A place to make and discuss feature requests for the forum software. When any particular request gets formalised, it’ll get put into the bug tracker so we can keep an eye on progress.

Recent posts/subscribing to forums

The recent posts list contains topics from all forums, even if they’re not of interest. This is a particular problem for Aldershot.

A quick hack would be to filter Aldershot from the page.

A better solution, if practical, would be to allow users to subscribe to forums if they’re logged in. Have new accounts default to “all”, but allow users to change this later on to opt out from (or back in to) forums. Only show topics from subscribed forums in recent posts. It may also be useful to only show subscribed forums on the index page by default, but this is a side issue compared to recent posts.

Block list/kill-file

When logged in, users should be able to filter out all posts made by specific users. There would still be an issue with quoting, but it would be a big step towards allowing individuals to choose what they see and avoid the posts that they find problematic.

ETA: I wouldn’t expect this to affect search results (probably), although it might be a nice to have. The ability to search only in posts by a specific user would be handy, though, as a general thing to aid finding things that we remember people posting some time in the past.

OK so we’ve got:

• Short-term hack that filters Aldershot out of ’"Recent posts"
• Longer-term goal to provide a user settings page that lets a forum member choose which things appear in “Recent posts”
• Longer-term goal to extend the user settings (however the UI might work) to hide posts from a particular user
• Better search which lets you choose/exclude a specific topic, and/or specific user, and (maybe optionally) obeys blocked users

+1 for me on Steve’s proposals, thanks.

Also, whatever helps to have fast access to technical issues and answers it’s very much welcome :)

Some other forums have a “mark as answer” feature, which makes the marked posts show up with a different background colour or other highlight. In some systems they’re also ‘promoted’ to the top of the thread, right below the first post, but I’m not sure whether it’s necessary to go that far.

Some other forums have a “mark as answer” feature, which makes the marked posts show up with a different background colour or other highlight. In some systems they’re also ‘promoted’ to the top of the thread, right below the first post, but I’m not sure whether it’s necessary to go that far.

Given that the examples of that feature I’ve seen out on the net frequently have a marked “answer” that is anything but correct, I don’t think the feature is really worth the effort Andrew would need to put in.

How about a really obvious FAQ link – off to the wiki page
People with known working solutions should then edit the FAQs

I think Steve Fryatt’s idea is the basically the right way to go.

Longer-term goal to provide a user settings page that lets a forum member choose which things appear in “Recent posts”

Maybe this should form part of the set up account process to select the forums you would be interested in and which appeared in recent posts. Plus if the user wanted to use the RSS feed they again would only see the posts from their selected forums. Obviously there would need to a way for a user to later on change which forums they were vwanting to see posts from.

Maybe this should form part of the set up account process to select the forums you would be interested in and which appeared in recent posts. Plus if the user wanted to use the RSS feed they again would only see the posts from their selected forums. Obviously there would need to a way for a user to later on change which forums they were wanting to see posts from.

Which rather begs the question of how they would know that there were posts they might have wanted to see before opting to “change” to include them, as they don’t see them.

Not even, you suggest, on the RSS feed – which I use as an aid to deciding which posts might  interest me!

Sorry for quoting whole paragraph/posting, but it seemed logically necessary!

So the RSS feed should  remain complete!

;) A charter, expected behaviours, should be featured, incorporating a workflow that enables suspensions and warnings; I believe these should be background activities.

One issue I have with the RSS feeds (which is my primary method for receiving and reading this forum) is that when I open a post, the entire thread opens on the first page instead of going to the page where the post is (it’s OK for threads that are limited to a single page, but not for multi-page threads).
Also, a button on each post for ‘Quote’, so it makes it easier to quote that post when replying (I hardly use this forum because I have no clue on how to do any of the formatting and the help page just confused me). Maybe I’ve been spoilt by the Stardot forum software.

As it is a bit of a vote I will add my +1 to Steve Fryatt’s suggestion and Andrew’s precis.

To simply read the forum I don’t log in. I mainly read RSS with NetNewsWire on the Mac and iPad, synced via iCloud, which is set to separately fetch the nine on topic forums thereby getting rid of Aldershot, but there is no filtering available. On RISC OS there is Sargasso also set to fetch only the nine forums but this does have filtering. RISC OS can appear on the iPad via vnc.

