Why do my posts say they are JDRoberts posts?

Not that I’m losing sleep over it, but what do my posts have to do with JDRoberts? In the activity feed, it says JDRoberts is the author.

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The pencil icon Usually means I edited the thread title, not that I’m the author.

I might have added tags so more people would see it, removed deprecated tags, or moved it to a different part of the forum ( again, so more people would see it, or more of the people who would be the most likely to give you an answer). :sunglasses:

I remember the “trigger lambda from smartapp” one, I moved it to the developers section of the forum so you would get a better answer.

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You’re being too helpful and you’re freaking people out. Keep it up! :smiley:

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the Pencil icon means Edit or Edited by

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The structure of the forum has changed significantly over the years, and since it contains tons of useful information, I’d say that most of the editing I do is either to get a post to where it will get the best/quickest answer or to preserve the current structure of the forum so that the archives will continue to be useful.

For example, there are two changes that happen a lot.

  1. someone has a question or comment about custom code, including webcore, and puts it in the top level of the “smartapps” section of the forum.

I know it’s not at all clear, but that section is intended for discussion of the officially published smart apps that appear in the SmartThings mobile app. Not for any custom code at all. (Webcore/core actually has its own subsection of the forum.) So questions about writing smart apps, for example, now go in the developer section of the forum under the “writing smartapps” subsection.

Questions about a specific custom smartapp, like trendsetter, should really go in the author’s thread for that particular code, but barring that, usually end up in “smartapp ideas” just because at least that’s a section that discusses custom code.

I’d really like to see that whole area re-organized and the headings renamed, but until then, posts will still get moved around.

  1. Similar to the above, back at the end of 2015 we used the “smartapp” tag to identify code which was being contributed to the community. Now that tag has been deprecated all together, but it was never used for questions about the smartapp or writing smart apps. It was supposed to be a quick way to find code.

Now there’s a separate section, “community – created smartapps” where the author threads go, and the quick browse lists in the community – created wiki to provide a quick way of finding code.

http://thingsthataresmart.wiki/index.php?title=How_to_Quick_Browse_the_Community-Created_SmartApps_Forum_Section

So most of the time the “SmartApp” Tag just needs to be removed altogether on new posts.

So just minor housekeeping. None of this changes the intent or meaning of a post, and if one does get moved, it’s just to get more people who might be interested in that conversation to see it, and help with future archive searches. :sunglasses:

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It is extremely helpful both for the posters, answering members, and future searchers.

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I should also say that some of the editing I do is just to add some searchable detail to a topic thread, again so it will be useful in the future.

For example, if someone titles a new thread “I need help” I or someone else is likely to put the device brand/model in the title or some indication of what the person needs help with, whether it’s wiring, or a specific smartapp, or a particular use case, or, again, a particular device. Or we may add a date to the topic title, again, just to make it more meaningful when it pops up in future searches. Or I might add the phrase “advice needed” to make it obvious that the person is looking for help rather than just posting a project report.

And again, it doesn’t change the intent or meaning of the post, it just makes it a little more likely that other community members will decide it’s worth reading. :wink:

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Everytime we have a major Outage, I have taken the first topic that becomes the mainstream for that outage and edit it so that all of the outages share the same common topic name with exception to the date “SmartThings Outage - xx/xx/xx” to try and make it easier for people to identify, and search and sort by relevance here in the community, which is becoming more and more common “7-10 day timeframe per outage” this year.

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Ahhh… that makes total sense. Carry on.

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