Show Posts
This section allows you to view all posts made by this member. Note that you can only see posts made in areas you currently have access to.
Topics - Arantor
76
Features / Quote to PM
« on February 16th, 2013, 09:43 PM »
Something I've seen done - we can already send a PM to someone by clicking on it in the minimenu.
Would it be of use to be able to send a PM quoting a given post in the process? I'm thinking this would be a new item in the minimenu per post if the user can send PMs.
Would it be of use to be able to send a PM quoting a given post in the process? I'm thinking this would be a new item in the minimenu per post if the user can send PMs.
77
Bug reports / Raw HTML in Custom Profile Fields
« on February 16th, 2013, 09:34 PM »
This has multiple consequences, depending on your perspective.
So, I created a dropdown with both raw HTML and bbcode in it, as I couldn't remember whether it allowed either or neither or what. bbcode is unparsed, understandably.
Now, raw HTML is not supported as such. I'm willing to take it that this is a security measure, because the way it is implemented, the value is stored as-is in the DB and displayed without further processing later on. So it would be a security issue to just accept and handle raw HTML there, and naturally it is htmlspecialchars'ified before use.
This leads us to the interesting situation where inside the dropdown, the htmlspecialchars'ified text will be rendered as HTML inside the selectbox.
Which means there's one bug, in that the content isn't twice-parsed.
There is a separate side bug related to the selectbox. I have a piece of text with an image that's substantially bigger than a single line of text. It was the first image at hand, and was 40x40. When the selectbox is expanded, it is displayed normally. But when closed and it is the selected item, something else happens entirely. See attached. The picture shows both the expanded behaviour and the unexpanded behaviour (i.e. it doesn't change height, and the text is base-line aligned, so the text is actually out of sight)
I'm not sure what *should* be the ideal behaviour here, though.
So, I created a dropdown with both raw HTML and bbcode in it, as I couldn't remember whether it allowed either or neither or what. bbcode is unparsed, understandably.
Now, raw HTML is not supported as such. I'm willing to take it that this is a security measure, because the way it is implemented, the value is stored as-is in the DB and displayed without further processing later on. So it would be a security issue to just accept and handle raw HTML there, and naturally it is htmlspecialchars'ified before use.
This leads us to the interesting situation where inside the dropdown, the htmlspecialchars'ified text will be rendered as HTML inside the selectbox.
Which means there's one bug, in that the content isn't twice-parsed.
There is a separate side bug related to the selectbox. I have a piece of text with an image that's substantially bigger than a single line of text. It was the first image at hand, and was 40x40. When the selectbox is expanded, it is displayed normally. But when closed and it is the selected item, something else happens entirely. See attached. The picture shows both the expanded behaviour and the unexpanded behaviour (i.e. it doesn't change height, and the text is base-line aligned, so the text is actually out of sight)
I'm not sure what *should* be the ideal behaviour here, though.
78
Features / Multiquote
« on February 16th, 2013, 08:57 PM »
So I've been looking through my list of mods, and multiquote seems to come up fairly often as a request.
Now before anyone says 'but SMF/Wedge already has this', the answer is 'not really'.
OK, so yes, you can click on a post and have it be pushed to the quick reply. That's fine if quick reply is on and you only want to quote one message. In the first case, that's not really an option because it just redirects you to the full reply, in the second it's awkward - the first time you click, it sends the content to the quick reply, but then pushes you down to the quick reply.
Which brings me to conventional multiquote. The idea is that you click on multiple messages, and it adds them to a list - including across pages of a topic if desired. Then you click on a main button and all of the messages are quoted at once in the post, with appropriate quote tags.
So, how important is this? How often would it be used? Is it worth our time to investigate? I'm mostly inclined to argue that our current implementation is probably 'good enough' but I'm not normally satisfied with things that are merely 'good enough'.
Now before anyone says 'but SMF/Wedge already has this', the answer is 'not really'.
OK, so yes, you can click on a post and have it be pushed to the quick reply. That's fine if quick reply is on and you only want to quote one message. In the first case, that's not really an option because it just redirects you to the full reply, in the second it's awkward - the first time you click, it sends the content to the quick reply, but then pushes you down to the quick reply.
Which brings me to conventional multiquote. The idea is that you click on multiple messages, and it adds them to a list - including across pages of a topic if desired. Then you click on a main button and all of the messages are quoted at once in the post, with appropriate quote tags.
