Suggestions for Forum Improvement

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paulh177 · #101 Post by **paulh177** » Fri 14 Sep 2007, 11:06

It's a feature of many boards to have a "Quick Reply" which appears at the bottom of each page of a thread, and allows the user to post an instant response without having to go through the "Post Reply" screens; it usually allows BBcode and smileys to be used but relies on the user to know what s/he is doing with them (no buttons or icons).

Although not a standard phpBB feature there do seem to be many user-
created addons to provide this functionality.

For those on slow connections, waiting for the "Post Reply" page to reload can be a bit of a pain, so adding this can be more than just a "convenience" but a real boon.

I hope this isn't a duplicate suggestion (I searched but could not find any prior reference to it)

paul

#102 Post by **Flash** » Fri 14 Sep 2007, 14:39

You are the first person I can remember suggesting it. As for me, I'd have to see it in action to say if I liked it. In any case it's up to John Murga.

#103 Post by **Pizzasgood** » Fri 14 Sep 2007, 20:26

They are pretty nice. You just start typing right there at the bottom of the page, and hit submit.

Now I have a home

Those are nice things to have.

kirk · #104 Post by **kirk** » Sun 16 Sep 2007, 02:35

The board is no longer allowing attachments. Is this by design?

#105 Post by **Flash** » Sun 16 Sep 2007, 03:38

Hm, yours is the second mention I've seen today of problems uploading an attachment. What have you tried to attach? I have only uploaded images, but haven't had any problem doing that.

At the top of the attachment section is a link: Allowed Extensions and Sizes. I see that it says maximum upload size: 0 bytes. I'll have to look into it.

kirk · #106 Post by **kirk** » Sun 16 Sep 2007, 17:16

I tried to attach a .tar.bz2 file, it was near 1mb (used to be the limit), so I tried a small file. No go. Then I saw the attachment limit of 0 bytes.

NathanO · #107 Post by **NathanO** » Tue 25 Sep 2007, 17:29

Can we do anyting about the people selling things on the forum?

The biggest problem is that the forum 'owner' and Barry may become liable for some one getting the short end of the stick if some item they buy because of a posting is not what it is supposed to be.

#108 Post by **Flash** » Tue 25 Sep 2007, 20:28

NathanO wrote:Can we do anyting about the people selling things on the forum?

The biggest problem is that the forum 'owner' and Barry may become liable for some one getting the short end of the stick if some item they buy because of a posting is not what it is supposed to be.

It isn't helpful to complain in a general way without supplying links to the specific posts you are complaining about..

Moderators remove on sight all posts that are obvious commercial solicitations but the forum is large and busy and they can't read every new post; it may be a while before an offensive post is removed.

Please, if you post to the forum or send a PM regarding a questionable post, include a link to the offending post. Thanks.

#109 Post by **Pizzasgood** » Wed 26 Sep 2007, 04:17

Only Flash and John can ban and delete. The rest of us just move the threads to a hidden area until one of them can attend to matters. As for me, I don't have moderator permissions in Truly Off Topic so I can't do those ones.

#110 Post by **Flash** » Wed 26 Sep 2007, 04:52

Thanks, guys. Providing links makes it painless.

As for banning, it's been tried. Spammers register in the forum and then do their business one time like a dog leaving a pile in your yard while you aren't watching. Banning doesn't do any good because they never use the same name or IP address twice. Eternal vigilance is the price of a spam-free forum.

#111 Post by **Pizzasgood** » Wed 26 Sep 2007, 05:21

I ran an experiment on my own forum once, to see how often I got a repeat IP. It happened about twice over several months and pages of spam.

What was much more obvious and potent were the patterns in their email addresses. Most of it came from mail.ru, web.de, and cashette.com. That was almost a year ago though, so the currents of spam may have shifted.

SirDuncan · #112 Post by **SirDuncan** » Wed 26 Sep 2007, 20:00

Normally this forum appears very spam free, but yesterday we just seemed to get bombed or something. I want all the mods to know that we (at least I, but I assume I speak for others) greatly appreciate the effort you put forth to keep the forum peaceful and spam free.

SirDuncan · #113 Post by **SirDuncan** » Wed 10 Oct 2007, 15:20

Can we have some script that automatically removes any post containing the words "Nokia", "sale", and "new". That should kill some of the spam (and this post, not that it matters).

Another possibility, although slightly annoying for new members, is to not allow new accounts to post their own thread until they have made at least one post post to an established thread. This would stop most bots dead in their tracks.

#114 Post by **Flash** » Wed 10 Oct 2007, 17:55

SirDuncan wrote:Can we have some script that automatically removes any post containing the words "Nokia", "sale", and "new". That should kill some of the spam (and this post, not that it matters).

I tried something like that back when the forum was getting spammed with drug ads. I caused the forum to change various drug names to "poisonous crap." Though the results were sometimes hilarious, it had the unintended result of messing up some legitimate posts. Since John Murga upgraded the forum the problem is much reduced. So far it hasn't been too bad for the moderators to keep up with.

Another possibility, although slightly annoying for new members, is to not allow new accounts to post their own thread until they have made at least one post post to an established thread. This would stop most bots dead in their tracks.

That would probably stop bots but it seems to me that it would be such a high hurdle that it would discourage many newcomers. Puppy wants to be friendly.

wingruntled · #115 Post by **wingruntled** » Tue 23 Oct 2007, 02:34

Flash
I noticed that a couple of mods have been on since that last spam attack.
Just a thought, give the mods a little more pull so they can ban members and delete post in any thread/forum.
Lets just call it sudo board admin.

alienjeff · #116 Post by **alienjeff** » Fri 26 Oct 2007, 02:34

If the mods would simply click "View posts since last visit" after logging in (like a lot of we civilians do), they'd realize how easy it is to spot the SPAM and deal with it then-and-there.

#117 Post by **Pizzasgood** » Fri 26 Oct 2007, 05:43

That's pretty much what I do. But I like to do things on a section by section basis (it helps keep it all organized in my head) so I just middle-click every section that has new posts in it, then go through and middle-click any thread I'm interested in reading, or any that need to be dealt with (dealing with them immediately). Then I start reading. When I finish a thread, I either hit ctrl-w to close it and cycle over, or hit ctrl-tab to cycle and preserve the tab (in case I don't want to wait for it to finish submitting; I can come back and proof read when I finish the next tab with ctrl-shift-tab). I've easily had 50+ tabs up at once using this method.... Thus why I configure Firefox to not have the X on each tab and to make the minimum tab with as small as possible (slightly bigger than the icon or so).

When I finish, a good chunk of time will have passed, so I go back and this time use the "view posts since your last visit" link to catch any that popped up while I was reading/typing. Sometimes I do that three or more times, if I've been gone a while and have to read lots of posts.

John Doe · #118 Post by **John Doe** » Fri 26 Oct 2007, 06:35

alienjeff wrote:If the mods would simply click "View posts since last visit" after logging in (like a lot of we civilians do)...

that's what i do.

alienjeff wrote:...they'd realize how easy it is to spot the SPAM and deal with it then-and-there.

are you assuming the mods have the means to deal with it? i saw some SPAM earlier but it's gone now. did they deal with it? if they did, they must have had the means to.

perixx · #119 Post by **perixx** » Sun 11 Nov 2007, 16:08

Hi!

What about adding a button to the forum's thread lists, that opens a menu where you can quick-search within a specific thread?

perixx

perixx · #120 Post by **perixx** » Mon 12 Nov 2007, 01:38

Besides, perhaps I am just too confused to use the forum-searching function....

But I am not very successful in finding threads which subjects reflect my searching words, whether I am using AND connections or not.

It seems that only some words somewhere within the post are being gathered during the searching process; this makes finding useful hints in the forum extremely difficult.

I think that the searching algorhytms need some polishing...

perixx

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Suggestions for Forum Improvement

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