Pine 64 plus

[tllim]

To address the loose button thing, during the kickstarter campaign, a stretch goal was reached which proposed a power button to be fitted to the Pine A64 board. Whilst some thought this a great idea, others were strongly against it, arguing that redesigning the board would cause delays. When it was explained that the board had already been designed to accommodate the button, that brought some satisfaction, but some still preferred not to have a power button mounted direct to the board, arguing that amongst other reasons, they might want to wire up a button themselves and not have it directly attached to the Pine A64 board. 

So a compromise was reached. Pine A64 Inc would provide a button, and if you wanted to, you could attach it. If you didn't want to, you didn't have to and were welcome to use your own solution.

Skip forward a few months and boards are starting to ship. People are mentioning finding a loose button in their package that they fear may have somehow fallen off the Pine. They post their concerns here and are informed, usually in shorthand, of the info mentioned above. 

Whilst it is frustrating not to have people reading through the updates that happened during the kickstarter campaign to keep themselves informed, or not reading the various threads here before posting their duplicate questions (some days I do feel slightly like just going on a massive deleting spree), the purpose of this forum is to assist and educate, and that includes helping everyone, even those who assume a loose button must have fallen from a board that has been damaged during transit.

Should there be a "before you post read this Q+A" sticky post in all the forums with link to the detail in the threads?

Perhaps yes. What is needed really is some other Pine64 staff (apart from TL Lim) working full time on organising this forum. I try and help out where I can by reorganizing posts and answering questions here or there, but like many people posting (and moderating) here, I have a full time job, family, other commitments, etc. 

One option is to have a sticky created for each sub-forum addressing the most common questions and answers, and re-directing to this sticky any posts that relate to it, and closing threads that have gone wildly off topic or that aren't really going anywhere. 

Some threads could also be merged, but I'm wary of trying this out and not being able to revert the merge if I mess something up.

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For instance, this thread 'Pine 64 plus' doesn't really have a focus or definite topic, thereby leaving it open to endless tangents and making it less useful as a source of specific information. Ideally threads should have a focus on a specific topic and should try to adhere to that topic. Where a thread does go off on an apparent tangent, it should recognise this as such and instead refer to a more appropriate thread, or if no such thread yet exists, one should be created. That way a database of cross-referenced information can gradually accumulate.

Like I say, the forum really needs a full-time organiser right now.

I reserved this week to clear up forum and wiki page after busy with KS production on last week in China, both sites need to tidy up.