Consolidation of Current FAQS and general cleanup

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There are a few reoccurring qualms people post about a lot.

  • How do I write an image to a SD card?
  • Where has all my space gone?
  • Retroarch sends me to a login screen
  • I followed insert outdated tutorial and now everything is broken
  • Why can’t I change my keybinds in retroarch?
  • (after doing and update/messing with menu order) My game shell just hangs when I start it up
  • How do I change the volume in insert non retroarch game?
  • insert emulator requiring a bios isn’t working!
  • My keyboard (bought between August and September) isn’t working
  • Don’t follow this tutorial! I couldn’t get it to work, therefore it must be wrong! (PEBCAK)
  • insert something that should be directed to customer service who do I contact via email?
  • When is my package arriving? It’s been [usually less than 4 weeks] insert random empty legal threat

These are a handful of queries that keep coming up off the top of my head that have been answered multiple times. Whether or not threads should be merged, or new requests like this deleted/locked is one approach to discuss.

Threads and tutorials for deprecated versions of clockwork OS should potentially be tagged as such to avoid people trying to follow something that is no longer relevant. That would be a clean up and a half!

Potentially more categories could help people a) search up for their problems (since chances are, they wouldn’t know what to search for), b) the forums would be tidied up more and c) more relevant content would be bumped higher.

Having an updated FAQ covering the above mentioned points would also be a great way to point people in the right direction, or thread. Currently, the new user’s quick start guide is VERY out of date and misleading!

Helping each other is great! But helping people find the resources to help themselves is aiding in the education process even more; rather than having people adopting an attitude to simply ask loud enough, threatening to throw away their Gameshell, that someone ends up doing the legwork for them.

I would be happy to write out a tutorial, but know for a fact that I have a terrible case of verbal diarrhoea. I mean, look at this post!
If anyone else would like to take on this challenge, I would be happy to assist, cross referencing threads that cover common problems new users face.

In addition, guidelines on when to actually make posts, and possibly having to wait longer before making posts can encourage people to learn to search for solutions. Despite being here for quite a while, this is my first thread that I have started; fearing clogging up the forums with yet another irrelevant post.

If this irrelevant however I will remove it. Just wanting to see this community thrive. And by no means is this a personal dig at any person(s) in particular! It’s just understandably hard to find solutions here to seemingly simple problems that everyone runs into.

Sounds like there’s quite a few native Chinese speaking people coming in. Having it written in Chinese too could be beneficial. That said. The majority of the Chinese bilingual posts have been excellent community contributions and tutorials, and less the same re-occurring requests for help.

Being Chinese myself, I found that this forced independence and shame in not being able to find a solution yourself is an inherent cultural trait. Then again it could just be my family haha!

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Thanks for the great advice. The shame is on us, we could have done better in organizing these contents. I could really need some help from you @javelinface. The FAQ in this unofficial Chinese forum could be a good starting point. Can we do something similar here?

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Yes! Ha it’s funny, some of the FAQ items are exactly the same as what I listed!
Something with individual links to threads, contained within a single pinned thread is great and easy to maintain.
The notion of a mega thread is absurd and impossible to navigate. Having to expect a new user fo wade through hundreds of posts to find an obscure solution is crazy.
And further more, between the correct solution and their problem would no doubt lie outdated content, references and screen shots.

The individual step by step visual tutorials are also great, allowing someone with zero coding experience to visually see exactly what to do, educating themselves in the process. Furthermore, as updates and new solutions arise, they can be updated in a contained environment.
I fear that too much of what goes on here is mindless copy pasting, without knowing what is going on.

I personally try to be descriptive as possible with why I give whatever solutions I may be able to give at times, citing references and sources whenever possible. (But I come from an educator background so that’s to be expected hahah)

A lot of the repeated problems seems to be from people reading old information that inevitably breaks things. Or people doing something just for the sake of it, not knowing what or why they’re doing it; simply because it’s “new” (eg, people doing the Debian 10 Buster update, just to see what happens)

If there can ever be an admin who is knowledgeable enough to definitively know if something is coherent or not, having their seal of approval, or even a like of a post can assure readers that content is valid.
There are some great admins here who I believe were early backers? However, they are just as much an every day consumer as the next person, and could be misled by information, thus leading others astray with their elevated privilege status.