So, how important is this? How often would it be used? Is it worth our time to investigate? I'm mostly inclined to argue that our current implementation is probably 'good enough' but I'm not normally satisfied with things that are merely 'good enough'.
79
Plugins / Custom form (ideas, discussion)
« on February 15th, 2013, 05:23 PM »
So I'm in a fractious mood and can't settle on anything. Time for some ideas then.
The notion of needing custom forms is nothing new. Different sites have them for different purposes. Then we have the contact form plugin that already exists, and I figured I could solve both issues at once.
So here's the thought I'm having: a system that allows admins to build forms in their site with the following:
* permissions of who can see the form
* what should happen when the form is submitted (any/all of the following, would be configurable)
- create a new topic in a given board
- send emails to people
- send PMs to people
* allow creating forms out of modular units, i.e. the different things we might want in forms (textboxes, bbcboxes, numbers, select boxes etc etc)
* optional whether the CAPTCHA is required
* optionally adding them to the menu somewhere
* optionally creating an action for them for easy linking[1]
Thoughts? Does it seem like it needs anything else? Of course it would have all the usual Arantoric refinements. :eheh:
The notion of needing custom forms is nothing new. Different sites have them for different purposes. Then we have the contact form plugin that already exists, and I figured I could solve both issues at once.
So here's the thought I'm having: a system that allows admins to build forms in their site with the following:
* permissions of who can see the form
* what should happen when the form is submitted (any/all of the following, would be configurable)
- create a new topic in a given board
- send emails to people
- send PMs to people
* allow creating forms out of modular units, i.e. the different things we might want in forms (textboxes, bbcboxes, numbers, select boxes etc etc)
* optional whether the CAPTCHA is required
* optionally adding them to the menu somewhere
* optionally creating an action for them for easy linking[1]
Thoughts? Does it seem like it needs anything else? Of course it would have all the usual Arantoric refinements. :eheh:
| 1. | And SEO if that floats your boat |
80
Features / Bye Bye Recycle Bin?
« on February 15th, 2013, 05:44 AM »
It's something that we've sort of talked about before now.
Obviously some kind of method of indicating a post was deleted is needed, and some way of getting it back is also needed, as well as keeping it in context (something the current implementation can't do)
I've mocked up what I think the general admin/moderator view would be under what I've been proposing - the regular view of course is without the link to see the full version. Also note the wording 'deleted by a moderator'. If it was deleted by its author (moderator or otherwise) it would have different wording (i.e. deleted by its author)
This would also mean deleted topics wouldn't disappear off the normal board listing either.
As a result I can see this causing trouble so I'm just putting it out for discussion but this is the direction I think we want to be going.
Of course full on deletion by moderators will be possible, so you will be able to remove even the 'deleted by moderator' bits if you so desired.
Obviously some kind of method of indicating a post was deleted is needed, and some way of getting it back is also needed, as well as keeping it in context (something the current implementation can't do)
I've mocked up what I think the general admin/moderator view would be under what I've been proposing - the regular view of course is without the link to see the full version. Also note the wording 'deleted by a moderator'. If it was deleted by its author (moderator or otherwise) it would have different wording (i.e. deleted by its author)
This would also mean deleted topics wouldn't disappear off the normal board listing either.
As a result I can see this causing trouble so I'm just putting it out for discussion but this is the direction I think we want to be going.
Of course full on deletion by moderators will be possible, so you will be able to remove even the 'deleted by moderator' bits if you so desired.
81
Features / Custom profile field changes
« on February 15th, 2013, 02:37 AM »
I said I was going to do something with it, didn't I?
Here's where I'm up to right now. Mostly aesthetic changes here, combined with adding the ability to reorder fields.
I love the UI cues there, it's something we did in SimpleDesk and it is something I always liked - having something that is more than a textual indication of what you're doing. I may yet add some of the other things we did in SimpleDesk (on top of text fields, we added specific fields for integers and floating point numbers, as well as a multi-select, though that introduced its own issues)
Here's where I'm up to right now. Mostly aesthetic changes here, combined with adding the ability to reorder fields.
