A suggestion for issue reports

We see so many posts simply saying ‘my audio is not working’ or similar, and that’s it. I think it would be a good idea if people also stated basic details of platform, version and release, hardware and audio drivers and so. In Discourse you can add a sample topic template for people to use or at least read. This would prevent the invariable next question, what platform/etc/etc are you using, and help people who are trying to assist get to the nub of things more efficiently.

New users can be pointed to the forum guidelines, and other users can be given the link to that page. I am not saying there has to be a compulsory template for these issues - nothing worse! - but some guidelines for posters would be good I reckon.

As somebody who runs several Discourse servers I know how hard it is to get users to read the initial forum guidelines and policy and FAQ’s but if they exist you can at least refer users to them.

Forum guidelines, like these?

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Quite so; and poor Daniel regularly reminds people of these guidelines by linking to them in his replies to various threads.

“You can lead a horse to water…”

@Lillie_Harris No, they are this Discourse instance’s general guidelines. I mean another guideline page that is a ‘template’ or outline for submitting technical problems such as no audio, which is highly dependent on platform and hardware. I am not talking about polite behaviour or how to post a project. It would save everyone time if all the posters added the necessary basic details for technical issues - as I say, the inevitable next questions that get asked in this sort of thread. You can have as many guideline pages, and policy pages, and FAQ pages as you like. Not a template guide for notation and usage matters. That is totally unnecessary. Basic matters such as what platform - Windows or Mac - and what Dorico version, and more.

See also:

@Lillie_Harris yes, but not really guidelines for reporting hardware interaction issues, but useful advice that users really ought to read first. We will continue to get the brief posts ‘my audio does not work’ with no further information forever, helpful though that page is. I’ll bet you a pizza.

On my sites I make periodic posts as Admin politely reminding users of the existence of FAQ pages, forum guidelines, and policy. Whether this has any observable effect, I do not know. :slight_smile: