Freaks Macintosh Archive/Freaks Macintosh Archive.bin/Freaks Macintosh Archives/Aol/aol-unsorted/AOLStaffAccess.sit/AOL Staff Access/AOL TOP SECERTS FILES/MUT Message Board Manual

Text File | 1995-03-25 | 30KB | 210 lines

THE MUT MESSAGE BOARDS: A Brief Introduction

This is an attempt to give MUT staff members a summary of philosophy, concepts, and operational approaches regarding our message board area within a reasonably short document. Since I’m an unreasonably long-winded writer, though, you’ll all just have to suffer a bit!

The place to start, really, is by noting the purpose and focus of MUT as a whole. Our focus is on utility software, and there are some pretty fine lines between our concerns and those of some other forums…most noticeably Hardware and Operating Systems. Basically, though, we consider utility software to be any third-party (i.e., not made by Apple or a hardware manufacturer) item that helps the user make better use of the Mac, by doing one or more of the following:

a) Adding new capabilities to the System software, or to commercial programs;

b) Simplifying the user’s general non-hardware tasks, such as virus detection and extermination, backup, defragmentation, file organization, control and management of DAs, extensions, fonts, etc., and so on;

c) Assisting the user in making basic modifications to the appearance of the system, via simple operations involving ResEdit or similar specialty programs (SunDesk Strip, WallPaper, etc.).

Way back in the dark ages, this was known as the Utilities and Desk Accessories Forum. As a result, we also deal with another type of cross-over program, namely those DAs that provide a small-scale version of some process that, if fully-featured, might well be the province of another forum. (For instance, mini-word processor DAs like McSink.) Now that DA’s are no longer required to be installed in the system, we’re seeing less of this type of item, but they still exist.

Our purposes are multiple, but include:

a) Providing a “sole-source” location where information and questions about utility software can be supplied to AO users, and where discussions—both live and via message boards—on utility-related topics can be held;

b) Providing a meeting place for those interested in utility software, so that online friendships can be fostered among staff, users, and developers of utilities;

c) Providing a source library of both utility software and informational files related to such software;

d) Providing an umbrella organization for those utility developers who fit in our Company Support area;

e) Providing a location where the larger utility developers—those who are, or are qualified for, Industry Connection—can come to meet their buying public in an open, unbiased forum.

With that out of the way, we can take a more detailed look at our message boards. Like just about every forum, discussion area, and what-have-you here on AO, we have a message board center. We use what are called “super-boards”; that is, there are several sets of boards arranged hierarchically in three levels, and the user has the ability to find new entries on all of them at once via the “Message Boards” icon.

The MUT Message Board staff, however, is only responsible for one second-level set of boards, those titled “Let’s Discuss - Mac Utilities”. The other two sections are the Virus Information Center, managed by our own AFA JimW, and the Company Support  discussion areas, managed by the assorted firms that offer them.

Within this second-level set of boards are six bottom-level message boards, each containing up to fifty folders. The six boards, whose organization is based on some historical distinctions between types of utilities that System 7 has thoroughly blurred, are as follows:

1) Forum Business: This board is the sole province of the forum leader. The FL, and only the FL, has the right to determine what items belong here, though s/he may assign the work to others. He may, at his discretion, move folders started here to any of the other five boards if he considers them more appropriate elsewhere. Primarily, topics on this board are either aspects of MUT’s policies or applications of AO’s more general policies to our forum’s operation. This area is also used for general announcements.

2) DAs: Discussions of desk accessories, and of software for managing DA usage, fall here.

3) INITs/CDEVs & F-keys: Discussions of extensions/inits, control panel devices, Fkeys, and utilities for managing any and all of them.

4) ResEdit Helper: This is the area where discussions involving direct modifications of basic system resources—icons, windows, startup screens, and so on—are held. By a tacit agreement with the Developer’s Forum, it is specifically *NOT* an area for discussions of how to develop new kinds of resources and/or software.

