Proposition of the new tool on the forum

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tygrysek75

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Hi,just wondering how easy would be adding option of deleting the topics which no longer needed,for eg.post's to sell chickens which no longer available,by person who actually wrote the post.I know that you can delete last post which you wrote but if somone else write after you you no longer have this option.This could work in adventage to the forum as everyone would be able to clean the forum from their topics no longer needed meaning less clutter.It would be great for Moderators too as less of their time needed to do that for others.Does anyone think this would be good?
 
Hi, yes a good idea, problems is that permissions that allow deleting your own "started threads" do delete other members comments. We will look into it however and investigate options.

You also raise that fact that the For Sale hasn't been pruned for a while and needs a bit of housekeeping! :D
 
Yes,but I still think that if you have started that tread you should also be able to delete as people responding to yours question.Somtimes some topics realy pointless.
Another tool which I heve seen somwere else is best before date -it simply allowed you to post something for a number of days and after that it is deletad automaticly.If you have for eg.some good topic and it starts to go n other direction you can as the autor of the post put the best before date to your answer and when expire in few days time you will still have a topic which has a good responses without any clatter.
I mey push a litlle but how about marking helpfulness of advice given on the forum.It could work in tha way if somone had asked for help he could mark helpfulness of the information he reciwed, and this would show under avatar eg.Helpfull1,helpfull 32,etc
 
I like that idea of a response deadline and then the topic is closed, because they do tend to wander off after a dozen posts or so (yes, I am guilty of that more than most). Perhaps it could then be left in an inactive state for a quite a while to allow people looking for information by a search to find answers. Or perhaps then the question and conclusions could be summarised and perhaps go into a reference file. Depends how much time this takes I suppose and whether file space is an issue nowadays.
 
Definately some good ideas and I'll have a look at the set-up to see whether I can make adjustments to delete posts.

Let me give you a little background (a little boring...) about the set-up though and why I've tried to keep the forum fairly basic so far...

The 'add ons' to give extra functionality are basically written by anyone and I've had a few problems in the past where add ons have caused a problem where you can spend hours trying to work out what's broken. They can also introduce security problems and a site can get hacked - I've tried to use paid-for add-ons that are supported by a company rather free add ons by individuals who can vanish just when you need help.

We've had a 99.92% 'up-time' this year which is fantastic as websites go.

Every process on the server uses memory and 'add ons' can use alot of memory if they are poorly programmed - if the server reaches its limit, the site slows down and then, it starts to kill 'processes' and that's when things start to break. The next step is the site goes offline and I need to reboot the server. This has happened a half a dozen times this year and it's really hard to identify which website (the blog, forum and website run on the same server BTW) and which process is causing the problem, other than removing each one, one by one -or- increasing memory (expensive), it's hard to resolve.

Anyway, I hope that gives you some background information about the forum.

A little bit of history...

There was a setting that meant posts that hadn't had any activity after 30 days would be deleted from the For Sale section although Snifter, the first moderator we had (when we were just a few hundred members) asked me to disable this as she was going through posts and manually deleting them at the right time - but I'm sure I could find this setting again and re-enable it and will look into this shortly as I think it's very useful.

Keeping posts on topic....

I think is all about moderation, there's not a lot of automation available here of course. Some forums I have been to (usually to do with software) can be extreme where they will only answer the original question or move your post to a new topic. It suits their forums where you ask a question and once it is closed down, gets marked [resolved] and moved to a different section.
Personally, I think this can feel too strict for forums like this and can take a huge amount of moderation. Moderators are volunteers and we want the forum to be pretty easy going.

Topics do wander and some re-ignite after a long period of inactivity but I think this has to be the case. We do occasionally split topics but not very often.

I'm really happy to hear the suggestions, we're always looking to improve the site in some way and I'm always chatting to the Mods in our Moderators Forum about how we can do this.. there are lots of things happening every single day in the back ground to keep the forum running smoothly.

A bit of a long post from me but hopefully will help... Please keep the suggestions coming and I'll try to keep the site evolving, I'm re-wring the poultrykeeper.com site at the moment (due for launch in April) and after that will look at the blog and forum to see if there are improvements we can make.


Tim ;-)
 
Hi Chris,

I increased the screen width yesterday as this will allow bigger photos to be posted and shorten the height of posts. Many other forums are full screen width which I'm not keen on as it gives a different view to everyone with a different resolution and the results can be unpredictable.

Is it causing a problem on your screen? It should fit most resolutions and -most- users have wide screen monitors these days too but there are smaller screen laptops of course and it will depend on the resolution you are using.

