"My Project" forum board

[Ñuño_Martínez]

There are other forums with "Projects" boards.  For example:

• Allegro.cc Depot Seems empty, but click on "Showing recent threads ...".
• PGD's Your Projects

I know, both are about games. They're the ones I visit.

[Martin_fr]

There are other forums with "Projects" boards.  For example:

Begs the same question: How to the make the cut between what goes:
- into a "show off" app gallery
- other boards, dedicated to specific areas
- the "my project board"

What goes in there? And how to ensure the forum is not flooded with entirely off topic discussions.

Take as an example a sudoku solver. Someone might want to discuss about solving strategies.
Now, how to implement finding twins or hidden twins, is something that fits into programming general. It is something that is of interest to every sudoku solver, not just the one that the author made his project. (It might even contain advice, that goes beyond sudoku solving).
But discussing the difference between hidden and plain twins (not implementation specific) is something that belongs on a sudoku forum. It does not at all relate to Pascal, Fpc, or Lazarus.

But then, what would belong into "My Project" (assuming that show-casing is done in the app gallery / Where again, any need of improvements to the A.G. is not subject of this thread)?

Up till now, with the info I have, "My Project" sounds like a dedicated "off topic" board. And that (if that is all it is) would be something that I do not think we need or should have.

----
If we need means to attract/convince people of sharing their Pascal based work, then maybe we need to think outside the forum.

[trev]

I think Davo nailed it earlier when he said that this sounds more like a developer blog (with comments in response to project progress, issues etc) than a forum topic.

The existing forums provide a pretty comprehensive selection of topics for actually trying to resolve specific FPC/Lazarus/Component issues. The general categories cater for "how do I do x".

[kupferstecher]

If we need means to attract/convince people of sharing their Pascal based work, then maybe we need to think outside the forum.

The forum is a good place I think for several reasons:
- Because of the changing content it is highly frequented.
- Issues, wishes and appreciation can be communicated.
- The author(s) can get motivated by the last point.
So this would be a place for hosting projects in a rudimentary way.
There are already examples on the forum like fpcupdeluxe or ZCAD.
With such a forum section hopefully more programms would be published here in the forum, but I'm not sure about that.

Begs the same question: How to the make the cut between what goes:
- into a "show off" app gallery
- other boards, dedicated to specific areas
- the "my project board"

What goes in there? And how to ensure the forum is not flooded with entirely off topic discussions.

In the app gallery you can't comment. If a thread gets a lot of posts this is a indicator that it could be interesting (for me to read).
I would say as criteria for the section, that the programm has to work. Doesn't need to be finished (software is never finished).

[devEric69]

I think, that what @Raul_ES is suggesting, roughly speaking, is that there should be a tool such as a " virtual online workflow " (@Ñuño_Martínez has already referred to virtual paperboards, ...).
This is useful when we want to federate other developers, and discuss specifications together at the beginning of a common project (once the project is launched, a mailing list is enough).

It's technically less advanced, than the tools provided by this forum \ site (lazarus.freepascal.org).
But, it's more complete about collaborative management between humans.

Maybe, one solution would be to find such a free solution, and to open it under a generic name \ account (e.g. Lazarus Project Proposals and Analysis).

Well, in that case, a link from here - the Lazarus site - towards such a collaborative virtual space, would be welcome, because centralizing.

My 2 cents.

[Martin_fr]

So then what is the difference to the 3rd party announcement board?

Except for that in a handful of case the announcement board already exhibits the problem I am fearing that would be created by a "My Project" board.


If you follow recent posts or if you search the forum, you should find content that is relevant to Fpc, Lazarus or Pascal.
"My Project" would be a board with the sole purpose of breaking this rule.

FpcDeluxe is IMHO not off topic. It is an enhancement for Fpc/Lazarus.

[kupferstecher]

So then what is the difference to the 3rd party announcement board?

Projects and components could be postet in the 3rd party announcement as well, yes, but the name is not attracting this. I just checked, that section is quite interesting:)

If you follow recent posts or if you search the forum, you should find content that is relevant to Fpc, Lazarus or Pascal.
"My Project" would be a board with the sole purpose of breaking this rule.

Depends on how strict you see it. But at least components are definitely relevant to Fpc and Lazarus.
So perhaps a "my component" section?

FpcDeluxe is IMHO not off topic. It is an enhancement for Fpc/Lazarus.

OK, I think I understood now. If there are projects "hosted" on this forum, then the discussions may attract people from outside, even non-programmers. This could actually disturb the forum, I agree.
(For fpcupdelux this is obviously not the case).
And search results are cluttered with project stuff, I also agree that this is not favourable.

[Raul_ES]

I must recognize that it was easy to post just the suggestion, but quite complex to elaborate the idea...