Kill filing is a blunt tool and every now and again something useful gets lost.

A snag with user filtering is that though our individual experience might be better the forum noise is still there to potentially put off new users and make the forum look silly.

Short-term hack that filters Aldershot out of ’"Recent posts"

Please, no, leave it as is. Most of my access is via Recent Posts – it’s much the easiest way to search for spam. I seem to be able to remember the various topics well enough that I can follow them without needing to open each one individually.

Please, no, leave it as is. Most of my access is via Recent Posts – it’s much the easiest way

Very much a +1. I always go to recent posts as my first port of call. It is easy to skip threads I class as rubbish, and I have no objection to a bit of ‘banter’ occasionally. I only go to the ‘web’ version if I wish to look at a topic in more detail, or when things like code or urls need to be accessed with sensible formating.

Of late the off-topic posts have become more irritating – brexit, covid, vaccination, scottish nationalism, etc – but I had been hoping that the main posters would tire of such posts after a while.

I would certainly miss the ease of quickly checking recent posts by RSS.

Well we need to think of something, as a certain individual has the habit (3 times now) of disappearing for a year or so, then picking straight up from where he left off, only more so. During these merciful breaks, the forum goes back to trickling along in it’s normal tranquil state, and the need to do anything evaporates. Then in the middle of the next onslaught we seem powerless to do anything about it.

Hello all,

As I happen to like this community and its varied members, I felt that it would be unreasonable to simply vanish into the wilderness without at least putting forward a few points.

The first is to direct you to this: https://www.riscosopen.org/forum/forums/11/topics/16863

Somebody mentioned there was something about assembly programming on my site. Somebody else followed up with the main point being “don’t”, and a certain person popped up to say “Why are you anti RISC OS and anti ARM?”. It doesn’t make sense, it’s intentional trolling. Others pointed out the benefits of using a higher level language. I don’t need to rehash this as it’s pretty obvious to most of us. What followed was a big whole drama. Again.

Sadly, as Bryan mentions, while there is no specific post to point to in order to judge a person, there is a long trend of rubbing people up the wrong way, plenty of sweeping statements that are nonsense, and – yes – the occasional bit of passive-aggressive nastiness. This has been going on for a long, long time.

When it came (in another topic) about the idea that no geeks/hoobyists used Windows before 2000, and that people would have wiped that and installed DOS, I’m afraid I lost my patience and said something unpleasant. I won’t appologise to him for it, but I feel as if I have let you down. I did follow the insult with a reason of why I felt that way. But, yes, in retrospect I probably should have been less annoyed.
I apologise to all of you, the regular and decent denizens of the ROOL forums.

Now, do not think that my withdrawal from here is me sulking about being told off. I was an ass, I got called on it. Fair dues, I was an ass. I accept that. And, for what it is worth, I apologise again. To you.

My reason for dropping out is that the immediate aftermath seemed to more support the problem than to think of any way of dealing with it. As one person put it, losing the plot.

And, to be honest, reading the recent posts, it seems to me that nothing has changed. It’s all good to look at the technical side of the forum, and maybe clear up a few bits of weirdness like what’s the difference between “General” and “Community Support”, and even the comical idea of writing a charter. A charter, for goodness sake. That’s the sort of thing HR thinks up when they want to be seen to be doing something, without actually having to do anything.

So since I am the socially inept person with little tact and even less subtlety, please allow me to point out the giant pink disco dancing elephant flashing everybody as it pirouettes ungracefully to Boogie Wonderland…

There needs to be some form of moderation.

Not an if, but, or maybe. But an absolute.

While we, generally, are capable of being civil and polite to each other, there’s only so much mindless twaddle that everybody should have put up with. Post after post after post of “updates” on non-existant software, post after post about how things would be better if more of the OS was written in assembler, post after post of… seeming with each one to want to wilfully rile people up.

Now, some have pointed out “ignore the troll”. If you were to read backwards through the posts (and don’t bother, life is too short, but if you did…) you would see for a while that none of his messages were replied to. But, like an English river, the effluent kept on flowing. We’ve been nice, we’ve been helpful, we’ve tried ignoring, we even suggested moving it to a blog, but the person in question basically massively abused everybody’s hospitality.

