Time to split up the T&M categories?

[beanflying]

What about labels/tags instead of separate subforums? Does the forum have the ability to support these?

Read my last post only two back

[EEVblog]

Yes, Metrology, RF and vintage computers etc were obvious ones to split out as they had essentially formed their own little enthusiast communities

The infamous TEA thread is effectively that. Maybe split that out into a new subforum containing only that thread 

and were actually actively asking for their own section.

Yes, TEA. Ever since it started making the top-10 lists, I've been contemplating its future and brought it up amongst the members a couple of times within the thread. There are certainly pros and cons to making it a sub-forum of Test Equipment or its own forum. However, the benefit of being able to have threads for different topics would certainly be welcome. It may be better to exist as a sub-forum of TE rather than a separate forum since it's TE-oriented.

I've wondered that (as you can see above), but it is a self-contained ghetto of people chatting amongst themselves on thing that are usually related to electronics.

I haven't seen a decent reason, so I'm skeptical that splitting it out would benefit the wider EEVBlog Forum.

You can't really convert a thread into a forum section, they are different things.
Sure we could have a TEA forum section, and then does it have the one thread again?, or does it have multiple theads?
If it has multiple threads, how is it any different to the general test equipment discussion section already?

[tggzzz]

Yes, Metrology, RF and vintage computers etc were obvious ones to split out as they had essentially formed their own little enthusiast communities

The infamous TEA thread is effectively that. Maybe split that out into a new subforum containing only that thread 

and were actually actively asking for their own section.

Yes, TEA. Ever since it started making the top-10 lists, I've been contemplating its future and brought it up amongst the members a couple of times within the thread. There are certainly pros and cons to making it a sub-forum of Test Equipment or its own forum. However, the benefit of being able to have threads for different topics would certainly be welcome. It may be better to exist as a sub-forum of TE rather than a separate forum since it's TE-oriented.

I've wondered that (as you can see above), but it is a self-contained ghetto of people chatting amongst themselves on thing that are usually related to electronics.

I haven't seen a decent reason, so I'm skeptical that splitting it out would benefit the wider EEVBlog Forum.

You can't really convert a thread into a forum section, they are different things.
Sure we could have a TEA forum section, and then does it have the one thread again?, or does it have multiple theads?
If it has multiple threads, how is it any different to the general test equipment discussion section already?

Yes, yes, and yes.

Apart from those points, I see no benefit to splitting it out.

[colorado.rob]

I voted "leave it as is" but my preference would be be: move TEA to another category, combine all the EEVBlog DMM stickied threads into one thread or move them to a separate category, actively move all of the repair threads (e.g. "Replacing OLED screen on an Agilent U1253A Multimeter") to the Repair category.

Some of this can be fixed with just some active moderation.

[bitseeker]

Sure we could have a TEA forum section, and then does it have the one thread again?, or does it have multiple theads?
If it has multiple threads, how is it any different to the general test equipment discussion section already?

Exactly. Questions such as these are why I haven't mentioned it to you previously. It's a community within the forum, but still mostly about TE with some General Chat mixed in. So, we just continued with the mega-thread.

If there is more clarity one day, I'll officially bring it up.

[med6753]

Sure we could have a TEA forum section, and then does it have the one thread again?, or does it have multiple theads?
If it has multiple threads, how is it any different to the general test equipment discussion section already?

Exactly. Questions such as these are why I haven't mentioned it to you previously. It's a community within the forum, but still mostly about TE with some General Chat mixed in. So, we just continued with the mega-thread.

If there is more clarity one day, I'll officially bring it up.

I think it should be pointed out that the TEA thread is not a closed community. We encourage new folks to join the discussion. Yes, we talk test equipment from A to Z and at times venture off subject but we always discipline ourselves. What I like about it is that the regular contributors get to know a little about each other beyond the screen name. And as a group we are truly spread across the map. But as others have mentioned it's almost like meeting in a pub and talking our common hobby and having fun doing it. And yes, at times it leads to busting each other's chops and good natured ribbing. But that's what keeps me coming back everyday and checking in.       

[EEVblog]

I think it should be pointed out that the TEA thread is not a closed community. We encourage new folks to join the discussion. Yes, we talk test equipment from A to Z and at times venture off subject but we always discipline ourselves. What I like about it is that the regular contributors get to know a little about each other beyond the screen name. And as a group we are truly spread across the map. But as others have mentioned it's almost like meeting in a pub and talking our common hobby and having fun doing it. And yes, at times it leads to busting each other's chops and good natured ribbing. But that's what keeps me coming back everyday and checking in.       

