The Official VAIO blah Series Owners Threads don't work too well...

Is it me, or do these massive Official VAIO blah Series Owners Threads not work to well? They're tooo big and very dificult to find things buried in them.
I think forums work better when you have a specific problem and start a new thread on that... then people respond to help in that thread... And the conversation is so much less likely to go off on a tangent...
I.e. use these forums how they are normally used... One thread per subject. Most people are pretty good a adding the model in the subject if it's needed. This should make it a whole lot easier to browse thru and find stuff that it is right now...

Just an observation.

R.

 

Well, th owner's threads are also threads where you can chat about your laptop - but not off topic.

If you have a real life problem, there is nothing that prohibits your from startinga new thread about that problem.

 

Yeah quite, but unfortunately this is how it lands up... The chat only makes up a tiny bit about these thread posts... It's mostly specific stuff that lands up here...
I guess the mostly appear back when the laptop's just been announced, so everyone is just chatting about...

It's the "Official" tag that kinda makes everyone post almost everything in there... Sadly.

 

that's why there's a "search this thread" option

 

Well if it is little things like a loose flap for example you can post it in there.

Or "where can I buy" - but you can also create a new thread.

Just decide on what you think is best

 

I've got no problems posting a new thread with my questions... It's just that these threads act as a magnet for all throughs/problems/solutions/tips for each Series.

Seaching threads kinda works, but it makes it more difficult. Finding a focused thread is always going to help you better.
I've had to seach thru the whole of these massive threads before, as someone might raise a problem on page 15, but the solution might not be posted until page 20! And if they haven't typed the same keywords perhaps, then you're unlikely to find it.
Some people are here every day and follow every post in a thread, but most of are not. So we notice the problem more i think.

Forums are amazing, and work so well as each subject gets it's own thread.... Just not this forum!

 

Yeah it can be a problem when many difficulties are solved and buried inside that behemoth of a thread; and especially the unsolved problems which prospective users would like to know about.

 

It's always best if an enthusiast creates a FAQ thread for a series and users contribute their findings. The Timeline Tweaks thread is a perfect example, it works well imo.

 

Wow! Yes, that thread is awesome! It's not often we find someone with the dedication to maintain a thread like that one!

I was just looking at the numbers of posts in some of these behemoths owners threads... The VAIO Z thread has 9,581 posts!!!!!

 

The reason there's a mega thread is because half the questions in the Mega threads are similar(how do you do x thing?) and having 5 threads on a same subject(as people don't use the search function) would be redundant and mods don't want the hassle of constantly merging threads.

Is it the most efficient system? No it isn't

However, given the circumstances it's probably the best they could come up with As others have said, if you need help in something, make a new thread and someone will answer We don't mind answering over and over again the same question lol

 

But there's even less chance of someone finding the info needed... So they're gonna ask the same question but it'll be post number 9,600 in the thread... and one of you will still need to tell them to use the search button or post a link to an earlier post in the massive thread or explain it all again... If there's a focussed thread on that subject, they very much more likely to find it browsing thru the forum thread titles or by using the search results....
Finding anything in these behemoth threads involves a lot of concentrated reading.
No one wants to go thru 50 pages of a thread.

These threads have started for innocent reasons, but their popularity have made this forum work very inefficiently.

And i'd much rather see a few similar threads than a thread with 9600 post in it.

 

Well, you know, I thin these threads have tradition...

 

But unfortunately, it's a tradition that makes it not work too well...

 

its works but require "extra hardworking browsing skill".
when i was about to buy a notebook, the first thing i usually did was finding the user feedback on that notebook. and list them out and noted it to myself.

for instance, im actually browsing through all the pages in "Official VAIO Z thread" before im buying one somewhere in early of this year. really, its tideous..

and imho, its rely to the thread starter (thread's owner to compile the information acquired at the first page), but yeah, everyone has different point of view about this.

 

You'd be surprised at the amount of people who don't use the search function or don't read the stickies.

When people have a question, sometimes they don't even bother to look if a similar question has been asked at all in forums, let alone in a thread. They just make a new thread. Basically that's just how it goes. You could make a thread on x problem, but in a week, that thread would've already died down and another guy will post another thread with the exact x problem(I know, I've seen it happen many many times).

It's not just the forums you have to change, but the users which basically isn't a factor you can alter that much. You could re-arrange the forums nicely and people would still post the wrong questions in the wrong place and get re-directed. It happens all the time in the gaming section per-say(people always ask ,,which graphics card is better'' at least 3 times a day, yet there's a dedicated thread to it...)

I personally don't mind repeating the same thing over and over again because I udnerstand that people are sometimes just too lazy(or ignorant) to even bother searching at all(i.e. google), let alone searching a thread.

 

Yeah, i totally agree about how crap everyone can be in researching their problem... This is a very, very well know problem that isn't going away, ever.

But we need to have each topic visible, in it's own thread, not hidden in a behemoth thread, that's the point i'm getting at with this thread.

 

Well actually ideally, we'd have sub-forums for each laptop model(ex: a FW subforum, an AW subforum, a Z subform etc) and in those subforums you'd post individual threads with your problems. That would be the most organized method.

Only problems relating to Sony in general(ex: battery drain) would be left in the ''lobby'' Sony forum.

 

Not really. We covered this up the thread a bit.
The subforums would hide all the info away from other model users.
Sony laptops (and perhaps most other brands too) are often almost identical in so many ways. So subforums would handicap the forums in almost the same way as these behemoth threads.

All we're looking to do it to prevent most users posting anything other than 'casual chat' in these behemoth lounge/owners threads.
We'd like them to post them in the normal way, in well titled threads. (which they're pretty good at doing otherwise.)

 

I couldn't agree more with your observation. The official thread is very tedious to read. If I could make a suggestion, the forum for each notebook manufacturers should be split into models. There should be a sub forum for FW models, another sub forum for Z models, AW models, and one sub forum for generic questions not particularly tied to any specific models, and another sub forum that Sony has discontinued and no longer sold at retail market (older than 5 years old or whatever time limit you want to put into it).

This way, everybody can ask specific questions without cluttering the board too much.

 

I don't think subforums are a good idea at all, as they hide away the other models post... very much like the behemoth 'owners' threads do too...
There is so much overlap in the Sony vaio that so much of the info is applicable to the other models. We would miss out on a lot of useful info this way, like we already are with the behemoth threads.
All we need to do is to get all users to post everything that isn't casual chat to the forum in the normal way, in individual, well titled threads.

 

I've also raised this point in the Site Suggestions forum btw.
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?p=5313517#post5313517