Products > Test Equipment

Should OP have an obligation to keep a thread index???........

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Smokey:
The question is:
If you start a thread knowing it will get hundreds of pages of posts with quickly evolving content and specific high value posts with important procedures that people are obviously coming to the thread to get but are burried many pages deep....

.....should you have an obligation to keep an index of important posts in the first post?


I'm thinking here of the "Hacking the xxxx" type threads. 

Some do an good job at this:
New Rigol DS1054Z oscilloscope: https://www.eevblog.com/forum/testgear/new-rigol-ds1054z-oscilloscope/

Others, not so good:
Hacking the Rigol MSO5000 series oscilloscopes: https://www.eevblog.com/forum/testgear/hacking-the-rigol-mso5000-series-oscilloscopes/
   [In case anyone cares, the instructions for this thread are here 2167 posts in:
                       https://www.eevblog.com/forum/testgear/hacking-the-rigol-mso5000-series-oscilloscopes/msg3869852/#msg3869852 ]

This results in post after post of "where are the instructions????", and then eventually someone gets tired of that and makes a whole new post with the instructions as the OP, fragmenting the discussion. 

It would be great if there could be something like a moderator editable index for posts like this if the OP abandons it or just doesn't do it  themselves.

pcprogrammer:

--- Quote from: Smokey on October 26, 2022, 02:37:50 am ---This results in post after post of "where are the instructions????", and then eventually someone gets tired of that and makes a whole new post with the instructions as the OP, fragmenting the discussion. 

--- End quote ---

It is this lazy behavior of the posters of these "where are the instructions????" that these threads get cluttered in the first place.

For this having two threads would be a solution. One for the actual hacking work done and one where questions can be asked, but unless tied together in some way it would not work for the same reason. Laziness.

fourfathom:

--- Quote from: Smokey on October 26, 2022, 02:37:50 am ---.....should you have an obligation to keep an index of important posts in the first post?
--- End quote ---

The answer is "No".

The OP is responsible for the OP's posts.  Nothing more.  If someone wants to build and maintain an index of "significant" posts that's commendable, but it's a lot a lot of work and hardly obligatory.

And yes, I understand that only the OP (or moderator) is able to edit the OP's posts.  Oh well, that's just a fact of life.

Smokey:

--- Quote from: fourfathom on October 26, 2022, 06:09:37 am ---
--- Quote from: Smokey on October 26, 2022, 02:37:50 am ---.....should you have an obligation to keep an index of important posts in the first post?
--- End quote ---

... but it's a lot a lot of work...


--- End quote ---

Is it really though?  If you want to give the full play by play, that's awesome.  And having an index of how the reverse engineering process plays out would help everyone to be able to reference that....
.... But even the minimum of essentially just one edit and link to the instruction information post that 99% of people come to the thread for would be minimally acceptable. 

And I contend it's not laziness that causes people to ask where the one most valuable post is, when it's one in thousands in that thread and buried in hundreds of pages of technical discussions and random arguments.  That's like if you asked me for a specific technical detail and I told you it's in a book at the library and you are lazy for even asking when you could have already looked through every book yourself.

DaJMasta:
It's helpful, but it's an unreasonable expectation.  This is a forum, not a wiki, and even a well intentioned OP who diligently keeps track of all the posts and highlights the most useful ones in the first post will eventually stop going back to the thread at some point, and then nothing beyond a point gets indexed, and you end up with a thread that appears a lot less helpful than it is after additional follow ups have been made.  Case in point for this is the 3d printed replacement parts sticky at the top of this forum.  The OP is a helpful index of replacements available, but it barely indexes the first few pages and hasn't been updated in years.  While it would be a service to the community and a helpful resource to keep that main index updated, it is a lot of work, a lot of long term checking in, and is way beyond the scope of participation expectations for a forum user.

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