Improving the Networking Forum

Hey everyone. I've been an avid reader and poster in the Networking forum since I joined HF in 2001. This has definately been my favorite forum to visit and I do so probably a dozen times a day.

This forum has proven to be a huge wealth of information. We have some great minds here and some of the nicest people I've ever met. We all contribute to "the greater good" and help each other out, which is the epitome of what a group on the internet is meant to do. I know I'm not the only one that feels this way, so that's what led me to make this post today.

While this forum is great, it is not perfect (as with many things). I think there are a few things that can be done to make this forum even better. I'm by no means an authority on networking technologies, but I enjoy it as a hobby and hopefully one day as a profession. I'm asking for the help of the regulars that visit here to group together and begin to make some changes. Someone, I believe one of the mods, made a suggestion thread in the beginning of the year and that was a first step. I still think more has to change.

The main thing that I think needs to happen is some more in-depth FAQs and articles, or links to them. There are a few subjects that I know I personally see dozens of (almost) identical topics a month.

• Wireless troubleshooting (mainly SP2)
• Anti-virus reviews/showdowns (home AND corporate)
• Equipment reviews/explanations/recommendations (mainly wireless routers, but also switches, servers, etc.)
• File sharing (Windows, Mac, and *nix)

I know that some of these are covered in the FAQ, but it must not be good enough because people still ask the same questions. I personally thing that some of the answers in the FAQ are enough, but they must not be apparent enough for the above reason. There are at least 9 threads on the front page of the forum, when this was written, that pertain to these subjects.

I want this thread to be a sounding board, similar to the thread that was started around new-years, for continuous improvement of the forum. What do you guys think would make it better?

I've been posting here for some time. While the wealth of information is high among the users here that same information is generally hard to come by. I've noticed a major trend among almost all technical-based forums. After some time the forums hit a point where the same questions are asked over and over again. Here's a few examples:

1) What's the best AV?
2) What's the best NIC?
3) What's the best spyware blocker?
4) What the best .......?
5) My system is trashed, what virus did I get this time browsing porn sites? I thought my ultraleet virus protection would save me.
6) I need some tips on upping my 3DMark's to beat out my friend. I just need 2 points and women will think I'm the leetest!

Yeah.. the sarcasm is thick. These days I find it easy to narrow down information-rich threads just by how the subject line is stated - and as of right now in the networking forum - only 1 thread on the main page contains 'decent' information.

I am one of the newer posters in this forum, however, I have an idea.

I think it would be great if when people saw a good article or news tidbit on other network/security sites they post a link to it so everyone can read and then the read can be basically a discussion of whatever the news/article was about and peoples opinions. I think it would be both entertaining and educational for most of us to see this happen. I just came up with this idea while reading this thread so it is anything but perfect, but what do you think?

Do you think a separate, "sister" site with just links and how-to's would be appropriate, or would it be overkill?

We can only do so much as far as FAQs are concerned. People will either read them or we won't, so I don't know if a separate site would be much better.

I'd like to get more input on this. Thanks!

I think the problem is Google. It is becoming the Wal-Mart of the internet as far as where to find information. Alot of answers for me have just been a google search away and posting in forums to wait for a reply just...well takes to long sometimes. So lets develope a strategy to overcome the strengths of Google.

shade is pretty on with his assessment. This forum contains a lot of really basic questions. You can google to find in-depth reviews on tons of stuff (AV software, NICs, switches, bla bla bla), AV vendors often times have walk-throughs on how to remove infections, vendors like outpost and newegg usually can sort by the best selling products and display a user rating and user reviews. Take everything on the net with a grain of salt, people are partial to products and you probably get the same amount of fluff out of those reviews as you'd get here.

The problem with this forum I dont think is a lack of commonly seeked information being readily avaiable, it's a lack of common sense by a lot of the posters. Regardless of what you stick in a FAQ, most people arent going to read it. You're always going to get "OMG My computer is being hacked by a port scan! HELP ME!" even if you have a thread stickied that says "If you are being port scanned, READ THIS FIRST!" as the first post on the board. People just need to learn to use google, read FAQ's (the FAQ should be updated, but it wont do much good likely), use the search feature and save posts on the message board for those complex problems, or questions that need expert advice...such as evaluating a complex network diagram or security deployment.

What would be nice is some kind of feature like Cisco's online TAC Case Open tool has. When you submit a case, it takes keywords out of it and searches it's case collection for them and returns you with a set of possible solutions before you submit and open the case. If we could somehow make the forum pull keywords out of posts before they are posted, and search both the forum database for posts just like it or search google, I think it would cut down on the amount of constantly regurgitated information tremendously by basically forcing the poster to search for their problem before they post. But a feature like that is probably pretty hard to implement.

My $.02.

Well I hate to say it, but those are great ideas but I don't think we'll be able to do anything that modifies the forum. The Networking forum doesn't have as much "pull" as some of the others, and those features would need some pretty intense VB hacking.

I'll post some more thoughts once I get off work.

shyne said:

I am one of the newer posters in this forum, however, I have an idea.

I think it would be great if when people saw a good article or news tidbit on other network/security sites they post a link to it so everyone can read and then the read can be basically a discussion of whatever the news/article was about and peoples opinions. I think it would be both entertaining and educational for most of us to see this happen. I just came up with this idea while reading this thread so it is anything but perfect, but what do you think?

Click to expand...

I would personally request that we not make the forum a link site, there are many other places that do that job already. If there is a need for resources to read on a hourly/daily/weekly/monthly basis that would be a great FAQ section but not as a primary focus.

Most of this comes down to will people use the resources that are available to them or just take the path of least resistance and post a question expecting others to do the leg work for them. No matter what FAQs are available it will require the modification of people's behavior to change the forum. It's a downside of being popular online.

We've looked into this before, and the simplest answer is to just add the links to the FAQs. At that point it becomes a matter of "you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink". To remedy this, whenever someone posts a question that has been asked a hundred times and/or is already covered in the FAQ, you simply need to refer them to the Search function, or show them how to read the FAQ.

I'd love to get some community created content going, like the things you mentioned, but I've already contacted some of the key players here about such a thing and its just not feasible at this point in time. If you would like to get the ball rolling, by all means go for it. Best of luck and all, but don't expect an aweful lot of help on it right now. The best time for such things is after school finishes in the spring when people have more free time on their hands.