5) Utility Applications: Any free-standing program that performs a utility function is up for discussion in this area.

6) MUT 911 Assistance: Originally, this area was simply called “HELP!!!”. Both names make its function pretty clear—it’s the place to come with a utility-related problem.

Some aspects of message board operation are simply AO limitations: there can be no more than fifty folders in a single message area, which leads to the necessity of our staff acting to delete and/or archive old folders.  Also, the AO Terms of Service apply to messages here just as much as they do to the conversations in the People Connection chat rooms.

Other aspects are more a matter of style and practice, that can be summed up in just a few (?) simple (??) rules (I think…):

0) Don’t flame. The users will be more than happy to do that for you!

1) Keep up with all discussions to the best extent that your schedule permits. If you’re new on the job, make a point of skimming through all the old stuff over the period of a month or so. Once you’re caught up, checking for new messages once or twice a day will suffice.

2) If you don’t have an answer for a question, see if you can find someone who does. It may be an MUT staffer, or someone from another forum, or a company rep from IC, or a personal friend. Networking really pays off in getting our users’ questions answered.

3) It’s always better to give a more detailed answer than expected; someone else may be reading your message tomorrow and need those details.

4) There is no rule 4. In months with a vowel in them, substitute rule zero. Otherwise, substitute rule 0.

5) If a question doesn’t seem completely relevant to our forum, but you can offer an answer, do so, but also remind the user that there’s more info available elsewhere—in another forum, in an IC area, or wherever.

6) Know about what’s going on elsewhere in our forum. If a question’s topic is also next week’s conference topic, mention it. If there’s stuff in the library that’s relevant—either programs or archived conferences and/or folders—mention it. Although we often forget it, AO is a business, and our forum’s importance to that business depends on how many hours users spend here. Don’t encourage people to waste time, but feel free to give them hints as to what will be useful to them and let them make their own decisions.

6.1) Rule 6 works in reverse, too—if you see that a specific subject is getting a lot of attention, pass it on to the Message Board manager as a possible conference topic.

7) Know what’s going on elsewhere on AO. Nobody can keep up with everything on here, it’s true, but you should possess a general knowledge of what’s around. Among the most critical things are:
a) What’s in other forums, including their Direct Connect areas;
b) What utility manufacturers are over in Industry Connection, and what news and new items are available there;
c) What kinds of utility-related questions are coming up in other forums, especially Operating Systems, Hardware, and Developers;
d) What all-AO events—Center Stage visits and such—are relevant to our users;
e) What utility-related stuff is getting questions over at the Software Help Desk.

7.1) When appropriate, contribute to message boards and conferences in other forums. It’s not only good publicity for us, but also helps you meet other staff members.

8) Remember that, even under a non-staff screen name, you’re a part of this forum when you’re online, and it never hurts to mention briefly what we have to offer. If you have time to occasionally visit the Online Help Room over in People Connection, do so—the guides appreciate it, and so do the users. And consider visiting PC rooms with your staff name in place. Every user who asks you, “Uh, what’s an AFC?” is giving you a chance to mention the forum. Free advertising does help, y’know!

ARCHIVING AND FOLDER MANAGEMENT

The previous sections covered the general principles of what the message boards do here in MUT, how we answer questions, and so on—message management. Now we turn to the next higher level—folder management—and look at the MUT approach to archiving and deleting folders. I’m assuming that you have already reviewed the pair of stacks that describe the operation of the Board Tools, so that there won’t be any need to repeat that stuff here.

BASIC CONCEPTS
The AO message board design is such that each board (which includes any folder in a “superboard” like ours that isn’t at the bottom level) can only contain fifty (50) folders. As a result, one of the major jobs in keeping  the boards operational is performing a regular cleanup of older material.

Here in MUT, we try to keep our folder count down to between 42-44 folders per board. From experience, we have learned that, on a busy weekend, it’s not unusual to find 5 or more new folders created in each board. That’s  especially true when a major trade show has just ended, a new System release has just appeared, or a number of companies have just released upgrades.

