Forum Technical Suggestions Thread.

tartantipster

Dandles wrote: »

Yes .. . .. . . . . . (stupid minimum characters!)

Agreed! Another one for 1 minimum characters per post!:)

Former_MSE_Dan

Hi folks,

Thanks for the suggestions. However, we cannot bring these changes in

1) We have a min post limit that people must reach before posting links - and have found that by using a min. character limit this discourages some spammers from posting one word posts to reach the threshold.

2) The way that VBulletin's software works prevents us from doing this. In order to ban obviously offensive profanities, any words which contain them are ****'d out. The team have looked at ways around this in the past, but have been unable to find a solution

Sorry bout these

Dan

fermi

MSE_Dan wrote: »

2) The way that VBulletin's software works prevents us from doing this. In order to ban obviously offensive profanities, any words which contain them are ****'d out. The team have looked at ways around this in the past, but have been unable to find a solution

They can't have looked very hard.

vBulletin includes default tools in the word censor list to work around problems like that.

From the AdminCP:

Censored Words

Type all words you want censored in the field below. Do not use commas to separate words, just use spaces. For example, type 'dog cat boy', rather than 'dog, cat, boy.'

If you type 'dog', all words containing the string 'dog' would be censored (dogma, for instance, would appear as '***ma'). To censor more accurately, you can require that censors occur only for exact words. You can do this by placing a censor word in curly braces, as in {dog}. Signifying 'dog' in the curly braces would mean that dogma would appear as dogma, but dog would appear as '***'. Thus your censor list may appear as: cat {dog} {barn} barn

Do not use quotation marks and make sure you use curly braces, not parentheses, when specifying exact words.

You will need to Rebuild the Post Cache after making changes to update existing posts.

Censored Words

Here are some examples of what a censor list will do to a sentence:

Sentence:
Dogs and cats fight when it's raining.
Censor List:
{dog} cat rain
Censor Result:
Dogs and ***s fight when it's ****ing.
Censor List:
dog {cat} {rain}
Censor Result:
***s and cats fight when it's raining.

Do *not* use quotation marks or the results may be unexpected or it may cause errors. Make sure you are using curly brackets {} and not parentheses () when specifying exact words. Also note that you cannot censor phrases here because spaces are used as delimiters.

fermi

So putting the offending word in {} in the censor list, would result in:

Scunthorpe rather than S!!!!horpe.

But still give !!!! when the 'other' word is posted on it's own.

You may have to include a few additional filters to account for variations; plural etc; e.g. !!!!s, but that is not too hard.

tartantipster

fermi wrote: »

So putting the offending word in {} in the censor list, would result in:

Scunthorpe rather than S!!!!horpe.

But still give !!!! when the 'other' word is posted on it's own.

You may have to include a few additional filters to account for variations; plural etc; e.g. !!!!s, but that is not too hard.

MSE_Dan wrote: »

Hi folks,

Thanks for the suggestions. However, we cannot bring these changes in

1) We have a min post limit that people must reach before posting links - and have found that by using a min. character limit this discourages some spammers from posting one word posts to reach the threshold.

2) The way that VBulletin's software works prevents us from doing this. In order to ban obviously offensive profanities, any words which contain them are ****'d out. The team have looked at ways around this in the past, but have been unable to find a solution

Sorry bout these

Dan

Please try speaking to TGT - the gambling times http://www.thegamblingtimes.com or SBR - sports book review http://forum.sbrforum.com moderators, they use the same system and allow us to post one/two characters per post. Thank you.:)



P.S. Thanks fermi.;)

AandELee

The ability to see which threads you have posted in would be nice. Unless its already there and I can't find it.

I'm on one forum and they have a "view your posts" button, which links you to an area where all the topics you have commented in are stored. Everytime someone else posts on it they go to the top of the list to show that there is newer posts in them.

Would be so useful to stop having to subscribe to threads or remembering what ones I posted in.

I know I am new but just an idea.

postie_bear

Its been mentioned before but can we have tapatalk enabled, this will allow iphones, blackberry and other android phone users the ability to post fromn their phones without having to go through their phone browser.

d-seven

Rather than a 'thanks' button, how about a thumbs up/thumbs down rating system or some other kind of relavence rating for individual posts?
I tried to do a search the other day for 'jet lag' and the results threw up so many pointless posts that I gave up. So, if a thread was started about jetlag for example, then allowing users to give the posts some kind of relavence rating would be a good idea, especially seeing how many threads on these forums start off on topic, then degenerate into mindless, off-topic banter!
Also, if this was implemented, then an option on the user panel to hide posts below a certain rating so users trying to find information don't have to wade through all the off-topic stuff!

Edited to add:

The search function allows you to search 'Forums' but how about allowing you to search specific forums, thus (hopefully!) eliminating many of the spurious results from other forums. E.G. the search for 'jet lag' would be better off performed on the 'Overseas holiday and travel board' than any of the money saving or the arms or DT.

Joe_Bloggs

If somebody thanks me how do I find what they thanked me for ? All I know is that the total goes up. I would like to know the post/thread that this relates to.

How does the subscribed list work ? I did not knowingly subscribe to any of the entries in my ever growing list.


J_B.

fermi