A lot more questions, requests, and reports are being funneled to the renshuu forums (specifically, "Questions about renshuu", "Feature Requests/Improvements", "Bugs/Problems"). This is great, as I feel that roughly 60-80% of all posts can be handled without me needing to intervene at all (thanks to our amazing community).
However, these forums (which are close to 20 years old) have not changed since then, and I feel they are no longer manageable as is, so I'm looking to improve them (and would like some feedback).
Main points/concerns: 1. As noted, vast majority of posts are resolved without me. 2. No way to easily identify what posts need my attention. 3. Because these three forums are treated the same as the other discussion forums, there is a lack of organization regarding the contents.
My goal is to make it easier for me to get at what needs my attention, and let the community help itself when it can. This will let me spend more time focusing on fixes/features that help a larger group of people. It may not seem like much, but scanning forum messages each day to see where I'm needed takes up more time/energy than you'd think (and it's only going up).
A few thoughts that I've had: 1. A way to tag posts for better identification (posts could be self-tagged, but probably needs a way to crowdsource tags) 2. A way to get my attention (but with enough friction that I'm not called to every post) 3. A clearer policy on handling issues that are "left open" by the original poster.
Especially with #3 - this is a tricky one for me. I am plagued by a "want to implement/fix everything" mentality, but that's no longer feasible (and hasn't been for years), but I'm not sure how best to a)communicate that and b)organize it.
I do not think I want to blend in or implement a new system for bugs/feature requests, but I am willing to extend the forum functionality to include helpful tools.
Anyway, none of this is something I'll be able to implement sooner than later, but getting the conversation started now will help me better shape renshuu to be even more robust in the future.
For #2 It's probably easier to implement a feature that let's you know a certain question/problem has already been answered/resolved. You can let users mark their threads as "resolved" and have some sort of visual indicator that let's people know at a glance without having to read though the thread.
It's not a direct solution to #2 and can be folded into #1, but it should help you parse posts better.
Another idea is to give a few active users you trust the ability to tag you in posts they feel need your attention. This is probably better than a similar public system with a degree of friction and some sort of threshold.
The main issue with a system meant to get your attention is that some posts can easily slip through the cracks and if you get used to only looking at what's "tagged" you might miss them entirely.
That's why I think letting you know when you aren't needed might be more useful.
