Arrange Articles In Some Way To Increase Their Use

[fatman]

I believe the articles section is under used and that more readership would be had if the articles were arranged into some sort of categories that would alleviate the time needed to search through the whole list to find an appropriate article to read.
Also it would be helpful if more articles were contributed, like an article on T-5 lighting instead of constant referrals to other sites. The saying amongst teachers is if you can adequate explain something in understandable terms to a layman then you know your subject and you should share your knowledge, if you can not explain something in layman's terms then you should probably keep your opinions to your self and just refer people elsewhere where a simple explanation can be had. But simple explanations take space and time, that is why the article section should have more contributors and more contributions. There are no comprehensive articles on simple plumbing, circulation loop plumbing, drilling holes in glass, calculating overflow flow rates and many, many more areas that has received questions recently.
One line or two line responses in the forum sections are close to being not much more than idle chat!

[jhnrb]

Originally Posted by fatman

I believe the articles section is under used and that more readership would be had if the articles were arranged into some sort of categories that would alleviate the time needed to search through the whole list to find an appropriate article to read.
Also it would be helpful if more articles were contributed, like an article on T-5 lighting instead of constant referrals to other sites. The saying amongst teachers is if you can adequate explain something in understandable terms to a layman then you know your subject and you should share your knowledge, if you can not explain something in layman's terms then you should probably keep your opinions to your self and just refer people elsewhere where a simple explanation can be had. But simple explanations take space and time, that is why the article section should have more contributors and more contributions. There are no comprehensive articles on simple plumbing, circulation loop plumbing, drilling holes in glass, calculating overflow flow rates and many, many more areas that has received questions recently.
One line or two line responses in the forum sections are close to being not much more than idle chat!

The reason the articles were never arranged into a listing of order is that the site program did not provide at the time that function. There is a ton of information in the helpful tips that could be categorized out. Although it is time consuming, I must also contribute that the reason for the majority of failures in marine systems is the lack of understanding of the mechanics and biology of the water chemistry and equipment. For those that do not not have the patients to research and take the time to learn about the subject they are interested in, it will be hard to help them, less they find out the hardway. now for the the subject of using the articles, at such time as the article forum is programed to allow categorizing or alphabetizing not much can be done to make the process better. I think we need a data base where we can list by link to the articles and then we can organize the link. all within living reefs. so although I do agree it could be much better, The tools needed to get there are not yet in place. I will take this up with the administrator though and see what could be done. as for writing the articles, it takes time. I had not intended to contribute additional articles until we could organize what we have. so let IAN know if you have any thoughts on how the articles should be organized and when the tools are available we can make that happen. thanks for the heads up and the feed back.

[Ian Cunningham]

I don't mind coding a new article system to get the functionality you are after, if you let me know the features you are after in this thread then I'll see what I can do