Is the unraid community (or product) dying?


RokleM

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I've come back after a couple year hiatus and am looking at building a new box.  I've been browsing around the forums and things are... different.

 

1) It seems many sections have turned overly hostile and "go google it", "go search for it" type of answers.

2) The actual technical sections seem to be heavily abandoned.

3) Hardware suggestion sections have volumes of posts with little to no assistance / responses, or maybe a quick minor attempt from one or two individuals and then silence.  Even seemingly simple questions from people are ignored.

4) It appears (from a general view), the most commonly viewed and participated areas are actually just related to unraid and not unraid itself.

 

It doesn't seem like the product is dead, but it appears that the community mentality has changed quite a bit and isn't actually focused on one of the main reasons the forum exists.

 

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Honestly I've found myself coming to the forum and finding nothing of interest to read except for the RC announcements and the occasional major plug-in update.

 

But I feel like that's the result of LimeTech really tightening up their product to the point that there isn't that much to talk about anymore. Many of the quirks and workarounds are gone, things just work, and the community plug-in infrastructure is robust and clean.

 

It just works so there isn't much to talk about.

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I would say the community is better than ever. Years ago there were a few individuals with a lot of technical knowledge. Some of them aren't as active anymore. But there are many more helpful users than before.

 

OP, I think you must be reading only the least used subforums. Perhaps the subforums you remember from before the V6 days. Some of those subforums are practically dead. Try some of the other subforums.

 

And as CHBMB noted, there are a lot of new members who aren't quite as technical because it isn't necessary.

 

I started on V4.7, and if anything, I think the product and the community are stronger than ever.

 

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https://lime-technology.com/discover/

 

Scroll down through, I think you will change your mind as to the viability of the forums. If you have a specific question, you will very likely get a specific courteous answer, often with differing interpretations or possible solutions from several people.  If you post a long list of hardware with a question of "will this work with unraid" then you are likely to get very few responses.

 

I don't know if that's what you were referencing, but it's the most prevalent example of what you may be talking about.

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I still find unRAID forums as one of the most helpful for either new or seasoned users.

 

But, more than that, I feel the core product has people that is very committed to deliver the best user experience, both in terms of ease of use and most importantly, in very sound technical concepts.

 

I value that a LOT !

 

I don't get that feeling in other products/services/forums.

 

And there are many knowledgeable forum members, that ...sometimes, I pass them for Limetech core developers/members :) 

Edited by jbrodriguez
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12 hours ago, RokleM said:

Hardware suggestion sections have volumes of posts with little to no assistance / responses, or maybe a quick minor attempt from one or two individuals and then silence.

 

May be that not a lot really needs to be devoted to hardware these days since most hardware works with unRAID, and there are lots of other resources on the web to help people with building their servers. We tend to talk about how our specific uses might be better served by some hardware than others, and some of these discussions wind up in subforums that aren't necessarily devoted to server building.

 

12 hours ago, RokleM said:

It appears (from a general view), the most commonly viewed and participated areas are actually just related to unraid and not unraid itself.

 

And it might also be that what you think is merely related to unRAID is actually a significant part of the attraction of unRAID. unRAID is not only about storage these days.

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I remember years ago when I was learning about this stuff, I would google for things like which HDD to use for builds, SMART etc, and find links to the unraid forums because the posts here had the most indepth technical info. Sadly many of those posts are now gone or are relevant for older versions only.

 

Its true that online forums these days have become more toxic, you see this everywhere. People have smaller attention spans and are more willing to complain.

 

I still feel this is an extremely valuable community, it is one of the big pros of unRaid frankly. Without the active members here, a lot of the cool stuff in unRaid wouldn't exist and many have had an active part in influencing newer official features. 

 

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My guess is that disksize is the biggest contributor. Currently I have about 18GB of data, which meant that about 8 years ago you'd need about 20 disks so you'd need a 24-bay server, and motherboards and sas-cards that could handle the amount of data. Plus, it wasn't as fast, getting 100MB/sec was a big goal and required a lot of knowledge to get running properly.

Now, you just get three or four 8TB (or bigger) drives, and any motherboard has enough sata-ports to handle that, and will likely run at 100MB/sec. Even unRAID itsself got easier with the USB creator.

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I'm guessing because back in the day we had to deal with work around's and now everything just works well and dockers have taken a HUGE place in the operation of unRAID with tons and tons of support. 

 

We see these daily. Well at least I do. ;)

 

 

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There have been a few questions that I have asked that went unanswered, but to be honest... I see that as everyone here having only a finite amount time available or just simply not knowing the answer to some specific hardware questions. Aside from that, I have not run into what you are saying. The VAST majority of users have been overwhelmingly helpful and insightful. If anything, it feels like unRAID is growing. Thats just how it feels to me though.

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The OP first posts in over 2 years are over in Hardware, and there was no response. 

 

https://lime-technology.com/forums/topic/69727-build-help-requested-time-to-upgrade/

 

Not sure I ever even saw it. I don't read every thread, and seldom even browse specific subforums. My usual method is to continue to read and support threads I have already responded to, or to look for other new threads where people need support. The new forum software makes this easy with "Activity Streams".

 

Could be the reason he got overlooked is simply because of the number of other posts on the forums.

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As an old timer on the unRAID forums, I find that lately more people just want a quick answer and won't do the little research to find the answer to their question that has been answered many times already.  I understand that the forum can be a bit overwhelming, but a little searching can find answers to the common issues.  Many topics are pinned that provide information about the more common issues.

 

A lot of questions about unRAID operation can be found by using the built in Help.  I can't tell you how many times I've been asked a question that has an answer in the Help.

 

I try the best I can to answer all the questions I can help with, but answering the same question over and over gets old.  I, like most people that offer support on the forum are not employed by LimeTech and offer our assistance in our spare time.

Edited by dlandon
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As an old timer on the unRAID forums, I find that lately more people just want a quick answer and won't do the little research to find the answer to their question that has been answered many times already.  I understand that the forum can be a bit overwhelming, but a little searching can find answers to the common issues.  Many topics are pinned that provide information about the more common issues.
 
A lot of questions about unRAID operation can be found by using the built in Help.  I can't tell you how many times I've been asked a question that has an answer in the Help.
 
I try the best I can to answer all the questions I can help with, but answering the same question over and over gets old.  I, like most people that offer support on the forum are not employed by LimeTech and offer our assistance in our spare time.
I agree 110%. It does get old quickly.

Sent from my LG-H815 using Tapatalk

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I think it's fair to say that Search in the new forum software doesn't work as well as it did in the old forum software, or at least I haven't figured out how to make it work as well.

 

Having said that, many questions are already answered in the pinned topics.

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16 minutes ago, Perforator said:

To be honest the search here stinks. I get better results using Google.

 

In my experience that's true for most forums.  Not aimed at anyone here, but there is an increasing tendency for people to ask questions in forums rather than refine their Google searching technique.

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1 hour ago, tdallen said:

The current forum search is awful - surprisingly awful in this day and age.  It's impacting the ability of people to help themselves.

Agreed. It's much better to just use google search and append +site:lime-technology.com to your search. Maybe the search button could be redirected using that syntax? Or is that against google's terms of service?

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With more people, more variations in hardware and more applications that can be installed, the probability of other members having answers to questions posted goes down.  That's just the way it is. On the hardware side, there is so much hardware available and it changes so quickly that often there aren't many people using a specific part you may want to use. You can't get responses about it when no-one is using it.

 

Still, I'm not seeing any "Just Google it" answers you're saying you often see???

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