Moodle.org Website - Forums Link?

Moodle.org Website - Forums Link?

by John Provasnik -
Number of replies: 23
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Testers

I see the Moodle.org website got a nice update. I no longer see the Forums link in a prevalent spot. I feel this is a highly used section of the Moodle.org website. Does anyone else agree the Forums (https://moodle.org/course/view.php?id=5) should be part of the main navigation bar? If so, I'd put in a tracker...



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In reply to John Provasnik

Re: Moodle.org Website - Forums Link?

by Howard Miller -
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Well.... they call it "Community" of course. Personally, I've never been fond of that although it's not unique (Symfony's web site springs to mind). I think people look for Forum or Support.

The forum link isn't that easy to find now, although I do understand that lots of stuff competes for limited space.

So... in a roundabout way... I think I agree with you.

I'm still moving this to the Lounge, though...
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In reply to John Provasnik

Re: Moodle.org Website - Forums Link?

by Rick Jerz -
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Testers

Interesting.

I agree that the "Community" or "Forums" should be in the upper navigation bar.  And I do see, as Howard mentions, that finding the Forums is now more difficult.

What is that "Translation" thing?  I clicked on it, and still don't understand why it is in the navigation bar.

My suggestion would be something like the following:

Home (icon) | Documentation | Downloads | Community Forums | Tracker | Demo | Development | Moodlenet,  in that order.  I can be persuaded by other ideas.

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In reply to Rick Jerz

Re: Moodle.org Website - Forums Link?

by AL Rachels -
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Hi Rick,

The "Translation" thing takes you to the place where anyone can set up an account, log in, and help translate any part of Moodle's language strings (core or plugins) into any supported language. Even though I don't truly speak anything but US English, I have an account and using Google Translate, I sometimes add translations for language strings used by plugins I maintain, Hot Question and MooTyper. Changes/additions are verified/edited by a language maintainer, then added and made usable by Moodle. If the new/changed strings are used any language pack you might have installed, you will usually see them in use after your next site upgrade.

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In reply to AL Rachels

Re: Moodle.org Website - Forums Link?

by Rick Jerz -
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Well, I learn something every day.

But the question is, if we include only 7 items, is this the most important? You don't need to answer, I am just asking as an idea.
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In reply to Rick Jerz

Re: Moodle.org Website - Forums Link?

by Visvanath Ratnaweera -
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Translators
Rick, save your energy. Read the "issue" which led to this revision: MDLSITE-6090. It simply says, Update the first slide of the homepage with the following content. (refer to Mockup for layout) all images have been provided. I am still looking for the issue we had.

For all what I can imagine a business manager in the HQ came up with this brilliant idea, blessed by Martin.

Where were we?
sad
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In reply to Rick Jerz

Re: Moodle.org Website - Forums Link?

by Séverin Terrier -
Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Testers Picture of Translators
Hi,

If we where to put things in order to discover Moodle, and use it, then react on it for improvment, and then develop for it, i would prefer this order :
Home (icon) | Demo | Documentation | Downloads | Community Forums | Tracker | Translation | Development | Moodlenet

Séverin
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In reply to Séverin Terrier

Re: Moodle.org Website - Forums Link?

by Rick Jerz -
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Sure, this organization looks fine to me too.
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In reply to John Provasnik

Moodle.org Website - Forums Link?

by John Provasnik -
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If anyone is interested in adding thoughts there, I've created a suggestion tracker: MDLSITE-6095
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In reply to John Provasnik

Re: Moodle.org Website - Forums Link?

by Visvanath Ratnaweera -
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Translators
What is there to say? Business interests have been favoured over the community. Plain and simple.

A "business manager" who is not even registered in the community forums coming up with thie idea understandable. What I don't understand is that Martin personally endorsed it! MDLSITE-6090
sad
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In reply to Visvanath Ratnaweera

Re: Moodle.org Website - Forums Link?

by Howard Miller -
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My impression was MDLSITE-6090 is just talking about the "slider" (this week's cool word). It doesn't mention the other menus and navigation. I think you might have inferred this from the image that showed more than the slider but I don't believe that's the case.
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In reply to Howard Miller

Re: Moodle.org Website - Forums Link?

by Visvanath Ratnaweera -
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Translators
May be there are more than one thing. What I observer i reported here https://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=398250 with screen-shots. To visit the Moodle community forums https://moodle.org/course/ one needs to scan https://moodle.org/ with a magnifying glass.
sad
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In reply to Visvanath Ratnaweera

Re: Moodle.org Website - Forums Link?

by Howard Miller -
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I think so...

1. There is clearly now an emphasis on pointing people to paid-for services. Well... somebody has to pay the bills I suppose

2. The discussion forums are now very "low in the mix". But, to be honest, even the download links take a bit of digging now.

