Replies – Forums – Adrian – Page 77

Adrian

Member

26/10/2006 at 8:25 am in reply to: Profiles

OK – your webmistress speaking.
So listen!!!

In the past I have consdered adding extra fields to the profile so that people can describe more accurately themselves without having to write a peice of prose.
But I backed off from this – and evcn removed all those sort of fields from the forum profiles because I was concerned that people would accuse me of trying to pidgeon-hole or stereotype members. This would be particularly true if the information had fixed choices – but maybe I’ve been oversensitive in having nothing otehr than the message.

Even simple things like finding out roughly how old someone is is currently not possible.

So if this thread can produce some consensus about what woudl be reasonable ‘prompts’ to give people on the profile – then I’m happy to add them into the database.

So suggetions please….

Adrian

Member

08/10/2006 at 9:22 am in reply to: Click photo or name in forum to get to profile and pictures

Your memory is correcty.
As part of a set of very complex changes I made to make the web site “google friendly” – I was advised to remove the direct profile links.
This is because you want Google to follow links to all the articles being posted and index them in preference to indexing the more static profiles.

As a result you have to open up the forum and then click on the profile button at the bottom of the post. Same effect – different route to get there.

And I can assure you that the current high indexing of TgR by Google only happened after I made these changes – and also accounts for the highest number of user ever recorded – 86 in August 2005. They were all Googlebots indexing the revised web site.

Just another example of how our lives are ruled by Google now!

Adrian

Member

04/10/2006 at 9:55 am in reply to: View posts since your last visit? .

Ahh – someone noticed.
I broke something somewhere in the forum when I was integrating the web site a few weeks back… and I can’t figure out why the ‘last visit’ seems to update spontaneously now. So I’m sorry we will have to live with recent posts till I get some inspiration….
Amanda

Adrian

Member

27/09/2006 at 10:07 am in reply to: Tasteful photos in public albums, please

Fistly, thankyou everyone for posting such well thought out comments in response to Alice’s original observations – it is a great help to me.

Obviously I want to avoid the role of being the person who makes a decision as to what is or isn’t acceptable for general public viewing. That would be way beyond what Judy and I do at the moment in ensuring that the public site doesn’t get hijacked into an adult site by inappropriate postings,

So here is my proposal that I’m working on…
based very much on how youtube (www.youtube.com) is sorting out the videos people post that are slightly risque.

Each full size picture displayed on the web and profile text displayed on the web site will have a button next to it marked
“Flag this as inappropriate”

If two members flag an item as inappropriate then it will no longer display by default – and instead there will be a button marked
“Display All Content”

If you request to display all content you will be advised that what is displayed may contain content that is inappropriate for some users.

Once you have accepted all content the web site will display as it does at the moment….

Finally – any pciture that has been marked as inappropriate will not be selected to be displayed on the main entry page.

Sounds complicated in words – but shouldn’t be too hard to code….

… gets out coding wand….

Amanda

Adrian

Member

26/09/2006 at 10:33 am in reply to: Sometimes….(what???)

I don’t find being accused by a perfect stranger of having a “god complex” particularly nice, nor do I like my attempts to try and maintain the integrity of the web site labelled as “preposterous”.
It seems a bit sureal to devote a lot of time and money to running the site just to provide a forum for people to slag me off. But that’s what I do – so fire away Monique!

Monique wrote to me…

Is this not taking the god complex too far?

I thought that ‘we’ were more capable of understanding and caring for ‘everyone’ more so for each other.
I can not see for any reason why someone can’t post a small sentence even if its to say they agree with the thread, its normal.
And to tell people virtually to be more interesting/consistant with their posting is ridiculous.
I believe this new idea is preposterous, if there is valid reason for this move then Im all ears.

If… you want class on your website then you’re clutching at straws as you can’t ‘choose’ or decide how people want to be or be perceived.
You may aswell just put a IQ test on new user sign-ups.
The reputation concept is borderline as it is, as its not a popularity contest.
In the meantime I’ll be avoiding posting here. No great loss Im sure.

I can help you avoid posting by putting a ban on you – but I won’t cos that would be too “god like” behaviour?

Adrian

Member

26/09/2006 at 8:33 am in reply to: Sometimes….(what???)

OK – I rise to the bait.
I agree that control over what information is valuable is a difficullt area.
It depends on the circumstances of who is imparting and who seeking information.

But I hold that postings with 4 words (yes we have them!) are just wasting bandwidth and generally reflect the posters over-inflated opinion of themselves rather than any intent to impart real information to others.

Then what does it say when you start a new topic with the title – “Sometimes…” – like this thread?
To me it means that you don’t want to help readers find out if the topic is of interest but instead want them to have to open up the forum and read it.

So in addition to requiring at least enough words in a post to convey some information to others perhaps I should remind members that topic names are valuable to readers and shouldn’t be abused.

If you can’t identify what your posting is about why should others have to find out the hard way?

Perhaps “Somethimes” should have been “Sometimes we as individuals have to accept some constraints for the greater good of the comunity” but that I know wouldn’t have fitted!

Adrian

Member

23/09/2006 at 1:15 am in reply to: Tasteful photos in public albums, please

I’ll be very interested to read what people have to say in response to Alice’s posting. I’d much rather that the group as a whole forms the policy for the web site rather than me or any other individual dictating it. At the moment I only censor ‘adult’ pictures – ones with private parts on display or clearly indicated.

Adrian

Member

08/09/2006 at 12:11 pm in reply to: Notify me when reply is posted

I’ve edited the smileys – turned out that was an easy one to fix
So as you can see
: – p and : p give :-p :p

I’m locking this topic now as I think I have implemented the requested changes

Adrian

Member

08/09/2006 at 12:02 pm in reply to: Notify me when reply is posted

Alice,
The issue about “Notify Me when Replies are Posted” being set.
This was a side effect of my hiding most of the forum profile settings – the less people can change the easier it is for me to customise the web site.

But I have changed the posting code so it always clears the flag. It will even kill the notfication if it was set and you edit the message.

End result is that there will only be notifications if you explicitly select it when you make your posting.

Amanda