I go to gardening knowledgebase. My only options are : new questions, recently answered, popular, and unaswered. It was my understanding there were to be options like vegetables and more.
Or are the other options not available on smart phones ?
I typed in vegetables. Only got old old questions that are not listed recent to oldest.
Help me please.

Exactly what is it you'd like to know, Philip?

Searching vegetables gave me these results
https://garden.org/frogs/searc...

Did you see where you can ask a question?

I almost never surf the internet on my phone, so I can't be of much help there.

Karen

Well dang! I don't remember seeing that screen. Must have had my back turned.

When I click on the forum Knowledgebase I see this:


What do I need to do differently to find the choices? I am on a laptop if that makes any difference to the answer.

What is it you want to do, Greene? Notice you can search in the upper right hand corner. And if you ask a question there is a box under that where you can choose categories, like annuals, perennials, fruits and veggies, etc.

I guess I'm being kind of thick in the head. I'm not sure exactly what either of you is asking.

Karen

I have the same issue as @greene. That is, when I first go to the Knowledgebase, I see the same screen she sees. Yes, there is a small search field in the upper right corner. Apparently, the link that @kqcrna provided was what we would see if we had used the little search field. At least I think that's the case.

My feeling is that if we're going to have 'tags', then we should be able to just click on a tag.

I don't think it matters that you're on your laptop, greene. I just tried it on my phone and it worked.

Next issue. Upon doing a search as @kqcrna did, how were the results sorted?
Question #1 was asked on June 22, 2000.
Question #2 was asked on February 10, 2001
Question #3 was asked on February 15, 2009
(Question #4 was a duplicate of 3rd question.)

Ok. So it looks like we've got things sorted by date. But then Question #5 comes along.

Question #5 was asked on November 8, 1997

So if there was a sort, I don't know how it was done.
It would be nice to have the questions sorted by date. And given the age of some of the questions, it would be even nicer to have a reverse sort on the date so that the newest questions are at the top.

Next issue. Using the same example.

How could a question asked in the year 2000 have a tag? Scrolling down the screen there's a lot of inconsistency regarding tags. Oh, wait. One doesn't have to choose a category when asking a question, thus the question could display without a tag. Bingo. Talked myself through that one.
But then . . . are we just using a format that was hanging around all these years? Nothing really new about it? Return of the dead, so to speak?

Several people have said, 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it.' So that makes me think that the old format (that apparently has now reappeared) was broke and the fix must have been in the form we know and love as Ask a Question. But if there truly was something about the Ask a Question forum that was broken, why go back to the old format that had been ditched because it was broken?
I know it sounds like I'm playing games here but I'm not. As a relatively new member I don't know the history of ATP and NGA so I have to ask. Re-read this paragraph if you need to. But fill me in. Tell me the history and how it evolved.

Was there a recent vote to get rid of the Ask a Question forum? Maybe I wasn't paying attention.

tx_flower_child, yes, that screen was the results of searching "vegetables" as philip had asked about.

I'm not certain about how and why Dave designed and built the Knowledgebase as he did so I guess it's time to bring @dave into the discussion.

Karen

I'm assuming that you've seen Dave's original post in the site talk forum and also his instructional video, found here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Karen

greene said:When I click on the forum Knowledgebase I see this:
What do I need to do differently to find the choices? I am on a laptop if that makes any difference to the answer. :thankyou:

At the top right of the page, in the little box that says search ... type in Vegetables and it brings up all questions/answers pertinent to vegetables. Type in Houseplants and it brings up that variety.

I am also confused. I see the search box but don't know what the various subjects might be. Would it make sense to have a drop down menu to choose from? Then within, say vegetables, can you search again for just zucchini?

Second question, I see a lot of plant ID questions in the knowledgebase - does that mean the Plant ID forum will be discontinued and those queries moved to this area?

No complaints, just trying to adjust to this change.

The search box will allow you to search for any keywords - if you want just questions containing zucchini, then you just need to put in zucchini.

At the moment there isn't a way to filter based on the different tags on questions (i.e. plant identification, pests, etc). beyond finding a question that has that tag and clicking on it. I suspect @dave will add the ability to filter on these tags in future.

It is an option to add a category when the person asks the question.
Choose any categories that apply to this question:
Plant Identification
Pests and Problems
Fruits and Vegetables
Annuals
Perennials
Houseplants
Trees
Shrubs
Lawns
Soil
Garden Planning
Seed Starting
Tropical Plants
Roses
Bulbs

Thanks for trying to understand my question; sorry the question was difficult to understand.

I had already tried the search box using the word 'vegetables' which gave me 1,000 results most of which were from 2009-2011. I tried again using 'roses' then 'insects' and got the same thing - 1,000 results most of which were old. That is not a good search result for the time I have available.

Right -- what Australis and Seedfork said. When you ask a question you get to pick the categories that fit. If you want to find just questions that match a certain category you need to find one that has that category and click on the green box at the bottom for the category. I also think that Dave intends to improve the ability to search for a category (or at least I hope so).

Philip, can you see the green category boxes (at the bottom of a posted question) when using your phone?

How about selecting one of these options:: [ New questions | Recently answered | Popular | Unanswered ] letting those load
then doing a search for the category you are interested in. Wouldn't that narrow the search way down.

That idea sounded good to me, Larry -- but I just tried it and it didn't help.

Hopefully this is the beta testing of this new feature and it will gradually get tweaked to improve usability.

Yes, I think it still is, Deb. And there's a long thread on the site talk forum about it as well as the video I posted above, for folks who want to keep on top of it.

Karen