It's a change of emphasis for sure.
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In reply to Howard Miller

Re: Moodle.org Website - Forums Link?

by Visvanath Ratnaweera -
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Translators
So, we are in agreement, for a change.
wink

Forget the business, it is a huge No-No in web design/accessibilty the sleazy "forwarding" form .ORG to .COM. You don't swap domains behind one's back, definitely not in the same browser tag. As it is now the community site is just a honey pot to get people to the commercial site.
sad

Luckily the "ticket" is a week old and marked minor. Otherwise one would suspect that the HQ wants to make money from the pandemic.
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In reply to Visvanath Ratnaweera

Re: Moodle.org Website - Forums Link?

by Howard Miller -
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Could be worse... could have opened in a new window tongueout
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In reply to Visvanath Ratnaweera

Re: Moodle.org Website - Forums Link?

by Martin Dougiamas -
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Visvanath, we're dealing with a crisis here. Please give us the benefit of the doubt.

We made hurried changes to help thousands of teachers get onto Moodle quickly to help millions of students (nearly 1 billion in total according to UNESCO, and they were sending them to moodle.org, which really sucks for most people and needs a big redesign).   Most of them are taking up free sites FYI, which COST us money.  Redesigning and hosting sites like this also costs money.
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In reply to Martin Dougiamas

Re: Moodle.org Website - Forums Link?

by Visvanath Ratnaweera -
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Translators
To Moodle HQ, Cc to the co-writers

This is the second surprise in a week, shining new light on the first one. First of all, I am impressed that a complete high-ranking delegation responded to a handful of angry voices from the community.

Coming to the subject, what clarified (for me) the most is the fact that these changes were driven by the current Corona crisis. I thought it was initiated earlier. Yes, I can imagine how much is demanded from the world's leading Open Source LMS. We are measured against behemoths of the Microsoft and Googles' like. A dispute amoung the ranks is the last thing we need.

Even for somebody in the periphery, I am taxed enough. Then we all are - in and out of Moodle. For me personally, it is a relief to know that the people immediately involved in, and guiding, the project do care, so that I can go back to my "work", or better the new work in this crisis. And I am grateful - for everything that keeps me absorbed - and Moodle is not a small part if it. ;)
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In reply to Martin Dougiamas

Re: Moodle.org Website - Forums Link?

by Howard Miller -
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The clarification is interesting and welcome. I didn't make the connection either. 
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In reply to Martin Dougiamas

Re: Moodle.org Website - Forums Link?

by Manal Moukaddem -

Hello,

Sorry to write on this thread, butI was trying to send a message to Martin but failed. I just need please to make sure that I am on your mailing list, since I have missed the news about eThink not being a partner anymore, which is very worrying for me since their service has been excellent.

Please advise.

Thank you.

Manal.

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In reply to Manal Moukaddem

How to get on the Moodle news mailing list

by Helen Foster -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Moodle HQ Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Plugin developers Picture of Testers Picture of Translators

Hi Manal,

You can receive notifications of moodle.org announcements by going to moodle.org/news and clicking the button 'Subscribe to this forum'.

Similarly, for moodle.com news, go to Moodle.com news and follow the link 'Subscribe to Moodle News'.

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In reply to Visvanath Ratnaweera

Re: Moodle.org Website - Forums Link?

by David Mudrák -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Moodle HQ Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Peer reviewers Picture of Plugin developers Picture of Plugins guardians Picture of Testers Picture of Translators

Plain and simple.

Not really. Things are not black and white when it comes to the business and the community. One does not work well and long without the other.

Given the global situation, it was apparent there is a huge interest in instant solutions based on Moodle. There has been a massive wave of people seeking for how Moodle can help them and their school today. And many of them missed the message so we wanted to make it more visible and explicit. We urgently needed the front page update and this was the quick and dirty solution. My apologize for having to replace the existing community slide with a new message. However, we believe we had good reasons to do that.

On other news, as you can see in MDLSITE-6095, the community is going to be given the credit it deserves again with the new upcoming update of the page. Coming soon to your browsers.

Thanks again for your feedback.

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In reply to John Provasnik

Re: Moodle.org Website - Forums Link?

by Sander Bangma -
Hi All,

To give some reassurance - it was not at all our intention to make it harder to find the forums, nor was there a 'business manager' decision behind this. It was an oversight, so thank you for raising your concerns.

I think there are some good suggestions in here. E.g. revisiting the main navigation bar. However, that would impact all our community sites, require quite a bit of testing, etc. Down the track we will do a larger overhaul of the community sites and we will save that effort for then.

For now, based on your feedback, we are planning to make the community forums more prominent by adding more visible linking on the moodle.org page. So please stay tuned for that.

Thank you all
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