It’s probably more of a community attitude that needs to be more one of self discovery and sharing. The problem is, if individual frustrated people don’t feel as though if they’re being looked after, they will vent their frustration on the community, and eventually end up selling their device on this very forum. Something else that has happened a few time here.

Before making a FAQ, possibly a tidy up, and an elevation of admin/mod roles to edit, lock and merge threads would stop problems from happening. One thing I don’t see happening much is the tagging of a thread as SOLVED once a solution is found.

As for what I can do to help, most of the queries I listed in the OP are things that I have interacted with in the past. I can pull up my forum history and hopefully help out with finding individual up to date links to things. That said, a few things are fixed by say, updating retroarch, enabling more of the options. Eg, input time out problems, and GL driver selection dumping TTY login.

Would it be better to wait for the next big OS release before making an official FAQ? We wouldn’t want the FAQ to be outdated just as it’s being written. For now, simply identifying the common questions, and collating answers would be a great first step.

Anyway thanks for noticing this thread, @yong

(I moved the thread to the site feedback. Probably more appropriate here in retrospect)

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The only admins here are Clockwork Staff, people like me are mods we are here to keep the forum from inappropriate content but in the end we are everyday consumers.

Maybe discourse isn’t as clear as other forums because it says Moderator even for yong but Staff tends to have Leader badge, or next to their name like Veronica.

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This is what I mean exactly! I meant that actually in the best way possible re: the reality of having the mods being just normal people; equals in the world, who just happen to have a forum broom stick to clean things up. I am sincerely sorry if it came across any other way!

There are some people who aren’t mods but who are recognised as being a part of core development (from what I have inferred) who after getting to know them, can tell when their addendums carry strong factual accuracy. A new user however wouldn’t know how to distinguish such users, and could follow a tutorial that is flawed and outdated.

But, just for example, if a leader such as Hal or Veronica endorse a post, you know it’s facts to be tried and true. Even a new user would be able to make this connection. It was especially good having Veronica introducing herself as a leader who was here to help with things internally on a deeper level.

Returning to the point of an FAQ, no matter who it is written by, if it is pinned by a mod, and clearly has cited approval as being correct for a specified version and date, it could become the defacto go to first point of reference for new users. As for keeping it accurate and updated, that would be a community effort.

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Thanks again for your advice. Our wonderful community moderators like @Petrakis, @Godzil, @Micro007 helped a lot in making our forum more organized, if you feel like contributing your time and efforts like them, I could invite you as moderator, too. We want this community to be open and self-organized as much as possible.

I have created a new FAQ category under GameShell to consolidate all the FAQs. I realized there are different types of FAQ, those created by our users and official ones for sales related or hardware/software related, etc. Let’s put everything in one place. Maybe at some point, wiki is a better format. Let’s see.

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If I can help out in any way, I would be happy to help moderate, if only for the sake of consolidating and merging things that are frequently asked, and if possible locking threads that have repeat content. I really respect and look up to those who do moderate and contribute to the community. I’m happy to continue to do the same, and offer help whenever and wherever possible.

I’m loving your FAQ! It’s clear cut and concise. Just the kind of information people need and want. I’ll have a closer look after work and if anything else is needed, offer suggestions.

Wiki would be good, for the sake of history, change logs and maintaining current information. I’m all for that! But one step at a time. It’s a small team!

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I am a new user here. It is indeed quite difficult to dig up the old posts to figure out how to do certain things. The information is too dilute in the forum. I think a wiki or Read the docs would be helpful. I don’t mind helping to set it up. @javelinface We can work together to get it working.

