Question for web speciallists

V

Vishnu Mahadev

Registered Users (C)
We have some threads on this current folder ( immigration.com\ I485 \ California S.C. \) as per time e.g. April, May, June, July
We have some threads on this current folder as per subject e.g. RD tracking, AP tracking, EAD tracking, FP tracking and AOS-AD tracking

How can we form a structure to avoid the chaos.

e.g. If we have time slices and then under each month if we have issue ( RD, EAD, FP AD etc) we will have peace of mind.

I think, we owe this much to immigration.com

Most of us will have our approval within next 45 days and then we may never visit this site again in our life.

Why don\'t we bid a good buy with grattitude by giving the structure to this site.

B] PCeeGCee, you have to teach somebody ( may be December filer folk) o how to run that cute excel file on tripod,

C] CIBA the mighty man of immigration, are you planning on having your successor or ARE YOU GOING TO DO IT FOR REST OF YOUR LIFE.

POINT IS WE SHOULD LEAVE THIS SITE ( AND WORLD ONE DAY) A MUCH BETTER PLACE THAN WHAT WE LIVED IN.

 What say you my dear friends ?
 
The technical question is how to create folders and subfolders

So that this 485 CSC thread will look like this

APRIL 2001
                 ALL MD/RD tracking issues
                         Individual discussions 1,2,3,4 to n
                 ALL EAD/iEAD tracking issues
                        Individual discussions 1,2,3,4 to n
                 ALL FP tracking issues
                        Individual discussions 1,2,3,4 to n
                 ALL AOS/AD teacking issues
                        Individual discussions 1,2,3,4 to n

MAY 2001
                ALL MD/RD tracking issues
                 ALL EAD/iEAD tracking issues
                 ALL FP tracking issues
                 ALL AOS/AD teacking issues

JUNE 2001
                 ALL MD/RD tracking issues
                 ALL EAD/iEAD tracking issues
                 ALL FP tracking issues
                 ALL AOS/AD teacking issues

JULY 2001
                 ALL MD/RD tracking issues
                 ALL EAD/iEAD tracking issues
                 ALL FP tracking issues
                 ALL AOS/AD tracking issues
                                                                      and so on, this will be a neat work and will be our contribution to this site
 
No Title

Vishnu Mahadev,

The most important thing is flexibility...

I guess for any discussion group the important factors for success are..
1. How many people are there in that group.
2. How active those members are (how frequently they visit, contribute to that group)
3. What are the issues/problems.
4. How many people are sharing their ideas/experiences/solutions to solve those problems/issues.
5. The time (how long they stick to that group, so that people in that group know each other, and get feeling of helping each other).
6. Attracting new members and retaining knowledgeable/experienced/helpful current and old members. (Finding people like CIBA may be very rare, who got GC very long back but still around to share his experience and valuable knowledge/information he gathered in this journey and spend some time).

Starting around April end there was a very big delay in issuing receipts and that issue was very important to so many people and they are able to get together as a group (app. there were 80 members in May thread). Since it is not an issue any more it may not be a commanding factor in creating groups/threads. May be at this point of time it may make more sense to create threads based on years or quarters. Note that there aren\'t many members in Oct, Nov, Dec threads. Or may be Separate threads based on type of application like AP, EAD, AOS rather than based on date mailed etc.

Bottom line what looks the best right now may not make much sense tomorrow. Doing too much structuring may be overkill! For e.g. do you think that if you create app 48 threads (4 different threads for each month) for one year then people like CIBA can visit all those 48 threads and participate in those discussions? I am already having tough time gathering information to summarize data for existing threads. One should depend on summary info to look at data not discussion threads.

In my opinion this site (immigrationportal.com) is already well structured and still very flexible and able to achieve most of the objectives as I specified above!

- PCee
 
I agree with you Pcee...

Between you and CIBA the lists you maintain are wonderful sources for tracking. I just wish more people would contribute to CIBA\'s personal experiences section. I also agree with Vishnu in that successors need to be identified for both you and CIBA unless you folks will have the time to visit this site and update your tracking lists for much longer. Maybe you and CIBA enjoy doing this and do not want successors at this time. In that case pardon me for being presumptuous. Once again, thanks to you and CIBA for your tremendous help to folks on this board.
Besides being cumbersome for tracking, too much structure would end up in cocooning folks into narrow avenues of information. I for one would want to read what everyone has to say. That way I can help and be helped.
 
Can this be an alternative

PCeeGCee and CIBA,

I must say, that you kind of people are very difficult to get.
If I ever float a company, I will send you an invite to hold some worthy post. ( This is to show that I honor you guys)

Considering your comprehensive reply, do you think, if you generate an E-mail Id like PCeeGCee@yahoo.com ( 6 MB free storage) and ask people to send you an e-mail only if their status is changed, will help you far better than to go into each thread and find out only those mesags which show change in status ( e.g. AP approved, EAD received etc)

This way, both you and CIBA will get readymade Status update with respect to handle and we can read only summary.

