Forum features

Not so sure about this one since the “answer” might become out of date

Hence my suggestion of a general pointer to the FAQs hosted in the wiki (editable and therefore updatable) and my not agreeing with the idea of marking a specific post as the correct answer. Experience of other forum “answers” being that they are often not the best solution, frequently only apply to edge cases and as you point out become outdated when some aspect of the OS changes.

I do think that a tested work method is worth putting into the wiki FAQs. A link in the final post pointing to the FAQ might be worth doing, but that relies on the specific poster

a general pointer to the FAQs hosted in the wiki

That page currently says nothing about posting behaviour. I think it would be a good place to outline good community conventions.

If moderation is too time consuming and potentially controversial, there should at the very least be a Sticky up front in the Forum itself that welcomes polite and community-spirited members, and reminds everyone of a few basic rules of engagement and etiquette, referring on to that FAQ page.

That could then be pointed to by any poster who feels another party might have ‘forgotten’ or overlooked the guidelines that form the basis of participation in the Forum.

@Bernard Boase. I am totally in agreement with your post.

Regards.

That page currently says nothing about posting behaviour. I think it would be a good place to outline good community conventions.

Yes – its a good place to outline the sort of behaviour expected of forum posters.

That could then be pointed to by any poster who feels another party might have ‘forgotten’ or overlooked the guidelines

Yes – if we want to fan a flame war.

That page currently says nothing about posting behaviour. I think it would be a good place to outline good community conventions.

+1

And another thing… would it be possible to make login cookies persist more than 24 hours (or whatever the timeout is)? I seem to need to login to the forum every single time I come along – that’s not a big deal as my browser remembers the login, but it does mean I can’t just roll up and post. It also means I don’t get the forum remembering what I’ve already read until I actively login.

On that note, if somebody clicks on the login button, it would be nice to have a link that takes them back to wherever they came from. So if I’m reading a post and want to reply, I click on ‘login’, but once I’ve done that I can’t easily go back to the post I wanted to reply to. If I click ‘back’ I get to it, but the cached version not the version with me logged in. If I then reload the page, often I get the logged in version and can post, but sometimes I get logged out again (I haven’t been able to reliably reproduce this – which browser etc does it).

A little bit of friendliness around the login procedure would go a long way…

And another thing… would it be possible to make login cookies persist more than 24 hours (or whatever the timeout is)?

“Best practice” is to use cookies that expire at the end of the connection session, so something that lasts all day is regarded as less secure already.

If I click ‘back’ I get to it, but the cached version not the version with me logged in. If I then reload the page, often I get the logged in version and can post, but sometimes I get logged out again (I haven’t been able to reliably reproduce this – which browser etc does it).

This trick usually works for me in Firefox and Safari (but occasionally doesn’t), but doesn’t work in Edge (and presumably would also fail in Chrome).

“Best practice” is to use cookies that expire at the end of the connection session, so something that lasts all day is regarded as less secure already.

I disagree, since people often leave tabs and windows open for days on end, and often do so on shared computers.

Besides, the daily restart is just there as a maintenance sweep to keep the site up without things going overboard on RAM, temp file use etc.

I disagree, since people often leave tabs and windows open for days on end, and often do so on shared computers.

Shared computers (without separate user accounts) are probably a relatively small use case these days, but the way to deal with them is a ‘remember my login’ tickbox which decides whether to store a persistent login cookie. If the user doesn’t tick the box then the cookie is cleared when the session is closed, but if they do it persists indefinitely. Many other forums work like this, and it saves a lot of login hassle for sites you come back to regularly.

“Best practice” is to use cookies that expire at the end of the connection session, so something that lasts all day is regarded as less secure already.

I disagree, since people often leave tabs and windows open for days on end, and often do so on shared computers.

I used the quotes round “best practice” as an indication of what is regarded as best practice “out there”

As to holding tabs open for “days on end” – I have pinned tabs that have been pinned since pre-covid and others that stay there for a number of weeks for a variety of reasons. However, I do expect that the more secure locations will make revalidate the connection on a regular basis.

Banks will log you out after a few minutes of inactivity.

Facebook will leave you logged in forever.

But no-one with a nanogram of nous would use Facebook for anything where security mattered a toss anyway.

But no-one with a nanogram of nous would use Facebook for anything where security mattered a toss anyway.

Fixed. :)

Good point.

I obviously have less than a nanogram of nous, but more than some yet smaller threshold…

Updated summary.

Any progress?

A sane mobile view would be nice. But I’m not sure it would be particulary easy to retrofit to the forum nor the wiki.
Maybe a halfway house like a responsive layout using CSS? Modern mobile browsers are as good as their desktop brothers, it’s just the need to consider the viewport differently and make buttons less able to prod accidentally.

Thumbs up for an improved mobile view of the site.

I guess for some people editing the ROOL forum Wiki is easy; for others, not so much fun.

Perhaps an upgrade would enable text input without resorting to Textile or HTML.

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…).

wrote Stefan over a year ago.

I recently suggested to Dave that it might be helpful for spam-control if recent (say last 10) new users were identified by having, for example, their user number (the number in brackets after the name) highlighted in red, as it is most often that new-ish users are the spammers. They may have made a “valid” test foray initially to establish themselves before spamming.

Dave didn’t think it would actually help him, again possibly because of the method he uses, but it may make the rest of us aware that a posting may be dodgy before we get to the advert for lawn-care or whatever at the end!

Programmatically it just involves keeping a note of the latest number and having a condition in the author line to alert us. “last 10” and “colour the number red” are just suggestions!

Any observations?

it would be particulary

Def: Becoming antisocial over a single issue.

Programmatically it just involves keeping a note of the latest number and having a condition in the author line to alert us. “last 10” and “colour the number red” are just suggestions!

Any observations?

If it’s as simple as coding to note the number then it might be possible to just code to

1. Mark with colour for users with fewer than 10 posts (nominal allowance number)
2. Not allow more than those 10 until the moderator allows it.

Perhaps an upgrade would enable text input without resorting to Textile or HTML.

Which markup language would you prefer instead?

If it’s as simple as coding to note the number then it might be possible to just code to

1. Mark with colour for users with fewer than 10 posts (nominal allowance number)
2. Not allow more than those 10 until the moderator allows it.

Disadvantage of that is it has to take away any deleted posts from the total so far!

Present situation is post a spam, membership removed.

Oh, and there’s that moderator we haven’t got.

We have an effective Dave who with the best will in the world cannot be always available.

My idea is a hint for the reader or post viewer that there may be a problem!

You can see how many postings each user has posted – it’s in the box at the left of each posting.

You can see how many postings each user has posted – it’s in the box at the left of each posting.

Of course! Make that red if it’s 9 or less! Even easier to implement! No sums except a simple digit count or comparison!

Only the most assiduous spammer could do that well without being spotted and deleted very quickly!

Thank you, Dave!

Make that red if it’s 9 or less!

A lot of code tweaking to highlight what could easily be seen by looking to the left?

On some other fora I’ve been on, posts have a crowdsourced rating. If some people vote the past as bad, it’ll be marked with a banner. If even more people rate it badly, banner and only the first few lines shown by default. And if it passes a threshold, it won’t be shown at all except to admins. In some places this ties in with a personal reputation system which, if you have enough bad posts, the next thing you post will be visible to you and admins and nobody else (in essence, unless an admin fixes your reputation, you’re considered “not worth bothering with”).

Not a way of removing spam, but an interesting self-censorship method for dealing with unwanted content.