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I think for now, it’s a matter of users needing to use tags correctly, but that comes down to everyone contributing.
Whenever possible, I’ve been trying to provide links for people, as they need them. Realistically, this isn’t a feasible means of doing anything.
Just because of the way discourse is formatted, you can’t edit posts after they’re older than a month. This can make revisions extremely difficult if say, you wanted to have a master post referencing a lot of related threads. It’s what I’ve tried to do in some of my posts.
The best thing to do now is probably to set up a wiki page. That’s the only way we can keep on top of the ever changing information. As for what should be included in it, well! That’s another exciting topic!

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It seems to be possible to change the time limit to allow editing forever: https://meta.discourse.org/t/free-to-edit-post-at-any-time/35516/2 @yong can we try to do that?

If that doesn’t work out, we can make a wiki. I found a wiki on clockwork’s github: https://github.com/clockworkpi/GameShellDocs/wiki Maybe we can build on that one.

As for the topic, we can start a new thread for discussion. As a new user, I found the top tutorials to be the most useful:

  1. How to transfer files with TinyCloud through SSH
  2. How to add new emulators (Gameboy, SNES, etc.)
  3. How to install PICO-8 on GameShell
  4. NWJS + Phaser.io game engine Tutorial

Most of these are already covered in the github wiki. We just need to make sure it works on the latest image (v0.4 and v0.5 for now).

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I’m 100% happy to help with organisation, information gathering, and initial writing of tutorials. As you’ve probably gathered, I have some real problems communicating, and write FAR too much! Either that, or too little, assuming too much.
Possibly even small cheat sheets on how to do some basic commands in linux. Eg. the number of times I’ve written instructions on changing modes/chmod would warrant having its own wiki article!

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I don’t think you have problem communicating. I appreciate all your inputs on the forum. Your replies are usually the most helpful!

A cheat sheet on linux commands is great. I have no idea about linux. Maybe we can start with that. Let’s try to use the github wiki. I love the git workflow though I never use wiki on github. I can update the existing articles as I am still new to GameShell. What do you think?

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Aww, thanks! I really try to help as much as possible, and fear I may just be frustrating some people haha!

This is actually a really really good idea! No pre-assumptions on any coding knowledge!

Actually, one thing that is hard for newcomers to come by the existence of - the Discord channel! That and the twitter account.

It may be a good idea to one day put aside a time when both of us are free to chat on discord to get something put together.

I am really excited to get things written down from the point of view of someone who hasn’t got much experience. This is precisely who the wiki would be targeted to the most!

if it helps, my time zone is GMT +8. I’m in Western Australia. I also don’t sleep and am on work break till the end of the month, so have some free time up my sleeves. :slight_smile:

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I just tried the github wiki. No PR is needed just like Wikipedia. I kinda like it.

I am aware of the Discord channel but it seems not very active. But it is certainly a better way to communicate. I am free now. We can chat over there.

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https://discord.gg/XKGGkPM - just for anyone else who happens to be stumbling across this and may want to know!

I seem to have spotted you on twitter too! I’m probably going to be busy tonight, and tomorrow with some social engagements, but will be free wednesday until about 6pm my time, so if you wanted to do then, hit me up!

I’m Lettuce Leaf#1226 on discord. (It’s my FFXIV name, and what I usually use discord for.)

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Took me a while to figure out how to DM on Discord :sweat_smile: Just sent you a friend request

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Well easy, it’s up to users to make it active you know :slight_smile:

So not going there because “it don’t seems active” will not make it active, so you are more than welcome to come here and add your stone on the path of “being an active server” :slight_smile:

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I will become more active on Discord. For now, I need to “consume” existing information on the forum first :grin:

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Call me a boomer, but I actually don’t know how to use instant messenger for something like this; discussion about a game console. Twitter or something makes sense.
That said, tech support and troubleshooting would be way easier; which is what I’m hoping to do soon!
Good news! We’re in a similar time zone! We’ll work something out on Wednesday! :slight_smile:

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Yes, I live in Singapore so we have the same time zone, though I am in Europe until 9th Jan. You can just ping me on Discord or Twitter whenever you want to chat. I should be available most of the time since I am on holidays :grin:

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