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DCC sub-forum area re-structure


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The DCC area is currently divided into four areas - DCC Discussions / DCC Questions / DCC Fitting and DCC Sound.

 

I take my hat off to Ron Ron Ron for always flagging up to me when topics have been posted in the wrong area and, believe me, I have a lot to thank him for as so many topics have to be moved. I'm doing some re-structuring at the moment and I'm of a mind to put it all into one forum area - plain old DCC.

 

Can anyone raise a good reason for not doing so?

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I agree with Andy's plan.

 

Would this also be a good time to ask people carrying out commercial activities in DCC Sound to move into the Small Suppliers area? Or is that again dividing up content that you're trying to amalgamate?

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Discussions and Questions are easily amalgamated, the Fitting and Sound could also be in one, but possibly better to keep them separate and specific.

 

The DCC area is the forum I find the most useful, but that’s just me.

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STOP !!

 

​Well it looks to be a popular move, but personally I am totally against amalgamation of the sections.

 

Reason....

Where we are, arises from past experience.

In the beginning we just had a single DCC section.

However as interest and postings in this section grew, it became very unwieldy to navigate and topics quickly got swamped or lost in the ether.

 

There was a suggestion to split the DCC section into sub-sections to better organise it and make it easier to navigate and that has been the case for a while now.

 

The titles of the sub-section headings have been tweaked on occasion, in an attempt to avoid confusion about where to post and eventually, after those changes, this seems have become effective most of the time.

Still, I think it could be organised, or the titles worded, a little better.

There's always room for improvement.

 

 

Some benefits of separate sub-sections.....

 

Help and Questions - is self explanatory. It's a place to ask for help or raise a query.

It's also a place that can be recognised by those who can offer help and advice.

That section was decluttered from general DCC chat, discussion and product and news items.

 

Sound - A useful place to put all sound related topics and requests for help and advice that relate to the use of sound decoders.

By separating this out, those who are not interested in sound don't have these topics cluttering up the general Help and Questions section.

 

DCC Discussion Topics - the (not questions) suffix was added by request, to help people from posting in the wrong place.

This section could have been given a clearer title, as it has not entirely prevented mis-posting, sub-section wise.

It was suggested as a separate section to accommodate news items, announcements of new products and to house general discussion on matters DCC.

When everything was combined in one DCC section, if you were following a particular discussion topic, often you would return to the DCC section to find it had almost disappeared behind a whole avalanche of DCC questions and requests for help.

I particularly found it a bit irritating to find a topic I was returning to after only several hours, or a day or two, had gone back a page or even two pages, in a relatively short time.

Similarly requests for help and questions fell back in the queue and sometimes only got one or two answers, before vanishing in to the ether. Not very helpful.

 

DCC Fitting - I believe this was included after various requests to have a reference point for fitting in certain locos.

It does seem to have become more like a general Help section though.

 

 

The Down side of combining everything....

 

A return to a lengthy and what is likely to be a muddled section.

Difficulty picking out the wheat from the chaff.

Topics are likely to vanish back in the pecking order in very quick time.

The likelihood that there will be fewer respondents to requests for help and advice as topics get buried in a sea of fog.

 

Experience of other forums, both here, in mainland Europe and North American demonstrates this to be the case.

 

 

Anyway, that's my two penneth worth.

This is Andy's forum and no doubt having asked the question, he'll go with the opinion of those who answer.

Again I repeat, personally I think it will be a mistake.

 

There are several other sections of the forum that are in a much more muddled condition than the DCC section.

Dare I say that those areas are in far more urgent need of an overhaul than this one?

I don't presume to interfere, nor have I troubled Andy or any of the Mods by suggesting those areas are rearranged and/or re-labelled.

I thought I might already be troubling the "team" too much when helping police this small area of the forum.

Therefore it's nice to receive thanks from Andy for my humble contribution.

 

 

Ron.

 

 

.

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If anything more sections may be better.

 

I use one brand of controller, Fred uses another, Bill yet another an so on. Other than idle interest I don't need to know what other controllers do or don't do.

 

So how about subsections that deal with specific DCC brands. We'd have Digitrax, NCE, MRC,Lenz, Zimo,Digikeijs, ESU, ZTC, Hornby and Bachman? and maybe a few others I've forgotten, and then a catch all for the brands that are rarely used or not readily available (these all seem to be German,Austrian,or Swiss).

 

Regards,

 

John P

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I rarely have to ask a question in the DCC forum section and when I have one, it's usually been asked or covered already.

I've learnt or discovered much by looking first or using the search function.

I can usually go through the Help section and find what I'm looking for and I don't fancy the idea of having to wade through twice as much content to look for things.

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If anything more sections may be better.

 

I use one brand of controller, Fred uses another, Bill yet another an so on. Other than idle interest I don't need to know what other controllers do or don't do.

 

So how about subsections that deal with specific DCC brands. We'd have Digitrax, NCE, MRC,Lenz, Zimo,Digikeijs, ESU, ZTC, Hornby and Bachman? and maybe a few others I've forgotten, and then a catch all for the brands that are rarely used or not readily available (these all seem to be German,Austrian,or Swiss).

 

 

What happens when:

 

User has decoder from Hornby with a problem whilst using an NCE control system - is the problem with the decoder or the control system ?  Or a setting in one or the other ?   Or any other cross-combination of decoder/control system ? 

 

User has Digitrax hardware and wants to know about compatibility of certain control hardware with Digikeijs or ESU or NCE  (there are control system parts from all of them which are cross-compatible)

 

There are numerous posts which go across multiple hardware manufacturer combinations.   

 

So, the idea doesn't work in practise. 

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If you need to make changes I would suggest combining the discussions and question subsections but leave the fitting and sound as separate subsections. Although I  would much prefer it to remain as is!

 

I also find the DCC section of most interest and help and is the first place I usually go when visiting the site.

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If it helps understanding of why the "Discussions" and "Help & Questions" are separate sections, it might be helpful to tweak the sub-section titles again, rather than amalgamate them and create a mess..

 

For example, something like "DCC News & General Chat (or Discussion)" and "DCC Help - Advice, Questions and Problem Solving."

 

 

Note that the UK Prototype section was also split for similar and justifiable reasons, into "UK Prototype Discussions", "UK Prototype Questions" and "Preservation".

"UK Prototype Discussions" had "(not questions)" added later on, for clarification and the hard of thinking.

That seems to work very well.

 

 

 

.

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The DCC area is currently divided into four areas - DCC Discussions / DCC Questions / DCC Fitting and DCC Sound.

 

I take my hat off to Ron Ron Ron for always flagging up to me when topics have been posted in the wrong area and, believe me, I have a lot to thank him for as so many topics have to be moved. I'm doing some re-structuring at the moment and I'm of a mind to put it all into one forum area - plain old DCC.

 

Can anyone raise a good reason for not doing so?

 

I see no problem combining sub forums but this morning an old post of mine was moved and now it's disappeared.

 

Dave Smith

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