Two general tips should get mentioned early: 1) When you become a staff member, you will find that all messages you see now include a line reading “Posted On: America Online”. Whenever you are copying messages, either to a folder or a text file, be sure to remove this line from *each* message you move.  2) Changes you make with Board Tools will not show up for you in the “regular” windows until you have backed out of the current board area and re-entered it. However, when you delete a folder, the Board Tools window will be immediately updated to reflect that fact…which will give you a chance to grab a soda, go to the bathroom, or any other short task.

There are a number of different things we can do to cut down the number of folders in a board:

* Move folder contents into to another folder (usually on the current board), followed by deletion of the folder whose contents have been moved;
* Move folders to another board (which includes automatic deletion);
* Delete folders without retention of contents;
* Archival of folder contents, followed by deletion of the archived folders.

Let’s look at the mechanics of these approaches one by one, and then talk about the philosophical part of the job, namely deciding what stays and what goes. Much of the mechanical work can be automated by macros of one kind or another. How you do it is your choice, so long as you stick to the basic processes I’ll describe.

MOVING FOLDER CONTENTS

This can be quite useful when you see that several folders in a board are on the same topic. By bringing the contents of the two folders together, you end up creating a more viable discussion and save the users the trouble of locating the second folder. Another use for this is when you spot the case where a user has posted the same message in several different folders, and responses have already appeared in more than one place.
Because the board tools do not include an option to move messages between folders—at least none that I’ve been able to find—this has to be done by hand. There are two methods you can use here—individual and bulk.

Individual moves are done by opening the two folders involved. Go to the recipient folder and click on “Add Message”. For the message title, enter “Moved Message: XXX”, where XXX is a compressed form of the original message’s title. Go to the message text area, and enter a brief line stating where the message was moved from (e.g., “Originally posted in the folder Utility Applications/Microsoft Word”, followed by a line of 5-10 dashes. Then, click in the original message’s window *twice* (once to select the window, the second time to place your cursor in the message area), do a Command-A (Select all) followed by a Command-C (Cut), then click once on the “Add Message” window, followed by Command-V (Paste). This will paste the transferred text into the window. Post the new message. Repeat the process for each message to be moved.

As you move messages, you can remove from them unnecessary blank lines (especially before a signature line), and also the “Posted On: America Online” line. If a message has been posted in both the original and recipient folder, it should not be copied, of course.

Bulk moves are similar, but gather up a group of messages into a single long message before posting. The overall process is similar to moving individual messages, except that the title becomes “Moved Messages: XXX”.  You cut and paste the individual messages into a single “Add Message” window, and place a line of 5-10 dashes between each pair of messages you paste. If the “Add Message” window becomes full (i.e., you get the “Paste would exceed field capacity” error from AO), delete the portion of the last message that was copied, if any, post the current window and start another one with the title “Moved Messages (continued…)”.

As you proceed, you will want to keep a list of who the original message-posters were, so that you can send them email notifying them that their messages have been moved. One way to do this efficiently is to open a Mail window when you start moving messages, and enter each poster’s name into the To: box as you transfer the message. This makes sure that you don’t miss anyone. We don’t have a form letter for this process (yet..) but you can amend the one used for Archived Folders to fit the bill with minimal trouble.

Once all the messages have been moved and the mail notification has been sent, you can then use the Board Tools to delete the folder from which they came, as described below.

MOVING ENTIRE FOLDERS

This approach is used when you see an entire folder whose contents are inappropriate for a specific section of the boards, such as a discussion of QuicKeys in the ResEdit section. The most common instance of this is folders about specific utility problems that have been placed in the Forum Business section. Because this section is the AFL’s responsibility, however, do not move folders out of it without his or her prior approval.

Moving folders is a fairly simple process via Board Tools, as long as you know the folder number for the board section that will receive the transferred folder. This can easily be found via the MUT LibNums DA that we distribute to our staff. In an emergency, though, you can use Board Tools to determine the number of the recipient area. To do this, open a bottom-level folder in the recipient area, start Board Tools, and then look up that folder’s parent information. This will include the folder number of the parent folder (i.e., the board area).

As with anything else we do, you’ll want to notify the posters of the original messages that their stuff has been moved. In this case, the quick way to get a list of posters is to do a Browse on the folder in question.

DELETING AN ENTIRE FOLDER

This is the easiest thing to do in cleaning up a board. Just open the board’s Board Tools window, select the folder, click on Delete and then confirm the action. In general, you should notify the posters of what you have done, and why. However, you can make an exception for material that is extremely old and irrelevant, such as a call for beta testers that expired several months back. The standard form letter for an archived folder works here if you modify some of its text.

ARCHIVING A FOLDER

This is the most time-consuming process in board management. You begin by opening a New File window, a mail message form, and the folder whose content is being archived. In the New File window, enter a header line of the form “Archive of the folder XXX, originally posted on MUT/Let’s Discuss/YYY; nn messages, dated mm/mm-mm/mm/mm.” Here, XXX is the folder’s name, YYY is the board name, and nn and mmm are, I hope, obvious. Follow this with a line of 5-10 dashes and *immediately* do a Save As… of the window, giving it the title “XXX Archive”.

Why save now? For some unknown reason, some versions of AO have trouble tracking your cursor position in a new window until the contents have been saved at least once. If you are using a beta version, this is especially important and will make the work easier. Also, you can then do an occasional Command-S after every few message transfers to make sure you don’t lose your work.

Now, you can follow the same basic process described above for moving messages in bulk to a different folder, only you’ll move them to the XXX Archive window instead. Enter posters’ names in the To: field of the mail message, so you’ll have that ready when you’re done.

As you transfer messages, keep an eye on their content. If you see a message whose content is out of date, or which refers to an outdated program, add an editorial note in the XXX Archive file telling the reader about this fact. Editorial notes are always enclosed in square brackets and begin on a new line, in the format [NOTE:….] As with moved messages, you can delete unneeded blank lines, “Posted On:…”, and the like.

A key difference between preparing an archive and moving messages to a new folder is in how you handle the situation where you run out of space for additional text. AO text files are limited in size to about 32K characters. When you run out of space in your XXX Archive file, you’ll need to start a second one in order to continue transferring the messages. There’s no use worrying about combining the two yet, as there’s another step that has to come first, namely checking for earlier archives on the topic.

Once your text file(s) are done, you need to begin thinking about the keywords that will apply to the new archive. You’ll need these when you finally get to upload it, but first you’ll use them to search the Text Files & Forum Business library, and also the New Files library, for archives on related topics. If you find any, you’ll need to download them. Once you’ve done that, save that mail form with the list of names, quit AO, and open any word processor that has the ability to output text files, open all the archive files.

Read through the various archives. If the material in the early ones is now hopelessly out of date, they can be deleted without merging them. If there’s useful stuff, you’ll want to do some cut-and-paste work to add the new material into the existing archive file. Place the older messages first, then the new ones, in chronological order. In some cases, you’ll end up merging several archives into one file.

If the various files are too big to be merged into a single text file, then you’ll want to make them into a set of text files. Name them XXX Archive #1 through XXX Archive #N, where #1 has the earliest messages, and #N has the most recent material. Then, using StuffIt Classic, compress the set of archives into a single file named”XXX Archive.sit”.

If the archive is only a single file, don’t bother compressing it unless it’s over 10K. If you have StuffIt Deluxe, then the best compression approach for very large archives (over 80K) is to make a self-extracting archive with the Text compression optimizer turned on. in keeping with AO’s policy, we don’t upload even self-extracting archives made with compression utilities other than StuffIt.

