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 Suggestions for Improvement to CompSci.ca
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Martin




PostPosted: Tue Jun 12, 2007 2:44 pm   Post subject: RE:Suggestions for Improvement to CompSci.ca

I think that we need a nicer theme. One modeled after Tony's blog would be pretty awesome.

Also, I feel that we need an 'official' line of tutorials on the various languages that we support. While searching through posts works, a lot of people are lost as to the order to go through things.
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Tony




PostPosted: Tue Jun 12, 2007 2:51 pm   Post subject: RE:Suggestions for Improvement to CompSci.ca

Well while I'll be fixing how the forum handles CSS, I might as well port /blog's theme.

And good call on the "official" tutorials. The Turing Walkthrough works reasonably well for Turing, maybe we could have something similar for other languages.
Latest from compsci.ca/blog: Tony's programming blog. DWITE - a programming contest.
Dan




PostPosted: Tue Jun 12, 2007 3:00 pm   Post subject: Re: RE:Suggestions for Improvement to CompSci.ca

Tony @ 12th June 2007, 2:51 pm wrote:

And good call on the "official" tutorials. The Turing Walkthrough works reasonably well for Turing, maybe we could have something similar for other languages.


This is already in the works. Ultrahex and Clayton expersed some intresest in doing it and rdrake is working on somthing that could help update the turing one a bit.

I sotrgly suggest not making new templates but to do new styles for the site. Making a new template means you have to consider every changed made to the site from the basic phpbb version, a new style can be done with just CSS.
Computer Science Canada Help with programming in C, C++, Java, PHP, Ruby, Turing, VB and more!
Martin




PostPosted: Tue Jun 12, 2007 3:24 pm   Post subject: Re: RE:Suggestions for Improvement to CompSci.ca

Tony @ Wed 13 Jun, 04:51 wrote:
Well while I'll be fixing how the forum handles CSS, I might as well port /blog's theme.

And good call on the "official" tutorials. The works reasonably well for Turing, maybe we could have something similar for other languages.


I don't mean a forum post. I think it's about time for an actual site, where there would be a link to a tutorial (maybe blog post style?). The reason is, as clearly demonstrated, nobody even reads the titles for sticky posts.
Dan




PostPosted: Tue Jun 12, 2007 3:28 pm   Post subject: RE:Suggestions for Improvement to CompSci.ca

That is the idea of the Tutorials & Articles part of the forum (like above in nav bar). However it has a few bugs and no one uses it. I plan to make a fuction where a mod could add a tutoral they think is good to it by clicking a button on a topic.
Computer Science Canada Help with programming in C, C++, Java, PHP, Ruby, Turing, VB and more!
PaulButler




PostPosted: Tue Jun 12, 2007 3:30 pm   Post subject: RE:Suggestions for Improvement to CompSci.ca

The current forum has a tutorials section that is empty except for one tutorial.. tutorials could either be moved to that or it could be removed, but it doesn't make much sense to have tutorials posted on the forum when there is a tutorial section.

What I would really like to see happen is for tutorials to be moved to the Wiki and the wiki becoming more widely used. I notice that there are already some tutorials on there. Merging the phpBB and MediaWiki login systems would be great, but I don't know how easy that would be. If it is too difficult, automatically registering phpBB users on MediaWiki with the same password at the time of signup would be a half-decent workaround.

To make the wiki more popular, you could consider adding a [ wiki ] tag to the forum bbcode for easy linking. Many of the links at the top of the page (links, gallery, tutorials and articles) could be moved to the wiki where it would be easier to update them and at the same time make the wiki more popular.
Clayton




PostPosted: Tue Jun 12, 2007 3:32 pm   Post subject: RE:Suggestions for Improvement to CompSci.ca

I do believe there is a [wiki ] tag, although I'm not too sure how it works

Test: DuckFest

Edit: Format is : [ wiki]<insert page title here>[/wiki]
Dan




PostPosted: Tue Jun 12, 2007 3:35 pm   Post subject: Re: RE:Suggestions for Improvement to CompSci.ca

PaulButler @ 12th June 2007, 3:30 pm wrote:
The current forum has a tutorials section that is empty except for one tutorial.. tutorials could either be moved to that or it could be removed, but it doesn't make much sense to have tutorials posted on the forum when there is a tutorial section.


