We All Need To Work As A Team And A Family And Fix This.
idbruce
Posts: 6,197
First off, let me say that this thread in intended to be constructive, not destructive.
I would imagine that many members like me, have taken a back seat to all the changes thrust upon us, with forum participation declining and many of the familiar, knowledgeable faces rarely posting. This forum was once a flurry of activity and interesting discussion. I miss those good ole days and I would like to see them return. It is time to start mending fences, so that we may get our new house back in order. The style and format of the forum is not the problem, but I would guess the biggest problem facing the forum is criticism and egos, and this applies to all involved parties. Even constructive criticism can put the recipient on a defensive.
As I see it, there are many apologies to be made from both forum members and Parallax, so that the healing may begin. As for me personally, I regret every feud I ever had on this forum and I wish those disagreements had never happened. Instead of naming individuals, I would just like to publicly apologize to anyone I ever argued with and I hope you can accept my apology, because I am being sincere.
I cannot speak for anyone but me, but this place will never be the same without Beau Schwabe, Phil Pilgrim, JonnyMac, Mike Green, kuroneko, clusso99, Leon, etc.... The participation by these members are slowly fading and I believe a lot of this has to do with appreciation for their help and support. Over the years, these people, as well as many others who are not mentioned, have provided countless hours of support, for the less knowledgeable. If we lose these members, the infrastructure to this forum will be severely damaged. Please take a moment to thank all these wonderful people, to show them that they are still wanted and needed in this forum.
As an observation, I realize, just as in the real world, there must be law and order within the forum, but I do believe that moderation within this forum is becoming excessive, almost to the point to where I am afraid to express my point of view, for the fear of the thread being locked, sunk, or being reprimanded by Parallax. In my opinion, this place was much more interesting, when ideas were and opinions were expressed more freely.
Over the years, I have always said that "Content is King". This forum needs more content to get us rolling forward again. If you have an ongoing project, then tell us all about it. Don't be shy, give us photos, give us source code, give us links. Additionally, we need more contests.
Just my two cents
I would imagine that many members like me, have taken a back seat to all the changes thrust upon us, with forum participation declining and many of the familiar, knowledgeable faces rarely posting. This forum was once a flurry of activity and interesting discussion. I miss those good ole days and I would like to see them return. It is time to start mending fences, so that we may get our new house back in order. The style and format of the forum is not the problem, but I would guess the biggest problem facing the forum is criticism and egos, and this applies to all involved parties. Even constructive criticism can put the recipient on a defensive.
As I see it, there are many apologies to be made from both forum members and Parallax, so that the healing may begin. As for me personally, I regret every feud I ever had on this forum and I wish those disagreements had never happened. Instead of naming individuals, I would just like to publicly apologize to anyone I ever argued with and I hope you can accept my apology, because I am being sincere.
I cannot speak for anyone but me, but this place will never be the same without Beau Schwabe, Phil Pilgrim, JonnyMac, Mike Green, kuroneko, clusso99, Leon, etc.... The participation by these members are slowly fading and I believe a lot of this has to do with appreciation for their help and support. Over the years, these people, as well as many others who are not mentioned, have provided countless hours of support, for the less knowledgeable. If we lose these members, the infrastructure to this forum will be severely damaged. Please take a moment to thank all these wonderful people, to show them that they are still wanted and needed in this forum.
As an observation, I realize, just as in the real world, there must be law and order within the forum, but I do believe that moderation within this forum is becoming excessive, almost to the point to where I am afraid to express my point of view, for the fear of the thread being locked, sunk, or being reprimanded by Parallax. In my opinion, this place was much more interesting, when ideas were and opinions were expressed more freely.
Over the years, I have always said that "Content is King". This forum needs more content to get us rolling forward again. If you have an ongoing project, then tell us all about it. Don't be shy, give us photos, give us source code, give us links. Additionally, we need more contests.
Just my two cents
Comments
Many of the names you've mentioned are making great contributions in the Propeller 2 forum. A few others are involved in the new Activity Board WiFi downloading software as well. They're still "investing" in the future of Parallax, just a different focus for now, certainly not really fading.
