Real names...no...there's no way to police that unless we have a policy of address/phone verification with positive confirmation. We'd need a staff of people to do that.
Professional credentials are required to be stated upon registration via the list of selectable yes/no fields...again someone could lie if they want to.
Practice location...that's a good idea I will look into adding that.
If a poster's name is not a link, does that mean they are no longer a member? I don't think that I am the only one who sometimes checks on the credentials of a poster before bothering with a response. Just wanted clarification on how this new forum works. BTW, I think it is GREAT that Chris is getting this going.
Joan if someone's name is not a link then either something is wrong with your browser or I screwed something up in the underlying HTML or CSS code for the page
If you see an example of that send me the URL (copy/paste it from your browser's address field, the http: text up there ^^ )
Anytime a user name shows up on this site it should be a link, unless the user's name was simply typed in as part of a post, or if it is in their signature line below their own post.
Not a bad idea; I can put that in the user profile (make it a non-required field at registration). I don't think we want to force people to fill it in; I am sensitive to making the registration process as easy as possible. With the exception of the little reading/math test of course
There are some great ideas about info for the registration page. I can understand that most of it would be voluntary. BUT, will there be some way to search the registered users by any of those fields? I can see where it might be useful to find all the Texas users, or the Lacerte users, or (using double criteria) the CPAs in Texas, etc. Of course, folks could opt to leave those fields blank, if they don't want to be found that way. All I see now is that the screen names can be sorted alphabetically.
From a program usage standpoint. I would again suggest separate user forums for each major product out there. This will then afford a non-proprietary place for users to gather.
Those user forums become also a starting point for beginners to cut their teeth before venturing onto the big boy <and girl> board.
Fred, I can guarantee you will get taxation questions in any of those software product forums. I probably already made a mistake by having the 'general accounting' forum; should have just had "taxation" and "business"
You guys have to trust me on this; multiple forums is not going to be helpful.
Joan I need to look at that search-by-profile attribute idea; it is on my list...will require custom programming unfortunately but I do want to get there.
Separate forums dedicated to a particular topic is a great idea in theory. A place where all the posts relating to a particular topic are gathered together. In practice though we see that users don't always post in the proper forum. They just post wherever they happen to be. It's a moderation nightmare. Or properly catelorized topics morph into other areas. One winds up checking all the different forums just to see if you're missing something good.
Chris, you're absolutely right that it's better to start with fewer forums and wait till there's a confirmed need. I've seen plenty of cases where proliferation made things much worse, but rarely cases where a limited number of forums were inadequate.