I love the UI cues there, it's something we did in SimpleDesk and it is something I always liked - having something that is more than a textual indication of what you're doing. I may yet add some of the other things we did in SimpleDesk (on top of text fields, we added specific fields for integers and floating point numbers, as well as a multi-select, though that introduced its own issues)
82
Off-topic / Something Nao might enjoy (and others, but Nao especially)
« on February 13th, 2013, 02:38 AM »83
Off-topic / If Twitter can do it, should we?
« on February 12th, 2013, 10:42 PM »
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/02/12/twitter_lolcatz/
Yes, Twitter have provided a LOLCATS localisation. :lol:
Yes, Twitter have provided a LOLCATS localisation. :lol:
84
Features / Post count permissions
« on February 10th, 2013, 10:46 PM »
I haven't raised this issue lately mostly because I wasn't very happy with what I'd proposed for it. But here we go.
In an ideal world, I'd ditch post count groups entirely. There are advantages to them, though, e.g. for badges and the like and if you want to provide access to boards based on post count.
But they raise issues with respect to things like permissions. Not so much from a technical standpoint, there it's all very convenient, of course - but from a usability standpoint.
Previously you'll remember my somewhat inflamed commentary on setting up post moderation using post count groups, and that exemplifies what's wrong with post count permissions. What strikes me, then, is that we actually need to set up a situation whereby we're not using post count permissions through groups.
So here's my proposal. Instead, we present the user with a UI, whereupon we can set rules. For example, grant 'lock own topics' to users once they have > 100 posts. You'd select the permission from a dropdown, set the minimum number of posts, optionally limit it within a board or similar, job done.
Where this gets really clever is that if I built it correctly with proper support from other areas, we can cleanly provide additional permissions for additional systems without having to fart about with magic group changes.
I know in the past users have wanted to do groups (and by extension, permissions) based on time since registration, karma, and even topic count. I see no reason why we couldn't set these things up with this system if handled properly. (It would mean, for performance, having to track these things, but that's not exactly a hardship to set up)
What it would mean, though, is that we'd have a single UI that could do all this cleanly - and it wouldn't even trigger a performance hit under most circumstances because most of the time, none of this is even in use on most sites... so it's only a performance issue if you use it.
Does this sound sane? If it does, I'll go away and try building it.
In an ideal world, I'd ditch post count groups entirely. There are advantages to them, though, e.g. for badges and the like and if you want to provide access to boards based on post count.
But they raise issues with respect to things like permissions. Not so much from a technical standpoint, there it's all very convenient, of course - but from a usability standpoint.
Previously you'll remember my somewhat inflamed commentary on setting up post moderation using post count groups, and that exemplifies what's wrong with post count permissions. What strikes me, then, is that we actually need to set up a situation whereby we're not using post count permissions through groups.
So here's my proposal. Instead, we present the user with a UI, whereupon we can set rules. For example, grant 'lock own topics' to users once they have > 100 posts. You'd select the permission from a dropdown, set the minimum number of posts, optionally limit it within a board or similar, job done.
Where this gets really clever is that if I built it correctly with proper support from other areas, we can cleanly provide additional permissions for additional systems without having to fart about with magic group changes.
I know in the past users have wanted to do groups (and by extension, permissions) based on time since registration, karma, and even topic count. I see no reason why we couldn't set these things up with this system if handled properly. (It would mean, for performance, having to track these things, but that's not exactly a hardship to set up)
What it would mean, though, is that we'd have a single UI that could do all this cleanly - and it wouldn't even trigger a performance hit under most circumstances because most of the time, none of this is even in use on most sites... so it's only a performance issue if you use it.
Does this sound sane? If it does, I'll go away and try building it.
85
Off-topic / Thoughts from Jeff Atwood
« on February 10th, 2013, 08:58 PM »
Very occasionally, I'll stop by Jeff's blog. Very occasionally, mind, because it's not something that usually occurs to me to do. Jeff, for those who don't know, is one of the founders of StackOverflow, and perhaps more relevantly to us, Discourse. I am still trying to get my head around the logic of some of the things Discourse is doing, and I'm not convinced that it's quite the 'next generation' of forums that he's pitching it as. I strongly dislike some of the directions taken.[1]
But he has some very interesting thoughts I'd like to add.
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2012/02/listen-to-your-community-but-dont-let-them-tell-you-what-to-do.html
I believe this is something we do, and I believe it's one of the problems SMF has had, and as far as I know still generally does have.