I disagree about moderation. It's very impressive to watch the self-moderation among the "old hands" in the Propeller 2 forum. Things are said respectfully and mostly kept on topic. Moderation here is mostly about respect, every once in a while about language. I can't speak for the other moderators, but I take guidance from the Graceys who are really nice people.
Thanks for your comments. There are all sorts of members of these forums (fora?). Some have questions. Some are proud of their projects and want to share. Some would like to have projects and need some advice on getting started. Some are experienced and enjoy sharing their knowledge.
Have a private discussion with Ken or one of the education folks about contests. I'm sure they have some general ideas about what works for Parallax.
Go to go to work ... have a great day!
It's a busy time for a lot of people. Activity is down, but it won't stay down. For me personally, that's for sure true. It has nothing to do with whatever friction may be here, and I'll bet that's true for most of us.
The forum change is resolving just fine. Most of us will get to a point where we value the dialog more than our particular UI sensibilities and Parallax will get the more important use cases working well for us. Things will be fine.
IMHO, the new FPGA boards and the Propeller 2 FPGA project about to kick off again will bring the activity level up.
I agree with you on contests. Have that conversation Mike suggested. And, take my advice, and think it through so you don't have a dud like mine ended up being.
What have you got going on right now? Sometimes that dialog takes interesting turns.
For me it is. I can no longer quickly scan the latest activity like I used to, or like I can on literally every other forum I visit. So much wasted screen space. It takes far longer now for me to look through posts to find what interests me. The meat of the forum is compressed into this narrow stripe down the center of the screen and I don't know how to change it to work better with my brain.
The Parallax forum used to be my most visited web page, by far. Now, I rarely come here - has nothing to do with anything except the style and format.
My guess is that things will improve in the Fall when the weather gets crappy, kids are back in school, and doing stuff indoors seems more attractive.
-Phil
Frankly, it doesn't matter to me now what Parallax does with the forum theme. There's bound to be some small thing about it that I won't like. But if I can fix it on the client end to please my own tastes, there's really nothing for me to complain about, is there?.
-Phil
Can you give us a screen shot of what "your" forum looks like with this Stylish program. And maybe a tutorial on how to install it and what the best tweaks are?
Thanks.
That's a 50% reduction from my full screen size. Here's the Stylish stuff:
@namespace url(http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml);
@-moz-document domain("forums.parallax.com") {
#Body > div {
max-width: inherit !important;
background-color: #f0f0f0 !important
}
a {text-decoration: underline !important}
}
-Phil
Thanks. I'll give that a try. Looks like you're using FireFox. Does it work with IE11? (if you know)
-Phil
I'm looking forward to the day the vanilla parallex forum has proper 'Read Unread Posts' support, that'll make it much easier to use the forum the way I did before. Because now I have to go through several pages to hunt for unread threads, and I bet that's part of why people don't follow as many threads as before. Look at the few visible ones on the first page, mark everything viewed (if even bothering with that), leave.
From what I see, forum usage has dropped a little since the upgrade, but I do not believe that it has dropped too significantly.
To me it appears to be more of a trend over time. Several years ago, there was a time when members were posting all kinds of content. There were always questions and the forums were filled with various ongoing projects, and this place was very, very interesting. Those days are only memories of the past now.
I suppose the only way to gain a true insight into this downward trend, would be to survey discontent and lost members. To be perfectly honest, I am very surprised that Parallax does not maintain various surveys within the forums, just to monitor the pulse of customer and member relations. To me, that would be an indispensable marketing tool.
The slowdown happened before the forum upgrade, so yes, it's not only a Vanilla thing. But it may be because so many of the Propeller 1 (and Stamp) avenues and possibilities have been explored already, combined with the wait for the P2: Everything goes into idle for a while.
To me it appears to be more of a trend over time. Several years ago, there was a time when members were posting all kinds of content. There were always questions and the forums were filled with various ongoing projects, and this place was very, very interesting. Those days are only memories of the past now.
I suppose the only way to gain a true insight into this downward trend, would be to survey discontent and lost members. To be perfectly honest, I am very surprised that Parallax does not maintain various surveys within the forums, just to monitor the pulse of customer and member relations. To me, that would be an indispensable marketing tool.
