Suggestion for this forum - add a "Lesson Learned" tag

I’ve been doing a lot of browsing here, and have discovered more that a few valuable pieces of information - particular on quirks, pitfalls, and "gotcha"s - particularly in SU, but elsewhere as well.

Wouldn’t it be nice to have a place where we can gather these together, a place where newbies can easily navigate to discover these gems of SU wisdom, a place where old hands can record these gems?

Then it hit me - that navigation is already there - almost!

Proposal: Add one more “tag” that can be applied to ANY post: “Lesson Learned”

How would should we use it? Well, here’s a few that I’d like to see:

  • What is the “.001” problem? I’ve seen it mentioned in a few different contexts, but I’ve (yet) to see a clear statement of the problem.
  • How to put angle brackets “<” and “>” in the text displayed in a Component Options box. (I’m prepping some quick, small, screencasts to illustrate the answer)
  • Why it’s a bad idea to move geometry off Layer0. (Yes, I know this is covered in SU Help, but it isn’t clear there - as evidenced by the repeated help requests here that ultimately turn out to be due to a misunderstanding of how SU uses Layers.)
  • How to embed small screencasts in forum posts

By adding “Lesson Learned” as a tag, newbies could find this distilled essence of our collective knowledge quite easily, by pulling down the “all tags” button either at the top level or within a category and selecting “Lesson Learned”.

The should probably be a screening process before a topic can be “blessed” with the “Lesson Learned” tag. I don’t know enough about Discourse to know if the process below is possible, but I envision it going something like:

  • The author puts “[Proposed Lesson Learned]” at the beginning of the Topic Title and puts it out - in the appropriate category - for review
  • Approval path 1: 20 “likes” by lower level users (Level 0 and 1)
  • Approval path 2: 10 “likes” by Level 2 users, aka "SketchUpper"s
  • Approval path 3: 3 “Likes” by SketchUp Sages or SketchUp Team Members
  • once any of the above paths are achieved, the topic gets the “[Proposed Lesson Learned]” removed from the Topic Title and has the “Lesson Learned” tag applied.

As I said, I don’t know if Discourse allows a process such as I describe above, at least not without customization. It’s just what I envision. I’d be satisfied with any appropriate, clearly defined mechanism.

What do Y’all think?

Steve

1 Like

This would be somewhat like the “doh!” thread over on sketchUcation. But we might need it to apply to a specific post (kind of like the solved tag) rather than to an entire topic, since many discussions wander afield before settling on the “aha!”.

I’ve haven’t yet spent ANY time in the sketchUcation forums, so I didn’t know it was there. Going to take a look right now!

@slbaumgartner,

Found it!

Yep, something like that, but had you not suggested “doh!”, I wouldn’t have found it! Much less been pointed to it by something as formal as a tag (which sketchUcation lacks) or in one of the introductory posts that new forum users are encouraged to read.

And restricted! Since the tag has to be earned to apply to a topic, when browsing by tag, I can envision replies to “Lesson Learned” tagged topic being turned off - or restricted to the higher user levels.

I’m striving for a way to concisely present our collected wisdom. Many replies stray off topic, or are just “Thanks!”. I don’t mind those in most contexts, but I’d like to see the “Lesson Learned” stay cleaner.

IMO, a forum cannot do a good job at collecting and presenting information in this way. That is what the Sage site and the various blog sites do.

But an interim collection of post links is often done as a “pinned post” in Discourse (or a “sticky post” in phpBB like SketchUcation. I’ve done quite a few over there in the Developers forum.)

Steve is correct, right now the tags apply to the entire thread.
Something like a “LightBulb” icon feature would need to be a Discourse extension.
(Check over at https://meta.discourse.org to see if anyone else is talking about that kind of extension.)

In the meantime, you yourself can collect bookmarks of individual posts or entire topic threads. (You use the bookmark icon at the bottom of each post or at the bottom of a whole thread to add it to your personal bookmarks list. Then you access your bookmarks via your avatar menu.)

@DanRathbun,

First, thanks for those additional resources - they’re now in my “Sketch Help/Learning Resources” bookmarks folder in my browser. And I have been bookmarking posts in this forum that I want to find quickly later.

I still feel it’s important that we find a way to include the function I describe (not necessarily implemented as I suggest) in forums.sketchup.com. As far as I can tell, this forum is the only source of community advice/wisdom that SketchUp itself makes easy to find from SketchUp.com. all their “resource” links are to books - which are static and non interactive.

As I was recently a complete beginner, I for one would have been thankful for a clear path to find the accumulated wisdom of our community.