We try to invite all kinds of thoughts and suggestions. I don't promise to implement anything. But I promise we'll look at what's suggested, no matter who suggests it, and if it makes sense to us we'll build it.
And we don't go off and build huge systems for minor features. We won't go building huge major features unless we think the need for it is justified. That doesn't mean we won't build things, it means that if you want to see it implemented, give us a reason to do it. "Because it's cool" isn't really enough.
And yes, we will be honest about things we won't do. There's a lot of things I've made very clear I will not build myself, and that I won't allow into the core, and I'm pretty sure Nao has said the same.
The other nugget I want to share, is http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2012/12/web-discussions-flat-by-design.html
We've had discussions about threaded topics, and putting aside the technical matters, there is a major usability aspect to it, and I believe it's partly why I avoid Reddit because I have no freakin' idea what the hell's going on at any given time >_<
But it's certainly food for thought. I'm going to just leave it here for now and let people have at it before I weigh in with my $0.02 on where I see it going.
But he has some very interesting thoughts I'd like to add.
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2012/02/listen-to-your-community-but-dont-let-them-tell-you-what-to-do.html
I believe this is something we do, and I believe it's one of the problems SMF has had, and as far as I know still generally does have.
We try to invite all kinds of thoughts and suggestions. I don't promise to implement anything. But I promise we'll look at what's suggested, no matter who suggests it, and if it makes sense to us we'll build it.
And we don't go off and build huge systems for minor features. We won't go building huge major features unless we think the need for it is justified. That doesn't mean we won't build things, it means that if you want to see it implemented, give us a reason to do it. "Because it's cool" isn't really enough.
And yes, we will be honest about things we won't do. There's a lot of things I've made very clear I will not build myself, and that I won't allow into the core, and I'm pretty sure Nao has said the same.
The other nugget I want to share, is http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2012/12/web-discussions-flat-by-design.html
We've had discussions about threaded topics, and putting aside the technical matters, there is a major usability aspect to it, and I believe it's partly why I avoid Reddit because I have no freakin' idea what the hell's going on at any given time >_<
But it's certainly food for thought. I'm going to just leave it here for now and let people have at it before I weigh in with my $0.02 on where I see it going.
| 1. | For example the reputation aspect as being effectively a sort of power control, because it actually encourages elitism and cliquism than not. It's why I long since gave up on contributing to SO. |
86
Features: Posts & Topics / Moderation Filters
« on February 8th, 2013, 11:25 PM »
Feature: Moderation Filters
Developer: Arantor
Target: Moderators
Status: 98% (there's things I could do with it that aren't currently done, but things most people probably won't even notice)
Comment:
This one needs a bit of explaining. I never liked the way SMF handled post moderation. I remember the first time I did it, and it bugged the hell out of me. So I came up with this.
Essentially, the idea is to run a series of rules when a post is made, and potentially take action based on the post, its contents and/or its author.
Rules are constructed in the forum of:
* Moderate the post... when any new post is made... if the following conditions are met.
or
* Prevent the post being made... when a new topic is started... if the following conditions are met.
There are also other options available, too.
In essence, this gives you very fine control over moderation without having to manually involve moderators. Don't like certain words being used (e.g. profanity)? Easy, just create rules to prevent the post even being made if it contains a word you don't like.
You can also mix and match criteria, for example you can block posts being made, in a certain board, if they contain certain words and it isn't a moderator making the post. The functionality is there to enable you to tailor the automatic moderation for your community, and the system is extensible, too.
Out of the box, you can prevent a post, moderate a post, or even pin/lock a post[1], limited to just new topics, or for any post. And out of the box you have the choice of a lot of variables: what board the post is in, the post count of the user, the warning level, content of the subject, content of the body, which group the user may/may not be in, or how many links are in the post.
Already, too, there are additional plugins for this, which add facilities like how many smileys are used, how many images are used, the number of words in a post and more, so there really are a lot of options for flexibility.
Developer: Arantor
Target: Moderators
Status: 98% (there's things I could do with it that aren't currently done, but things most people probably won't even notice)
Comment:
This one needs a bit of explaining. I never liked the way SMF handled post moderation. I remember the first time I did it, and it bugged the hell out of me. So I came up with this.
Essentially, the idea is to run a series of rules when a post is made, and potentially take action based on the post, its contents and/or its author.