I've made this remark a few times over the last couple of years, ever since the P2 threads I think in fact and also the P1V too. I know it has taken away a lot of people, time and talent which despite the excitement has lead many to disappointment with some ending up looking to other processors. Even now it astounds me that so much time is being spent on all kinds of P1Vs which I would not even consider for a real project, maybe an esoteric one, but not day to day as there are much simpler solutions outside of Parallax for this kind of thing. But I do understand the academic interest/curiosity in these, I just don't have a lot of time left over to play with it what with actually using and developing projects with the P1.
There are many that use the P1 day to day in real projects like yourself that could however contribute a little more *but* that leads me to the other reason why the forum appears to be in the doldrums, the fact that we have had the official push from Parallax to back C in general and the need for (many) IDEs and compiler support and libraries that are required for it. I myself have not stuck to Spin/PASM due to limitations of performance and memory whereas I perceive that the "Spin-off"
I'm not trying to stir up any camps, I'm just making observations, but in saying that I realize that we do have "many camps" rather than the good ol' Parallax camp-fire that we all used to sit around, toasting our marshmallow projects and telling stories or listening in awe and wonderment. Even Chip has left that one a long time ago while he brews up the next best thing. In the meantime someone has to keep the embers burning with what non-FPGA firewood we can rustle up before we all freeze to death.
I must say that you have brought up several possibilities, but the shift to C could be the culprit. If I remember correctly, first there was the desire to polish up the objects in the OBEX, followed by a complete U-turn, with a big push for C, and followed further by you know.....
While I prefer C myself, it certainly isn't for everyone, and can be quite difficult for some people to grasp. SPIN appeared to be a good entry level language for those interested in uC's, and perhaps there should be more effort put back into SPIN, while maintaining growth in C. However, there no longer seems to be a big push in either of these areas, and I am sure you have your own belief as to the cause, but I would surmise there is a lack of resources, as well as a lack of incentive.
I just wonder how much effort Parallax has put into monitoring these changes. From my perspective, I would certainly inspect the ever changing business model of Parallax and compare it against forum participation over time, to get an insight into what exactly happened.
While I prefer C myself, it certainly isn't for everyone, and can be quite difficult for some people to grasp. SPIN appeared to be a good entry level language for those interested in uC's, and perhaps there should be more effort put back into SPIN, while maintaining growth in C. However, there no longer seems to be a big push in either of these areas, and I am sure you have your own belief as to the cause, but I would surmise there is a lack of resources, as well as a lack of incentive.
I just wonder how much effort Parallax has put into monitoring these changes. From my perspective, I would certainly inspect the ever changing business model of Parallax and compare it against forum participation over time, to get an insight into what exactly happened.
Bruce,
There probably is no longer a push on SPIN as it is a matured product, gosh it's been out 10 years!
I would think Parallax is monitoring the whole C push via feedback from the educators, whom normally do not show up on the forum, but rather report directly back to the education dept. I'm just assuming that.
- The constant Windows Sux Linux Rulz comments that find their way into darn near every thread.
- The bashing of things that are not cross-platform or cross platform enough to meet the purity standards of some of those here. I recall several times people mentioning wanting to create something and mentioning using C#, VB.NET, etc., and basically being told their project isn't wanted or isn't useful here if they don't change it to some other platform. I can see something like "Hey more people could us your tool if...", but I don't recall it being mentioned that way.
C.W.
Not sure how to do the quote thingy yet
Anyhow, I respectfully disagree, with your viewpoint. SPIN is a fine language by itself, but with new and interesting devices arriving daily within the marketplace, code must be written for these new devices. Additionally, I believe Parallax had the right idea, when they wanted to initiate the Gold Standard for the OBEX, and perhaps this needs a follow through.
Don't forget that this place was hopping when the OBEX was at the forefront of the Propeller forum and SPIN was the driving force.
I have not visited the OBEX or the LEARN portion of the Parallax website in quite a while, but how often are new lessons being added for C, or support for new devices in C?
I have not visited the OBEX or the LEARN portion of the Parallax website in quite a while, but how often are new lessons being added for C, or support for new devices in C?
Andy and company have just released the first six chapters of "What's a Multicore Microcontroller", the WAM for the Propeller. Look's like a lot of work went into that.
https://www.parallax.com/news/2015-07-09/now-available-preview-whats-multicore-microcontroller-chapters-1-6
Thanks for the heads up and the link. Andy's efforts should definitely help with attracting newbies to the Propeller and C.
Not to slight Andy's efforts, because I am certain that he put a lot of work into that project, but I am referring more to a deep rooted base for developers, as compared to learning material newbies. I want to see the forum become strong again, where ideas and code are being shared on a regular basis.
We got to get back to that point.
Here in Propeller land things have never been so good. We have a pile of mature tools to use, The Prop Tool, OpenSpin, prop-gcc, HomeSpun, Catalina, Tachyon and other Forths, a bunch of BASICs, SimpleIDE, PropellerIDE, much of it cross-platform and Open Source, usable even on ARM based machines and others.
Then for those so inclined there is a nice 8 core CPU design to play with in FPGA.
The seemingly endless wait for the P II is a drag for sure but life does not depend on that.
Perhaps there has been a slow down in Propeller projects and or discussion. I have no idea. If there is I might attribute it to the wave of alternatives out there. 5 dollar WIFI modules programmable in Lua, the Espruino, the Micro- Python, the vast expanse of the Arduino world and the massive Raspberry Pi explosion, those new Intel dodads. That has all got to be keeping a lot of people busy.
As for "Windows Sux Linux Rulz" I have never seen such an illiterate comment here. I usually try not to talk about how much either of them suck. Certainly the "Hey more people could us your tool if..." approach has been seen here many times.
The P2 will re-ignite activity on the forum. After Chip began posting again on the P2 there have been hundreds of posts and thousands of views on the P2 thread. Once the P2 FPGA image is posted the activity will increase even more.
Here in Propeller land things have never been so good. We have a pile of mature tools to use, The Prop Tool, OpenSpin, prop-gcc, HomeSpun, Catalina, Tachyon and other Forths, a bunch of BASICs, SimpleIDE, PropellerIDE, much of it cross-platform and Open Source, usable even on ARM based machines and others.
Then for those so inclined there is a nice 8 core CPU design to play with in FPGA.
The seemingly endless wait for the P II is a drag for sure but life does not depend on that.
Perhaps there has been a slow down in Propeller projects and or discussion. I have no idea. If there is I might attribute it to the wave of alternatives out there. 5 dollar WIFI modules programmable in Lua, the Espruino, the Micro- Python, the vast expanse of the Arduino world and the massive Raspberry Pi explosion, those new Intel dodads. That has all got to be keeping a lot of people busy.
As for "Windows Sux Linux Rulz" I have never seen such an illiterate comment here. I usually try not to talk about how much either of them suck. Certainly the "Hey more people could us your tool if..." approach has been seen here many times.
koehler Heater, I fail to see how you can fail to see how anyone gets anything done on Windows .. Hmm...Install Windows and boot machine. C:> vim hello.c C:> gcc hello.c C:> cc hello.c C:> python C:> perl C:> ssh heater@192.168.0.101 Hmm...no luck with any of that. No decent editor no compilers or other languages. Seems this is not a computer operating system at all, you can't use it to compute! Did they ever fix that problem that it was pretty much impossible to find a file in the system? Or a file containing a particular string? Where is the package manager? I could go on for a long time.... Any of that ring a bell?
C.W.
I can't help thinking that with all the new building blocks out there those skylines are being built elsewhere.
Love the metaphor !
Yes Peter, I am referring more to the concept of sharing code, ideas, and projects. While Dave is correct, that C has been around for a long time, he may be correct that it is not a cause, but I do not believe the P2 is 100% solution.
And Heater, I am not attempting to spread doom or gloom, I am just being a realist and want to see the forum return to it's former glory. There was a time when there was always new content on the forum to spark my interest, but for quite some time, I just visit out of habit and quickly leave.
We can have our own contests, there is one going on with an alarm system now. Figure eights, etc.
"Any of that ring a bell?"
Yep, still all true isn't it?
As I said already somewhere here, the fact that I opened with "C:> vim hello.c" should have indicated I had tongue in cheek and not being entirely serious. Perhaps I should have spread some smileys around that post.