I will have a look to see if we can run two different templates - so you can select a different size by the template you select in the user panel. I'm sure this must be possible, then the old size could be selected.

Failing this, I can only make it a fixed size, or, go full width which probably looks fine on laptops but is lost on a widescreen on a desktop PC.

Would appreciate feedback on this, I can only test with what I have here.

Tim.
 
Tim said:
Definately some good ideas and I'll have a look at the set-up to see whether I can make adjustments to delete posts.

Let me give you a little background (a little boring...) about the set-up though and why I've tried to keep the forum fairly basic so far...

The 'add ons' to give extra functionality are basically written by anyone and I've had a few problems in the past where add ons have caused a problem where you can spend hours trying to work out what's broken. They can also introduce security problems and a site can get hacked - I've tried to use paid-for add-ons that are supported by a company rather free add ons by individuals who can vanish just when you need help.

We've had a 99.92% 'up-time' this year which is fantastic as websites go.

Every process on the server uses memory and 'add ons' can use alot of memory if they are poorly programmed - if the server reaches its limit, the site slows down and then, it starts to kill 'processes' and that's when things start to break. The next step is the site goes offline and I need to reboot the server. This has happened a half a dozen times this year and it's really hard to identify which website (the blog, forum and website run on the same server BTW) and which process is causing the problem, other than removing each one, one by one -or- increasing memory (expensive), it's hard to resolve.

Anyway, I hope that gives you some background information about the forum.

A little bit of history...

There was a setting that meant posts that hadn't had any activity after 30 days would be deleted from the For Sale section although Snifter, the first moderator we had (when we were just a few hundred members) asked me to disable this as she was going through posts and manually deleting them at the right time - but I'm sure I could find this setting again and re-enable it and will look into this shortly as I think it's very useful.

Keeping posts on topic....

I think is all about moderation, there's not a lot of automation available here of course. Some forums I have been to (usually to do with software) can be extreme where they will only answer the original question or move your post to a new topic. It suits their forums where you ask a question and once it is closed down, gets marked [resolved] and moved to a different section.
Personally, I think this can feel too strict for forums like this and can take a huge amount of moderation. Moderators are volunteers and we want the forum to be pretty easy going.

Topics do wander and some re-ignite after a long period of inactivity but I think this has to be the case. We do occasionally split topics but not very often.

I'm really happy to hear the suggestions, we're always looking to improve the site in some way and I'm always chatting to the Mods in our Moderators Forum about how we can do this.. there are lots of things happening every single day in the back ground to keep the forum running smoothly.

A bit of a long post from me but hopefully will help... Please keep the suggestions coming and I'll try to keep the site evolving, I'm re-wring the poultrykeeper.com site at the moment (due for launch in April) and after that will look at the blog and forum to see if there are improvements we can make.


Tim ;-)
Click to expand...
Hi Tim
I do not know what are adds on.Please do not try to explain it to me-I'm not good with this staff and it is waist of you time(to try explain it to me anyway)I,m sure some of the forum users know what you talking about.
From all ideas I had sugested I would love to have a bestbefore date for some of the posts to be chosen by person who writes them.For eg this one do not have to be always but I would put a 3month period to be visible and after that automaticly deleted.
Some of the topics really somtimes going somwere else which totaly has nothing to do with orginal question or query and people could put for eg 1 week befor their post will be deleted.As said before I have no idea how this stuff can work from IT poit of view but this is only proposition.I hope that all this has some sense(I try to explain best as I can)
 
Hi Tim, I have only got 2/3rd's of the page on my PC screen. Occasionally I have a little bit missing on a web site I visit, but nothing like this. I thought the problem with photos was the memory space rather than the screen size. Big photos are really going to slow it down if the server capacity is an issue. I have to scroll across to see if I am reading the last post or not as the page numbers are on the RHS. The login tab is as well so I now use the one at the bottom. Not a big issue Tim, more a significant irritation.
 
Hi Chris,

OK understand - The last forum width was 900 pixels wide, the new width is 1200.

You may be able to get a higher resolution on your monitor by right clicking on the desktop and selecting screen resolution in Windows 7 or (I think) properties and then finding the screen resolution tab or display in Win XP. It should give you a choice of resolutions and you may find this can be increased.

As an option 2, I'm trying to add a duplicate template to the forum so you would be able to select the old width. You would be able to select this in your User Panel. I'll let you know ... hopefully I'll get it working today.

I can understand why you want it back now - it's annoying having scroll bars.