A "my project" board would need - IMHO - to have the following characteristcs:

* it's not a blog

* it's not a wiki page

* it's not a paralel forum with redundant information

* it's not a screenshot with a couple of text lines

* it's not a large TODO list or a Gannt diagram

* It's not an status page to be updated every time you compile and test the program or a user test it, but each time you add a major feature or solve a big problem and you want to share it with your subscribers or the forum users...

...

* it has to be attached to the forum but somehow be independant so it will not bloat the forum on every update. Instead of
updating the "Recent posts" message box may be it could have an independant "Recent  Projects" box and a cool indexation menu "category-name-short description".

* it has to be moderated and under control of the OP, so he/she will choose the contents/answers to show and will be responable for it, moving them to the right place, add files, delete them...

* it has to be perfectly structured into a clean and clear tree of project types: android apps, server programs, clients, windows only, multiplaform projects, frameworks, libraries, etc with different categories: games, office, bussiness, security, science projects, etc. A tag system could be used by the search engine.


I think of it more like a kind of portfolio or mind map for your project were you (following a template):

* breif description

* explain your project, intentions, etc with a resume ---> suggest ideas, alternatives, etc

* diagram of the application architeture ----> suggest improvements, corrections, etc

* explain certain parts in more detail (you can go as deep as you want). ---->

* explain the actual stage of development and status of the project.   -----> suggest project management ideas

* explain what you've done and where you may need help. ----->offer or seek for help if you know any

* explain problems you've found during develpment and how they were solved. ---> propose improvements

* explain problems not solved and you don't have a clue to solve them. ---> the answer can be a link to a post in the forum

* share uml diagrams, er diagrams, user cases, screen mockups, actual screenshots... ---> improve designs

* share links to doucmentation, libraries, wikipedia articles, books you are using in your project ---> recommend better ones

* can subscribe to a project of your interest, participate, follow its progress, ...

* discuss about software engineering techniques used in your project, theoretical computing aspects...

* request specific help for your project or participants  ----> offer yourself as colaborator

* ask project specific questions related to many different subjects: GUI, databases, networking, grapgics, what ever, to be answered all in the same place, so will not be scattered all through the forum. The answer can be a link to a post someplace in the forum itself or outside.

* generate a healthy discussion about why you are doing the things you do (always related to your project), so other experienced programmers will contribute with their knowledge and merciless  honesty to discover design errors, code bottlenecks, absurd designs, etc in early development stages... All this can help to polish and improve your project in a global way, and will attract developers with a same goal or similar ones. It has to be something dynamic as a forum to incentivate participation and the will to share knowledge to be applied in your project. But at the same time it has to be versatile and configurable enough to allow it to become a "personal space" for the OP and his project inside the forum.

I'm not sure if I explained myself 

It could be a good idea to see how other websites an forums implement this kind of feature. I will do some research.

regards,

[Martin_fr]

So basically a database frontend. The same could be used to manage a collection of snippets...
I do not know what software would provide the features best.

But it would be like a scaled down sourceforge (without downloads). Add your project, have a description, have a comment section.
All grouped by categories, maybe also tags.

It is definitely not  a forum board.
It is seems like a gallery, but with comments and all the whistles.

-----------------
The concern that "not a forum board" will probably raise, is that it will be a lost, hard to find, forgotten thing, like the current app-gallery on the wiki (which is probably not visited very often)

The popularity would be a question of linking it from the right places. (Maybe even a random or most recent entry / like the Lazarus webpage does list some of the recent forum posts/announcements).

-----------------
Besides not knowing what software would provide such things as a web service, I also do not know any one who would currently volunteer to do the work of installing it and maintaining it.

[trev]

While I haven't visited the site in ages, hackaday.com used to provide something similar for individual's to document their hack projects and field questions.

[Ñuño_Martínez]

(...)
I'm not sure if I explained myself 

You did. Explained very well. 

So basically a database frontend. The same could be used to manage a collection of snippets...
I do not know what software would provide the features best.

But it would be like a scaled down sourceforge (without downloads). Add your project, have a description, have a comment section.
All grouped by categories, maybe also tags.

It is definitely not  a forum board.
It is seems like a gallery, but with comments and all the whistles.

Maybe you're right. Now I'm not so convinced it should be a sub-forum...

[440bx]

Just a thought...

As I stated before, I think the idea has merit but, IMO, it also has some downsides to it, such as, the level of knowledge required to understand someone's project may be not "common", thus limiting the audience.

I think a tutorials "sub forum" might be something more useful.  The idea being that the "project" is specifically directed to sharing knowledge and techniques in some area of computer science and, all those interested in the subject can participate in the thread, asking questions, thereby benefit all readers.   That means, it wouldn't be about language constructs such as how to use a component or some library (the Wiki mostly covers that), instead it would be about things like scanning, parsing, recursion, hashing, neural networks, etc.

All projects/tutorials in Free Pascal, of course.

Just my $0.02...