(*) Forum is retired...

Hi all,
for many years, this forum has served well... but it's time to move on. Now all user discussions happen on our new Q&A forum. It's a big change, but we hope for the better!

Existing users, feel free to reply here with rants and kudos...

Best regards,
Florian

What password do we use, Old bome forum password or bome registration password or do we need to create new account and password?

Ah, good question! So unfortunately, the forum account cannot be used. The good thing is that the new Q&A system uses the standard bome account which you use for newsletter preferences, licenses, and ordering:
https://www.bome.com/shop/my-account

The new web site keeps a login section in the top right corner for your convenience.

Hope that explains!
Florian

Woah. This was unexpected.

I know. I does feel to me as if something I've really learned to like is taken away from me
Well, I hope we all get used to the new system and eventually won't miss the good ol' forum...

But in any case, we'll preserve the forum as a reference for all the great solutions.

I've also just noticed that right now, I believe it's not possible to set nick name and avatar photo. For now, please send a request for nick and/or avatar to me.

Yes! I agree with the discomfort on "what to do now".

How can we send you info for avatar/username?

just send me your bome login name or email address, and desired nick and avatar image (link). For those who haven't had email contact with me yet, please use the contact form:
http://www.bome.com/contact

Profile from www.gravatar.com are recognized, too.

Why, oh why would be my question!
Change for changes sake?

The new "social"?
The old internet must die and thus all forums everywhere must go?
I just don't get it.

In German we have a word for it: Verschlimmbessern

Assume this to be the last time I engaged with anything here that is not a direct problem that I personally have.

CY

TomViolenz wrote:Why, oh why would be my question!
Change for changes sake?

The new "social"?
The old internet must die and thus all forums everywhere must go?
I just don't get it.

In German we have a word for it: Verschlimmbessern

Assume this to be the last time I engaged with anything here that is not a direct problem that I personally have.

CY

I am also not a big fan of this change but I assume the Bome team has some good reasons for the move so I will roll with it for now.

I find the UI of the new system somewhat confusing.

I propose a "Forum Rules" type of header to direct those unfamiliar with these types of discussion sites to understand, firstly, to not answer their own questions. There are places for comments and the answer field is meant to resolve the issues only.

Hey,
thanks for telling us your opinion, especially Tom! The change is definitely not for change' sake. This forum will stay online forever, it's a great resource with all your/our discussions.

But a while ago, I came to the realization that the forum is not the best format for the kinds of discussions we're having here. Usually, it's one question asked, and then a discussion following, with various solutions and answers interspersed. That's fine while the discussion takes place. But it's bad for using it as a reference to go back and find the best solution for a given question (like a knowledge base). You'd need to read through the whole thread... So it even happened that when a duplicate question was asked, I'd rather answer again than to link to the other, same question, because that thread would take time to read through...

The Q&A system allows for discussion just like in a forum. Actually, I believe it's fine to post general side questions and discussion as an "answer". The key to making it more efficient than the forum is the voting aspect: using the up/down arrows, all users are allowed to mark good answers (and good questions). Then you can just order by rating and have the best answers at top. The answers purely used for discussion without information regarding the original question will not get votes and stay at the bottom. Also, the original poster of the question can (should) mark the answer that helped most as "best answer". Again, a useful tool for building a knowledge base.

Being able to comment on questions and on answers is another way to differentiate discussion and actual answers.

As a programmer, I've grown accustomed to the Q&A site stackoverflow.com . It's great for discussions AND for quick retrieval of the best answer to a given programming problem. I hope that the Bome Q&A will work as good as that one, eventually.

And, just like stackoverflow, we plan to add some more gamification: you'll earn reputation points with every activity. Your activity in these "old" forums will be taken into the calculation, too.

Last, but not least, it became more and more of a support problem that there were 2 different accounts for licenses and for the forum. It was technically not possible to unify those 2 account systems.

Having said all that, our current system is not perfect at all, and we will improve it over time. Please tell us any specific things you don't like, or which you'd like to be improved, and if you have ideas for new features, that's great, too! Feel free to post all that as questions, too.

Also, I realize that while we (the Bome team) have worked on this change for months, we should have discussed it here in the forum to avoid such an abrupt change for you. I underestimated the impact.

I hope that explains some more.

Thanks,
Florian

So it's confirmed: It's for the "social"

No thanks, I need no validation of my ego via up-votes because I try to be helpful and like to think about solutions.
That help was always given free of any expectation of "reward" or "reputation" on my part and I reject that it is put into these terms from now on.
And I also reject that everything becomes a popularity contest nowadays.
What's next? Facebook integration?

I also don't get the disambiguation issue. Afaik there is a search function in the forums that one can use before asking a repeat question. I used it often, it works.

Further it is exactly the merging of the accounts that is an absolute no-go out of principle for me (no worries I own a legit copy of MT Pro ).

I always keep my identity and my expressions separate thank you very much.

ibanman555 wrote:I propose a "Forum Rules" type of header to direct those unfamiliar with these types of discussion sites to understand, firstly, to not answer their own questions. There are places for comments and the answer field is meant to resolve the issues only.

I guess this is why I posted this... in regards to stackoverflow... If I didn't use that forum correctly I'd have my head ripped off. Same principals.

Well anyways, I digress on all of the above. I've never felt that anyone from Bome has deserved retaliation or nay saying ever, and not about to start now. Thank you Florian for all your hard work as always. You've gone above and beyond the call of duty that is expected.

This will be my last post on the forum, and I've already begun massaging my way thru the Q&A. It will all be familiar soon enough, and the best thing to do is support it, just as I do the software.

Scott

Scott: thanks, I appreciate it!
Tom, I respect and appreciate your opinion on this. It is still unfortunate and I feel bad for it. I still believe that we have different views on why we at Bome changed to the Q&A thing. So the following is not an attempt to convince you, but to try better to explain my motivation.

The social aspect is not the main reason (albeit welcome). For me, the main difference to a forum is that you can order by importance of the answer (by rating). That's not for the sake of someone's ego, but for getting to the gist of the topic as fast as possible. And a very effective way to find out the importance of an answer is by voting. It's democratic and does not require (much) additional effort for anyone. I hope that nobody sees it as a popularity contest

Now of course, everybody is welcome to ignore any such votes for his own posts.

And please create a separate account just for the Q&A, that's not a problem at all You will need to use a different email address for that, but I'd think that to be necessary anyway for separation.

But for us here, we kept on getting emails from frustrated users trying to access their license info with their forum account.

Anyway, I appreciate all your help on the forums (sorry for thanking you ), and we'll see how things evolve.
Florian