How can we Improve EP in 2017?

[davenn]

From unpleasant experience on a few other discussion boards, I've come to dislike all systems of assigning "rank" or "status" or "rating" to members, regardless of what they are based on.

What I have seen is that they often promote disunity and conflict, as board members vie for status versus one another and engage in loud pissing matches over who is the "better" member or who has earned more awards. I've also seen it cause the formation of cliques of members who surreptitiously agree to always "like" or "agree with" one another's posts (even those which are mere banter) in order to boost their collective ranks versus those of other, similar cliques. It can get truly ridiculous. One board I participated in for a while eventually fell apart completely due to the incessant bickering caused by their over-elaborate rating system with its various medals, ribbons, awards, trophies and other assorted nonsense, and it got to the point where most of the discussion on the board was centered around member status rather than the core mission of the board. The serious people walked away in disgust at this juvenile wienie-wagging, and the board died.

well none of that has ever happened on the physics forum. maybe because none of it is actually displayed openly, rather one has to go looking for the results
I'm not sure if anyone else can see what my trophy points are for ? rather they may only be able to see the points total and only I can see what they are for ( well and site mentors)

Did you actually go and look at the link I provided and see how the points are assigned ?? may be not, by your comments
The points really are based on GOOD personal achievement it encourages a positive attitude in posting and promotion of the forum


Dave

 

[OBW0549]

Did you actually go and look at the link I provided and see how the points are assigned ?? may be not, by your comments

Yes, I saw them; I just wanted to voice my concerns based on past experience, whatever that may be worth.

 

[davenn]

Yes, I saw them; I just wanted to voice my concerns based on past experience, whatever that may be worth.

must have been a badly run forum ??

 

[Arouse1973]

I sometimes find it frustrating to find a thread posted on the latest threads to disapear after a whileand then cant find it easily.
cheers
Adam

 

[OBW0549]

must have been a badly run forum ??

Definitely!

 

[davenn]

I sometimes find it frustrating to find a thread posted on the latest threads to disapear after a whileand then cant find it easily.

can you expand and clarify on that ?
not exactly sure what you are referring to

 

[OBW0549]

I sometimes find it frustrating to find a thread posted on the latest threads to disapear after a whileand then cant find it easily.

Another Xenforo-based forum has a "Today's Posts" button which brings up a list of all threads that have been posted to in the last 24 (I think) hours, regardless of whether or not you have read them. I wonder if we have that feature available here.

 

[davenn]

latest threads to disapear

ohhh ... Im assuming you mean that small list down the side ?

probably cuz they are been replaced by even more recent threads

 

[Arouse1973]

ohhh ... Im assuming you mean that small list down the side ?

probably cuz they are been replaced by even more recent threads

Yep. Sometimes see a post at lunch time, go home and its gone and cant find it.
Adam

 

[bigone5500]

@Ian
View attachment 31357


Dave

Oh...so you are ... GOLD MEMBER!!!!

sorry, I couldn't resist.

 

[davenn]

Oh...so you are ... GOLD MEMBER!!!!

sorry, I couldn't resist.

haha

that membership badge is for those that financially support the forum

 

[chopnhack]

My concerns are that new members may sign up to use the chat room for "instant answers" from members, which means that there would be no thread documenting the process which would help other people with the same question (this is how a lot of people arrive on the site originally, by reading existing questions and then asking their own).

I agree with your desire for documentation, but there is a real need for a chat area where members can interact in real time to resolve questions on large projects. As I mentioned before, I think if the chat is transcribed - much like the companies that have those chat windows for service calls, that send you a copy of the chat via email when finished, then the chat contents can be appended to an existing thread. Perhaps the chat feature can only be enabled after a thread is made - maybe after x posts, etc. and the contents placed there.

If it's easily implemented Ian, I think it will have true value.

