Clean up old stickies in forums

[ilferrari]

It's tiresome having to scroll past pages of announcement topics stuck to the top of every forum, many of which are very old and no longer important. Can you clean some of these up please? Thanks

examples:

http://forum.mikroe.com/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=9330
http://forum.mikroe.com/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=9025
http://forum.mikroe.com/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=19765
http://forum.mikroe.com/viewtopic.php?f=164&t=53379
http://forum.mikroe.com/viewtopic.php?f=164&t=55689

etc

[trevor]

I was just about to request the same thing! It's bad enough on the first page of a forum, but it carries over onto the top of every page

[checker]

Yeah, really annoying but I don't expect it will ever be fixed because their idea of important info is different than ours, I would like to see all sticky posts in a separate thread but as all forum mods in nearly every forum I have ever been member of they think everything is important and should never be moved/removed for any reason ever. Like a good shirt, if 'I' think it still fits why change it.

[anikolic]

It's tiresome having to scroll past pages of announcement topics stuck to the top of every forum, many of which are very old and no longer important. Can you clean some of these up please? Thanks

examples:

http://forum.mikroe.com/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=9330
http://forum.mikroe.com/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=9025
http://forum.mikroe.com/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=19765
http://forum.mikroe.com/viewtopic.php?f=164&t=53379
http://forum.mikroe.com/viewtopic.php?f=164&t=55689

etc

Thanks ilferrari for pointing this out. It really was crowded with old announcements and stickies.
I've converted most of the old ones, but if I missed something, please just share links, and I will convert those topics to normal as well.
I've also created new forums for Timer Calculator, CANculator and mikroBootloader.

Thanks for making our Forum a cleaner place!

Best regards,
Aleksandar

[trevor]

It really was crowded with old announcements and stickies.
I've converted most of the old ones, but if I missed something, please just share links, and I will convert those topics to normal as well.
I've also created new forums for Timer Calculator, CANculator and mikroBootloader.

Thanks! That makes life much easier

Here are a few old "stickies" in the mikroPascal Pro for PIC forum that need "unsticking":
o http://forum.mikroe.com/viewtopic.php?f=93&t=20424 (from 2009)
o http://forum.mikroe.com/viewtopic.php?f=93&t=20073 (from 2013)
o http://forum.mikroe.com/viewtopic.php?f=93&t=30166 (from 2011 - author said he could not delete)

Thanks again!

[anikolic]

Thanks trevor and - done!

Best regards,
Aleksandar

[trevor]

Thank You!

[ilferrari]

Hi Alexsander, thanks alot for listening to users and responding, it's better now.

A smaller suggestion I would make is to move ARM higher up the forum list, since it is far more active than forums like 8051 or AVR today.

[anikolic]

move ARM higher up the forum list, since it is far more active than forums like 8051 or AVR today.

I've just ordered the mikroC Forums based on their posts count, and turned out that mikroC PRO for ARM forums are second only to PIC. So you had a good point, once again, thanks for suggestions.

For the sake of consistency, I've arranged mikroBasic and mikroPascal forums the same way as mikroC. However, situation there is not the same, so ARM is a bit privileged now in Basic in Pascal. Hope this will not be offensive to users of other architectures.

Best regards,
Aleksandar

[ilferrari]

Hi Aleksandar, thanks again for listening.

Something else I would suggest - all the "Beta Testing" subforums are not being used - there has been nothing about beta testing posted in them for years, just occasional posts made in the wrong forum.

[janni]

Wouldn't it be better to return to the practice of beta releases, than to remove the beta testing forums?

Some of last compiler updates, even as marginal as they were, brought bugs that users had (or still have) to live with till next update. Beta releases would undoubtedly help to remove some of these bugs before final release.

[anikolic]

Wouldn't it be better to return to the practice of beta releases, than to remove the beta testing forums?

Some of last compiler updates, even as marginal as they were, brought bugs that users had (or still have) to live with till next update. Beta releases would undoubtedly help to remove some of these bugs before final release.

Hello Janni,

This sure is a good point.

For the sake of others, let me give you a brief history behind the decision to stop with Beta releases:

Effort to have beta releases before the final ones became significant as number of compilers grew. After we introduced PIC32, ARM and FT90x compilers we ended up maintaining 21 compilers in total. If we want to have at least 2 releases per year, that means 21 x 2 = 42 releases. We go double that (84) if we do beta releases prior to official ones.

You may argue that we in fact release all three compilers at the same time, but don't forget that behind that process is a serious work so it's not one release but three releases for us, just coinciding in the same moment. We have indeed slowed down releasing click board examples for Basic and Pascal, but those compilers are still maintained regularly and we invest our resources in them.

This means that we would have a release every week, or every other week. This involves a lot of testing and preparation, as process is time-demanding. We ended up sacrificing Beta releases for the sake of increased dynamics.

But let's put all of this aside. Your argument is valid, and we need to find a mechanism that works where community can actively help in getting the compilers in better shape with each new release. We need some sort of continuous integration, quicker updates. There are things which can be addressed asynchronously, like bugs or improvements in the libraries.

DISCLAIMER: I'm stepping outside of my jurisdiction here, as this topic is for our software department, so consider my participation here as a healthy brainstorming, without any official commitments, for now.

Best regards,
Aleksandar

[trevor]

@anikolic

Your candour, and action, is appreciated. If nothing else, it encourages the belief that someone is actually listening.

[janni]

Hello Aleksandar,

Sorry for late response, but the forum notification stopped working for me some time ago and I had no inkling about your post. (Finally I cleared all 50 pages of old Watched topics in my User panel and changed email address and the notification engine seems to be working again - more or less.)

In the spirit of healthy brainstorming that doesn't change things a bit - I've heard the argument about statistics before and can't say it convinced me. First, it does not defend mE against the charge of overextending itself in releasing so many compilers without sufficient resources, and second, it suggests meaningful updates for all compilers, which was certainly not the case for last two years. (Not that the beta releases died so recently .)

Having said that, as trevor, I appreciate your friendly tone and willingness to improve things, whether any changes are within your power or not. It only saddens me that we wait for new releases with dread rather than anticipation nowadays.

[ilferrari]

I'm stepping outside of my jurisdiction here, as this topic is for our software department, so consider my participation here as a healthy brainstorming, without any official commitments, for now.

Hi, just wondering if there was any decision on this? It's been several years since beta releases, and there are currently no plans to go back to them, so at this moment there is no reason for the forums. The forums can always be restored if there is a future decision to go back to beta releases.