I'm not sure about the logic of the decision, but during the upgrade and relaying out AAC forums, the decision was made by a nameless admin that the Completed Projects Forum and Projects Forum was not needed. I used and needed the segregation of a separated forum to maintain the Completed Index. My opinion was discounted and I was over ruled. The Index was my idea and my baby, basically I decided I am walking away from this function as being unmaintainable, at least by me. If you want to add a submission to this Index, use the report function,and if another moderator agrees it meets the criteria it will be added to the index, which is now a sticky on the electronic chat forum.

Several functions took a hit due to the upgrade, such as the ability to copy ad paste a hyper texted word, keeping the BB coding intact even when the coding is invisible. The table function has also apparently taken a hit, as I no longer know how to use it.

It bothers me deeply but sometimes you just have to walk away. You can't win em all.

Unless I am fired, I will continue serving as a moderator and writing the occasional article as a thread on AAC.

 

Wow, that’s disturbing news. I get that there maybe wasn’t much traffic in those, but they were the reason I came here in the first place. Sad.

 

I also appreciated that section and think it added a lot to AAC.
@Wendy - Chat Forum?

 

Bummer... I had a couple of babies posted in that forum, and was a little proud of them. It's real sad news it was simply done away with. I consider it a very bad decision. That forum could've easily grown into the crown jewels of this fine website.... I share your frustration, W.

 

I share your pain. I put a lot of work and time into the Components Selection Guide. Now the tables are all messed up. There is no way that I will be willing to do that all over again.

The same goes for RichardO's My old data book collection. That has vanished into the black hole of AAC site upgrades.

 

Bummer... I had a couple of babies posted in that forum, and was a little proud of them. It's real sad news it was simply done away with. I consider it a very bad decision. That forum could've easily grown into the crown jewels of this fine website.... I share your frustration, W.

The Competed projects are not gone, just scattered throughout the electronics chat forum. The Index stickied on the General Electronics Chat is still accurate. If the way threads are described change again (as has happened in this case), It may completely lost.

AAC is now a business, not a hobby, judging from this event I do not expect better in the long term. Bureaucrats do not care about the same things as users, just what they perceive as added value, which may differ from the older users opinions. Apparently my opinion is not held in high esteem. Just how I feel.

 

The Competed projects are not gone, just scattered throughout the electronics chat forum.

I searched for a couple of my old projects and sure enough, they’re still here. Just in unexpected places.

 

@jrap, what would it take to reinstate said forum? ... how many signatures would we have to gather for the owners so that they'd reconsider things and bring it back?

 

In fairness to the owners, they did post a proposed list of new forums for the mod staff to review and requested feedback. In it they did state: "Projects Forums - Too generic. Redistribute these topics as they all will fall under new categories. " There were no objections stated, by anyone, to this change; so it's a bit unfair to declare after the change that one's opinion isn't valued when one didn't give an opinion when asked for it ahead of the change. The very limited discussion focused on the number of forums and whether it would be too long to be rendered effectively for users to peruse. If none of the mods recognized the negative impact of that change when it was proposed, it's hardly fair to blame the owners for not recognizing it when they proposed it. It may well have been a poor decision from the perspective of hindsight (I agree that it was), but that doesn't mean that it was done out of some greedy motivation because AAC now has a commercial emphasis on the non-forum side.

I agree that Completed Projects are a very distinct critter from the normal threads in a forum and deserve to be treated differently. However, that may not mean that they can't reside within the various forums as long as there is an effective and readily visible way to find them and peruse them. A decent index that is maintained is a good start, but not really enough. The ability to sort and filter and search them is also important and that may or may not be feasible to support with them distributed about the forums -- having them in a single forum may make sense. A lot of it really depends on the degree the threads can be tagged and the capabilities of the forum search function (which I have not been impressed with).

 

A lot of it really depends on the degree the threads can be tagged and the capabilities of the forum search function (which I have not been impressed with).

That’s really the nub of it. Completed projects wouldn’t need to be in separate forum if they had a flag or such that differentiates them from other threads.

The entire forum hierarchy concept is not very useful in my opinion. If I come looking for info on a topic, I search that topic. I really don’t care how the thread starter chose to categorize their thread. Many or most are arguably wrong. At the very least there’s a lot of overlap.

A search that could better identify useful posts would be really great. Now we get chaff and a little wheat if we’re lucky. Usefulness is in the eye of the beholder of course. Google made a fortune by figuring out which search results were actually useful to users. A little bit of that would be nice here. No idea how to make it happen.

 

I was derived to this thread because a thread I started today.

I searched for a couple of my old projects and sure enough, they’re still here. Just in unexpected places.

What threads are these and where are they now?

That’s really the nub of it. Completed projects wouldn’t need to be in separate forum if they had a flag or such that differentiates them from other threads.

The entire forum hierarchy concept is not very useful in my opinion. If I come looking for info on a topic, I search that topic. I really don’t care how the thread starter chose to categorize their thread. Many or most are arguably wrong. At the very least there’s a lot of overlap.

A search that could better identify useful posts would be really great. Now we get chaff and a little wheat if we’re lucky. Usefulness is in the eye of the beholder of course. Google made a fortune by figuring out which search results were actually useful to users. A little bit of that would be nice here. No idea how to make it happen.

Please check my OP in "Feedback and suggestions forum". As a general solution, nothing better than the Google alternative "website: allaboutcircuits xxxxxxxxxxx" Used it even for the Microchip forum in the bad times of their past.