those that some users try to implement themselves as a makeshift form of thread indexing/navigation.The only way to make sense of it is by reading through all or most of it, which is extremely inefficient and a huge waste of time.

Just take a look at the 800+ page 'threads' that exist on RCG; its ridiculous and just plain retarded IMHO. Forum searches for a specific topic are near useless with such a scattered mess of data. You really have to dedicate yourself to being a 'forum troll' that sits around & invests massive amounts of time and energy into keeping track of & filtering through a constant stream of changing info. If you're looking for a quick answer to a question/solution to a problem/advice on a specific item, you'll be SOL unless you have a weekend to kill in order to scour the forum for the best-fit answer (good luck with that).

And, to top it off, people get really pissed off when you end up redundantly asking a question or starting a thread about a subject that's been previously discussed... You'll get the cliche "hey NOOB!, that topic has already been covered a thousand times before here on the forums! learn how to do a forum search...", even though the information that you're seeking is actually buried on page #736 of some obscure forum thread from like two years ago, and there's no way in hell that a forum search would ever lead you the nugget of information that you're after....

Forums were fine in the 90's for people looking to randomly chatter, flame each other, or exchange feedback on misc. topics, but there are better formats in today's world, or at least improvements on the old-fashioned forum layout.

Over @RCG, there are a ton of 'old dudes' with lots of time on there hands that seem to enjoy spending their weekends reading through & piling onto the massive jumbled stack of info. These are the true 'forum gurus/librarians' that can quickly drop a link to some random thread that will reference whatever subject you're interested in (even though your own searches will turn up zilch).

I would think that most people come to DIY looking for answers to specific problems, quick advice on how to do 'xyz', examples/inspiration based on other users' layouts/accomplishments, and all of this mostly related to the APM family of hardware/software. As a side bonus, you might get a kick out of reading some drone/UAV-related article, but the main focus is on APM/3DR stuff.

For problem solving & advice, nothing beats the 'stack exchange/ stack overflow' structure. It's pretty damn awesome, because its compact, specific, and the quality of the solutions can evolve over time based on user rating & feedback... The answer to 'whats the best ESC for a 1kg hex?' will be quick, concise, reliable, and always up-to-date...

If DIY were to implement something like this, it would blow RCG away...
Admin

Thomas J Coyle III November 9, 2013 at 5:23am

@BkSeatFlyr,

Many of your observations will be incorporated into the website once we move to NING 3.0. We are trying for a profession, polished website with international appeal that will address the future UAS environment from both development and legal perspectives.

Regards,

TCIII Admin
BkSeatFlyr November 9, 2013 at 5:10am

Hi folks,

Bill Patterson,

Thanks for that link. I didn't know about the new forum, I'm sure many don't. I had a look, read the forum rules & signed up.

Turns out its a 3DR product technical support forum, not a general AV news/discussion forum, not a replacement for Diy Drones. As word filters through it should remove all the "My Arduxxx is not working, Help" & "How do I tune my xxxx params" posts & allow this forum to adopt more of a general AV community focus. It's phpBB powered to.

Joshua Johnson,

Forget the whole surpass RCG's deadend. Compairing RC with autonomus controll is like compairing apples with truffels.

Both sights have there strengths & weaknesses. As a fixedwing guy I go to RCG's exploring aeronautics, I come here to explore controll hardware, software & communications.

Diy Drones Guys,

This sites only real hangup is the search engine. If I wish to reread something from a fortnight ago its quicker to search in my browser history than here. Other than this I like the site, find it authoritative, no bull, no blowing trumpets. But having said that, I tend to come in search of specific information & am not bothered by stale top content etc.

So I,m with Chris Card, this site needs a proper search engine & please (sorry Joshua Johnson) no animated distractions or videos that self start on site/page entry.

Regards.....Bak
Joshua Johnson November 7, 2013 at 9:35pm

@Chris, Try my forum search engine for Diy Drones on my website DiyDronesNews.com It works pretty good if you set it to search by date.
Chris Card November 7, 2013 at 8:12pm

This site needs a proper search engine. There is a lot of useful content that is not accessible because the current search engine returns unusable results.
Bill Patterson November 3, 2013 at 4:48am

I don't know what this topic is about. This forum (ning) has been replaced (thank god!) here:

http://ardupilot.com/forum/

What this forum needs is to be shut down so people stop using it and start using the new. It may not be "official" yet though, not sure.
Developer

Bill Bonney November 2, 2013 at 8:02pm

you mean http://diydrones.com/forum & http://diydrones.com/forum/topic/list which are linked on the forum tab above. The issue is discovery. Maybe the forum tab above could have an extra entry http://diydrones.com/forum/topic/list which is topics by activity, not just by category. (it's a revolving gismo)
not2fast November 2, 2013 at 7:30pm

Revolving globe to attract our attention? Really? That's what we need to look past is a revolving or blinking gismo. You don't need to attract our attention, we're her already.

A real menu like RCGroups so it's actually possible to find something on DIY. Right now the "top stories" are up for months! Does that say there are no new threads?

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