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Forum Rules & Information

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Re: Forum Rules & Information
Post by rocket_scientist   » Tue Oct 09, 2012 6:07 pm

rocket_scientist
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Location: Tucson, AZ USA

Pardon my simplemindness please, but I am completely confused on what the 'friends' and foes' options are actually used for. I think I can figure out if someone else on the forums should go in the friends list or the foes list, but beyond that I am stumped.

What happens when I put someone on my friends list? Do we get magic decoder rings to be able to send secret messages to each other? Does a light on my keyboard light up whenever someone in my friends list is active on a forum? Do I get extra credit if I put 10 or more people in my friends list? Or if I get 10 other people to put me on their friends list? Does it automatically sned me copies of the other person's posts, or private messages?

What about foes? Does it automatically add angry faces when ever a foe reads one of my forum posts so that he will know I am his foe? Does it block all posts from people in my foes list so that I don't see their forum posts? Does it block them from sending me private messages?

On a more serious note, is there a button (or magic phrase) that will show me all the new posts by people on my friends list in every forum since the last time I pressed the secret button? Does the forum software keep track of people who most frequently end up on other people's foes list to see who the trouble makers are?

So far, I don't see any advantage to adding people to either list. Am I missing something, or are those 'just for fun'?

Mike
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Re: Forum Rules & Information
Post by Duckk   » Wed Oct 10, 2012 8:09 am

Duckk
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Friends do little more than make it a little easier to track people who are online and message them.

Foes are a blocklist which hides posts made by foes.
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Shields at 50%, taunting at 100%! - Tom Pope
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Re: Forum Rules & Information
Post by rocket_scientist   » Sat Oct 13, 2012 2:49 am

rocket_scientist
Commander

Posts: 150
Joined: Sat Nov 12, 2011 12:00 am
Location: Tucson, AZ USA

Duckk wrote:Friends do little more than make it a little easier to track people who are online and message them.

Foes are a blocklist which hides posts made by foes.


Thanks. Pity some of my more imaginative ideas don't apply to reality! :)
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Re: Forum Rules & Information
Post by Randomiser   » Tue Oct 23, 2012 6:34 am

Randomiser
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Posts: 1452
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Location: Scotland

I've been mostly reading the Safehold forum, and been struck by the large number of people who quote huge previous messages in their replies whether it is helpful or not. Then the next poster includes both in their reply! Sometimes it runs to 2 of my pretty deep screens worth of retread to scroll through before I get to the new material. I find it really annoying and time consuming. Moreover, it often obscures the point 2nd and subsequent posters are trying to make. If they need to refer to the point they are answering it works much better to snip it out of its original post and quote just the relevant part.

I don't suppose you can ban this over-quoting, since even RFC does it on occasion, but can you at least strongly encourage posters to respect other reader's time and sanity by quoting more sparingly?
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Re: Forum Rules & Information
Post by Duckk   » Tue Oct 23, 2012 7:56 am

Duckk
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Posts: 4200
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I've reduced the maximum level of nested quotes by one.
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Shields at 50%, taunting at 100%! - Tom Pope
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Re: Forum Rules & Information
Post by FriarBob   » Tue Oct 23, 2012 12:00 pm

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Duckk wrote:I've reduced the maximum level of nested quotes by one.


Oh man, please reconsider. Good night, it's hard enough getting context sometimes with three quotes. I've been wishing you'd UP it to four or five for years now.

What you really need to do is find a WYSIWYG post editor for phpBB and use that. Then people could more easily snip the previous quotes without trashing the phpBB tags that so few people know how to use properly (which IS a problem, but isn't something you'll fix without requiring every user of the forum be an IT expert).

I did some quick searches and found at least two "dead" attempts at such a plugin/mod and one that appears to be valid in only about a minute of searching. I'm sure you'd want to give it more thought and research, but these types of options DO exist and it would be a HUGE improvement for the site in general, plus alleviate this guy's concerns without trashing the ability to properly retain the context in your posts.

This one may not be exactly ideal, but it's at least a start...
https://www.phpbb.com/community/viewtop ... &t=2149399
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Re: Forum Rules & Information
Post by Duckk   » Tue Oct 23, 2012 1:07 pm

Duckk
Site Admin

Posts: 4200
Joined: Sat Aug 08, 2009 5:29 pm

You'll still get quotes two deep, which should be enough for historical context.
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Shields at 50%, taunting at 100%! - Tom Pope
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Re: Forum Rules & Information
Post by Randomiser   » Tue Oct 23, 2012 7:51 pm

Randomiser
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Location: Scotland

I wasn't really expecting such prompt action, thanks Duckk.

FriarBob, you've been here a lot longer than I have, but surely people can be expected to read back a bit in a thread to get context if need be.

I would rather have had people self restrict on their posting than have new rules, but then I have to admit to having some background in IT and I didn't think the phpBB tags looked so hard to mod. They just seemed to follow basic HTML format. Maybe Duckk has a better grasp than me of how hard it would be for others to play with the quotes at the moment.
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Re: Forum Rules & Information
Post by FriarBob   » Tue Oct 23, 2012 8:02 pm

FriarBob
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Randomiser wrote:I would rather have had people self restrict on their posting than have new rules, but then I have to admit to having some background in IT and I didn't think the phpBB tags looked so hard to mod. They just seemed to follow basic HTML format. Maybe Duckk has a better grasp than me of how hard it would be for others to play with the quotes at the moment.


It isn't, for people who understand HTML.

Sadly, I'd say probably somewhere around 95% of the users of the web have exactly zero understanding of HTML. Users of this forum are probably significantly better... but I'd still guess at least 40% have only minimal understanding of it.
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Re: Forum Rules & Information
Post by Duckk   » Wed Nov 07, 2012 5:16 pm

Duckk
Site Admin

Posts: 4200
Joined: Sat Aug 08, 2009 5:29 pm

We now have a Politics subfourm, as an annex of the Free Range Topics board.
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Shields at 50%, taunting at 100%! - Tom Pope
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