Note: If you are not an active forum participant and/or if your view of what’s posted here is a carefully curated RSS feed that omits things, then please accept that you aren’t exactly the best qualified to have an opinion as to what’s been going on.

Now, don’t think I’m laying into this one person. Before him was gh0st, g0st, however it was spelled. Then that dude that pitched a fit because we weren’t going to relicence the entire codebase to GPL instantly. And another or two that I barely remember. The thing is, eventually another troll or weirdo will turn up. This sort of thing needs to be nipped in the bud before it becomes a problem.

So there needs to be some degree of moderation here. Now, I don’t mean a thread nazi that jumps on everybody that doesn’t stick exactly to the topic in the heading (a little meandering is natural, even rivers do it). But there needs to be somebody (or somebodies if it’s felt that dropping this on one person is unfair) that has not only the power to say “guys, put the kettle on and calm down” or “dude, this is not your blog”, but the power to enforce this. To lock threads from further posts. To delete undesirable messages. To delete entire threads if need be. We already do this for spam, why not other forms of distruption? And, of course, the ability to suspend logins for a period of time as punishment and, yes, maybe even suggest that somebody might be better finding a more appropriate forum elsewhere.

I believe the lack of moderation is what got us to this state. Regardless of whether or not everybody is stressed out since the world ended in March 2020, this went unchecked and, well, look where we are now.

So if I may, please allow me to present an alternative set of suggestions. Don’t bother renaming fora, that’s not the problem here.

• Soft-touch moderation to keep things in line should they stray.

• The ability to split threads and relocate posts. Often people say “take it to Aldershot” and some do, others don’t. So the ability to pick up a post and toss it into Aldershot might make that point clear.
  (and if that’s too technically difficult, tell the chosen moderator(s) that they are fully entitled to delete posts that fail to take it to Aldershot – people will learn quickly ;-) ).

• Only permit the original author to continue a topic posted in Announcements (in case of updates). For all other messages, either redirect them to a different forum or simply disallow general replies to announcements. You’ll notice there’s a lot of rubbish in announcements that shouldn’t be there.

• The ability to block a user’s login attempts for a specified period of time (but tell them why, don’t just fail it or they’ll wonder if the password has been changed). Think of it as sitting on the naughty step.

I regret that I was the catalyst for the explosion (but, then, socially-inept tactless me, it probably shouldn’t be a surprise).
This, for me, should be a happy time. I’ve just written and released an actual proper game, and my first bit of real “commercial” software. I should be happy. Not feeling depressed, disillusioned, and disappointed.

I do not regret that it happened. I perceive the entire sequence of events as “an inevitability”. This was going to happen, eventually, one way or another.

What I do regret, and very much regret, is that the fallout has taken some decent and useful contributors away from here. Whether or not you count me amongst them is up to you, I don’t have that kind of ego.
But when a person who has contributed nothing (and no, I do not believe that the USB stuff ever existed) causes people who have contributed a fair amount to up and leave, it’s time to step back and reevaluate things carefully. There is an underlying problem that a bit of renaming isn’t going to fix.

This is not how it should be. But something needs fixed.

As for me, I will reply if anybody has any issues or questions regarding anything of mine. I will also post an announcement here should there be anything to announce. I read using Recent Posts, so +1 to not messing with it.

Otherwise, count me amongst those who have dropped out. I may return, next year, maybe, if it looks like things are better. And by better I mean some sort of moderation to ensure that we don’t end up in this situation again in the future.
This isn’t a decision that I want or like, but I don’t want to end up again in a situation where my first thought is to write “You complete tw*t” to anybody. I’m not proud of it. I’m not happy about it. But it is what it is. Let’s hope we can all learn from this that something went quite wrong along the way.

So, until then, I guess Merry Christmas and I’ll see you in the new year.

#include "cry.emoji"

@Rick, if you’re happy enough with me just copying that I’ll post it to e.g. a new Community thread about moderation options. That way, we can keep this thread focused on forum features. We already have moderators, they just don’t have the parameters you would like about what they consider problem behaviour. In your specific case as far as this thread here goes, I think a “don’t show me posts from this user” feature would’ve helped a lot. Sometimes there are just personality clashes, and the electronic equivalent of stepping away from the discussion is what I think you wanted to do, but could not because the software lacks that feature right now.