I've rarely ventured into that thread, and wasn't really aware of how big it had gotten, or that it seems to have become a sort of chat room?

[tggzzz]

 

I think it should be pointed out that the TEA thread is not a closed community. We encourage new folks to join the discussion. Yes, we talk test equipment from A to Z and at times venture off subject but we always discipline ourselves. What I like about it is that the regular contributors get to know a little about each other beyond the screen name. And as a group we are truly spread across the map. But as others have mentioned it's almost like meeting in a pub and talking our common hobby and having fun doing it. And yes, at times it leads to busting each other's chops and good natured ribbing. But that's what keeps me coming back everyday and checking in.       

I've rarely ventured into that thread, and wasn't really aware of how big it had gotten, or that it seems to have become a sort of chat room?

med6753's characterisation is correct.

It is actively self-disciplined and mostly, but not entirely, related to test equipment. I haven't seen anything that leads me to believe that it will bring this forum into disrepute - quite the contrary in fact. I can't say that about some other threads elsewhere in the forum.

The frequent contributors to that thread are active in other parts of this forum, and are well aware of what makes this this forum tick.

My judgement is that you can rest easy

[bitseeker]

I think it should be pointed out that the TEA thread is not a closed community. We encourage new folks to join the discussion. Yes, we talk test equipment from A to Z and at times venture off subject but we always discipline ourselves. What I like about it is that the regular contributors get to know a little about each other beyond the screen name. And as a group we are truly spread across the map. But as others have mentioned it's almost like meeting in a pub and talking our common hobby and having fun doing it. And yes, at times it leads to busting each other's chops and good natured ribbing. But that's what keeps me coming back everyday and checking in.       

I've rarely ventured into that thread, and wasn't really aware of how big it had gotten, or that it seems to have become a sort of chat room?

Thanks, med, for contributing additional color to the picture!

Dave, TEA is more that just a chat room. It's a test equipment enthusiast community for EEVblog members who enjoy all aspects of TE including acquiring, collecting, restoring, modding, re-homing, chatting about, and of course, using them. Oh, and infecting others with inviting others to TEA.

There are a dozen or so regular members, several dozen part-timers, and lots of observers. I often see 30-50+ "guests" in the thread. We love test equipment and EEVblog is the place to be for TEA.

Here's a quick tour of the TEA House, the thread-that-acts-like-a-forum:

Original thread post

• Starts with a short description of TEA
• The Points of Interest section is maintained by me with deep links to posts in the thread about specific TE and teardowns as well as other topics. It serves as a substitute for a sub-forum so that the information isn't completely buried. Having TEA as a sub-forum would help me most with this aspect.
• Additional sections include the TEA Anthem, the Laws of TEA, the TEA Mascot, etc.
• Toward the end is the TEA Glossary of Terms, Conditions, Causes, and Effects. Those who are addicted to test equipment usually identify with many of them (and discover more as they participate in the thread ).

History

• For a short synopsis of how TEA started, check out this post: https://www.eevblog.com/forum/testgear/test-equipment-anonymous-(tea)-group-therapy-thread/msg2199750/#msg2199750

[bd139]

I'd say it keeps us regular posters off the streets and out of trouble

I think it's mostly a celebration of the joy of getting hold of something none of us could afford when it was new for virtually nothing because it's old, broken or mangled and making it good again, with some diversions occasionally usually whining about the broken thing we've bought being broken some more by the carrier. All with photos of the gubbins.

Oh and some bizarre stuff occasionally.

[worsthorse]

I think it should be pointed out that the TEA thread is not a closed community. We encourage new folks to join the discussion. Yes, we talk test equipment from A to Z and at times venture off subject but we always discipline ourselves. What I like about it is that the regular contributors get to know a little about each other beyond the screen name. And as a group we are truly spread across the map. But as others have mentioned it's almost like meeting in a pub and talking our common hobby and having fun doing it. And yes, at times it leads to busting each other's chops and good natured ribbing. But that's what keeps me coming back everyday and checking in.       

I've rarely ventured into that thread, and wasn't really aware of how big it had gotten, or that it seems to have become a sort of chat room?

As a relatively new arrival to the TEA thread, I want to extend med's comment... of all the places I have interacted with others on the forums, the regulars on TEA have been the most welcoming. It is great to wander in and out of the conversations that happen there, get my questions answered, share the deals I find, and commiserate when the broke-ness of any particular treasure exceeds my capabilities. Where else would I find someone to be as jazzed as I am that I scored two working 8640Bs for a hundred bucks?   

