Re: Maintenance Wednesday 24th

The conversion has finished. You should all have your welcome messages by now. If not, please check your various spam-traps.

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Guys, I for one am rather disappointed in this change. I NEVER EVER use email with this list and always just browsed for new content. This is inferior in my opinion from a browsing stand point as there is less information.

I do appreciate the hard work required to start something new….but this is not an improvement for me.

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You don’t need to use email, it’s optional, you can still interact via the web interface like it used to be.

Todd

On Oct 24, 2007, at 1:47 PM, chuckamuck wrote:

Guys, I for one am rather disappointed in this change. I NEVER EVER use email with this list and always just browsed for new content. This is inferior in my opinion from a browsing stand point as there is less information.

I do appreciate the hard work required to start something new….but this is not an improvement for me.

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Can you elaborate? Email is not required for any purpose, you can browse to your heart’s content without ever getting a single message!

Walter

On Oct 24, 2007, at 2:47 PM, chuckamuck wrote:

Guys, I for one am rather disappointed in this change. I NEVER EVER use email with this list and always just browsed for new content. This is inferior in my opinion from a browsing stand point as there is less information.

I do appreciate the hard work required to start something new….but this is not an improvement for me.

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Can you elaborate about what information you are missing in the new view?

Walter

On Oct 24, 2007, at 2:47 PM, chuckamuck wrote:

This is inferior in my opinion from a browsing stand point as there is less information.

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The reference to the email is in regard to the issues people have had here with spurious emails sent from auto replies, which I have experienced also frankly. I understand wanting to eliminate this and I assume the change is partly to achieve that, no?

Sorry, I just like the form of the other site better. Call it personal taste if you like.

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That’s fine, and understood. But if the new forum is missing something in particular, I’d like to hear about it in detail. This is version 1.0, and it’s only seen a limited amount of user testing by a small group of people. Changes can and will be made in the future.

Walter

On Oct 24, 2007, at 3:09 PM, chuckamuck wrote:

Sorry, I just like the form of the other site better. Call it personal taste if you like.

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I think the main thing I miss is not having a link to the newest reply without having to scan through all the earlier ones. As it stands, I now have to scroll to the bottom of the page to find it.

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Okay, that’s easily added, and something that is on the list for 1.1. But understand that needing to scan through the replies is essential if you want to know what the replies have been so far. This was a design decision, made deliberately.

Walter

On Oct 24, 2007, at 3:13 PM, chuckamuck wrote:

I think the main thing I miss is not having a link to the newest reply without having to scan through all the earlier ones. As it stands, I now have to scroll to the bottom of the page to find it.

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The old system grudgingly supported mail, through the use of a third- party plug-in. The mail aspect was quite hackish, and when it worked, it only sort of worked.

Now this is important because of where the content comes from. It turns out that an overwhelming number of the posts — particularly the answers — were sent by a relative minority of the forum subscribers. And of those, nearly all were using the mail-only subscription mode. So it made sense to cater to the mail users big- time in this redesign.

The new system is based on GNU Mailman, which is pretty much the industry standard for mailing lists. The Web view is designed to present the mailing list as a forum, not the other way around. Each message posted to the list is read into a database, and organized in a forum (topic/thread) model for display on the Web.

Mailman has robust bounce-processing and I’m-on-vacation-message removal filters, and is generally the bee’s knees as far as keeping the mail users happy. Apple uses it for all of their many mailing lists, and those are some tough people to keep happy, believe me!

And if you have subscribed with mail turned off, you won’t have to worry about that at all, because it will just never send you anything in the mail. (Except maybe some administrative messages once in a while.)

Walter

On Oct 24, 2007, at 3:09 PM, chuckamuck wrote:

The reference to the email is in regard to the issues people have had here with spurious emails sent from auto replies, which I have experienced also frankly. I understand wanting to eliminate this and I assume the change is partly to achieve that, no?

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Yes but if you have already read the previous thread and only need to see later responses then this is less efficient.

There is another issue with reading previous thread for subject…. It is non existent that I can see. There is a thread here with no subject from Tim that was resurrected from earlier thread. Just looking at the thread heading there is no way to tell what it’s about without reading the whole thread.