The tutorals don't get moved when posted there, they are liked there and shown there but they also existice on the forum.

PaulButler @ 12th June 2007, 3:30 pm wrote:

What I would really like to see happen is for tutorials to be moved to the Wiki and the wiki becoming more widely used. I notice that there are already some tutorials on there. Merging the phpBB and MediaWiki login systems would be great, but I don't know how easy that would be. If it is too difficult, automatically registering phpBB users on MediaWiki with the same password at the time of signup would be a half-decent workaround.


The users are allready linked, however it dose not work for wired usernames that have symbols in them. It is also case cesntive.

PaulButler @ 12th June 2007, 3:30 pm wrote:

To make the wiki more popular, you could consider adding a [ wiki ] tag to the forum bbcode for easy linking. Many of the links at the top of the page (links, gallery, tutorials and articles) could be moved to the wiki where it would be easier to update them and at the same time make the wiki more popular.


There allready is a wiki tag that dose just that.
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PaulButler




PostPosted: Tue Jun 12, 2007 3:43 pm   Post subject: Re: RE:Suggestions for Improvement to CompSci.ca

Dan @ Tue Jun 12, 2007 3:35 pm wrote:
PaulButler @ 12th June 2007, 3:30 pm wrote:
The current forum has a tutorials section that is empty except for one tutorial.. tutorials could either be moved to that or it could be removed, but it doesn't make much sense to have tutorials posted on the forum when there is a tutorial section.


The tutorals don't get moved when posted there, they are liked there and shown there but they also existice on the forum.

PaulButler @ 12th June 2007, 3:30 pm wrote:

What I would really like to see happen is for tutorials to be moved to the Wiki and the wiki becoming more widely used. I notice that there are already some tutorials on there. Merging the phpBB and MediaWiki login systems would be great, but I don't know how easy that would be. If it is too difficult, automatically registering phpBB users on MediaWiki with the same password at the time of signup would be a half-decent workaround.


The users are allready linked, however it dose not work for wired usernames that have symbols in them. It is also case cesntive.

PaulButler @ 12th June 2007, 3:30 pm wrote:

To make the wiki more popular, you could consider adding a [ wiki ] tag to the forum bbcode for easy linking. Many of the links at the top of the page (links, gallery, tutorials and articles) could be moved to the wiki where it would be easier to update them and at the same time make the wiki more popular.


There allready is a wiki tag that dose just that.


Thats pretty cool actually. Still a shame the wiki isn't used more though.
richcash




PostPosted: Tue Apr 01, 2008 4:53 pm   Post subject: Re: Suggestions for Improvement to CompSci.ca

I think if we targeted the site more towards "real" computer science, possibly for university students, we would not only get more experts on here but people who are not in university could actually learn something about CS.

I like compsci.ca, I have learned a lot, but I hardly know anything about the field of computer science and its branches relative to a university student. Maybe if we had the subforums organized differently, instead of having a subforum for each language (which promotes more syntactic problems/discussion) we could have subforums for the different branches of CS and algorithms. Also, a math/physics subforum might be be good.

Or maybe that wouldn't make a difference, I don't know. Maybe the whole goal is to make this a high school forum.
wtd




PostPosted: Wed Apr 02, 2008 12:40 am   Post subject: RE:Suggestions for Improvement to CompSci.ca

Well, you have sort of seen the dilemna. CS teaching, especially at the university level, is supposed to be about concepts. These are for the most part language neutral.

However, programming languages are used to provide a medium to communicate these ideas such that they can easily be tested and explored. As such, courses exploring any one of the topics of interest to a CS student choose a language.

To varying extents, students not only have difficulty with the concepts, but with the actual implementation of them. From here we get discussion pertaining to specific languages.

You can't have both. Organize Compsci.ca by concepts taught and you make it more difficult for students to find helpful information pertaining to the language they're using. Organize it the other way and you have information about concepts spread across multiple forums.