Rules are constructed in the forum of:
* Moderate the post... when any new post is made... if the following conditions are met.
or
* Prevent the post being made... when a new topic is started... if the following conditions are met.
There are also other options available, too.
In essence, this gives you very fine control over moderation without having to manually involve moderators. Don't like certain words being used (e.g. profanity)? Easy, just create rules to prevent the post even being made if it contains a word you don't like.
You can also mix and match criteria, for example you can block posts being made, in a certain board, if they contain certain words and it isn't a moderator making the post. The functionality is there to enable you to tailor the automatic moderation for your community, and the system is extensible, too.
Out of the box, you can prevent a post, moderate a post, or even pin/lock a post[1], limited to just new topics, or for any post. And out of the box you have the choice of a lot of variables: what board the post is in, the post count of the user, the warning level, content of the subject, content of the body, which group the user may/may not be in, or how many links are in the post.
Already, too, there are additional plugins for this, which add facilities like how many smileys are used, how many images are used, the number of words in a post and more, so there really are a lot of options for flexibility.
| 1. | For example, a rule where the post is made by a moderator, and begins with /lock to lock a topic quickly. |
87
Features / Reply to New Topic
« on February 8th, 2013, 07:22 PM »
I came across Discourse recently; it's a forum built on Ruby on Rails, and I described it as the bastard lovechild of Vanilla and Google Wave. This is not a good thing.
But it does have some interesting ideas, most interestingly for me, it has 'Reply to New Topic'.
The idea is that you can hit the reply button, leaving a reference back to the original topic (e.g. as a quote or link) but essentially convert what would otherwise be an off-topic tangent into a new topic.
It's one method of keeping things on topic in what is essentially a flat topic model like we have.
Thoughts?
But it does have some interesting ideas, most interestingly for me, it has 'Reply to New Topic'.
The idea is that you can hit the reply button, leaving a reference back to the original topic (e.g. as a quote or link) but essentially convert what would otherwise be an off-topic tangent into a new topic.
It's one method of keeping things on topic in what is essentially a flat topic model like we have.
Thoughts?
88
Features / Editing PMs
« on February 8th, 2013, 07:16 PM »
So, this came up in recent conversation: the ability to edit PMs.
You can edit posts, should you be able to edit PMs that you yourself have sent?
Putting aside the small issue relating to email notifications, is this something that you would ever find useful? Concerns?
I can see the use of editing a PM for 10 minutes or so before actually sending in case you want to make last minute typo fixes or whatever.
Thoughts?
You can edit posts, should you be able to edit PMs that you yourself have sent?
Putting aside the small issue relating to email notifications, is this something that you would ever find useful? Concerns?
I can see the use of editing a PM for 10 minutes or so before actually sending in case you want to make last minute typo fixes or whatever.
Thoughts?
89
Off-topic / And people wonder why I think Facebook Connect is a bad thing
« on February 8th, 2013, 02:12 PM »
http://allthingsd.com/20130207/in-one-fell-swoop-apparent-facebook-glitch-deep-sixes-the-web/
Just read it, watch the video and then you'll understand why I find it awkward.
Just read it, watch the video and then you'll understand why I find it awkward.
90
About 50 minutes ago I realised it was 40 minutes until I should be going to bed, and I wondered how much of this I could conceivably pull off in 40 minutes.
Well, I got entrenched in a little bit more debugging than I'd hoped, but here's what I managed in that time. (The DB stuff works, the changes to the like handler work, now just need to add a button for it :whistle: (Nao, can you add the thumb up and maybe even thumb down icons to the icons that can be used in buttons please? I don't like touching that, it's an optimisational thing) Heck even the likes popup works.)
Code is a shade ugly and there's some slightly nasty abuses going on that proper refactoring should avoid (like where the likes handling takes place, right now Home just wholesale includes Display.php to get the likes handler)
Well, I got entrenched in a little bit more debugging than I'd hoped, but here's what I managed in that time. (The DB stuff works, the changes to the like handler work, now just need to add a button for it :whistle: (Nao, can you add the thumb up and maybe even thumb down icons to the icons that can be used in buttons please? I don't like touching that, it's an optimisational thing) Heck even the likes popup works.)
Code is a shade ugly and there's some slightly nasty abuses going on that proper refactoring should avoid (like where the likes handling takes place, right now Home just wholesale includes Display.php to get the likes handler)