A couple of unrelated complaints..

[ZeTurd]

Just some random things that annoy me:

1) Posts stretching the width of a thread unnecessarily. Sometimes it's pictures that hasn't been properly resized for forum use, sometimes it's quoting a paragraph for the 27th time, and other times it's a failure to understand the subtleties of whitespace and linebreaks.. When having the forums set to 100 posts per page (as is good and proper), it gets really annoying to read threads that are infested with such posts. Would it be possible to make guidelines for such posting behavior and/or make mods edit such posts to increase the readability of said threads?

2) Cookies. There seems to be something wrong with the expiration of the forum-cookies. At seemingly random intervals I have to log in again, even though I have the forums set to remember me (about once a week if I were forced to venture a guess). A minor annoyance, but still an annoyance. (Browser: Firefox 2.01)

3) Threaded mode. Pretty sure this has been covered before, but I just want to say that this is an insane way to view the forums. Which, of course, would be OK if it didn't affect the rest of us by people posting 10 posts in a row in threaded mode without quoting the context, effectively confusing the hell out of everyone that is reading in flat mode. If something ala threaded needs to be kept, why not consider nested mode? (See slashdot for reference.) The best would probably be to wake up from the nineties (this ain't usenet) and kill it altogether, but that's not my decision.

4) Finding my posts. Unless I'm incredibly dense, the only way I can find my own posts is by doing a username search on myself, or find a post made by myself, click on my nickname, and click on "Show all user's posts". Not exactly a big deal, but why isn't that option available in my profile ("My Home")?

[Sniper]

As you might expect, all of these have been previously discussed...

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1) Posts stretching the width of a thread unnecessarily. Sometimes it's pictures that hasn't been properly resized for forum use, sometimes it's quoting a paragraph for the 27th time, and other times it's a failure to understand the subtleties of whitespace and linebreaks.. When having the forums set to 100 posts per page (as is good and proper), it gets really annoying to read threads that are infested with such posts. Would it be possible to make guidelines for such posting behavior and/or make mods edit such posts to increase the readability of said threads?[/b]

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You will find the solution to this here


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2) Cookies. There seems to be something wrong with the expiration of the forum-cookies. At seemingly random intervals I have to log in again, even though I have the forums set to remember me (about once a week if I were forced to venture a guess). A minor annoyance, but still an annoyance. (Browser: Firefox 2.01)

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The cookies expire after a week... the previously suggested resolution, is to deal with it [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]


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3) Threaded mode. Pretty sure this has been covered before, but I just want to say that this is an insane way to view the forums. Which, of course, would be OK if it didn't affect the rest of us by people posting 10 posts in a row in threaded mode without quoting the context, effectively confusing the hell out of everyone that is reading in flat mode. If something ala threaded needs to be kept, why not consider nested mode? (See slashdot for reference.) The best would probably be to wake up from the nineties (this ain't usenet) and kill it altogether, but that's not my decision.

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The default view was changed from Threaded to Flat a little while ago... this should help to reduce this problem. fwiw, there are some advantages when linking to a specific post, to link in threaded mode.

Also, the problem of not being able to determine who the poster is replying to was made worse when Quick Reply was turned on. That said, usually, if you are reading the whole thread, you can figure out what is going on.


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4) Finding my posts. Unless I'm incredibly dense, the only way I can find my own posts is by doing a username search on myself, or find a post made by myself, click on my nickname, and click on "Show all user's posts". Not exactly a big deal, but why isn't that option available in my profile ("My Home")?

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The easiest way to handle this to bookmark your profile. I agree it would be nice if there was a link in My Home.

[ZeTurd]

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1) Posts stretching the width of a thread unnecessarily.

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You will find the solution to this here

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Thanks for the very useful suggestion, but it still doesn't resolve the problem with posts containing very long words/url's or "over-quoting".


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2) Cookies.

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The cookies expire after a week... the previously suggested resolution, is to deal with it [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

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No problem. Any particular reason for not setting them to the more standard 365 days though?


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3) Threaded mode.

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The default view was changed from Threaded to Flat a little while ago... this should help to reduce this problem. fwiw, there are some advantages when linking to a specific post, to link in threaded mode.

Also, the problem of not being able to determine who the poster is replying to was made worse when Quick Reply was turned on. That said, usually, if you are reading the whole thread, you can figure out what is going on.

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Re linking: It's no problem to just copy&paste the post number and have a bookmark ready for insertion of the post number (since bookmarks seem to be the standard resolution for a number of problems [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img] ).

But yeah, I guess it's not that big of a problem, it's just that threaded mode seems hopelessly archaic to me and combining the two modes (flat & threaded) at the same time causes (imo) more problems than benefits.

[Sniper]

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Thanks for the very useful suggestion, but it still doesn't resolve the problem with posts containing very long words/url's or "over-quoting".

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As a bandaid solution, you could always notify on the post, and a mod might clean it up.

Its pretty hard to "get the message out" to all posters on something like this... I would guess most who do it don't realize the issues caused (somewhat compounded by different screen resolutions).


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No problem. Any particular reason for not setting them to the more standard 365 days though?

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No idea, but there might be a good reason (maybe related to performance).

[jaydub]

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2) Cookies. There seems to be something wrong with the expiration of the forum-cookies. At seemingly random intervals I have to log in again, even though I have the forums set to remember me (about once a week if I were forced to venture a guess). A minor annoyance, but still an annoyance. (Browser: Firefox 2.01)

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The cookies expire after a week... the previously suggested resolution, is to deal with it [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]



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It is not that simple. I have experienced two related cookie flaws:

1. On many occasions I have been greeted on the login page with "Welcome jaydub" but also prompted for username and password. Unless I close the browser, logins will return to this same page.

2. On many occasions, I will login to see an entire forum of unread posts marked read.

J

[MrWookie]

For #2, there isn't a great solution. If you get logged out due to cookie expiration, every forum you then read will have everything marked as read. The only solution is to log in and get a new cookie, then completely close out of your browser w/o going to any forums. Reopen your browser and go back to 2+2. Then it'll work like normal w/ read and unread posts.