New title for this Forum area?

I agree, it seems like folks see forum help and jump right here. There are plenty of posts that end up here but are not seen by the people who could help.

Absolutely, this needs to be worked on for sure!

how about. FORUM HELP ONLY NO MODELING QUESTIONS. or is that too subtle.

Be sure to say please on the second part ;)

I am in favor of the idea, but getting the right title will be hard.  I see the same thing in other forums. In almost any forum I see so many questions completely unrelated to the existing title.

I think some folks only want to hang in one forum.  I also wonder how folks get to the forum.  If they start with the "discussion forums" heading they will see the whole list.  But I think many folks find one forum they like, then bookmark or favorite that forum.  Then, if they do want to ask a question about another subject, they either do not know how to get to the other forums or do not realize the wide range of subjects FSM's forums cover.  There needs to be an introduction to forums that recommend looking at the whole list of forums before going to any single one.  Maybe an article or column  in FSM could address that.

many people today don't read or listen

Is this the right section for this sort of discussion? Wait, it actually is. Whewwww........

Really though, it won't matter what you call it. You're still going to get those that misuse the various sections. I don't know how the title for this one could be any clearer.

Community assistance/Forum Help sounds kind of generic to me. Not that I have thought of a better title for this forum, but the header is rather "catch all". Something like "site technical help" would be more appropriate... Technical assistance... Etc.

Won't matter.  Every forum I belong to has a similar area, and no matter what you do to name the section to indicate that it's for technical issues related to the forum, you will still get questions like "What's the best Bf-109 kit on the market today?"  Humans are humans, that's why.

Yeah they area... People can really make you shake your head in wonder of their actions at times...

I'll often contact an admin, though, too, and recommend a thread be moved to a more appropriate subforum, when I think of it.  Just looking at the recent threads/posts in this Community Help forum, I can see a couple that should go to the Painting forum, for example, and one on decaling that could go to the Decaling forum.

It's a never-ending task, to keep order in a forum like this.

Yes, keeping track of just this area to keep it in line could be an all day task for the moderator(s) here...

Kinda late on this thread but I think that's a good idea.  I suppose you could call it something like "Forum Use Assistance".    Or something like that.

What they need to do is put the "Feedback, Testing, and Help" section at the bottom of the page that lists all the subforums. That way the true modeling related subforums will show up at the top without needing to scroll down. Folks savvy enough to realize they have an actual computer/forum related issue are savvy enough to scroll down to find the correct subforum.

dirkpitt77

What they need to do is put the "Feedback, Testing, and Help" section at the bottom of the page that lists all the subforums. That way the true modeling related subforums will show up at the top without needing to scroll down. Folks savvy enough to realize they have an actual computer/forum related issue are savvy enough to scroll down to find the correct subforum.

Possibly.  But my IT and forum experience tells me that we'd just see an increase in posts in the modeling forums that start with, "I don't know if this is the right place, but has anyone else had a problem with posting photos/opening threads/finding your old posts...."

There seems to be an uptick in guys posting things here in the Community Assistance forum, that belong in other forums.  I wonder if there's a discernible cycle to the frequency, or if it's pretty much random.

I suspect that it is associated with new members and their not knowing the forum layout.

How about "Help about using Fine Scale Forums" ?

stikpusher

I suspect that it is associated with new members and their not knowing the forum layout.

True, Stik, and then it becomes a question of personality and experience.  I've learned when joining a new forum to look for FAQs or how-to's on how to use it.

There's probably a correlation here between how those of us who read the instructions first behave in a new forum, and those who just start building

Hooray! We have been heard!

http://cs.finescale.com/fsm/announcements/f/11/t/161892.aspx

I am not applauding too loudly. I don't think the new name is that much better than the old one.  It could be read as a forum for technical assistance, of any kind.  I think it needs to say specifically that it is help for USING the forum.

O come on Don. We have to get to some point where we are not wiping peoples backsides or spoon feeding them. It seems pretty clear to me, its for technical assistance on the forum. If people start asking about problems that are not related to the forum, then I would question whether they should even be using a computer.