It annoys me a lot the way the form to post here works. It blocks all the fields, especially the question when the other fields are empty. This is extremely annoying and it forces a dumb sequence of events to allow me to unlock the message field.
The message field is where I type and “think” about the issue. It should be free to use not locked.
The first thing unblocked to type should be the message field. When I come here I want to say something like a question or an issue, but instead, I have to do a bunch of useless tasks at that moment. For instance, I have to think of a title for the post, and I do not know what the post itself would be about yet, so… How should I come up with the title first? Then after, I have to select where to place the question that I don’t even know about yet.
This is a very limiting, very frustrating, and childish way of limiting the sequence of the events of the user.
There’s not much that can be done about that, it’s the way the Discourse forum software was designed. However you can go back and edit the title and category after filling in the body. You could also edit your thoughts in a notepad-type app before copying to the posting dialog, though you may run into spam detection on rapidly pasted text.
You can enter an interim title and category, then type your content. When you have finished, before hitting Create Post you can modify the title and category fields.
And later you can still amend the title and category using the pencil next to the title.
People comes to the forum to say something… then they can categorize and name it.
But first, they may write something, and then after that, they can work on the text structure making it organized for others to understand, and eventually help.
But this is “my” view, why should I limit others to following my view? Other robots (yeah, not people of course) can do the opposite, exactly what the forum is asking to make a post.
So, what do I do to overcome the limitations of this forum:
I do hit random keys on the keyboard for the title, then TAB. Then, I choose the very first useless category. TAB. Then I write the ideas that are about to be lost if I was wasting time following forum bullshit.
After, I update the title, and then the category. Now I am thinking of not updating the category anymore since we have a category editor helping here.
Of course. Because Kicad allows me do whatever I want. If Kicad were like this forum I would have switched to something better. Now , we are not talking about PCBs here, right?
You’ve probably spent more time and keystrokes whinging about Discourse than it would have taken to move the mouse pointer some millimetres and changed the title after writing the content.
This is exactly what I am saying. I think you are not reading or not understanding. I have to put a ducking title BEFORE being able to add the text since the body section is locked by default. I am also saying that THIS is my workaround. Putting a random title and a category to unlock the body, so I can add the text and then I can go back to set the title properly.
We certainly understand what you are whinging about. You could put a single letter in the title, write the content, then go back and fill the title. It probably requires a minimum length for a valid post. But most people don’t go on and on about something that’s just done without thinking about how many precious seconds of their life they are losing. How many seconds have you spent so far on this topic? You have to earn a living. I don’t.
Nope, and this is serious. The advice is about final thesis, and it’s only half serious, but also only half non-serious. It’s a big mistake to fix the title and research question beforehand and then write a thesis which doesn’t quite correspond to the title and research question, just because your first idea actually changed along the way. This happens.
I find starting new threads here unnecessarily difficult (although only very slightly) because I rarely do it, I mostly just answer and creating a new thread doesn’t come automatically from old memory. The forum should support or allow different cognitive work patterns rather than force everyone to the same mold.
Maybe people don’t notice the pencil, or don’t understand its significance, or don’t hover over that pencil long enough to see the pop-up box stating Edit.
I thought that paople rather comes to forum to ask something…
I had never noticed the problem you describe. When I was asking here something I knew if my question is about schematic, symbol, pcb or footprint so I had no problem with categorize.
Also when I wanted to ask a question I knew what I will be asking about so had no problem with writing a title.
It is perfectly true, but it suits me better for topics like a PhD and not asking a question about some problem with KiCad.
