I'm excited to see the forum moving to the next phase.

I like the new layout and many of the new features related to editing and version tracking for forum content.

When the new forum was announced, there was a lot of emphasis on what forum users needed to do to ensure that their content was migrated to the new system. While I'm personally happy to see that all of my content has been migrated, I was surprised to note the following:

• All posted content is attributed to Beta Community Content instead of the author who created it.

• Previous number of downloads to date is missing.

• The ratings for many of the posted items is different than what it was previously. If the displayed ratings are correct, perhaps a description of how these values were arrived at would help.

• How are the most popular items displayed on the main page selected?

Thanks for the reply.

Here is additional information related to your bullet points.

• All of my content was migrated to the new forum; however, all of it is attributed to Beta Community Content. When I received the instructions on how to prepare for the migration, I had a lot of problems trying to get my profile cleaned up. I contacted someone else from your group (Brian?) and we exchanged a few e-mails and I did as he instructed, so I thought everything was in order. Is there a way to correct these items to show that I contributed them? I checked the amount of content attributed to Beta Community Content and found that 241 out of the 291 total items in the community (83%) are attributed to that user, so it looks like this issue affects the majority of forum users.

• I had contributed a utility to track posted items under the old system (http://decibel.ni.com/content/docs/DOC-1239), so I have historical data on a few items (only three of which were rated). Of the three that were rated, all of them have different ratings under the new system:

http://decibel.ni.com/content/docs/DOC-1331 Was: 3.94 Now: 0

http://decibel.ni.com/content/docs/DOC-1062 Was: 3.93 Now: 2.83

http://decibel.ni.com/content/docs/DOC-1086 Was: 3.92 Now: 3

• I really hope that showing the number of downloads will be added back in quickly.

• It appears that a view is generated each time an item's page is requested from the server. I tested this and found that the view count for an item is updated each time a page is loaded or refreshed in a web browser. Knowing that, I really must say that in my opinion the view parameter should not be used to determine an item's popularity. This behavior could easily be manipulated to artificially increase an item's popularity rating and does not provide a true indication of an item's usefulness to forum users. An item could get a lot of views (legitimate or manipulated), have one great rating and no downloads, yet make it onto the most popular items list. In my opinion, that does not tell the full story. Personally, I view many items on the forum. If the write-up is compelling, I might download the item. Therefore, I believe that the number of downloads is a key parameter for judging the popularity of posted items. Also, I recall that there has been a lot of conversation on the boards regarding the rating system. Some users have questioned its validity and some have even suggested that the rating system be done away with altogether. In that light, I am surprised to hear that an item's rating is now one of the key parameters used to determine its popularity. My suggestion would be to select the most popular items based on number of downloads, and then rating in that order. Personally, I take several things into account when deciding whether to download a posted item - number of downloads, rating and comments (If 500 other users have downloaded the item (they can't all be wrong), it has a decent rating (if rated) and few negative comments (I believe that users are more likely to post negative comments on web forums), then I'm more likely to download it).

I appreciate your feedback.

Mark Ridgley

Continued from previous post:

The items listed  as the most popular items in the previous forum had thousands of downloads, so it is not apparent how the currently displayed items were selected. What is the "Views" parameter? Depending on what that is, I believe that the number of downloads provides a better indication of the amount of interest that a particular forum post is generating.

The What's New section from the previous forum was a nice feature because it provided a quick way to keep informed of the latest example code posted to the fourm.

I look forward to your response.

Thanks,

Mark Ridgley

It seems that the number of downloads is still available in a slightly different form

When you navigate to My Profile & Tools ->  Documents you get an overview of all your documents. One col contains the # of "Views". It seems that this col is not related to the number of http requests for the document its more related to the number of downloads of an attachement of this document.

Damn, you are absolutely right.

When I wait until the page is loaded completely (sorry,currently I have a very slow internet connection),  the count is incremented by 1.

Hi Jeffrey,

The editor seems to have some bugs. The formatting like the tabs, superscript, subscript do not work (Xⁿ) properly. Extra spaces which are introduced on purpose are also removed when we publish the doc. Can you guys fix this?

One more request, can you display the "#of downloads" of the examples/ ip instead of the "# of views"?

Thanks,

Vinay