"Solar" Sub-Forum

IRV2 forum has a technology sector but no sub forum for solar, However, they have a search box for the forum and I entered Solar term and received many hits. They do have a going Green sector. The Escapees forum has a Technical sector but no sub forum for Solar.

pianotuna wrote:
I do love this forum above all the others. Keep up the good work.

Thanks Don, but it wouldn't be what it is without stalwart contributors like you.

I do love this forum above all the others. Keep up the good work.

I just got word back. I guess it's too late for me to apologize for being a buzzkill since I've been a buzzkill since the git go with this discussion, but now I'm even buzzkillier.

This isn't a self-service enhancement for the moderation team. I confirmed it with Admin. We would need to get help from the dev team, but that's not currently an option.

Sorry to dash your hopes and dreams, but this change isn't going to happen under our current conditions.

Quick Update:

I floated the question to our moderation team to see if we're even technically able to implement this.

Categories were created over a decade ago (pre '08 crash) when we actually had a budget for software modifications. The forum tech has been running on autopilot for all these years, so I'm not sure if this is a change that we can enact on our own or whether we'll need to bring in the developers. If it requires dev help, then it's pretty much dead on the launchpad. We've got a long list of unfixed bugs that take precedence over enhancements.

I only bring this up because any debate on the merits of the idea are moot if we can't actually make it happen.

I'll report back with my findings.

And in fairness, my query to the team was objective and unbiased.

I'd also like to challenge you all again to spend some time perusing some of the forums that use categories.

I'd like you all to objectively spend some time in Class A and Toy Haulers (and/or any of the other forums that use categories) and see for yourself whether you love them or not. You might think it sounds like an awesome idea now, but in practice the categories aren't what any of us had hoped they would be.

Also, I don't think anyone has addressed what I brought up previously.

Think about how you'll browse Tech Issues and ask yourself which type of visitor you'll be:

1. "Man oh man do I love me some Solar posts. I love Solar and hate everything else, so I'll only look at the Solar sub-forum."
   
   
2. "Man oh man do I hate me some Solar posts. I hate Solar and love everything else, so I'll click through each of the other sub-forums to read those posts and skip Solar."
   
   
3. "Don't care. Seriously don't care. I'll never click into any of the sub-forums because it's a waste of my time. It's easy enough to look at the 'Show All' list and see which threads seem interesting enough for me to open and read."

You get the picture. The value of the sub-forums/categories, in my opinion, is negligible and they're actually more trouble than they're worth.

I was teasing when I said to point to the doll and tell me where the other posts hurt you, but nobody has explained yet what the actual pain point is. What are we actually trying to solve? Is it really so burdensome to scroll past the posts about gas fridge ignition to get to the solar threads?

And back to the point about only having suggestions for two categories so far (Solar and Everything else)... To me this doesn't show a need for categories at all. If anything it shows we might have enough interest to create a separate Solar forum. There again though, would it just be Solar, or would it be for all topics about power (Solar, Batteries, Shore Power, and heaven forbid Generators)?

StirCrazy wrote:

dedmiston wrote:

The current consensus seems to be to create one category for Solar, Generators, Batteries, etc. and then another category for everything else. I definitely couldn't support this.

If there's truly a demand for a category (and yes, that's what the sub-forums are called in the UI), then we need to come up with a workable list of other categories that aren't just "everything else".

what exctly is your reason you cant suport this? the extra work to moderate another forum or to add it? from a userpoint child forums are wonderful and make finding the topics you are looking for very streamlined. I look at most new post in the subforms I am interested in, and out of say 100 when the board is busy in the summer I may read 15, the rest are a waist of my time, not that there not valid posts, justy nothing that I am interested in personaly. even in Tech, where you might get 20 topics a day in the summer 5-7are on solar and or batteries. this is more posts per day than you get in a lot of other subforums and its just one little segment of that subform.

persoanly I wouldnt want to see generatores in the same forum as solar and battery as to me the purpos of solar is to not have a generator but doesnt mater... here is an idea you could even add one caled
"RV electrical" that would cover batteries, solar, generators, auto change over switches, power panels, outlets and so on but at least the info in the forum would be streamlined and related.

Steve

Hi Steve,

Two points on this:

1) What I can't support is having just two categories: one for solar etc. and another for everything else. Honestly, this is not a good suggestion and there's no way I would support it.

2) From a usability standpoint, I don't think the categories are effective. They were popular at the beginning, and then they lost their flair. Using the Toy Hauler forum as an example, very few new posts are actually categorized and most people just drop their posts into the catch-all "Toy Haulers" category. This points to an unsuccessful feature as far as I'm concerned.

Just to be clear though, the fact that I don't support it doesn't mean it can't or won't happen. If somebody wants to make a compelling case to Admin, go for it. I'm just saying that I won't volunteer to put hours of thought or legwork into something that I don't believe would have the bean return.

If y'all are fired up about it, then let's see some better suggestions about the categories. To reiterate, having just two categories for Solar and Not-Solar is a bad idea. Let's see some better proposals if you hope to see this happen.

I just realized that "Tech Issues" has over 115,000 topics, second only to "Class A Motorhomes". That alone tells me some topics need to be in a new category. However I believe Solar will quickly become well used and should stay under "Technical Resources", rather than be a sub-category under "Tech Issues".

Another good title would be "Solar & RV Electrical".

Enjoy,

Perry

dedmiston wrote:

The current consensus seems to be to create one category for Solar, Generators, Batteries, etc. and then another category for everything else. I definitely couldn't support this.

If there's truly a demand for a category (and yes, that's what the sub-forums are called in the UI), then we need to come up with a workable list of other categories that aren't just "everything else".

what exctly is your reason you cant suport this? the extra work to moderate another forum or to add it? from a userpoint child forums are wonderful and make finding the topics you are looking for very streamlined. I look at most new post in the subforms I am interested in, and out of say 100 when the board is busy in the summer I may read 15, the rest are a waist of my time, not that there not valid posts, justy nothing that I am interested in personaly. even in Tech, where you might get 20 topics a day in the summer 5-7are on solar and or batteries. this is more posts per day than you get in a lot of other subforums and its just one little segment of that subform.

persoanly I wouldnt want to see generatores in the same forum as solar and battery as to me the purpos of solar is to not have a generator but doesnt mater... here is an idea you could even add one caled
"RV electrical" that would cover batteries, solar, generators, auto change over switches, power panels, outlets and so on but at least the info in the forum would be streamlined and related.

Steve

There is generator mechanical/electrical to run/repair it and there is generator usage to charge batteries, how much VA to run a converter, etc