On 24 Oct. 2007, 3:18 pm, waltd wrote: But understand that needing to scan through the replies is essential if you want to know what the replies have been so far. This was a design decision, made deliberately.

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I had noticed that, and will have to see if I can sort it out. This is a boundary problem, caused by the transition between systems. As we move forward to all new content created in the new system, that problem will disappear.

Walter

On Oct 24, 2007, at 3:25 PM, chuckamuck wrote:

Yes but if you have already read the previous thread and only need to see later responses then this is less efficient.

There is another issue with reading previous thread for subject…. It is non existent that I can see. There is a thread here with no subject from Tim that was resurrected from earlier thread. Just looking at the thread heading there is no way to tell what it’s about without reading the whole thread.

On 24 Oct. 2007, 3:18 pm, waltd wrote: But understand that needing to scan through the replies is essential if you want to know what the replies have been so far. This was a design decision, made deliberately.

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Ok, another issue….

It appears there is no way to target a specific reply to quote, only All or Last. As a result I can’t target your last reply as a quote.

Your reply underlines my point <quote>The Web view is designed to present the mailing list as a forum, not the other way around.</quote> and… <quote> It turns out that an overwhelming number of the posts — particularly the answers — were sent by a relative minority of the forum subscribers.</quote> Great for the few….now the many have to conform.

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Walt, thanks for doing a great job, I like the new GUI, much cleaner and easier on the eye than the previous one. I’m sure the small bugs will be ironed out in the future but for now I’m impressed. Only thing I see is it looks like the posts from Oct 23 is missing. Thanks Marcel

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More…

There is no longer an “edit” button which would allow the message poster to alter or correct a just posted message without starting another post.

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How do you edit an e-mail that you already sent?

One system that I work with (Basecamp) gets around this by delaying the mailing of comments for 15 minutes. During that 15 minute window, you can edit the post. You make your comment, see it on the Web, change your mind and want to re-word something, click the edit link… But after it’s been mailed, that’s it.

I understand their design decision, but I wonder if it breaks the fluidity of the medium to have your send throttled back like that.

What do you think? Can you suggest a way to do this, given the constraints in hand?

Walter

On Oct 24, 2007, at 3:46 PM, chuckamuck wrote:

More…

There is no longer an “edit” button which would allow the message poster to alter or correct a just posted message without starting another post.

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In which forum?

Walter

On Oct 24, 2007, at 3:45 PM, Helveticus wrote:

Only thing I see is it looks like the posts from Oct 23 is missing.

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I feel it would really help to have the user of the last post along with the user who started the post. Is this a possibility?

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I just made a post before my last with a list of different problems and a couple of questions, I was told the post was made by the app and then a ‘Mail failure’ arrived, the problem reported was: ‘A message that you sent contained no recipient addresses, and therefore no delivery could be attempted’

The post has not appeared on the tread!

quote

On 24 Oct 2007, at 20:34, chuckamuck wrote:

Great for the few….now the many have to conform.

Chuck,

Unfortunately, without the few there would be much less of a community and the forum’s usefulness would be much diminished. If you have any constructive feedback about how the web interface (which is a fairly new development anyway in the history of the FreewayTalk list) could be improved, please tell us.

Originally, there was only mail. With phpBB, there was web (which was quite usable but ugly as sin) and e-mail (which was severely flawed in many ways). We are confident that the new system provides a good interface for both web and e-mail. I personally think it’s a lot easier on the eyes, and while there are still a few rough edges, I have to say that as someone with intimate knowledge of the gnarly internals of both systems I have to say I think we’re in a much better position than we were before.

— Finlay

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Second attempt:

Walter, I was taken aback a bit, for me I think it was just the fact that it was totally different and not expected. Hopefully. I think it is just be a case of getting used to it for me.

The red ‘count’ on each list, I take it this is for unread messages, I have read some but the numbers don’t change, just seem to get added to when a post is made! If this is what the red ‘count’ is, might I suggest that unread messages (topics with unread posts) are marked, I see I am told how many new message there are for each list but when I open a list I see myself thinking, which topics have new posts?