There are messages for various stages and various months which we are not directly related to.
May be 90% of messages are irrelevant to common man.

If we do not want to over do structure then we can at least have an option and give you an option of maintaining summary without having to go into each thread.
what say you?
 
analysis

Hi guys

This is a very nice discussion

I fully appreciate the work done by pcee and ciba - however it is a valid point that after gc a motivated successor is a better option than pcee and ciba still doing the heavy work.

Yes pcee has a valid point that the spread sheet (or any other tool) needs to be flexible to handle new columns or new processes being added by INS

Pcee and ciba could start analysing what takes more time
a) Gathering information
b) updating the data
c) posting the html pages on the website
d) posting messages on the website that the pages have been updated
e) posting comments/messages/replys to discussions

I feel that b) updating data and c) posting html pages could be improved - however any technological change should take into account the need for flexibility and future requirements

You could maybe have the following scenario

A web page is made where the user enters his information.

He enters his login id and fills in only the relevant columns

for example when he first starts on this web site he enters

MD, RD and PD

The information is sent to pcee using pipe delimited format

after a few weeks the person wishes to update his information and
enters his login id/ ap info

after a few weeks the person wishes to update his info and enters the
login id and ead info

everytime the user enters information on this special web page the information is sent to pcee using pipe delimiters and
this can easily be processed and this will save him all the grunt work of updating his spread sheets

Think about it
 
No Title

Vishnu Mahadev,

I remember, in the past CIBA wrote that he could use some help. Like some one going through all these threads and gather information/updates in one place so that CIBA can update the summary data. That kind of process definitely works but asking users to just e-mail or update at perticular site may not really work! I mean many people may not want to send e-mails. Note that since this is a public discussion group and one need NOT mention their actual name and some other personal information (e-mail etc.) people are able to discuss freely! Also if volume of e-mails is too much it may become a problem for who ever need to go through those e-mails. Most of them may not be just status updates, rather they could be questions asking for help regarding status etc. Also note that when e-mail addresses involved it becomes a bit more personal in nature and there may be some legal issues involved like -can some one advise on legal issues with out proper qualifications etc. I read some where on this site Mr. Rajeev Khanna saying something like "as a professional I have some limitations/restrictions on what I can do and what I cannot do.. By creating this discussion group you don\'t have those restrictions, you can help each other freely..." see the link for actual message Rajiv Khanna "I-483 Tracking Tables for each Service Center" 6/29/00 6:13am

Regarding automatic data collection... there are already mechanism built in at several sites but they are not able to attract enough people so that collected data is some what useful! Or some times there is too much of fake data.

For e.g.
http://www.immigration.com/ins-tracker.html
http://infitime.com/imm/2.asp

Data is just a small part of this big discussion. Members experiences, feelings and openions are also important. If you see data inlight of those things it helps a lot.

Other thread discussing almost same topic...
http://www.immigrationportal.com/WebX?128@@.ee8c2f8

- PCee
 
Can we use private mail on this forum to send status update to PCee?

Thank you PCee and Vishnu for initiating this useful discussion.

I surfed on many sites before and this is the best site for tracking immigration related matters.

It is indeed wonderful that folks are trying to improve it further.

I saw that we have private mail on this site.

If we sent out private messages only for status updates, it will be useful for PCee.
If anybody sends legal questions, PCee may not answer.
This way, we can maintain our anonimity and help PCee.

Good discussion everybody. Thanks to Pcee and Vishnu Mahadev.
 
No Title

inssuperwaiter,

In my openion people must post all updates to discussion forum individually. That way if some one makes a mistake any one can search all messages from that user and get required information. By asking people to send private messages, we will hide that information from all others! By the way going through private messages won\'t make it any easier though!

What I wrote in my previous response is "If some one could post recent updates by going through several threads..." for e.g. in the following post (old April thread) what "Padhu" has done is really helpful
Padhu "Hopefully, the LAST thread for April\'01 CSC I-485 filers" 12/4/01 6:56pm

- PCee
 
web discussion

to PCEE

So ur suggestion is that if u could have someone search for updates it could help u - is that correct
 
Will the threads like Jan 7 to Jan12 AOS help?

I saw that Vishnu has started focussed threads for getting AOS/AD summary.
I also saw that people have willingly appended their summaries there.
Some third party people actually copy pasted sections there.
do you think, this type of summary threads will be helpful?

In that case, I volunteer to help.
I will copy and paste whenever I get a chance.
We have several categories though.
MD/RD/ND/EAD/iEAD/FP/AD for Months by regions. May be 6 X 12 X 3 = 216 sections.
I wonder this is what Vishnu was saying to creat folders and subfoldes for each moth for summary.
Let me see what I can do.
I will try to help.

Thanks for your good work.
 
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