Anyone mind taking a look at my site?
- Thread starter EchoRomeo
- Start date
Don't forget to get your mom to register as a member! Every one counts!
Haha, great idea! And considering how much my mom loves giving me advice I'd have no problem generating content
I've taken @Mr Lucky's advice to heart and eliminated all mention of bots on the forum. I agree with his take about a bot-dominated appearance being offputting...think I was trying to be a bit too creative with the bot angle. I've now renamed the usernames associated with my ChatGPT seed posts to "Questions"/"Answers" and set their custom titles to "Forum reference material (AI-generated)". So I'm trying to make clear that seed material is AI-generated but not giving an impression that the site is bot-dominated. @Mr Lucky, do you see that as a more appropriate/more appealing way to handle bot-generated seed content? I really appreciate the feedback!
80sDude
Well-known member
Smart move if you ask me.Haha, great idea! And considering how much my mom loves giving me advice I'd have no problem generating content
I've taken @Mr Lucky's advice to heart and eliminated all mention of bots on the forum. I agree with his take about a bot-dominated appearance being offputting...think I was trying to be a bit too creative with the bot angle. I've now renamed the usernames associated with my ChatGPT seed posts to "Questions"/"Answers" and set their custom titles to "Forum reference material (AI-generated)". So I'm trying to make clear that seed material is AI-generated but not giving an impression that the site is bot-dominated. @Mr Lucky, do you see that as a more appropriate/more appealing way to handle bot-generated seed content? I really appreciate the feedback!
ForumFan
Well-known member
I'm not "Mr. Lucky," HA! But, I don't think using "AI" generated "seed content" is a good idea at all. Authenticity is the name of the game. And that means generating content yourself. Human-generated content will win the day.
Just my opinion.
Well said! In the absence of a userbase I've had the ability to experiment and try things out with AI, none of which I'm attached to or think are long-term solutions. It's definitely been helpful to be able to vet my ideas with the community here and get feedback, though, to keep me from going too far off track
. Thank you!
Mr Lucky
Well-known member
Yes.
If I was going to do that I would call it FAQs rather than questions/answers - no big deal basically the same thing but is just a heading that is ubiquitous.
If you are adding some kind of disclosure about AI, it could be worth mentioning that although answer may be AI generated they have been checked/verified/edited by a human.
Thank you - great suggestion! I implemented, except referred to them as "Forum Q&As"...I think of the "Q&A" term as also ubiquitous and a bit more accurate in my case.
Well, the latter part of your statement isn't true. I have not verified (or even seen) the vast majority of the AI posts. In an attempt to address this, I added a sidebar widget with a disclosure in forum and thread views. Feel free to take a look, e.g., at: https://www.permittingforum.com/threads/penalties-for-unpermitted-plumbing-work-in-alamogordo.3501/.
I also went an additional step...In an attempt to gamify verification of the AI content and engage a userbase, I tried to incentivize content verification by users by indicating that I'd award trophy points to users who post responses critiquing/elaborating on the AI "Q&As" content. I also added a "Point Redeem" function (add-on by Siropu) that allows exchange of accrued trophy points, including points gained from content verification, for charitable donations at a rate of $1 per point earned.
Bottom line: the AI content isn't verified, but I'm making this clear and trying to create a system in which the content can be improved. I'm also experimenting with turning the "Q&As" content into a contest opportunity to engage users and get some kind of dialog started. I'd of course happily throw out all the AI content and replace with user-generated contributions...that's where I'd ultimately like to end up.
Thanks again for the input. If you have any further thoughts/critiques, please don't hesitate to let me know!
Mr Lucky
Well-known member
Yes, but you've gone about it well by asking for feedback. I think I have something along the lines of "we try to verify all the AI answers so please help us by feeding back anything that appears to be wrong...
Mr Lucky
Well-known member
Sidebars are great, but don't forget that many people could be on mobiles. I can just imagine asking questions on site, the contractor is more likely to look up an answer about a permit on their phone rather than hauling a computer around.
Yeah I'm aware, lol. I've had a few comments here suggesting that I reorganize things so that states are identified with prefixes rather than each having their own dedicated subforums. There are merits to both in my view, but strongly considering making the switch. It may especially be necessary since there are permitting types not covered by my list. I'd like to include these additional types but am reticent to since doing so would make the big list of permitting categories/states even longer. Condensing and using prefixes would solve that problem...
Great point, thanks. The disclaimer is probably most important in thread view where someone is really taking in the content. To make the disclaimer widget more visible, I moved it from the sidebar ("Thread view: Sidebar"; which had it all the way at the bottom) to "Thread view: Below messages", which moves it up quite a bit. That seems to provide the best balance in terms of visibility in desktop and mobile devices...at least that's my initial impression, but I may keep tinkering. I've mostly been working on this using my desktop but obviously recognize the need to optimize for mobile for real world application. I appreciate the suggestion!
⭐ Alex ⭐
Well-known member
Something is wrong with your talkingforum.com redirect. It's accepting connections on port 443 https but has no means of creating a secure connection so it fails to load.