I also see in the ‘Tutorials’ list there is a post of mine’marked ‘No Subject’ yet it was a post related to the previous post and not a separate post!

I am getting ‘Safari can’t open the page.’ errors when a feed for the lists is selected.

Is there going to be a page link chain for linking to pages of posts on a topic? scolling to the bottom of the page everytime is a little bit off putting, 15 posts and still on the same page.

Is there going to be a link to the posts with e-mail notices so we don’t need to browse a page at a time?

The site looks great Walter, there was a lot of work put into it by the looks of it, great design.

Well done.

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I have been making some minor tweaks here and there, and it’s possible that a message was sent in the instant that an update was uploading. If one of the libraries of code wasn’t all there, you wouldn’t see the error, but the mail might get sent badly.

Walter

On Oct 24, 2007, at 4:13 PM, Mike B wrote:

I just made a post before my last with a list of different problems and a couple of questions, I was told the post was made by the app and then a ‘Mail failure’ arrived, the problem reported was: ‘A message that you sent contained no recipient addresses, and therefore no delivery could be attempted’

The post has not appeared on the tread!

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OK, no worries, just though I had better let you know.

On 24 Oct. 2007, 4:19 pm, waltd wrote:

I have been making some minor tweaks here and there, and it’s possible that a message was sent in the instant that an update was uploading. If one of the libraries of code wasn’t all there, you wouldn’t see the error, but the mail might get sent badly.

Walter

quote

On Oct 24, 2007, at 4:17 PM, Mike B wrote:

Second attempt:

Walter, I was taken aback a bit, for me I think it was just the fact that it was totally different and not expected. Hopefully. I think it is just be a case of getting used to it for me.

The red ‘count’ on each list, I take it this is for unread messages, I have read some but the numbers don’t change, just seem to get added to when a post is made! If this is what the red ‘count’ is, might I suggest that unread messages (topics with unread posts) are marked, I see I am told how many new message there are for each list but when I open a list I see myself thinking, which topics have new posts?

I have an idea how to make the count go down as you browse, but for now, it’s sort of half-implemented. The count is the number of messages added since you last logged in.

I need to do several things with cookies, this is one of them.

I also see in the ‘Tutorials’ list there is a post of mine’marked ‘No Subject’ yet it was a post related to the previous post and not a separate post!

the conversion from PHPBB to Mailist was mostly event-free. There are tens of thousands of messages in the system, and most of them Just Worked. A few did not, and sadly one was yours. IF the original post in PHPBB didn’t have a subject line, I can’t make one up. When you say it was related to a previous message, related how?

I am getting ‘Safari can’t open the page.’ errors when a feed for the lists is selected.

Which version of Safari are you using?

Is there going to be a page link chain for linking to pages of posts on a topic? scolling to the bottom of the page everytime is a little bit off putting, 15 posts and still on the same page.

Say a little more about this feature, I don’t know exactly what you mean here.

Is there going to be a link to the posts with e-mail notices so we don’t need to browse a page at a time?

Do you want to get the messages in mail? Not sure what you’re asking for here.

The site looks great Walter, there was a lot of work put into it by the looks of it, great design.

Thanks very much. It’s been a lot of work, but it’s good to hear that.

Well done.

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Feeds are working again. Stupid error.

Walter

On Oct 24, 2007, at 4:30 PM, Walter Lee Davis wrote:

I am getting ‘Safari can’t open the page.’ errors when a feed for the lists is selected.

Which version of Safari are you using?

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the conversion from PHPBB to Mailist was mostly event-free. There are =

tens of thousands of messages in the system, and most of them Just =

Worked. A few did not, and sadly one was yours. IF the original post =

in PHPBB didn’t have a subject line, I can’t make one up. When you =

say it was related to a previous message, related how?

It was a message posted to the previous thread.

Which version of Safari are you using?

Version 2.0.4 (419.3)

Is there going to be a page link chain for linking to pages of =

posts on a topic? scolling to the bottom of the page everytime is a =

little bit off putting, 15 posts and still on the same page.

Say a little more about this feature, I don’t know exactly what you mean here.

Sorry, I should have made myself clearer.

