Idea for helping "angry" Sorgelig

[BattleToad]

Hi guys, I am a new user so take everything I'm about to say with a grain of salt. Just trying to do something productive.

As Sorgelig reasonably points out in his post Disclamer from "angry" Sorgelig :) he is a hobbyist who wants to work on the cores and develop MiSTer, not spend time answering the same question again and again on the forums. The fact that he has worked so hard to set up these forums and answer questions is something we shouldn't take for granted.

My suggestion is for us to create an issue solving pathway to troubleshoot most user problems without having to involve Sorgelig or any core developers unnecessarily and only bring issues it to their attention when they appear to be true limitations within MiSTer or the cores. Here is a flowchart showing what I am imagining:

TxbubW2.png (20.71 KiB) Viewed 2590 times

The requirements for this idea would include:

• Sticky post directing users to search the forum for their issue first (and the wiki now that I think about it)
• Help subforums (Optional - assumes we would like to keep general discussions separate from issue discussions)
• Knowledgeable volunteers willing to help users with their issues (from what I can tell we do not currently have a shortage of this)
• A project site for issue tracking (using something like Bugzilla, Trac, or similar)

[ARCADEAGES]

This assumes new users who are asking questions know and follow this protocol. It's a nice idea, but I would be surprised if people put it to good use.

[aberu]

I suggest that things should mostly stay the same, but will specify what I think that ought to be (and most often is):

1. Users here keep doing what they do and people who understand the subject more can help them with it. People just openly ask questions and try to figure it out. Sorgelig can feel free to ignore stuff since it's his perogative and he doesn't really owe us anything, but he does far more than he gets patreon money for, in terms of development time per $ (in my estimation).

2. If during the process the people who understand the subject more determine that this is an actual issue with the MiSTer that would be worth submitting on github, then they should search to see if it hasn't already been submitted yet for the relevant repository and submit it if it hasn't.

3. People that are capable of testing the behavior of the core and, even better, against real hardware should try to spend a little time to do so since just reporting the issue without evidence or a comparison, etc... is pretty vague. I've been trying to test out things without a comparison to original hardware. Some things you can do, get a super cheap hdmi capture card (like the BlueAVS I have that was like 20 bucks) and try and explain and replicate the steps to recreate the bug.

4. Keep supporting the project if you have the means ($$$) to do so.

[Newsdee]

I appreciate the effort to make things rational, but you are expecting users who do not read the forum nor wiki in detail to read your new protocol

There are already issue tracking websites (on the github repo), and help subsections on the MiSTer discord channels (see link in my sig).

What I'd like to flag is that any one person coming in with an attitude and entitlement will be much less likely to get help by anybody. It's rare but it does happen with people who think they bought a commercial product.

No need to be reverential either (which is maybe more insulting). Just show you did your homework (e.g. "I read X, I tried Y and Z, still didnt work") and you will find plenty of help. This is not just true of MiSTer but most technical communities out there...

[shaitan]

I think expanding on the wiki would be a great start. The ao486 project for example has a few tools that has limited documentation but has been discussed a few times in the forums. Searching the forums is only so useful since you never know and I always have these questions: well did this change during the beta tests? Is there one post in this thread of 300 that may have a throwaway line?

Also being able to expand knowledge on some of the more esoteric systems, helpful links to outside resources or just maybe some basic HowTo's would be really helpful. For example, I never had an Amiga and so that has been a real struggle trying to understand Minimig since there is a lot of assumptions into a user's experience. I realize that the MiSTer community doesn't want to become a full on help forum for every OS, but some beginners tips, useful links to guides would be REALLY helpful.

These are just some of the items that I think would be useful for the wiki. I'm guessing this is out of scope for the original intentions of the project, nobody wants to fully support every single system it supports. However, I also think it has grown quite a bit and there are a fair number of more unexperienced folks who want to look and learn and sometimes a lot of that knowledge is locked behind some smaller websites/forums.

[Newsdee]

The ao486 project for example has a few tools that has limited documentation

A lot of those are brand new, and as you say, it's best to wait until the dust settles before writing anything.

I realize that the MiSTer community doesn't want to become a full on help forum for every OS, but some beginners tips, useful links to guides would be REALLY helpful

See this: viewtopic.php?t=88
There are also basic instructions on the readme of each core, just click the sidebar link to find them.

I also think it has grown quite a bit and there are a fair number of more unexperienced folks who want to look and learn and sometimes a lot of that knowledge is locked behind some smaller websites/forums.

Plenty of resources here:
https://github.com/MiSTer-devel/Main_Mi ... -Questions
https://github.com/MiSTer-devel/Main_Mi ... nal-Videos
Feel free to suggest more tutorial videos to add, there are several out there.

[jca]

Something has to be done with the search feature:
I was looking on the forum for information on the Update All script and searched for "update all script".
Try it.

[aberu]

Something has to be done with the search feature:
I was looking on the forum for information on the Update All script and searched for "update all script".
Try it.

If you type "mister fpga update all script" into google you will find theypsilon's script is the top search result I believe. His readme.md has all the info you should need.

[WolfgangBlack]

As Sorgelig reasonably points out in his post Disclamer from "angry" Sorgelig he is a hobbyist who wants to work on the cores and develop MiSTer, not spend time answering the same question again and again on the forums. The fact that he has worked so hard to set up these forums and answer questions is something we shouldn't take for granted.

Non problem IMHO.
He did what he needed to do in order to offload the stuff he doesn't want to deal with and there
are plenty of good people on this forum who do help people all the time.
Ask your questions here and maybe even ask an experienced MiSTer user for help in private message if you must.
I've helped and received help here, MiSTer is a fantastic community.