Big Tables taking over the page

[Reeza]

There are some posts with people posting big tables, of data usually, and then the tables spread outside of the message box and 'float' over everything. I'd rather have the table truncated.

[Reeza]

Here's an example of a table taking over the page:
https://communities.sas.com/t5/Base-SAS-Programming/How-to-calculate-95-CI-and-SE/m-p/237729

[RW9]

Yes, I had posted something like this myself.  The "quality" of questions seems to have dropped over the last few months.  There seems to be a total reluctance to post simple test data in the form of a datastep (I mean we are seeing pictures, excel file, rtf's etc.).  Also code formatting has drastically gone south, I think that might be a combination of some generated code from a new SAS app and the formatting in the forums.

Maybe worth emphasising the good "question" guidance.

[LainieH]

@Reeza, thank you for bringing this up!

For the shortterm, I was able to force this table to wrap by adding bolded text to the HTML for the table <table style="table-layout: fixed; width: 100%;">.  https://communities.sas.com/t5/Base-SAS-Programming/How-to-calculate-95-CI-and-SE/m-p/237729 

In this particular example, we believe a user may have copy/pasted the table and the table didn't want wrap/break the long decimals and words with no spaces.   in other cases, if a table was migrated from the old platform, it might wrap and I can fix.

@RW9, I'm  interested in learning more about what you are noticing in the community and quality of posts.  We had hoped users would find the SAS code syntax highlighter helpful in pasting code. What sense are you getting from your experience on the community over time.  If you have ideas and could provide more details that would be great. Maybe there is something simple we could do to promote better posts.

Thanks!

Lainie

[ballardw]

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@LainieH wrote:

What sense are you getting from your experience on the community over time.  If you have ideas and could provide more details that would be great. Maybe there is something simple we could do to promote better posts.

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I think that having some form of sticky on several of the groups such as Base Programming, Data Management (which has so many posts about basic programming that I believe the title is misleading new users) and Reporting with the "How to ask a good question" information might help. The sticky should also include a brief explanation about how to post code

[LainieH]

Thanks! I will see what we can do..  I agree we need to make this messaging more prominent and clear. 

[JerryLeBreton]

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@ballardw wrote:

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@LainieH wrote:

What sense are you getting from your experience on the community over time.  If you have ideas and could provide more details that would be great. Maybe there is something simple we could do to promote better posts.

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I think that having some form of sticky on several of the groups such as Base Programming, Data Management (which has so many posts about basic programming that I believe the title is misleading new users) and Reporting with the "How to ask a good question" information might help. The sticky should also include a brief explanation about how to post code

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A good place for  stickies would be on the posting page itself.  There's space on the right hand side, next to where people are typing their posts.  Probably can't get much more in-your-face!

[LainieH]

@JerryLeBreton, that is a great idea.. the community team and I were talking about doing just that soon.

Thanks for all the suggestions 🙂

Lainie

[RW9]

Well, let me see.  There are several different things combining.

1)  Is there some new product whjich generates code all in upper case, as this seems to happen a lot:

DATA want;  SET have; IF a=1 THEN...; RUN;

2) Code formatting, good to point out the use of the code editor window to maintain spacing.

3) No example data given, or example data given as Excel/Word/Picture etc. attachment.  Means that first step to answer the question is to create the data.

4)  No result expectations given.

These are the main points I think and examples can be found of all of these in pages 1-4.

[LainieH]

Thank you! very helpful.. 

[Reeza]

@LaineH Thanks for fixing this so promptly!

@RW9 that's a convention I've seen used, in fact, I think the snippets with SAS UE are capitalized and then when customized, likely done using lower case.