We > Me: Joe Morel's Blog : Moderator Toolset

Idea: "Wiki" Code Snippets at the top of Forum Threads

joemorel — Sat, 09 Dec 2006 03:24:00 GMT

This is just a short, half-baked idea that I'd love some feedback about. It's pretty common in the forums for users to post a code snippet in their question, say "Hey! This isn't working!" and then having a conversation with the community about how they should fix their code so it works. The problem is that people have to keep copying and pasting the code block over and over again, or they just don't bother, and it becomes fairly difficult to follow the thread.

Why not have a little wiki-style area at the top where any contributor to the thread could edit the code sample, slowly turning it into a quality piece of code. Just like a wiki, moderators would be able to control it, and a history would be kept. The code snippet could be locked down (maybe when the question is marked as answered?) Then, at the top of answered questions, you'd have a community validated code snippet.

Here's my mockup of what it might look like. What do you think?

ForumExplorer: A Better(?) Way to Moderate the MSDN Forums

joemorel — Tue, 17 Oct 2006 01:41:00 GMT

A couple of months ago I created a small tool that utilized some of the cool meta tag searching capabilities of MSN Search and published it out to GotDotNet. It was simple, but definitely helps overcome one of the biggest limitations in the forums--lousy search.

That little tool catalyzed a project that I've blogged about in the past--the creation of a "toolset" for the MSDN Forums moderators (requirements) that help them overcome some of the current limitations of the platform. I'm not the strongest developer out there, but I had some great, passionate moderators step up to the plate and create little pieces of functionality--small prototypes of what the toolset could eventually have. My search tool was fixed and augmented. A custom web browser with a treeview based navigation sidebar was created. I even wrote a tagging prototype--first from del.icio.us's API, then from my own web services.

I recently tied this all together in one application--ForumExplorer. ForumExplorer allows for advanced question search, custom tagging, and faster navigation from one common interface. It's rough, and some of the UI doesn't make a ton of sense, but if you're currently a moderator (Microsoft or not) on the MSDN Forums, you might want to give it a try. You can download the ZIP file for Beta 1 of ForumExplorer here:

http://www.codeplex.com/Release/ProjectReleases.aspx?ProjectName=ForumsToolbar&ReleaseId=772

Just download it, unzip the file, and run "ForumExplorer.exe". I'd love to know what you think of the tool. Microsofties--would you like to see an internal version that exposes Answerme's question assignment and statistics tracking? If you're not a moderator, would you like a tool that just allows you to browse the forums in a custom environment?

Update: Thanks to Richard Edwards for pointing this out, but the ForumExplorer tool requires a "secret phrase" to create an account. Since the current version is limited to forum moderators, you'll need to go to the forums to find out what the secret phrase is:

http://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=832076&SiteID=1&mode=1

Make sure you're logged into Passport before you click on that link!

Forums Moderator Toolset Requirements and Feature List Available

joemorel — Thu, 10 Aug 2006 03:07:00 GMT

Well, it looks like I really am going to move forward on creating the moderators toolset that I first mentioned a little bit back. We're going to use CodePlex to host the site, and I'm very, very excited to run a project where Microsoft is working step-by-step through the entire development process with the community! If you'd like to check out the project, here's the homepage:

http://www.codeplex.com/Wiki/View.aspx?ProjectName=ForumsToolbar

As part of the launch of this project, I've drafted a "goals/requirements/features" document and posted it right on the wiki. I'm inviting anybody who might be using this toolset, or anybody who's interested in helping develop the toolset, to check out the requirements document and leave me feedback:

http://www.codeplex.com/Wiki/View.aspx?ProjectName=ForumsToolbar&title=High%20Level%20Requirements

What's missing? What is prioritized wrong? Let me know, and I'll do by best to make it happen.

I'm excited to be working with the awesome MSDN forums moderators community, and I'll be reporting progress here on my blog, and in the CodePlex project itself (it has RSS feeds too...) :)

Microsoft Forums MSN Search Tool

joemorel — Wed, 12 Jul 2006 23:52:00 GMT

I've blogged about using Live.com macros to make searching the forums a breeze, but the feedback I've gotten is that the macros themselves are difficult to create, especially for the forums. It's a pain to troubleshoot whether or not the queries are working, and how exactly to use the meta tags (do I use spaces or plus signs or quotation marks or...)

I spent an hour last week playing with the MSN/Windows Live Search meta tags, and I created a small tool that constructed these complex queries for you and launches a browser window to run a search on MSN against your search terms. MSN Search also allows you to subscribe to RSS feeds for a particular search, and these searches are no different.

The tool can be downloaded here:

http://www.gotdotnet.com/codegallery/codegallery.aspx?id=eb5f1dc5-6868-4fde-9c78-909832315ccc

I'm still working on the tool, and I'll post updates, but I wanted to get something out there so people could start getting use out of this tool. Any feedback or suggestions are welcome!