I have 24 posts on the same page, would it be a good idea to have a list of page numbers with say 10 posts to the page? or would it help to have a link to the bottom of the page so we don’t need to scoll all the way down each time?

Is there going to be a link to the posts with e-mail notices so we =

don’t need to browse a page at a time?

Do you want to get the messages in mail? Not sure what you’re asking =

for here.

I get an e-mail for a post that is made to a list, but I don’t get a link to open the web page at that post.

Oh and as chuckamuck suggested, a way of editing prevous posts. PHPBB allowed the posts user to edit a post any time after the post was made ‘I think”, in general it seemed to work there OK did it not?

Thanks

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Okay, I see what’s the deal.

Something like: “view this message in context here: http:// freewaytalk.net/thread/view/14988#m_15018”

Walter

On Oct 24, 2007, at 4:43 PM, Mike B wrote:

I get an e-mail for a post that is made to a list, but I don’t get a link to open the web page at that post.

quote

On 24 Oct 2007, at 21:43, Mike B wrote:

Oh and as chuckamuck suggested, a way of editing prevous posts. PHPBB allowed the posts user to edit a post any time after the post was made ‘I think”, in general it seemed to work there OK did it not?

Well, sort of. The mails were sent out and there was an indelible record of the unedited post as a result…

— Finlay

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Finlay, i’m sorry if you feel my comments are overly neggative, but how will you know how I feel if I don’t say something? Since there apparently is no way to selectively quote a previous post you will forgive the following “”…

FINLAY SAID: ” If you have any constructive feedback about how the web interface (which is a fairly new development anyway in the history of the FreewayTalk list) could be improved, please tell us.”

In my view my comments have been constructive as they point out missing features I previously found useful.

I have nothing but respect for what is being attempted here and I fully support making the email capabilities more robust, but for my uses the previous site worked better as a web forum. This will improve I am sure.

I think what you meant by the “few” are those who respond most often. I would like to think that my own posts were found useful by someone here even if they were not of the same level of technicality as the “few”.

quote

On 24 Oct 2007, at 22:23, chuckamuck wrote:

Finlay, i’m sorry if you feel my comments are overly neggative, but how will you know how I feel if I don’t say something? Since there apparently is no way to selectively quote a previous post you will forgive the following “”…

It’s like e-mail - clicking quote just puts a bunch of quoted text into the edit field, you can then trim it as appropriate. Does that work for you?

In my view my comments have been constructive as they point out missing features I previously found useful.

I didn’t mean that your comments were not constructive. All feedback is valuable, but specifics about what exactly you find to be worse than before (missing functionality, awkward or non-obvious interface quirks, etc) are the most useful.

I think what you meant by the “few” are those who respond most often. I would like to think that my own posts were found useful by someone here even if they were not of the same level of technicality as the “few”.

As a fraction of the membership base, the number that interact with the forum via e-mail is fairly small, but they do seem to be some of the most regular and insightful posters. That’s not to say that there aren’t a great many useful posts from those who exclusively use the web interface (such as yourself), it’s just that without a few key regulars the forum would be a much less active, useful resource.

— Finlay

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Since it was possible before using HTML to insert a <quote></quote> where needed, It would work better if there was a way to quote only the post I am responding to rather than have to edit out all the previous posts. A button with the choice to quote “Selected” text would fill the bill.

If the forum reply mechanism recognizes a manually inserted > as a quote reference same as an email, please add an explanation to home page explaining this option for those used to the html way of doing things.

It’s like e-mail - clicking quote just puts a bunch of quoted text into the edit field, you can then trim it as appropriate. Does that work for you?

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Walt,

I see you added the most recent posts feature to home page. That’s an improvement, thanks. Now is it possible to have the link jump to the specific post instead of to the top of the list?

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That feature has always been there. You have to log in in order to see that home page. If you log out, you will see the other view.

As to the links, I will think about it. The parts are all there, I can build a link to an anchor, but particularly on a tall page, it is a bit disorienting. Maybe as a compromise, I will add a Most Recent Post link to the top of the thread page.

Walter

On Oct 24, 2007, at 8:31 PM, chuckamuck wrote:

Walt,

I see you added the most recent posts feature to home page. That’s an improvement, thanks. Now is it possible to have the link jump to the specific post instead of to the top of the list?

