Laracasts Improvements Discussion

Timezones

I also regularly see wildly inaccurate date information and I'm in US Central time.. so I'm not convinced the issue(s) is/are tied to timezones.

Leaderboards

I don't know who specifically you're referring to but I certainly don't believe "half of the users" just have all the lessons marked complete. There are definitely some that aren't as active in the forums as they once were (myself included to a certain degree), but I don't believe it's nearly as skewed as you believe it is.

Locking of old threads

Not sure if outright locking and prevention of further discussion is quite the right approach, but maybe some kind of "Are you sure you want to revive this thread" kind of message reminding the user that it's rather old and likely they're better off starting a new thread instead would be beneficial. It is certainly annoying to get a notification of activity on a thread you participated in years ago, often just because someone decides to spam their new package to a bunch of barely relevant old threads and so forth.

Prefixing thread titles

Some manner of indicating the relevant laravel version would be useful, but I don't think the assumption can be made that it would be whatever was the current version at the time of posting, and my experience has shown that users generally can't be fully relied upon to provide all the relevant information when seeking assistance. Maybe the inclusion of a "Select the version of laravel" widget on the post creation form would help, but it may likely just get ignored, or wrongly assigned too.. no real silver bullets here.

Thread suggestions upon thread creation

This would be an interesting feature.. Would require some sort of recommendation engine, based on.. what? The entered post title? That leads to another major issue with user-generated content, fairly worthless titles :) But interesting feature, if that nut can be cracked in an intelligent manner.

Forum Titles

Don't the existing badges already more or less accomplish this?

Caching issues

Not sure I've experienced the behavior you mention here, but even if I had I'm not overly bothered by a bit of delay due to caching, the site feels speedy, and it's not ever been advertised as real-time communication, so if caching keeps the site speedy, and operating costs down for Jeffrey, I'm not personally bothered by any caching delays.. but that's just one mans' opinion :)

@willvincent

I also regularly see wildly inaccurate date information and I'm in US Central time.. so I'm not convinced the issue(s) is/are tied to timezones.

Hmm. Interesting. Last few days has been especially wild for the dates. I've had dates in the future.

I don't know who specifically you're referring to but I certainly don't believe "half of the users" just have all the lessons marked complete. There are definitely some that aren't as active in the forums as they once were (myself included to a certain degree), but I don't believe it's nearly as skewed as you believe it is.

Apologies, I meant in general. For example, you see some users who have an account that is one month old, with all lessons complete and over 100,000 XP. You see some users with barely any forum activity with a high level / XP. You see some regular users battling to stay on the leaderboards because of this. I've been here a while like you have, and have also become inactive a few times, however, we still have a reputable forum background. I've been watching the leaderboards extremely close over the last week (hence the reason for suggesting it), and it changes everyday (primarily the last 10 users) because of users just completing all lessons and having no engagement. The leaderboard is part of the forum (and new comment system), not on the screencasts

Not sure if outright locking and prevention of further discussion is quite the right approach, but maybe some kind of "Are you sure you want to revive this thread" kind of message reminding the user that it's rather old and likely they're better off starting a new thread instead would be beneficial. It is certainly annoying to get a notification of activity on a thread you participated in years ago, often just because someone decides to spam their new package to a bunch of barely relevant old threads and so forth.

Good idea.

Some manner of indicating the relevant laravel version would be useful, but I don't think the assumption can be made that it would be whatever was the current version at the time of posting, and my experience has shown that users generally can't be fully relied upon to provide all the relevant information when seeking assistance. Maybe the inclusion of a "Select the version of laravel" widget on the post creation form would help, but it may likely just get ignored, or wrongly assigned too.. no real silver bullets here.

Agree. Sometimes we see code examples from an older version like 5.4, but we don't have any indication that it's from that version until some time later, and then we're left puzzled, trying to find solutions. Having some form of prefix or widget like you stated would give us a little more feedback and understanding if one is provided.

This would be an interesting feature.. Would require some sort of recommendation engine, based on.. what? The entered post title? That leads to another major issue with user-generated content, fairly worthless titles :) But interesting feature, if that nut can be cracked in an intelligent manner.

Agree. Would be interesting indeed. However, this could use similar functionality to the search function on the site, how it recommends threads/episodes. Whilst probably not a great idea, maybe the Laravel Markdown docs could be searched and a link provided to the documentation page for the subject

Don't the existing badges already more or less accomplish this?

Agree, they do to some extent. They're not immediately understood however. Tooltips are working fine now which is great, but sometimes they don't. Not a huge benefit to be honest, but you know, in case Jeff gets bored or something haha

Not sure I've experienced the behavior you mention here, but even if I had I'm not overly bothered by a bit of delay due to caching, the site feels speedy, and it's not ever been advertised as real-time communication, so if caching keeps the site speedy, and operating costs down for Jeffrey, I'm not personally bothered by any caching delays.. but that's just one mans' opinion :)

Has started happening for around about a month. Sometimes it's a pain in the arse. I can live with it. It's interesting however, as the page views are always refreshed, and I assume the other data like reply count and UI styling might be cached like the page views.

Good feedback, everyone has a different point of view :)

P.S: What ever happened to the country flag? That never worked for me personally (even when logged out and viewing my account. And the badge was set to visible), but it showed for others. I liked that.

Just noticed then in the edit profile modal, that we still have the ability to set it.

i dont think anyone would sit here and 'mark complete' all videos to have a higher XP - it gives them no incentive/bonus/award or indeed even a pat in the back...

Oh, it happens. Just seen two recently (within 48 hours). 3 week old account, all lessons complete. @snapey worked it out to be about 65 lessons per day.

EDIT: It could be used to scheme a potential employer. In the past, I've had employers ask if I have a Laracasts account, so they can review it. Setting your page to private, completing all videos for the XP to get into the leaderboards is a genius way of showing an employer that "you're skilled and active in the community". Not that's its our business.

I saw the post with the 65 per day, we could just hope that employer sees very quickly that person don't have a clue about programming. How do you fool that when you actually have to program an industrial application.

@jlrdw I've just looked at that account, come the end of the week and that user will be in the top 50 on leaderboard. account is 3 weeks old, 151,000 XP @ 1403 lessons complete with 50 comments on the forum (@ 10xp each) and 3 best replies (@ 500xp each)

Apologies, I meant in general. For example, you see some users who have an account that is one month old, with all lessons complete and over 100,000 XP. You see some users with barely any forum activity with a high level / XP. You see some regular users battling to stay on the leaderboards because of this. I've been here a while like you have, and have also become inactive a few times, however, we still have a reputable forum background. I've been watching the leaderboards extremely close over the last week (hence the reason for suggesting it), and it changes everyday (primarily the last 10 users) because of users just completing all lessons and having no engagement. The leaderboard is part of the forum (and new comment system), not on the screencasts

Or it would be good to have an option on how to sort them to generate the list. I tend to look at the persons best reply count rather than their overall xp to determine how well the community affirms their knowledge. That part can't be gamed really as it's completely determined by questions/answers in the forums.

@cronix I agree. Sometimes it's hard to check.

I found that if the user's profile is public, then it's a lot easier to check their engagement. Looking at the age of the account, against the lessons complete and best reply awards, along with any forum activity is a good indicator.

For users with private accounts, sometimes badges can be an indicator, and sometimes their own threads/comments are a good indicator. If they're in the top 50 on the leaderboard, that can also be an indicator based on their best replies.

Best replies of course, isn't a solid way to check. But, an active user should at least have an average amount of best replies.

Sorting would be a good way.

@jlrdw its ironic you are questioning his programming experience ;)