One more thing... The discussions there have led me to follow and contribute to other threads much more often than I would otherwise; I am a lurker by nature.  Without a doubt, TEA is the reason I am so frequently on eevblog.

[0culus]

I think it should be pointed out that the TEA thread is not a closed community. We encourage new folks to join the discussion. Yes, we talk test equipment from A to Z and at times venture off subject but we always discipline ourselves. What I like about it is that the regular contributors get to know a little about each other beyond the screen name. And as a group we are truly spread across the map. But as others have mentioned it's almost like meeting in a pub and talking our common hobby and having fun doing it. And yes, at times it leads to busting each other's chops and good natured ribbing. But that's what keeps me coming back everyday and checking in.       

I've rarely ventured into that thread, and wasn't really aware of how big it had gotten, or that it seems to have become a sort of chat room?

It's way more than a chatroom. I'm a relative newcomer, but besides my electronics hobby I am a test equipment enthusiast. Nowhere else have I found a group of people who are as excited as I am about test equipment. Maybe the HPAK and TekScopes mailing lists, but they aren't as conversational as the TEA thread. It's a unique community within a community where all bitten by the TEA bug are welcome (and if you aren't bitten, you will be!!!  )

[xrunner]

I have been posting in the TEA thread almost since the inception. I like it because it allows me to be an enabler for members on the edge of pressing the Ebay "But it Now" button. I've always wanted to be an enabler.

Thank you bitseeker. 

[Cubdriver]

I'd say it keeps us regular posters off the streets and out of trouble

Alas, it causes my credit card no end of trouble...  (I don't think the floor joists in my house hold it in high esteem, either)

I think it's mostly a celebration of the joy of getting hold of something none of us could afford when it was new for virtually nothing because it's old, broken or mangled and making it good again, with some diversions occasionally usually whining about the broken thing we've bought being broken some more by the carrier. All with photos of the gubbins.

Oh and some bizarre stuff occasionally.

And let's not forget the occasional whining when what we bought turned out NOT to be broken, thus denying us the opportunity to repair it.  We're an odd lot, but we like us and always welcome fresh meat newbies to join us in our addicting enjoyable little corner of the forum Dave graciously provides.

-Pat

[Kosmic]

What make eevblog forum interesting (and popular I think) is mostly the peoples. This is particularly true for the TEA thread that kind of became its own thing with 32k posts and almost 1.4 million views.

Now for the question on How it should be organised, I don’t think that creating a lot of subcategories is necessarily going to help everybody keeping track of everything going on the forum. Might look well organized for a newcomer or someone looking for a specific information on a specific subject, but for the regulars I think it will make our life harder.

Going back to the TEA thread, might be interesting to see if the format of the forum could be modified or extended with something more dynamic? I’m thinking of something like Slack (but I’m not proposing to use Slack).

[worsthorse]

So I read through most of these posts and I still have to ask,  what is broke? 

Or if nothing is broken, maybe, what are we trying to improve? 

[bitseeker]

wch, the main issue that spawned this thread is the case where a visitor, who hears that EEVblog has the Internet's largest test equipment forum, arrives for the first time and sees that the TE section is just one forum of so many other electronics and other subforums. Granted, TE has 300K+ posts, which is huge. But one must look at that detail to notice.

The concept that was proposed inquired whether it would look better, work better, or otherwise be better if the TE forum was separated into sections by instrument type. Subsequent posts elaborated on pros, cons, alternatives, etc.

[beanflying]

Looking at where the current poll numbers are any changes made based on them would be the Test Gear equivalent of Brexit  The thing Dave has going for him is he is a benevolent Dictator 

Unless something is fundamentally and badly flawed in the layout of the Forum Categories the best option is always leave it alone or you will find out any gain will be minimal if any and the hit to the SEO and work needed to sort this Category out into the new ones overwhelming.

[worsthorse]

wch, the main issue that spawned this thread is the case where a visitor, who hears that EEVblog has the Internet's largest test equipment forum, arrives for the first time and sees that the TE section is just one forum of so many other electronics and other subforums. Granted, TE has 300K+ posts, which is huge. But one must look at that detail to notice.

The concept that was proposed inquired whether it would look better, work better, or otherwise be better if the TE forum was separated into sections by instrument type. Subsequent posts elaborated on pros, cons, alternatives, etc.

okay, got it. i won't wade into this one, though i think that are far more interesting improvements or feature additions that warrant more consideration. glad this is dave's decision. 

[SparkyFX]

I've rarely ventured into that thread, and wasn't really aware of how big it had gotten, or that it seems to have become a sort of chat room?