I advise you to get your forum behind cloudflare for added security and performance. there's a free addon for that: https://xenforo.com/community/resources/digitalpoint-app-for-cloudflare®.8750/
Thanks, ok I'll look into that. I'm forwarding from Google domains and it seems to work for some browsers but not others. Will check out your cloudfare suggestion.
I changed the URL to www.permittingtalk.com, and updated the site quite a bit since the previous version. If you (or anyone else), has further feedback, it continues to be appreciated! The last round was very helpful and I ended up incorporating prefixes (perhaps to an extreme extent but permitting is a difficult topic to deconstruct into categories), among other changes.
Hi all - I've updated my forum design quite a bit since I posted this thread a couple months ago and was curious if anyone could provide further feedback at this time?
The site is https://www.permittingtalk.com/.
The main difference from my original version is that I'm now using a single forum instead of hundreds of forums/subforums like I had before (lol), and am now relying exclusively on tags/prefixes for the categorization. For a topic as broad and multifaceted as permitting, involving all different geographic locations and permit/activity types, I think this organization makes more sense, and especially with the use of tags (using the tag essentials add-on) allows topics of interest to materialize organically over time. I also believe that a single forum makes more sense for cases like mine given the level of popular interest in my forum (which is none right now, lol) and for helping cultivate more of a sense of community among whatever meager traffic does find its way to my site.
Anyways - thanks to anyone who sees this and responds! Any suggestions/tips you can provide that you think could improve my site further would be very much appreciated!
The site is https://www.permittingtalk.com/.
The main difference from my original version is that I'm now using a single forum instead of hundreds of forums/subforums like I had before (lol), and am now relying exclusively on tags/prefixes for the categorization. For a topic as broad and multifaceted as permitting, involving all different geographic locations and permit/activity types, I think this organization makes more sense, and especially with the use of tags (using the tag essentials add-on) allows topics of interest to materialize organically over time. I also believe that a single forum makes more sense for cases like mine given the level of popular interest in my forum (which is none right now, lol) and for helping cultivate more of a sense of community among whatever meager traffic does find its way to my site.
Anyways - thanks to anyone who sees this and responds! Any suggestions/tips you can provide that you think could improve my site further would be very much appreciated!
I really appreciate the honest feedback and I couldn't agree more! Maybe it's not clear but the main forum page is a single forum in forum view (thread list). So you register and immediately become part of the conversation with basic organization provided by prefixes and tags.
I probably do have blind spots, having developed the site in a way that makes sense to me. But the objective truly has been to be as simple as possible. If there's any specific aspect that's particularly confusing, I'd appreciate any further elaboration you can provide!
Mr Lucky
Well-known member
I like the way it is now very clean and uncluttered, nice having the images in the header.
BUT
Part of the clean look is not using separate forums but instead everything is sorted or categorised by prefixes. Nice idea. The problem here is that there seems no way to filter the prefixes apart from clicking on a prefix in the thread list - but most people won't know that. (and once you have more e posts there will be many prefixes not visible on page 1). You really need a prefix menu at the time for people to choose from. I have done that here. There are some addons available for that.
The problem is compounded because at the top you have a quick thread (I don't like those) but it's not immediately clear to a casual visitor that's what it is. At first glance I thought that where its says Location/Topic would be the dropdown list of prefixes to filter the threads but no, it's a quick thread. This is also confusing because the thread prompt says: Thread Title as if it's just a heading (because it is above the list of thread titles).
So for example I want to know about permits in Alaska so see Location and click there and choose AK, but I see nothing about Alaska
This will confuse visitors, many/most of whom are not familiar with how xenForo works.
Thanks a lot, @Mr Lucky, these suggestions are extremely helpful! The support I've received from you, @Tracy Perry, and others in this community has been really truly appreciated.
Regarding your suggestions, fully agreed on both counts. Yes, it's obvious to me now that a straightforward way of filtering my prefixes was completely lacking. Also agreed regarding the quick thread and the confusion the prefix drop-down may cause for visitors not familiar with xenForo.
I'm tinkering still, but I'd really appreciate if you'd be willing to take a look at how I've now updated based on your suggestions (link again is www.permittingtalk.com). Again, thank you!
I incorporated @AndyB's "prefix filter" add-on which, unlike any other prefix filter add-on I could find, offers a drop-down list option for prefixes - all others seem limited to a single button for each prefix. I really can't do one button for each prefix like your cafesaxophone forum uses because of the large number of prefixes I have (one for every US state, plus more). The screen obviously gets far too cluttered. I only wish @AndyB's prefix filter button went straight to activating the drop-down list instead of having an in-between menu, but I'm really just thrilled the add-on exists. One click would seem better than two there...I'll leave that feedback on @AndyB's "prefix filter" add-on page for his future consideration...
Also a big thanks to @AndyB for his "Remove quick thread" add-on, which I also incorporated with this update...
Thank you again, @Mr Lucky. I feel like I'm better off now but am open to any other suggestions or critiques that you, or anyone else who checks out my forum, may be able to offer.
