Hi everyone! Thanks for all the great feedback! There's a lot to sort through on a Monday
One big thing I want to try and plan for is the growth of our forums. We've doubled in active members quarter over quarter pretty regularly, not to mention getting even more people coming for one off question drive-by. And as more WiiM products come out, the list of forums for each one of them might get a bit crowded.
As cooky560 and slartibartfast suggest, this choice is most likely cookie based. The site doesn't remember your selection, it's stored in a cookie on your browser. No cookie, no memory. I don't think there's a way to make that choice account based as a setting, but I'll check it out just in case.
I saw several people talking about this, along with harkpabst's comment about solutions. In many communities you'd find the troubleshooting board would be full of a "question" type post where someone is looking for a solution or answer. Xenforo has voting on that post type as you've all noted, so that good answers can be highlighted, and the author or a moderator can select any of the replies as the "solution". Solutions will get pulled to the top of the thread and highlighted. We could also make it so a certain tier of community member can mark solutions, maybe people that don't have moderation level capabilities, but know a good answer when they see it.
The way our board is currently designed, the troubleshooting forums don't require the question post type, in fact it defaults to "discussion" which doesn't have solutions or voting. Solutions are good for search engine optimization and to help people find answers, which is why a lot of troubleshooting boards lean in into having some sort of solution mechanic. Forum admins can also usually do some fun things with solutions on the back end like building out leaderboards and having awards and prizes for top solvers.
It might be more helpful to new members for a more streamlined "get help" category where they can ask their questions and we can all help them find answers. Ideally, with more solutions people will find the answers by searching instead of just asking the same questions over and over again. I'd love to get your take on this too!
On that note, one mechanic we haven't done much with is Resources, which are articles that are hosted on the forums, another way to put common answers in front of people prior to searching.
We'll definitely try to get in there more! I'm still getting up to speed on some things so I might have to just let you know I'll look into it and circle back with you. This time of year is always crazy and I know the teams are stressed, but I'll be trying to lighten the load for them as much as I can. Thanks for your patience!
This could be a good use for Questions with Solutions. Threads can be converted into Questions and a solution marked if it's something that keeps coming up. That way it's easier to find. Also, it may be help to have a "top topics" type section/post/FAQ somewhere (maybe along the side as a banner) that has links to some of these answers.
As an aside, since I'm still pretty new around here I certainly don't know all of those questions yet, and probably don't have the answers. But if you can think of some that would be great to get definitive answers to, can you PM me them? I can't promise I'll be able to get you a good answer, but I'll do my best.
Would you all be interested in having some guest stars come to the forums? Like if I could get an AMA with some folks either live or asynchronous?