Roger B said:

I wonder if his problem is generational

I'm sure it is, my children (in their mid twenties) have always had a totally different approach to "filing" soft copy information, and I wouldn't like to decide which is better, just different.

That said, I think your point about neuro diversity is very interesting, but again I'd hesitate to suggest (due to lack of knowledge) which approach would be most appropriate for someone e.g. on the autistic spectrum who is starting to work with a new online environment - a different issue from adapting to a changed environment (which has its own, equally serious challenges). Taking a very simple case, which I have long found interesting, does it work better to store all photos under the WIndows "Photos" directory with tags (putting it simplistically, my children's approach), or under "C: > Photos > Andy's camera > 2021 > holiday" (my old fashioned approach)? Now I know what many on here will say, i.e. the second one, but that could well be because it's the system we grew up with - particularly those of us who date back to DOS! 

For me personally I think the best solution actually comes down to the size and type of data. If there was a huge volume of information in the forums then actually I wouldn't care how it was organised, I'd just use the search function to find anything that looks interesting. But while the volume of posts is pretty small (except in W&R), which it has been for the last 15 years, then frankly having them pretty much in one long list and scanning down the thread titles by eye works pretty well for me. At the moment this site isn't one thing or the other, there's not much on here, but it wasn't easy to find, I've now worked out just to go "all discussions" and scan down.

P.S. My desk has always resembled the late lamented Bob Pease's https://www.autodesk.com/products/fusion-360/blog/whats-all-this-bob-pease-stuff-anyhow/ , so although I now audit document control systems, any advice from me on filing systems is definitely "do as I say, not as I do"!  

I look forward to seeing with other views there are on this.

Thanks,

Andy

Hi Roger:

You may find this page helpful: https://engx.theiet.org/f

Here you can see all discussions (i.e. including those posted in the Wiring Regulations forum), ordered by date/time of the most recent post. You can then choose to filter these by technical interest, using the dropdown list in the left-hand column:

The previous site required users to navigate to specific forums or groups to find relevant content, whereas the new site is designed to show you content based on your selected interests (chosen from a pre-defined list of topics), and to make it easier (we hope) to connect with others with similar questions or concerns. You can update your interests at any time via your profile.

The "Engineering Discussions" forum at  https://engx.theiet.org/f/discussions  includes discussions other than those related to the Wiring Regulations, and the default view here is filtered by your chosen interests when you are logged in. You can opt to see everything by selecting "View all discussions".

Content displayed on the site homepage is also filtered in the same way, so by default you will be shown content relating to your interests (but here again you can opt to see everything).

We are certainly keen to make our websites as easy to use as possible, for all users. Any further feedback you can offer (e.g. in relation to your experience of adding a new post) will be helpful.

Peter

that "/f" is useful, and will replace the current shortcut om my platforms.. 

In terms of other feedbacks, personally I find the use of grey on white an issue when used to (not) demark things like this answer box, but that is eyesight, and the format of course the uncertainly about who a reply is for and the running order of a thread.

Roger

I do sometimes wonder about the neural diversity question  - I rather fear that  "neuro-typicals" are really just all that majority of people who unfortunately will never be able to properly comprehend and follow the engineering method and systematic 'cover all bases' approach, and do not share that feeling of exposure and irritation some of us feel when something has not been done properly.  But on a solidly engineering forum it is most likely that NT will not be the majority of users anyway, so perhaps we should not worry, but be asking for a website design that is intended to be most efficient for the main user base.

Andy

With you on the apparently disordered desk thing - somewhere under here I have one, but not much of it is visible - but contrary to popular belief that is not any  handicap to successful working, it just distresses visitors who do not think it ought to be that way. However I'm not sure that the scramble filing aspect is generation/education - my children are both the same. (but the home computer is Linux so the option of windows photos is not there.)

M,

Thank you all for your comments and interest 

Peter, this is approximately my first experience of posting on this forum. I was looking for something like ‘New Topic’,’ New Discussion’, ‘New Thread’ as I see on other forums (fora??). I finally found a pale grey button saying ‘Ask’ (I agree with Mike’s comments on the low contrast grey not being helpful. Was this tested with visually impaired users?).

This had a box next to it so I pasted my text there. (If I am writing more than a sentence I type it in  a word processor first having lost too many pieces of work due to pressing the wrong button or forum problems.) This turned the ‘Ask’ button black and allowed me to move on to the next step. Now I could decide if this was a question or a discussion, why not before? I also found I had pasted my entire text in the subject box. Ok so cut all except the title off and paste it in the box below. Now look for an emoticon, probably in ‘insert’, Ok found. I then had another option to add ‘technical topics’ which I suppose are like tags. No idea what to use for this question so I just left it and pressed post.

 I also noticed that I had a welcome email from Lisa so I went to add a modified version of this post in response to her. I pasted the same piece of text in the reply box and went to add a couple of lines at the start to explain a bit more and ended up sending the mail 

I shut the browser down and went off to do some colouring in my blanket cave (actually I went back to modifying the CAD drawings for a radiation safety system). These may seem like trivial problems but auti/aspi people have enough problems dealing with change anyway.

Andy, Mike, the photo storing is an interesting problem. I generally store chronologically by camera as we have a selection of digital cameras for different purposes. Specific trips are stored in their own named folders with all cameras together as this is easier for my wife when she makes photobooks. To me tags will only work properly if you ensure that all the relevant tags are there at the start. If you develop a new interest do you go back and add the tag to all the relevant pictures. The same applies to the ‘relevance’ function on this forum.

Thanks all for your responses. There is certainly scope for improvement, both in relation to contrast issues and calls to action in the forums. 

The "Ask a question..." form is intended to enable users to identify posts on similar topics, before starting a new thread: is this helpful? Or would a more straightforward presentation (as on the site homepage) be preferable? 

Selection of technical topic(s)/tags is optional, and we're aware that the interface isn't optimal; currently we're only able to present an alphabetical list, with typeahead matching (i.e. start typing into the field to see a list of matching terms). The list of topics, and your current selections, can be viewed at engx.theiet.org/.../tags when logged in.

How does the software decide which 'tags' to apply to a specific post ? Is  it searching for keywords in just the thread titles or content, or both or what ? It seems to miss an awful lot - searching for RF for example turns up a load of stuff from 3 years ago, but none of the more recent stuff.

Also quickly it looks as if it may be that being in one category precludes being in another, but that may be just a few I have looked at, though if true it is not so useful... for now I think 'all' is the most useful category, though even so it only finds about 7000 threads, which seems a very low number given the history of the site.

Mike.

mapj1 said:

How does the software decide which 'tags' to apply to a specific post ?

Tags are manually applied by the poster when they make their post - there isn't any forum logic applied.

For content that was migrated we had to make some assumptions based on where content was initially posted, for example content from a technical network was mapped to the primary tag for the network, the professional development forum category etc. You'll see a lot of content tagged with 'general chat' that could have other tags. It's a task that we could carry out if it's something that'll add value to the community. 

mapj1 said:

Also quickly it looks as if it may be that being in one category precludes being in another, but that may be just a few I have looked at, though if true it is not so useful...

Doh, forgot this part! Multiple tags can be added - when migrating we could only add map to one tag so that's why you'll see the majority of content only has one tag.

Not sure if this is just another confusing option, but another way to view content in EngX is via the home page, which shows everything (discussion, blogs, events etc) added to the site in date/time order. The home page feed is filtered to your interests, if you've chosen some, but can easily be unfiltered to show all content.