• After 15+ years, we've made a big change: Android Forums is now Early Bird Club. Learn more here.

Combined root sections

I see that all the separate "All Things Root" sections for each device are now combined into a single forum. Not sure I'm a fan of that, it seems more confusing and will make it difficult to find relevant posts for each variant of a given device.
Also unless I'm missing something there was no announcement posted that this was being done, a heads-up would have been nice.
Anyway just my $.02-
 
From what I understand it was done to allow some of the better functionality of XF to be utilized in the All Things Root forums. Having the separate subs was an incompatible leftover from the vBulletin days.

There were only about 25 (out of the thousands???) of device forums that actually had multiple ATR subsections. Right now staff is doing our best to organize and consolidate the stickies from the now combined subs. If you have any ideas for the stickies for a particular forum, PM your favorite Mod or Guide or start a thread in Private Chat with Staff.
 
Upvote 0
I've never complained about anything Android Forums has done and always been happy here, but...

Merging the variants into one root section is bad for the user/dev experience. Take for example a flagship phone that's available on most of the carriers like the Galaxy S?. All the dev work and threads/posts for the smaller carrier variant will be buried in the forum by the large carrier variants like Verizon. The users will have a hard time finding what they're looking for and the devs will have a hard time getting their work noticed for the smaller carrier variants.

Not to mention how chaotic and frustrating this will be with such a cluttered root section. Thread OPs dealing with much more users posting in the wrong threads and going off topic. And then there's the potential for more heated discussions and teddy bears flying around lol.

I normally watch a root section for a particular variant so that I get alerts and can keep up with it. I can't do that anymore because now it'll be too overwhelming with all variants merged. So now I can only watch my threads which limits how informed I stay with a particular variant.

I'll admit this probably makes the site easier to manage for the site maintainers, but at the expense of the user/dev experience.

Well enough of my long rant lol. I guess I just needed to vent and be heard on this matter. I really do hope this isn't permanent or that I haven't offended or pissed anyone off.
 
Upvote 0
Good feedback, all. :)

A thought that I had:

With the normal prefixes (those that have the drop-down menu when you're creating a thread - Support, Tips, etc), you can click on the prefix of any thread in a forum to see only threads with that prefix.

It sounds like some of the headaches with the combined root sections could perhaps alleviated (at least to some extent) by a similar system for carrier prefixes - so tick the "Verizon" prefix and only see the Verizon-specific stuff.

Ultimately, we (mods, guides, and members) are just along for the ride - hopefully the end result will make these growing pains worth it.
 
Last edited:
Upvote 0
Well enough of my long rant lol. I guess I just needed to vent and be heard on this matter. I really do hope this isn't permanent or that I haven't offended or pissed anyone off.
I'll start with the end part. you certainly haven't offended me. So I'm cool with that.

As far as your greater point about the visibility for lesser trafficed variants. What we are able to do now, until we see how this pans out, is make sure what should be visible to members, is made visible in the ATR sticky thread (s) and make sure there aren't 20 sticky threads fust making a clustered mess at the top of the ATR section.

Similar to what I did with the previous stickies in the GNex ATRs.
http://androidforums.com/threads/all-things-root-stickies.914686/

So lpng as we have the right threads stuck, and the information in these threads, we hope to keep the same information available and highly visible that was in the previous segregated ATR stickies.

And so we are clear here, "we" in this context is mods and guides. As CS pointed out above, we are just along for the ride right now too.:)
 
Upvote 0
So apparently the existing posts had carrier prefixes attached to them when this change was made, however I do not see any option for adding such prefixes when creating a new thread in the now merged section. Also even if this option did exist I doubt there is any way to enforce it so that all new threads are appropriately labeled.
Sorry but I really don't see this going well-
 
Upvote 0
@Fox Mulder we need to see the final product in order to tell how it will work out on the long run. I know the GNex and the S3 main forums we had a sticky asking folks to add the [carrier] prefix to their threads when creating them. Maybe we should add that language to the ATR stickies during in the interim.

Do you think that would help?
 
Upvote 0
Maybe if the prefixes were available in the dropdown list when creating a thread, I don't see them there currently.
I think prefixes was one of the incompatibilities. :( We faced the same problem when we merged the GNex main forum (remember those used to be GSM and Verizon forums). We used a sticky (http://androidforums.com/threads/read-me-first.550039/) because the prefixes were still Tips, Support, Accessory, and General and there was no option for dual prefixes.
 
  • Like
Reactions: codesplice
Upvote 0
Heya!

Have not read thread, there's that disclaimer - but I will, today. Just passing through real quick and saw the taggings. A couple notes:

1. Yes, it is true this only affected 25 devices out of 1200+. Obviously though, 25 of the most popular among the more technical community.

2. We badly wanted to prefix them legit, so you could click said prefix and filter to only your carrier, but the multi prefix functionality is highly busted and broke many things for us when we tried it out. In fact, we're still recovering from it. BUT, we do plan to get it working, and would like to then properly multi-prefix these forums.

3. This is why we put them all as [whatever it was before] at the beginning of the titles. We are hoping everyone follows that lead/example, because when we get multi prefix working again, that will make it much easier to automate applying those prefixes.

4. This was done for a reason - yes maintenance on our end is easier like this, true. But it is because:
a) we need to be as consistant as possible on a site like this, for various reasons
b) it was the only way we can introduce a new tabbed-like way to access root/resources, which you'll see in a few weeks.

Honestly from a maintanence perspective multiple forums was a nightmare. But I agree it's not the best for a certain group of users - especially since it would appear advanced searching, for example, in S3 root forum, for [verizon] isn't pulling any results.

I will talk with Rob and see if he can bump priority to get multi prefix working.

Edit: One solution would be to nix the current root prefixes, "rom, kernel, etc" prefixes in favor of carrier prefixes. Then for THOSE, use the [rom] in titles.

In fact, I like that. The problem is, then it becomes a maint thing keeping track of what carriers for what forums. But I would be willing to do that..

vote: http://androidforums.com/threads/in...-to-be-broke-by-carriers-now-combined.915007/
 
Last edited:
Upvote 0
I personally always bookmark info in the Military Style, hierarchical with the Brand/Make/Model/Serial/Problem type of doing it.

with bookmarks, I almost Never leave them as the title is written:
ie:
Lollipop, Lock Screen, Notification issues ........
doing this way, makes it a lot easier for my pea brain to find things later. Way after I have forgotten how the original poster wrote the title.

So, Prefixing should be the same.
Brand (Verizon)/Root/S5/method description
or maybe move /Root/ to the front as we are talking about Root stuff.
 
Upvote 0
I think anytime you can get more users into fewer forums its a win for AF. In my humble opinion this could be applied to all forums here not just root. In other words, make separate forums for flagship devices, then have a single forum for other less popular models. I believe that would result in more eyeballs seeing threads in that larger, combined devices forum vs nobody wanting to post in a dedicated backwater device forum for the fear it won't be seen by anyone.

Keep up the great work!
 
  • Like
Reactions: Phases
Upvote 0

BEST TECH IN 2023

We've been tracking upcoming products and ranking the best tech since 2007. Thanks for trusting our opinion: we get rewarded through affiliate links that earn us a commission and we invite you to learn more about us.

Smartphones