Tim
 
Hi Chris,

Try going to User Control Panel, select Board Preferences and then select the 'Reduced Width' template from the 'My Board Style'.

This is the old 900 pixel wide setting....

On the photos - yes, we limit the size of the photos so pages don't load slowly but the physical size is a little small at the moment and I'd like to increase this a little. We're limited by the forum width.

The thing you will notice is the scroll bars appearing on larger photos - but this I'm sure you'll say is OK if the forum width is without scroll bars.

Cheers,

Tim
Tim
 
Which browser are you using Chris? I have noticed it's fine with other browsers ... IE, but with Google Chrome the width is too wide
 
tygrysek75 I've checked the documentation and it confirms that users cannot delete a post once someone has replied. You can edit a post though and can of course add another post to say something is now sold for example.

I have re-set the 'auto pruning' in the Chickens Wanted / For Sale forum - so 30 days after the last post and hasn't been viewed for 7 days, it will delete the post. This should get rid of any very old posts. Mods will also delete 'sold' birds too when they are browsing that area.

For other forums, it's hard to do this as many of the pages get listed in the search engines and that's how we get found. I think many people like to search the forum for old posts too.

If there's anything specific you'd like deleting though, please just let a moderator know and we can do it for you.

Hope this helps.

Tim
 
1578 posts have been pruned from this forum with the first prune... so it really did need doing!

Tim
 
Thank you Tim,nice preechristmas clean.I have one more question .The pictures which we could add to any posts are good size (I think as I can use any standart medium webpage photos)but avatar picture is imposible for me to add it just to small .Is tere any chance to make them slightly bigger,please? size 90x90 still good but if we could increse to 20kb please?
 
Funny you should say that, Tygresek, because I had a lot of trouble getting my avatar to work, because either it rejected it because the file was too big, (it wouldn't go anywhere near 90X90) or when I gradually reduced it, it said it was too small. Tim helped me a lot, but in the end, I don't know what I did that was any different, but after umpteen goes it just accepted one of my many versions, to my amazement. I agree it would be lovely if posting avatars was easy to do as they do brighten up the Forum and it's nice to see what pics people choose. The 'Marigold' in my avatar is friendly but stupid - probably quite an appropriate choice!
 
tygrysek75Some of the topics really somtimes going somwere else which totaly has nothing to do with orginal question or query and people could put for eg 1 week befor their post will be deleted.)[/quote said:
Would you like to see the moderators being more proactive, Tygresek, and dividing topics where they move in a different direction?
We've had examples in recent weeks where a) a discussion turned into an exchange of jokes and the moderator moved those posts to the Other Things section and b) when I split the Rat Problem thread, about predators, and started off a new thread about Condensation in Coops, both of which have run well.

I think we tend to prefer a light touch, as Tim has said, but I suppose part of a mods job is to be a sort of chairperson without coming down too heavily. What do people think?
Click to expand...
 
I agree with the light touch approach Marigold as sometimes threads run off topic with a bit of banter and within a few posts are back on track. Splitting threads off too soon would result in extra work for nothing in that case. So far I think the balance is spot-on. I do try to stay on thread but have to say I know I am particularly bad for getting side-tracked.

Having viewed another forum over the last week I have noticed a chronic lack of committed expert guidance from people like yourself, Foxy ,Tim and others. People don't say much, perhaps for fear of being chastised. There may be many dozens of people logged in at any one time but very little is posted by any of them. When something actually is posted it seems to ignore completely what has been posted before and/or it is just one short sentence. The moderators don't seem to contribute at all. I can't put my finger on why it feels 'wrong' but this forum seems an altogether much happier and happening place and long may it remain so.
 
I try to reduce kb size of any of my picture and the smalest I able to do is 20kb any smaller and is disapiring completly.I had noticed that Foxy avatar is more digital squares than image itself,yours looks very good and you can see an image clearly.
As to go to the off topics posts I would not like to split them up but for people who know that if write something which not nessesery is on topic to be able to make their post stay for eg for a monh or 2 even for few days when everyone who is involved in discussion could reed them and afterwods to be removed automaticly.If I have some problem which I like to be helped with I'm using the search engine on poultry keeper forum to see if there is anything about it.I do read some of the older posts and somtimes you have to read a lot of stuff off topic to get to the really good stuff.This is I would like to be able put limits on some posts even I write we all get somtimes get carried away and writing something on impulse which after a while is just waist of our forum space.I hope that all this make any sence for you guys,It is not mine intention to upsed anybody:) :D
 
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