 

[Ian]

Another Xenforo-based forum has a "Today's Posts" button which brings up a list of all threads that have been posted to in the last 24 (I think) hours, regardless of whether or not you have read them. I wonder if we have that feature available here.

It's there, but it's hidden away a bit - if you click "new posts", it'll show new unread threads. However, there is a "recent" posts option on the top right of that results screen. That will show all new posts, regardless if they have been read or not. Here's a direct link:

https://www.electronicspoint.com/find-new/posts?recent=1

Perhaps this is something I can add to the sub-menu when we're on the new version of the software.

 

[Ian]

If it's easily implemented Ian, I think it will have true value.

OK, I'll have a look at what will integrate with the forum software and see how it could work . No promises, but I'll perhaps do a beta-test once we're on XenForo 2.0 if there's something we can use.

 

[OBW0549]

It's there, but it's hidden away a bit - if you click "new posts", it'll show new unread threads. However, there is a "recent" posts option on the top right of that results screen. That will show all new posts, regardless if they have been read or not.

Here's a direct link:

https://www.electronicspoint.com/find-new/posts?recent=1

Perhaps this is something I can add to the sub-menu when we're on the new version of the software.

Excellent! Outstanding!

That seems to address the issue @Arouse1973 raised in post #44 above very nicely, as it gives a list of all threads that have been updated or created all the way back to (currently) January 3.

To make it even more convenient I've created a bookmark from your direct link and placed it in my Chrome bookmarks bar up at the top of my browser window, so I can jump straight to the good stuff with one click.

 

[(*steve*)]

One other forum I've used allows members to vote :-( :-| or :-D

A members ranking comes from some combination of the number and recency of these ratings.

Even though each member only gets one vote, their recency make a difference, so continually voting for someone doesn't change the number of votes, but does maintain recency.

The ratings themselves are somewhat whimsical. I once had a rating of something like "uniformly glowing".

The benefit of the scheme is that your rating was heavily biased by your recent posts, not by a history of thousands. After not posting for several months my rating had disappeared. In our case I can think of a few instances where ratings should outlive their posters.

On a completely different note, I would be really like to be able to access a list of the full text of all of my posts from my very first or in a range of post numbers. Sometimes I know I've posted something in the past but it's hard to search for. I know I can perform far more powerful searches based on (for example) inverted indexing locally than I can through the search facility.

 

[Ian]

On a completely different note, I would be really like to be able to access a list of the full text of all of my posts from my very first or in a range of post numbers. Sometimes I know I've posted something in the past but it's hard to search for. I know I can perform far more powerful searches based on (for example) inverted indexing locally than I can through the search facility.

I'm not sure if that would be possible (perhaps I can find a way to allow XML exports, but it would be database intensive). However, I can potentially tweak the search engine to index things a little differently - if you can give me some examples of searches that don't work as well as you'd like, I'll see where the problems are and see if I can give things a re-jig. At the moment, I think that words under 4 characters aren't indexed, but I may be able to manually add some 3 letter words to a whitelist for the index, if that's the problem.

 

[Ian]

I'm working through this list of things and adding features to the existing design where possible, and if it's a bigger job I'm saving it for the XF 2.0 upgrade .

I've just added the "thread starter" notch to post icons - it's a bit of a test for now, so let me know if you think it's useful. The green notch is for an online member, and an orange notch is for the thread starter. If you take a look at my avatar on this post you should see the orange notch.

 

[(*steve*)]

Have you done something accidental? The "Perform action with selected posts" banner appears even without any posts selected. I'm sure it didn't before...

And I'm being asked "are you sure you want to like this post?"

And the font in the editor seems smaller.

 

[Ian]

It all looks ok at my end - although it does sound like more than a co-incidence that these problems have occurred at the same time as the code change. Has anyone else had any problems too?

Could you attach a screenshot please Steve and I'll see what has happened .

edit: Can you press CTRL+F5 to see if that fixes it? I wonder if you're seeing a mix of old and new CSS/JS files