The issue of moderating has come up before. The whole idea of moderation is subjective and each message and thread is evaluated on a case-by-case basis. I haven't given any specific "rules" to Steve in moderating; rather I trust his good judgement. If either Steve or I see something that is way off-topic, we close down the thread.

As a rule, I tend to be a bit lenient. If something is somehow related to 8052 I generally let it by. Asking a generic electronic question is technically off-topic, but if the person mentions how it relates to an 8052 project then I usually let it slide. Quite a few generic electronics questions make it into the forum for that reason.

Example:

1. Asking for help getting the 8052 to communicate with Windows. ON-TOPIC, perhaps focus on protocols and techniques.

2. Asking how to write a communications DLL for Windows. OFF-TOPIC, even if it will eventually communicate with an 8052.

3. Asking about airframes for cruise missiles [grin] is interesting, but doesn't have anything to do with the 8052, so that was off-topic.

I try not to be too heavy-handed. The whole bunny rabbit thread was off-topic, but an *occasional* thread like that is not going to kill anybody (except the bunny rabbit) and can be fun and relieve some stress. Of course, if we started seeing those frequently we'd have to close them down. We need to maintain some reasonable signal-to-noise ratio.

Regarding having people vote on whether a thread is off-topic, it's possible. But it has the possibility of abuse. Who would be eligible to vote? How long would it take to get enough votes to close down an off-topic thread? Is this whole issue really a problem? Are Steve and I so bad at moderating that a user-controlled voting system needs to be instituted?

Finally, the idea of having multiple message forums has come up before. The advantage to multiple forums is that you can post to the "right" forum. The disadvantage is that it's harder for everyone to read and follow multiple forums, and many questions might actually belong in several forums at the same time. We can discuss this again, but in the past it has generally been rejected by the 8052.com community.

That said, I've been thinking about creating the option to create product/topic-specific groups. Users can already create their own home page and I've thought about the possibility of allowing people to create forums that are related to 8052 products/topics. Kind of like a "Yahoo Groups" type of thing, but focused on 8052 topics. I've seen there is a TI MSC1210 Yahoo Group and couldn't help but think that could be hosted at 8052.com. Perhaps others would like to have a forum for their freeware 8052 program or open-source project. However, this wouldn't affect the 8052 forum since they'd be very specific forums--not open subject such as "8052 Software," "8052 Hardware," "General Electronics."

I'm certainly interested in hearing everyone's comments on all these issues.

Craig Steiner
8052.com Webmaster