At this point, you should have a single file—either a text file or a compressed file—ready for upload. If you previously left AO, start it up again and dial in. Go to MUT, and open up the New Files library window. Click on “Upload” and fill out the form as follows:

Subject: XXX Archive Author: MUT Users (or MUT Users and Staff, if appropriate) Computer: Any computer Needs: Any text file reader, including AO (mention StuffIt or UnStuffit Deluxe, if appropriate)

In the description area, paste in a copy of our template for archived folder descriptions and fill in the necessary information specifying the keywords and archive details. Then upload the archive file. Once that is done, take the mail message form with the list of contributors in the To: field. For subject, enter “Archived Folder XXX”. For the message body, paste in our Archived Folder template and fill in the necessary information. Remember that all text in a file description should be in a monospaced font such as Geneva!

If you do not have library privileges in the New Files area, go to the cc: section of the message and add the AFA’s for both Message Boards and Library. This will let them know that the file is there and ready to be released.  Of course, if they contributed to the archive, don’t bother listing them twice. If you do have privileges, follow standard procedures for releasing the archive into the New Files library.

After the archive has been uploaded and the mail notification has been sent, return to the appropriate board, enter Board Tools, and delete the folder that you’ve archived. Finally, if any older files in the Text Files area now need deletion, and you can’t do so yourself, send mail to the Message Board and Library AFA’s to let them know what needs to be done. Include both file name and upload date, so that no errors can be made.

WHAT GETS ARCHIVED, WHAT GETS DELETED?

This is one of the toughest things to describe in the entire board management process. Because our boards are relatively busy, with a lot of new messages and folders going up every day, keeping a reasonable amount of free space is a key job. At the same time, archiving can be a time-consuming bit of work, especially when compared to merely deleting a folder. In this section, I’m going to try and offer some guidelines—not hard and fast rules—about what is and isn’t worth archiving.

First of all, one way to clear some space quickly without a lot of work is to keep an eye out for multiple folders on the same topic. When you spot this situation, you can simply transfer the more recent messages (usually from the newer folder) into the other folder, then delete the folder whose contents you just transferred. This makes for a more continuous thread of discussion and is often beneficial to the users. Don’t forget to notify the posters that their messages have been moved, of course. Remember, too, that sometimes topics overlap the board categories, and you may need to move messages from one board to another.

In general, the folders most worth archiving are the ones that deal with broad-ranging questions—comparisons of products, for instance, or discussions of backup methodologies—or general techniques—how to edit and install color icons, or eliminate init conflicts—rather than those that answer very specific questions. My basic rule of thumb is to ask myself how many users can benefit by archiving a folder. If it will help a broad range of users, it should be archived.

If a folder only will help a few people who have a very specific set of hardware and software, my approach is to leave the folder on the board for as long as is reasonable, and then delete it. If a very focused folder is around long enough, it’s not uncommon for the problem to be solved by a bug fix, at which point the information is irrelevant anyway. If the question comes up again in a few months, we can simply answer it again…or, even better, our users will answer it, which gets them more involved with the boards.

Folders that contain informational postings, such as calls for beta testers or announcements of new/upgraded products from a single manufacturer, are always open for deletion once they’ve had some time on the board. While it’s great to have such info posted in our message board area, 45 days is almost always sufficient for such promotional material. Also, note that here in MUT we now have a special folder in the Forum Business area, for announcements regarding beta testing and beta downloads available over in the IC area; such postings are no longer appropriate on other MUT boards.

DELETING INDIVIDUAL MESSAGES

In general, we don’t bother removing individual messages from within folders while they are on the boards. (As noted earlier, we do sometimes trim messages out when archiving a folder). One major exception is when the same message has been placed in several folders; how to handle that situation is discussed in the next section of this document. Here are a few other cases when a message may be deleted from an on-board folder:

* Violation of Terms of Service

Whether we agree with them or not, ToS are as binding upon us as “remote staff”  as they are on AO users. If we encounter messages on our boards that are in clear violation of ToS, we’re obliged to deal with them. In such a situation, you have two choices—you can write the user a letter, explaining how the message in question is in violation of ToS, or you can pass the buck up to the next person in line and ask him or her to deal with it. In general, if you’re unsure about whether a message is in violation, or how best to handle a violation, pass the buck. Remember, too, that it is possible to hide an individual message while a decision is being reached about its content.

