My thought is about stickies. I find info based stickies that get to be pages long, full of questions about the subject, tend to make it hard to sift out the facts. So, if someone writes a thread about, oh say washing micro fiber towels, that after it is stuck, it gets locked. The author can always edit it, and if there are questions, then folks can either find a thread on the subject, or start a new one. Thoughts on this anyone. Mark
Mark, We have a very nice Library system for that... There is a Detailing area in that Library too. It's also indexed and searchable See the dropdown up there ^ that says Library New submissions are moderated by Steve and Ryephile, the Library moderators, to make sure it is of good quality, the typos are fixed and is somewhat factually correct.
Another potentially good option is to have both. I've seen long (and years old) threads where the OP will scour new posts and add good new info all the time to post #1, and that can help a lot, but the option I'm suggesting is for someone knowledgeable to write the basics of an informative article and start a forum thread at the same time, cross-linking the two. If the thread is a good one, it can be stickied (or not) and discussion can run for pages in the thread. The author/OP then takes the best stuff and edits his article from time to time, adding links to source posts, etc. Does that sound cumbersome? It might be.....I haven't done it yet.....but it seems like we'd get the best of both worlds that way. An article with good information culled from good discussion but not cluttered with pages of less useful posts + a thread where all the helpful discussion can go on as it may. Again, just a suggestion. We'll have sticky discussion threads here anyway, but this way we get a growing and useful reference library as well.
Steve, that was what I was thinking about also. The OP can always go back and edit the stickie/library thread, and the open thread/threads on the topic has all the discussion. We detailers can be long winded, and babble on:rolleyes5::lol: Mark
Keep in mind that a Library article is not a thread per se, since you can't post replies (which is part of the beauty of the idea).....thus the cross-linking suggestion. If anyone wants more info on using the Library this way, please contact me. I think it's pretty self-explanatory since articles work much like long posts, but there are a few differences and I'm happy to help out. I'll be doing the same thing with my Gen1 Justacooper exhaust compilation article and a companion thread as soon as I have the article ready to go.
Steve that is the beauty of the library, no replies I did have one thought for a stickie for this forum though. One for all the abbreviations we tend to use. Help the newcomers figure out what we a babbling about. Mark
Great idea; well done! I'll think about a mass abbreviations/acronyms and/or even a glossary list as a Library article in the future as well.....hard to say whether it makes more sense to have a bunch of separate lists or one consolidated list.....or maybe both.
I thought of suggesting one consolidated one, but it would be huge, and would need to be broken down into categories I think. But both would work, let all the different forums come up with their own, then add them to the main library one. Mark
Yes, it would be huge but.... It can broken up by pages and each page for a different area. In the top right of each page there is mini table of contents so one can jump to the area they need. I'll make a mock up and post the link. Link Look at the Detailing Acronyms page too.... table goodness mmmmmmm tables
I would like to suggest than any library/sticky articles that incorporate pictures be required to use pictures hosted on MA. It's not fun reading articles that have broken Photobucket icons everywhere and really destroys them. I realize that would mean my writeup photos would need to be hosted on MA and relinked..it would be a pain, but I would do it for the sake of the community. Richard
Before you get started Richard let me get the new gallery in place. I'm not at all happy with the current software and am moving to something else. (This will not effect anything currently in the Gallery)
Also, I'm sure you know we loaded some of your articles into the Library. All the photos in those articles are already hosted on MA.
The only drawback is I didn't have all of your original files to work with so a few may be a bit less than optimal. If you're ever clicking through any of your articles and notice a pic or two that you can improve on, let me know and we'll take care of it.
Cool will do! I know I had a typo in one of my Brake articles that was in the image...if you are referring to that.:mad2: