Comments (constructive) on the New Forum Software

[KEITH BEAUMONTParticipant @keithbeaumont45476]

Can someone explain to me what the figures in blue, top right hand, are for. If it is a total count of views, I see no point to it, especialy if it is taking time to put it there.

The previous Forum had counters for number of people who had answered the post and those who had read it. I found that an interesting feature and hope it will return here.

 

Keith.

[KEITH BEAUMONT]

On KEITH BEAUMONT Said:

Can someone explain to me what the figures in blue, top right hand, are for.

[…]

 

Keith.

Sorry, Keith … not quite sure which figures you mean

If it’s the ones that I have ringed in green, then those are pages [each containing 25] of replies.

.

MichaelG.

[bernard towersParticipant @bernardtowers37738]

Why do latest replies come up with page one when there are a further  thirty one, dontthey understand what latest means?. God this is getting boring

[Michael GilliganParticipant @michaelgilligan61133]

It seems to depend upon which list you are viewing, Bernard

Here’s a screenshot of what you have just posted … and it is [as we might reasonably hope] showing page 31

.

.

MichaelG.

 

[bernard towers]

On bernard towers Said:

Why do latest replies come up with page one when there are a further  thirty one, dontthey understand what latest means?. God this is getting boring

Yes they know

but they don’t know whether you want the latest post, latest reply or latest activity!

Also unless you are logged in they dont know who you are or what was the last thing you read.

Ian P

[bernard towers]

On bernard towers Said:

Why do latest replies come up with page one when there are a further  thirty one, dontthey understand what latest means?. God this is getting boring

I believe Michael covered this some time ago, immediately after the question was raised

See also, my own post earlier this evening.

You could try searching my posts, as I’ve shown several examples previously; pretty sure Michael has a number of other screenshots illustrating this too.

Bill

[Ian P]

On Ian P Said:

On bernard towers Said:

Why do latest replies come up with page one when there are a further  thirty one, dontthey understand what latest means?. God this is getting boring

Yes they know

but they don’t know whether you want the latest post, latest reply or latest activity!

Also unless you are logged in they dont know who you are or what was the last thing you read.

Ian P

I’m not sure how much difference that makes in terms of what ends up being displayed here; several other forums I visit do have the facility to see all unread posts when a member is logged in, but I think they are mainly running under VBulletin software.
Here, the Latest Replies list, for logged in users, seems to be fully re-generated for every screen refresh.
Logged out viewers seem to get an older version, but I’ve never worked out how old it actually is; I still wonder if that’s why logged out readers get a faster viewing experience.

Here’s the view from another forum I regularly visit, where the viewer can select the last 24 hours.
Since I’m logged in, and have viewed a couple of topics, their headings change from bold font to normal

Bill

[peak4Participant @peak4]

N.B. to illustration below is valid only at the time posted; forum hosting software updates may render it invalid or misleading.
The actual “Latest Replies” Table, at the bottom of every Forum(s) page is actually quite powerful, allowing the viewer to select any destination shown by a blue hyperlink.
There is a fast scroll to it initiated by the rounded Latest Replies blue button at the top of the Forum/Forums/Topic page.
It refreshes, in date/time order, every time the logged in viewer instigates a page re-load.
Pressing the blue button itself doesn’t refresh the list.

 

N.B. This is different to the Latest Replies panel on the right, below a sharp cornered rectangular box.
That is just a list of which forum topics have received a recent reply, though still displayed in time/date order.
It just takes you to the head of the individual topic.
Note this second screenshot shows different results, as it’s one I had in stock ready.

Everything seems to work the same way for a logged out viewer, but the Latest Replies panel or table might be a bit out of date.

Also, the Buff coloured background just appears to show a pinned topic, and a pink one shows a locked topic (I Think).

Bill

[bernard towersParticipant @bernardtowers37738]

Why does latest mean something different from one side of the page to another.?

[Kiwi BlokeParticipant @kiwibloke62605]

Just posted a reply, using the ‘quote’ function to insert part of a previous post. It seems that one can type extra text into the slightly tinted quotation ‘panel’, and edit the quotation, and something unexpected happens to the font used for the additional text.

Don’t think one should be allowed to do anything to a quotation other than alter its length, including chopping bits out.

[Kiwi Bloke]

Just to illustrate…

On Kiwi Bloke Said:

Just posted a reply, using the ‘quote’ function to insert part of a previous post. It seems that one can type extra text into the slightly tinted quotation ‘panel’, and edit the quotation, and something unexpected happens to the font used for the additional text.

Don’t think one should be allowed to do anything to a quotation other than alter its length, including chopping bits out. (After all, we’re not politicians)

end quote, edited maliciously…

…and now, having posted, I’m editing this post… ‘Just to illustrate’ appears in the same font as the rest of this post whilst I’m editing it, but, once it’s posted, it changes. Odd? Odd!

 

[bernard towers]

On bernard towers Said:

Why does latest mean something different from one side of the page to another.?

.

“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean- neither more nor less.”

“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”

“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master-that’s all.”

.

[ from ‘Through the Looking Glass’ ]    MichaelG.

[Kiwi BlokeParticipant @kiwibloke62605]

…hence the term ‘looking glass logic’, a mental antic much favoured by politicians, for whom Lewis Carroll’s wonderful story is surely a text book.

[JasonBModerator @jasonb]

It was always possible to edit quoted text on the old system. Can’t please everyone some want to go back to it!

[Kiwi BlokeParticipant @kiwibloke62605]

Yes, being stuck in the middle is an unenviable position. I didn’t know it was possible to edit quotes before: I just truncated quotes, but never tried to change the text. However, the old forum is no more, and change is possible. In a well-mannered forum, such as this, quotes are probably used responsibly. But it still seems risky to allow the text of a quote to be altered – because it then isn’t a quote…

[bernard towers]

On bernard towers Said:

Why does latest mean something different from one side of the page to another.?

Designed by committee that wasn’t talking to each other. Which would be a good explanation for some of the other problems too

[John HinkleyParticipant @johnhinkley26699]

With all this to-ing and fro-ing between us and criticism of the “new” web site, I can’t help wondering what someone who has never visited the site previously would think of it. With no comparison to the “old” site/forum, would they think it unacceptably slow, wonder if their broadband was having an off-day or just accept it as “quirky”?

I’m of the opinion that, although still a bit rough around the edges, I’m prepared to take it for what it is at the moment and put up with its idiosyncrasies.  I will continue to visit the site once or more times a day, as is my custom, (without logging in – for speed purposes) and only log in if I want to respond to a thread or raise a new one.

I remain convinced that, given time, it will improve – or we’ll all get used to it and carry on as if nothing had changed.

John

 

[Michael GilliganParticipant @michaelgilligan61133]

Responding to Bill’s post  https://www.model-engineer.co.uk/forums/topic/comments-constructive-on-the-new-forum-software/page/31/#post-692191 which should be carefully read in its entirety !

 

I would highlight one very significant point:

It refreshes, in date/time order, every time the logged in viewer instigates a page re-load.
Pressing the blue button itself doesn’t refresh the list.

 

That behaviour ^^^ is surely counter-intuitive and needs to be changed.

MichaelG.

[Michael Gilligan]

On Michael Gilligan Said:

Responding to Bill’s post  https://www.model-engineer.co.uk/forums/topic/comments-constructive-on-the-new-forum-software/page/31/#post-692191 which should be carefully read in its entirety !

 

I would highlight one very significant point:

It refreshes, in date/time order, every time the logged in viewer instigates a page re-load.
Pressing the blue button itself doesn’t refresh the list.

That behaviour ^^^ is surely counter-intuitive and needs to be changed.

MichaelG.

It’s something I’ve been mentioning for some time now; and was the reason I rejuvenated the “Lathe Tools” post from 2017.
I picked that post as it was easy to navigate to, and observe what happened when I re-opened it.
It was near the top of Page 1000 of Latest replies; as an aside, these older pages are still labelled as “Latest Activity”, rather than “Latest Replies”.
“Lathe Tools” was 3rd post down the page, the 4th being “Arduino Controlled Indexer”, though the subject matter is unimportant.
When I re-opened and posted on it, the “Lathe Tools” post not unexpectedly vanished from Page 1000, and reappeared at the head of our current “Latest Replies” page; everything then rippled through, with previous posts moving down one in the list, and the Arduino post remaining as the 4th one.
This is to be expected, as there were no new topics created, just an old one updated.
This morning, I note that there has fortunately been a new topic posted, and the Arduino post has moved down Page 1000.
It’s all pretty much to be expected since our current “Latest Replies” facility seems to regenerate the list at every page refresh.
It may, or may not, take a while to reorganise the list, particularly if several members are refreshing a page whilst the list is being regenerated; not an issue for Logged Out viewers as the list doesn’t refresh.

As noted in an earlier post, several forums I visit, rather than having a full “Latest Replies”, in date order going back to the foundation of the forum, use a “Posts in the Last 24/48 hours”.
This only needs actual recent posts to be monitored, logged, and presented in a useful format.

If our “Latest Replies” blue button, rather than just being a scrolling shortcut, were repurposed to be a “Generate a new list of Latest Replies in the last 24 hours”,( or 48, or week etc.), I wonder if the list would refresh quicker, since there is less data to sort, and page loading times would improve. I can’t imagine that the developers haven’t considered this, so maybe there is a good reason.

It does need to be done with care, The Olympus page I screenshot gives several options, “2days”, “Trending”, “Since Last Visit”, with gives a good range of options; If logged in, it knows where you’ve been.
My Marlin Kit Car Owners forum for example, just has “New Topics”; It also logs when I last visited, knows which posts I’ve read, lists the rest, and then removes them from the list completely after I’ve opened them, which is a pain in itself, as I have to search for something I only read 30 seconds ago.
In contrast The Olympus forum, leaves the posts there, but changes the topic title from bold to normal font, to signify I’ve opened the topic.

These forums are built using different software, often VBulletin, so I don’t know if such time restricted sorting is available to our developers on here.

Bill

[Kiwi Bloke]

On Kiwi Bloke Said:

Just to illustrate…

On Kiwi Bloke Said:

Just posted a reply, using the ‘quote’ function to insert part of a previous post. It seems that one can type extra text into the slightly tinted quotation ‘panel’, and edit the quotation, and something unexpected happens to the font used for the additional text.

Don’t think one should be allowed to do anything to a quotation other than alter its length, including chopping bits out. (After all, we’re not politicians)

end quote, edited maliciously…

…and now, having posted, I’m editing this post… ‘Just to illustrate’ appears in the same font as the rest of this post whilst I’m editing it, but, once it’s posted, it changes. Odd? Odd!

 

Yes this has been raised before; certainly by me and maybe others.
On the subject of fonts for instance

Also perhaps more importantly, on abuse/malicious intent,
and the list of edits that used to appear at the bottom of edited posts. 

Bill

[KEITH BEAUMONTParticipant @keithbeaumont45476]

Michael,

The blue numbers I am refering to are the ones in the grey bar at the top of the post, with date,time, Reply/Quote /Report, then the number I am querying.

For some reason,I have not received any of the replies on my phone,although the box is ticked, since my 2 posts.

Keith

[Mark RandParticipant @markrand96270]

Normal forum software (this isn’t) allows a user to re-visit a thread at the point they were at the last time they visited it. I was under the impression that this was one of the improvement’s desired/specified for the replacement of the original…

[KEITH BEAUMONT]

On KEITH BEAUMONT Said:

Michael,

The blue numbers I am refering to are the ones in the grey bar at the top of the post, with date,time, Reply/Quote /Report, then the number I am querying.

[…]

Thanks for clarifying that, Keith

Those numbers are simply consecutive references to individual posts, and are hyperlinked thus:

https://www.model-engineer.co.uk/forums/topic/comments-constructive-on-the-new-forum-software/page/31/#post-692471

It’s one of the few features that many members requested and has actually been implemented.

MichaelG.

.

Edited a couple of times to tidy-up the presentation

[KEITH BEAUMONTParticipant @keithbeaumont45476]

Michael,

I still do not understand your explanation. Are you saying that 692,509 people have tuned in to this post?

Also ,I am still not getting any e mail follow up. The box has been ticked from the start,but I have just un-ticked  and re-ticked the follow up box to see if that has any effect,

Keith

[Colin HeseltineParticipant @colinheseltine48622]

If I understand correctly, every post made to the forum gets a post number.  The #692575 means to my mind, that there have been a total of 692575 posts to the entire forum.  So within this topic although the posts are consecutive, in the case of the last post there have been  66 posts elsewhere in the forum made between the time the previous post occurred and post 692575.

Colin

[Author]

Posts