* Outdated Information

In some folders where a discussion has gone on over a period of time, it’s not unusual for some of the earlier messages to contain information that’s become out of date. For instance, a folder in our ResEdit Helper section might contain a discussion on icon-editing that extends across four different releases of ResEdit, including messages that simply announce the availability of newer versions. It is perfectly reasonable to remove such outdated items if, and only if, they contain nothing else related to the discussion and their removal doesn’t interrupt the “flow of discussion”.

One minor point should be noted here. While an individual program can be outdated, we don’t consider versions of Apple System Software to be out of date as long as they are still available for downloading from the Operating Systems Forum’s library. For assorted reasons, Mac owners use a variety of system software releases, and discussions about all releases—not just the most recent one—are still considered relevant on our boards.

MULTIPLE POSTINGS OF THE SAME MESSAGE AND/OR FOLDER

It is policy in just about every forum that multiple postings are to be discouraged. They take up space on the boards, and tend to waste the time of the paying customers who use, as most do, the “Read New” option. In general, messages to users about this should explain that multiple postings tend to get fewer answers, and make following the discussion harder.

There are a couple of ways to deal with this:

* If it’s a new folder that’s been created twice on the same board, assume that it was most likely a new user who’s unfamiliar with the system. Examine both versions for messages and, if necessary, copy any responses from one folder to the other. Then, delete the less-complete folder and notify the user of what you’ve done.

* If it’s a new folder that’s been created on two different MUT boards, decide which board is more appropriate for the discussion topic, and then perform message copying (if needed), folder deletion, and user notification as before.

* If it’s the same message in two different folders that already existed, then you can delete one of the messages, along with the note to the user. Or, as an alternative, you can post a response in one folder saying something along the lines of “Your question has already been answered in the XXX folder in MUT’s YYY board. Please refer there for more information.” This approach also works for folks who post on multiple forums with the same question.

EDITING FOLDER TITLES AND DESCRIPTIONS

In general, this is something we don’t bother doing. If a folder title is in violation of TOS, or is very badly misspelled, or utterly misleading, it’s ok to correct it (with, as usual, a note to the poster of the folder).  Otherwise, don’t waste the energy. And the folder descriptions are, in general, worth even less effort!

EMPTY FOLDERS

On occasion, you’ll find that a person has misunderstood the operation of the message boards, and attempted to post his or her message in the small space designed to hold a folder’s description rather than in the folder’s first message. Folders like this are only noticeable when you are scanning an entire board’s contents, at which point they show up as having zero messages.

Here’s how to handle such a case:

1) Open board tools for the board containing the empty folder. Select the folder in the board tools list and click on Browse. You will now be able to see who created the folder. Note that the window may need expansion to the right to see the full screen name.

2) Send the creator our standard form letter about empty folders in a *Return Receipt* email message.

3) Wait three days. If no return receipt has arrived and a message has not been placed in the folder, re-send the email message with an addendum stating that the folder will be removed in 24 hours, but can be re-posted at the user’s convenience. If you have received a return receipt within those 3 days, and no message was posted, just delete the folder, with notice to the user.

————————————————————————————
This memo was created during the period of 11/30/91-6/30/92, by Dave Axler (AFA DaveAx), with advice, assistance, commentary, and criticism from the rest of the MUT management team: Floyd Zink (AFL Floyd), Bob Salsburg (AFA Bob), Steve Yaste (AFA SteveY), and Jim Warthman (AFA JimW). Any comments and suggestions can be sent to AFA DaveAx.