Making it more obvious

I’ve noticed that we are getting a steady trickle of forum users posting in the Feedback and Reviews section when they should be posting under their operating system. The following text is already there to try and direct them to the proper place: “If you need help with Audacity PLEASE post to the forum for your operating system.”. I know you can lead a horse to water but you cannot make him drink, but would putting that text in bold red help to catch their eyes before they make their post? Just a thought. Delete the topic if you think I’m totally off the wall on this, I won’t mind!
Peter

Thanks for the comment Peter.
I’ve moved your topic to the “Maintaining/Improving this forum” section (as you point out, the “Feedback and Reviews” section is “ONLY for general feedback and discussion about Audacity 2” :wink:

The “Information about this forum” text was recently added to that forum precisely for the reason that you state.
We are also discussing some alternative formatting for the title of that text to make it stand out more clearly (though I’d have thought that a bright pink message box should catch the eye for most users).

Contrast is what catches the eye; and red on pink is low contrast. We humans, like many other species are pre-programmed for certain combinations to alert us. Red and yellow is the classic “danger” signal colour combination. So, perhaps, bold bright red text on a bright yellow background? Or would that simply frighten them all off completely!

Sadly we could have a HUGE notice asking people to read instructions and some would still not see it.
If most of the people find the forum reasonably easy to use and can find the appropriate place to post, then that’s probably as good as we can hope for. The point of having separate boards is to make it easier for both the people that are asking for help, and those that are trying to help. If someone is using a Windows computer then there’s no point in asking if they are using PulseAudio, or if they are using a Mac there’s no point asking if they have defragmented their hard drive. I will often skip over posts on the Mac forum because I don’t use a Mac so it’s generally better if I leave such questions to those that know about Macs. Fortunately it’s quite easy for the forum moderators to move topic once the user has stated what system they are using - it’s just that it saves time for all concerned if they provide all of the relevant information at the start.