OSDev.org

Solar wrote:1) I haven't checked; have links within posts been converted so that thread cross-links are still functional? If not, that would be a real shame...

Indeed a shame, but afaik yep.

2) IMVHO, there are too many sub-forums around here. MT had OS Dev, OS Test, General Programming, Get a life (4) - here, there are 12 (!) subforums, half of which are administrative in nature...

Well... I'm just keeping up with new threads, which just about don't show up in administrative fora. Keeps the amount of threads to view low, but there are still more than on MT and there should be. I am very less inclined to hold long stories to beginners here though, but that could be because I've been doing that for 3 years and that people still skip over my smaller comments. I'm mostly trying to make more way-of-thinking comments which are overridden by other people within a few seconds anyway, so I'm not contributing stuff unless actually nobody knows. I'm still keeping my fingers crossed there'll somehow be a "designs" forum, but that's probably just my view on all threads here that I consider interesting so it's just a personal thing I guess.

Hi,

Solar wrote:2) IMVHO, there are too many sub-forums around here. MT had OS Dev, OS Test, General Programming, Get a life (4) - here, there are 12 (!) subforums, half of which are administrative in nature...

IMHO Jobs and Project Openings could easily be combined (especially considering the number of posts in Jobs, and the "almost nil" chance of employers advertising paying positions). Project Announcements could also be combined, given that most people do these things in the same post ("Hi, a started a new OS and I'm looking for volunteers!").

The Submissions area just doesn't get enough posts - I'd be as effective for people to send new News articles directly to Chase via. the personal messaging system (or just add them to the Wiki themselves?).

I'd consider the OSDev Wiki as part of the OSDev site, and combine it with the About This Site sub-forum.

IMHO reducing the number of categories would also help. For example, shift the sub-forums from the OSDev News and OSDev.org categories up into the Everything Else category, so that there's only 2 categories (Operating System Development and Everything Else).

I'd also sort the order of sub-forums so that the more important sub-forums are closer to the top of the screen (for e.g. having General Programming above General Ramblings).

The end result (if all of the above was done) would be that most people would see all sub-forums without scrolling down, except forGeneral Ramblings and the Test forum (for Mozilla on Gentoo and IE on WindowsXP, both running at 1024 * 768 with default fonts, I get the logo and header, 6 sub-forums and 2 category bars on the screen at the same time)....


Cheers,

Brendan

Categories matter less to me, since I use the "view all unread posts" feature most of the time, but I agree there are too many of them. Except:

I'm still keeping my fingers crossed there'll somehow be a "designs" forum, but that's probably just my view on all threads here that I consider interesting so it's just a personal thing I guess.

A "design" or "OS theory" category or something like that would be great. It's something I wanted even back at MT.