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I’m afraid I have another issue, unavoidable because of the complete site change.

ALL the bookmarks I have to specific posts from the previous forum are now broken. I can do a search to find the new links….but what a giant pain that is.

I understand that change involves pain…..still it’s annoying as hell.

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@Mike B — I changed the list view to show the person who spoke last. There isn’t room to show both names in that view, there’s barely room for one!

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Hmm…. It wasn’t necessary to log in to see that before, only to answer posts.

That feature has always been there. You have to log in in order to see that home page. If you log out, you will see the other view.

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I have a plan for this, but at a certain point you do need to actually launch something. Can you please send me a few of your favorites? I can make this happen with a rewrite rule, so you won’t have to change a thing and your old bookmarks will Just Work^™.

Walter

On Oct 24, 2007, at 8:37 PM, chuckamuck wrote:

I’m afraid I have another issue, unavoidable because of the complete site change.

ALL the bookmarks I have to specific posts from the previous forum are now broken. I can do a search to find the new links….but what a giant pain that is.

I understand that change involves pain…..still it’s annoying as hell.

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Okay, I have added this behavior to the custom (logged in) home page. Let’s see how it goes, and if there is any love for it in the rest of the crew.

Walter

On Oct 24, 2007, at 8:37 PM, Walter Lee Davis wrote:

As to the links, I will think about it. The parts are all there, I can build a link to an anchor, but particularly on a tall page, it is a bit disorienting. Maybe as a compromise, I will add a Most Recent Post link to the top of the thread page.

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Here are a couple….

http://www.freewaytalk.net/viewtopic.php?t=1580 http://www.freewaytalk.net/viewtopic.php?t=1178

On 24 Oct. 2007, 8:42 pm, waltd wrote:

Can you please send me a few of your favorites? I can make this happen with a rewrite rule, so you won’t have to change a thing and your old bookmarks will Just Work^™.

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Yep, that works great!

Okay, I have added this behavior to the custom (logged in) home page. Let’s see how it goes, and if there is any love for it in the rest of the crew.

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Bookmarks work now.

Walter

On Oct 24, 2007, at 8:54 PM, chuckamuck wrote:

Here are a couple….

http://www.freewaytalk.net/viewtopic.php?t=1580 http://www.freewaytalk.net/viewtopic.php?t=1178

On 24 Oct. 2007, 8:42 pm, waltd wrote:

Can you please send me a few of your favorites? I can make this happen with a rewrite rule, so you won’t have to change a thing and your old bookmarks will Just Work^™.

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Yes, might seem daft when you have the message but it helps when a thread is not of interest to you but maybe then at a later stage it becomes so.

On Oct 24, 2007, at 10:48 PM, Walter Lee Davis wrote:

Okay, I see what’s the deal.

Something like: “view this message in context here: http:// freewaytalk.net/thread/view/14988#m_15018”

Walter

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Yes, but I really think we need to have access to edit our posts, I think it might put some people off posting if they didn’t and that would be a shame.

Mike

On Oct 24, 2007, at 10:53 PM, Finlay Dobbie wrote:

On 24 Oct 2007, at 21:43, Mike B wrote:

Oh and as chuckamuck suggested, a way of editing prevous posts. PHPBB allowed the posts user to edit a post any time after the post was made ‘I think”, in general it seemed to work there OK did it not?

Well, sort of. The mails were sent out and there was an indelible record of the unedited post as a result…

— Finlay

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Sometime around 24/10/07 (at 20:37 -0400) Walter Lee Davis said:

I can build a link to an anchor, but particularly on a tall page, it is a bit disorienting.

I’m not bothered by that, personally. But anyway, how about that ‘scroll to anchor’ effect that was discussed a little while ago? :-)

k

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I have quite a few things to say about this new system - but I will give it a go for a few days just to make sure - but why do i have to login every time. Firefox & Camino do not ask to remember my login details and there is no tick box to tell it to do so - so do I just stay logged in ?

and I already hate having to scroll to the bottom of this now very long page

Gary

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Wait until someone clicks ‘Quote All’ instead of ‘Quote Last’ that’s gonna be fun :)

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