Try to have it both ways and you end up with an unwieldy number of forums and subforums.

Perhaps a blog-like structure, wherein all posts are flat and by default seen by date, but each can have muliple tags, and one can filter them by those tags? For instance, I might view all posts tagged with "data structures" and "c++".
jernst




PostPosted: Wed Apr 02, 2008 1:30 am   Post subject: Re: Suggestions for Improvement to CompSci.ca

richcash @ Tue Apr 01, 2008 4:53 pm wrote:
I think if we targeted the site more towards "real" computer science, possibly for university students, we would not only get more experts on here but people who are not in university could actually learn something about CS.

I like compsci.ca, I have learned a lot, but I hardly know anything about the field of computer science and its branches relative to a university student. Maybe if we had the subforums organized differently, instead of having a subforum for each language (which promotes more syntactic problems/discussion) we could have subforums for the different branches of CS and algorithms. Also, a math/physics subforum might be be good.

Or maybe that wouldn't make a difference, I don't know. Maybe the whole goal is to make this a high school forum.


I would also like to suggest something along these lines. I myself am interested in the cutting edge research areas of computer science, maybe you could have a portion of the forums for these types of things, for example artificial intelligence, distributed computing, bioinformatics, human-computer interaction, etc. While i like the programming sections you have now it seems like its only a small part of computer science.
Nick




PostPosted: Wed Apr 02, 2008 1:33 am   Post subject: Re: RE:Suggestions for Improvement to CompSci.ca

wtd @ Wed Apr 02, 2008 12:40 am wrote:
You can't have both. Organize Compsci.ca by concepts taught and you make it more difficult for students to find helpful information pertaining to the language they're using. Organize it the other way and you have information about concepts spread across multiple forums.

Try to have it both ways and you end up with an unwieldy number of forums and subforums.


jernst wrote:
maybe you could have a portion of the forums for these types of things


that's what wtd was talking about
richcash




PostPosted: Wed Apr 02, 2008 11:10 am   Post subject: Re: Suggestions for Improvement to CompSci.ca

wtd wrote:

To varying extents, students not only have difficulty with the concepts, but with the actual implementation of them. From here we get discussion pertaining to specific languages.

You can't have both. Organize Compsci.ca by concepts taught and you make it more difficult for students to find helpful information pertaining to the language they're using. Organize it the other way and you have information about concepts spread across multiple forums.

Try to have it both ways and you end up with an unwieldy number of forums and subforums.


I am not only referring to programming concepts. Discussing concepts in the specific programming languages has advantages, including how to implement them. That's fine.

But the field of computer science is not just programming. There are many other branches. jernst mentioned a few, there are also, computational complexity, cryptography, algorithms (with/without data structures), computer graphics, compiler theory, quantum computing, and many others.

I think there should be an algorithm/problems forum. I also think there should be some other forums for each branch of computer science. There wouldn't have to be that many, they can all be condensed, I don't think it would become unmanageable.

jernst wrote:

I would also like to suggest something along these lines. I myself am interested in the cutting edge research areas of computer science, maybe you could have a portion of the forums for these types of things, for example artificial intelligence, distributed computing, bioinformatics, human-computer interaction, etc. While i like the programming sections you have now it seems like its only a small part of computer science.

And if we had discussion on university level CS, it would draw more people to these forums who want to discuss these topics. There is a trend on these forums that once students get to university they become less active or inactive. There is little relevant to a university student's coursework material here and hardly anything advanced relevant to computer science.

Maybe providing a few more subforums besides the programming language forums would help increase the level of computer science topics discussed.
Tony




PostPosted: Wed Apr 02, 2008 11:28 am   Post subject: RE:Suggestions for Improvement to CompSci.ca

well the way we've done this before, is that if General Discussion / General Programming / Offtopic accumulates enough discussion on a particular topic, that topic is promoted to its own forum. All of the suggestions are fine, in theory, but creating a bunch of empty stubs does not promote discussion well.

Start new threads in a general area, tag subject lines appropriately, and we'll take it from there.
Latest from compsci.ca/blog: Tony's programming blog. DWITE - a programming contest.
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