I know forums with these large threads as well, as long as there is no definite answer they simply grow.

Wouldn´t be a problem, but i also saw forum software that was not able to split parts off over a certain amount of posts, because the DB query took too long and therefore ran into timeout (point of view if this is a bug or if it needs to be solved). Which means any off-topic or spam can not be split off, just made invisible (whatever SMF allows) - viewing and posting was not impaired.
This sort of problem comes with a growing forum - next to access times and caching.

[Specmaster]

Dave, I think that TEA is fine just as it is, as many of my fellow members have already pointed out, it keeps us off the streets and out of trouble, and especially true for us oldies  . I belong to many forums and to be honest, I cannot even remember my username or login passwords for them as I use them that much, honestly but here I have zero problem remembering and can seen logging in many times daily. Since joining this forum, which I only discovered through watching your video blog, I have never felt such a warm and friendly welcome on any of the other forums as I did here. It took me a while to discover the TEA thread, infact I was invited to join in here because of my addiction to test equipment in general and as soon as I had a sniff around the TEA thread, I have become hooked on it and have made many friends as well. It is a thriving community in its own right and as has been said already, its like a clubhouse to us, we discuss all things here from the obvious test equipment and relative items right through to politics on the odd occasion and we never allow it to get to far out of hand, self regulating if you will.

We do all kinds of product tear downs and repairs and if we think its good enough that it might help others, we often start a new thread in the repairs section so that in it self gets stored in its own sub section / heading and other-times, Bitseeker will add it into his POI section.

Other forums are much more rigid in their approach and as such they don't tend to be much used as the EEVBLOG and TEA especially, I think of it like a family were care about each others problems and tales of woe and offer each support and advice if required etc. I agree with all the comments others have already made and say, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it". 

[Echo88]

Test Equipment has about 340 pages. And due to the massive amount of posts per day, one would need to search a few pages each day to see discussions about devices one is interested in. Why bother to scan through 1 million scopes-posts, when youre only interested in high quality bench DMMs, vintage stuff or interesting specialized stuff from the 70ies. In the end i mostly dont bother to visit TM-Section because of its fast pace and the necessary combing to get interesting stuff and thats sad because theres gold buried somewhere in between.

[xrunner]

I really don't want to be a bother to anyone, and I realize I'm not the smartest person here by any stretch of the imagination. So please trust me when I say I don't understand when I say I don't understand something..

Why, on a general electronics for, do we now have seven separate computing categories?

General Computing
Embedded Computing
Programming
Security
Cloud Computing + IoT
Networking & Wireless
Vintage Computing

If that's deemed to be OK why then, can't we have separate test equipment categories like this -

Oscilloscopes
DMMs
Spectrum Analyzers
Frequency counters
RF Generators
Network Analyzers
Handheld test equipment
etc.

This is not even a mostly computing forum, and there are about a gazillion computing forums already out there. I truly do not understand the logic behind this. Here's the proclamation from the forum -

"This is the leading forum for test equipment reviews and teardowns ..."

If I'm shown the reason, and I still don't understand, I'll go quietly back to the TEA thread and keep my mouth shut.

But believe me when I state this: I do not understand. 

[wilfred]

Dave, TEA is more that just a chat room. It's a test equipment enthusiast community for EEVblog members who enjoy all aspects of TE including acquiring, collecting, restoring, modding, re-homing, chatting about, and of course, using them. Oh, and infecting others with inviting others to TEA.

If you say inviting others to TEA too often, I'll start calling you collectively TEApots. 

[tggzzz]

Test Equipment has about 340 pages. And due to the massive amount of posts per day, one would need to search a few pages each day to see discussions about devices one is interested in. Why bother to scan through 1 million scopes-posts, when youre only interested in high quality bench DMMs, vintage stuff or interesting specialized stuff from the 70ies. In the end i mostly dont bother to visit TM-Section because of its fast pace and the necessary combing to get interesting stuff and thats sad because theres gold buried somewhere in between.

Unlike when I was young, the key skill nowadays is quickly determining what to ignore.

Splitting into curated categories was the USP of Yahoo! when it started.

Searching uncurated content was the USP of Google when it started.

There are good reasons why the Yahoo! concept failed and the Google concept succeeded, and they are valid in this case too.

Consider: having many categories can only help you define where stuff isn't: most interesting stuff could be equally well be placed into many categories. Example: if you have a problem with a graphing 6.5digit DVM, which single category would you put it in? Repair, metrology, DMM, etc.