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Red Guard  Posts: 1808 Joined: 16 Dec 2007     | |
Beat Writer  Posts: 218 Joined: 12 Mar 2008     | I post on another forum that has a great feature on it. It logs which threads you have read and which threads you haven't. Every time you read a thread it resets which posts are new in that thread. When you come back to the site, a little marker that says "new" is next to the thread title (like what is on this site). But, the big difference is, when you click on the the word "new" next to the thread you want to read, it will take you to the first post that you haven't read yet. In other words you don't have to remember where you stopped reading and you don't have to re-read posts that you have already read. It is so convenient that I was genuinely angry that it didn't work on this site. Here is a screen shot of what I'm talking about: Those little blue "new" buttons take you to the first post you haven't read yet. Edit: changed screen shot, hopefully it's better. |
Web Developer  Posts: 1551 Joined: 5 Aug 2003     | Just so you know - we do browse your suggestions quite often and have implemented many of them, so please post your ideas/thoughts. Second, we are a US magazine, not Australian. Third, we do use a lot of Javascript/Ajax so if you do have JS disabled you probably won't get the full functionality of the site (which does have a lot of neat features). Finally, search improvements are high up on our list, so thanks for those suggestions - but that is in the works already. :D |
IT Director  Posts: 1012 Joined: 13 Jun 2002  | I'm going to break our own rules and reply to everything at once, but it's a lot easier for us all this way. All the search stuff is a big work in progress.
Post button now disables itself when you click it - hopefully this'll help.
This is a lose/lose decision either way. It was put in because not having it confused people, and we kept getting messages about it. We're going to err on the side of caution and keep it.
We're actually working on that. I only put in the ability to send 'system message' PMs very recently and haven't gotten all the stuff we want to do with it in yet.
Good idea - it'll take a bit of work, but I'll see what I can do.
Take a look at this (if you're logged in): http://www.escapistmagazine.com/profiles/posts?view=active
Never ever ever (sorry!). Mods and admins do try to clean up double posts when we see them though. I'd rather try to prevent them.
Done! Hit refresh a few times to make sure you have the latest JavaScript, and it'll just tack the quote on the end now.
Because using an [a] tag screws up all our name colors. The avatar pic is a direct profile link though.
We strip out errant angle brackets to make sure there's no way to put broken HTML into forum posts (and news posts and articles too, in fact - I'm all for protection from ourselves)
Possible, yes. Last time it came up we decided we don't want to do that though - just not our style.
Sadly, they aren't using any sort of automated account creation - it's real people doing that jackassery. |
IT Director Posts: 1012 Joined: 13 Jun 2002 |
User error on my part - I didn't set the E3 category to create comment threads. It's been fixed though.
Very unlikely, at least in the near term. While we are set up to have multiple themes per site, it's still a fair amount of work to create and maintain them, and we'd generally prefer to spend that time working on something else. |
Red Guard Posts: 1808 Joined: 16 Dec 2007 |
Moderators and Administrators can see actions taken against user accounts. If we open that up to everyone we're just allowing people to form an Authoritarian state where breaking the rules, even once, makes you a second class citizen. The current system shows why people have been banned for the term of the ban. This is to discourage the person in question from being an ass in the first place, but it also serves as a warning to other users. We have no plans to change this largely successful system. |
IT Director Posts: 1012 Joined: 13 Jun 2002 |
The offenses and punishments are in the forum guidelines. You noted that we don't actually list specifics - that's intentional. We don't want any rules-lawyering, and if someone can't bother to read the guidelines and understand what isn't allowed, we figure they can best contribute by being an example to others. |
Gone Gonzo Posts: 1478 Joined: 27 Mar 2008     | An idea I already posted in another thread: "Sink" is a really cool feature I've seen on some forums running Vanilla. Basically a moderator can tag a thread such that new replies won't cause it to float back to the top of the list, letting conversations that have gone on too long die out gradually. Good for those situations when you want a conversation to peter out but locking would be excessive. -- Alex |
Red Guard Posts: 1808 Joined: 16 Dec 2007 |
This thread is linked in the community map, easy to find if you know where to look. |
Gone Gonzo  Posts: 1130 Joined: 8 Apr 2008    | Could I make a general request? Instead of locking duplicate threads, which I'm sure makes some people feel sour that they have to repost their thoughts and ideas to another thread in order to share them, perhaps moderators could merge the duplicate thread with the original? I understand that's a bit more work, but maybe reserve doing that only if a duplicate thread has reached a certain post count by the time it's noticed. |
Web Developer Posts: 1551 Joined: 5 Aug 2003 |
Fixed, sorry about that one. |
Pulitzer Laureate  Posts: 735 Joined: 12 Apr 2008  | I was wondering if you could have previous posts displayed below when editing? |
Gone Gonzo  Posts: 2742 Joined: 8 May 2008  | Whenever I click "quote" I get sent to the bottom of the page, which then refreshes. I then have to scroll back up and click "quote" again, this always happens to me the first time I click quote, but it works the second time. |
IT Director Posts: 1012 Joined: 13 Jun 2002 | Hi Folks! I updated the list in wilson's post with some things that have already been fixed or changed. I also deleted a bunch of posts in the thread, either that are covered by the first post, not about the forums, or have a reply later that includes the question/answer. If your post was deleted, it's nothing bad, it's just me trying to keep this thread as short and clean as possible so our web team can keep up to date on the suggestions. |
Gone Gonzo  Posts: 3647 Joined: 25 Jan 2008   |
This is true, very true. I can't thank the mods enough for implementing my (and possibly others' but never saw it) suggestion for the ban/probation feature to say WHY banned, and how long. Used to be so lame never knowing if someone is gone for good, or a day, or what. Mmmm. New suggestions... -I would LOVE to see a feature that lets people sticky threads for themselves only (IE, I'm really engaged in X Y and Z thread, so I sticky each, and they are now the top listed threads whether or not there's new posts, but just on my end, not where one person's sticky is everyone's sticky). -Forum Filter that if "Yahtzee" or "Zero Punctuation" appears in the title, it's auto-deleted and the creator flagged as a fanboy (complete with his "ranking" renamed to "suck-up" or "Brown-Noser" or something. -I feel the mods and the community need to loosen up on the whole issue of a thread topic that's been done before. People here come and go, new members daily, and perma-bans being handed out like condoms at a gay pride parade. Some topics ARE worth a rehash, and sometimes it's just cleaner and easier to start a new thread than to drag up an old one that's 5 pages long, but usually the first post on a done-before topic is "thread's been done, learn to use search. In before lock" etc... "List" threads excluded from this of course, those can stay buried, as can anything titled "favorite X Y or Z". -I'd like my own parking space. I'm here more than I'm at my day job, and THEY give me free parking right at the front door. Now that I think of it, they pay me too... -Is there any way to have text in the post type'y box thingie NOT clear if you accidentally click a link and/or back/home button, and have to click back/forward to get back to your post? You can't imagine how many times I've typed up a well-thought-out post and as I was managing another tab I accidentally hit the link to somewhere else, click back, and find 30 minutes of typing gone... -Escapist Plushies? Well that's all from me for now, off to deal with the misery that is a head cold. |
Red Guard Posts: 1808 Joined: 16 Dec 2007 |
Which proves that you didn't read the posting guidelines.
Why do people post duplicate topics? Sometimes it's because they want to tell other people about something, perhaps reiterate an idea in their own voice. Other times people just want their name on a thread that has proven popular in the past. There is also the occasional user who really doesn't know about the search feature and probably wonders why such a "popular topic" hasn't already been discussed. We want to promote fresh ideas. We don't care to boost the egos of people who want to rephrase a "Xbox is better than PS3 thread." Nor are we trying to smack down the occasional user who just doesn't know better. The search feature is touted because we want people to look back over how the Escapist has evolved over the years and decide for themselves if they can bring something new to the discussion. We hope that resurrected threads will give users a sense of history. More than that though we want this community to continue evolving rather than repeating itself over and over again whenever a few new people come to the forums. If you would like to discuss this further please use PM. |
News Room Contributor  Posts: 1876 Joined: 21 Feb 2008   |
Do you know what would save us even more time? Just reporting trolls and moving on. |
King of the Yetis  Posts: 1958 Joined: 15 Jul 2008 |
Hardly. The part about signatures is a small addition at the end of a paragraph stating the obvious 'Don't be n asshole and we won't ban you' Perhaps a bold marker is in order? Or a bullet point. It also begs the question of why the option is there in the first place. |
Press Junketeer  Posts: 469 Joined: 14 May 2008 | Although most of Khell's suggestions were only meant to be funny, I did like the one about "personal stickies" so that RPs or discussions you're following closely can be stickied and put at the top of the page for the user that stickies it. I guess it would be a sort of bookmarking system for each user. That does sound a bit complicated, I'll admit, but if you guys can make it work that would be pretty awesome. |
News Room Contributor Posts: 1876 Joined: 21 Feb 2008 |
This is pretty much correct. The rule of thumb is be sensible with what you link to and you'll be ok. |
Gone Gonzo  Posts: 1279 Joined: 29 Dec 2007 | Adding a rule telling people not to make threads "360 Vs PS3" or "does halo suck". It allways ends the same, its been done before and new users will make that hread sooner or later. Edit: Also whats the go with pictures? Do we have a cap or something? |
News Room Contributor Posts: 1876 Joined: 21 Feb 2008 |
Scroll up for my thoughts on this topic. |
Web Developer Posts: 1551 Joined: 5 Aug 2003 |
The option for signatures is there for some of our sister sites (WarCry) who do allow signatures. Should we decide that we want to enable signatures on these forums, all we have to do is flip a switch - but right now the overwhelming decision has been no signatures on The Escapist. |
IT Director Posts: 1012 Joined: 13 Jun 2002 |
That's a cool idea, but unfortunately the forum indexes need to be cached in order to handle the amount of traffic they get, so changing them on a per-user basis isn't really possible. I'll think on it - maybe there's some way we can do something similar.
Can you give me steps to reproduce this? I tried every permutation of Yes and No in the forum option boxes and they always saved correctly.
Nothing here is stock - the forums, and everything else on our sites, is of our own design. :) |
News Room Contributor Posts: 1876 Joined: 21 Feb 2008 |
In such cases, you can PM the mods and ask the thread to be reopened. We might not do it, but we'll certainly consider it. |
Beat Writer Posts: 218 Joined: 12 Mar 2008 |
I know on another site we can subscribe to threads and they will appear in our user profile. We can also have the site email us automatically when some one has replied to the topic. I hate to keep using the same site as an example, but they really do a good job there. I'm sure they use a standard bbc code, though. Here's a link to what it looks like there: |
IT Director Posts: 1012 Joined: 13 Jun 2002 |
That, on the other hand, is actually easy. And done! Go update your profile and your 10 most recent videos will be linked. |
Red Guard Posts: 1808 Joined: 16 Dec 2007 |
Get to know your mods: We're in the process of updating the guidelines, When we do, we will certainly make some changes to who is around. Yellow cards: Updates to the forum software made the yellow card/red card posts redundant. That doesn't mean we've changed the rules. The effects of probations and work the same as yellow/red cards. Troublemaking while on probation usually means a ban. Reporting: We do get some randomly reported posts. I've seen some very nominal things reported. If it doesn't break any rules then I clear it out of the queue and forget about it. Remember, reporting a post is anonymous. Report to your hearts content. |
So you have a problem with some forum feature, or perhaps you have a suggestion on how to make the forums a better place for all? This is the place to post your concerns, complaints, and suggestions. This is not a place to post about moderator actions, those are still handled via private message or email.
If you have a technical issue please detail what version of windows or mac/lynix you are using and your web browser (including which version you have installed). If you can, provide a screen shot.
Issues with forum software
Forum search button only searches the body of the message, not the title.[Fixed!]The forum thread search is hard to find because it is not labelled as such.[Changed!]The user search button isn't labelled.[Changed!]Quote button doesn't quote text[Turn off noscript, or whitelist us]Editing posts with polls attached causes extra slashes.[Fixed!]Clicking on some people's avatars will redirect to the user search[Fixed!]User Suggestions
It's easy to double post, perhaps confirmation system would remedy this?[Fixed!]New users receive a "how to use the site" PM in their mailbox when they first join.[Done!]A few users suggest a new tag for threads you've read and have changed since your last visit.[Done!]Clicking "quote text" could add text to the reply box without overwriting the message already in the box.[Done!]YouTube videos on profiles[Done!]A notification with a linkback when someone quotes you.[Done!]Quotes link back to the post they were quoted from[Done!]On Reporting: Reports are anonymous. Accidental reports do not hurt anything, as it takes multiple reports to push a post into the moderation queue. Nothing happens automatically, the queue is just a list of posts for the moderators to look at.
Things that won't happen
Moderator issues