From ‘topics’, another one crops up as a possible request:

• Equivalent of a “reply to” for certain topics, principally Announcements

On a short-term hiding of Aldershot from ‘recents’, Rob @ ROOL mentioned by e-mail to me that we should probably just add a new feed that is thus filtered, so the exisitng ones aren’t changed – that way, people who want everything still get it, but a new simple filters-hard-coded-topics stream is available too.

if you’re happy enough with me just copying that

If you want to move it somewhere more appropriate, feel free.

@ Rick,

I am sorry to read you’ve decided to leave. You, together with many others, are very helpful when people have issues with RO and the apps. Not to mention all your contributions and (for me) the game changer USBMIDI work.

Please reconsider.

On the matter of that person, I share your feelings, indeed he drove me nuts quite few times (like he did with others). The reason I am not personally pointing at him/his actions, is just that in that particular case I am pretty sure there is more, but this doesn’t justify his behaviour. Indeed I use the RSS and, indeed, like others, I have got all those updates that for me (as for others) should have put on his own blog like we all do I guess. So, you are indeed right feeling the way you do and the situation.

I also think that what ROOL is trying to create is indeed an Open community, which is why they are asking us all to self-control (hope it’s the right term), in situations like this one. Maybe by ignoring certain behaviours as a whole community would have helped to reduce them (I honestly do not know).

In any case, I hope you’ll reconsider, meanwhile thanks for all your help and also for your help understanding British culture, which indeed made quite few posts less “Klingonish” to me :)

[edit: Whoops , will repost where Rick’s post will be moved and remove this one, sorry]

There needs to be some form of moderation.

Easy to say; there will, I’m sure, be many cases where we fail to strike an appropriate balance between freedom of speech and censorship. It’s an old, old argument.

I’m sorry that I don’t have a better solution to offer. I’m not convinced that one exists at all.

Someone pointed out that the recent posts that kicked off all this ill feeling were not in themselves the sort of things that would be expected to fall foul of good principles of moderation. I’d suggest that anyone who volunteers to be a moderator should look back over the recent posts and attempt to decide, without the benefit of hindsight, what should have been deleted.

Most of my access is via Recent Posts – it’s much the easiest way to search for spam.

I don’t think working via “Recent Posts” is a good way to identify spam and spammers, and it sounds like it is more of a workaround for you to do your work (which I much appreciate btw!) as efficient as possible with the current feature set.

Since we are in the “Forum Features” area, why not suggest some features that would ease spam identification and forum moderation. Something that I think works well for other forums is to have the first (or the first few) postings of any individual being put into moderation and needs explicit approval by a human (or a powerful AI that pretends to be a human…). Another thing would be a possibility for the mere user (or better: for regular users with say more than 50 posts) to flag postings as possible spam which would ease moderation.

On the other hand, I don’t think that spam and spammers are the biggest problem we need to worry about.

I’m sorry that I don’t have a better solution to offer. I’m not convinced that one exists at all.

+1, I do share the same feelings on the moderation topic. Maybe I am wrong.

Some other forums have a “mark as answer” feature, which makes the marked posts show up with a different background colour or other highlight. In some systems they’re also ‘promoted’ to the top of the thread, right below the first post, but I’m not sure whether it’s necessary to go that far.

Would be nice would be to be able to mark some posts that provides solutions for recurring issues (like the Pi400 installation troubleshooting) and have a way to restricts search to them. Thinking about it that could maybe be handled by adding an FAQ section in the Wiki.

I don’t think working via “Recent Posts” is a good way to identify spam and spammers

Well, my friend, this is one topic on which I feel particularly well placed to speak.

Every day, several times a day, I go to this site and read Recent Posts. I read back until I recognise a posting that I read before. Any spam I find on the way gets deleted, along with the spammer’s account.

I don’t normally need to read the individual fora or threads, because I pick everything up on the way through the recent posts.

Every day, several times a day, I go to this site and read Recent Posts. I read back until I recognise a posting that I read before.

Same here. I use Recent Posts more-or-less exclusively.

A: Because it’s top posted.

Q: Do you know why I don’t use Recent Posts?

:-)