This topic was marked solved by its starter, on April 1st, 2014, 08:07 PM
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[Poll] Board status icons: what's the point?
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Poll

Fix or remove the "unread" status?

Fix!
3 (17.6%)
Remove and replace with what you suggested!
13 (76.5%)
Remove everything!
1 (5.9%)
Total Members Voted: 14

Nao

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[Poll] Board status icons: what's the point?
« on March 27th, 2014, 07:50 PM »Last edited on March 28th, 2014, 09:50 AM
Regarding "New Post is indicated where none exists", I'm interested in knowing if people actually use the board index icons (or "New" label) to determine where they have unread posts.

Personally, whatever the forum, on the homepage I'll only use either the recent topics, unread posts, unread replies and recent posts links. Or, if I have to deal with a board index, I'll look for the last post's date on the right of each forum.

As such, then, I could imagine using board icon transparency to determine whether a board is 'hot'. Even if you've already read it... It could simply take the latest post's date, and if it's older than a day, decrease icon opacity by 10%, if it's older than a week, decrease by 20%, if it's older than a month, decrease by 30%, if it's older than a year, decrease by 50%. To me, that would be more interesting. Maybe it'd encourage admins to 'revive' some boards that have less user investment, I don't know.

Yes, the issue mentioned seems to be a Wedge bug, probably related to a commit I made a few years ago where I was cleaning up some 'boardseen' links, and $_SESSION work on board read states. I just don't know if this 'feature' is something that other forums do because 'it's the natural thing to do', or because it's 'what others do, so let's do it too.'

Drunken Clam

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Re: Board icons: what's the point?
« Reply #1, on March 27th, 2014, 07:57 PM »
Quote from Nao on March 27th, 2014, 07:50 PM
Personally, whatever the forum, on the homepage I'll only use either the recent topics, unread posts, unread replies and recent posts links. Or, if I have to deal with a board index, I'll look for the last post's date on the right of each forum.
That's exactly what I do. :cool:
Quote from Nao on March 27th, 2014, 07:50 PM
As such, then, I could imagine using board icon transparency to determine whether a board is 'hot'. Even if you've already read it... It could simply take the latest post's date, and if it's older than a day, decrease icon opacity by 10%, if it's older than a week, decrease by 20%, if it's older than a month, decrease by 30%, if it's older than a year, decrease by 50%. To me, that would be more interesting. Maybe it'd encourage admins to 'revive' some boards that have less user investment, I don't know.
Sounds good to me!

Nao

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Bunstonious

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Re: Board icons: what's the point?
« Reply #3, on March 27th, 2014, 11:21 PM »
Quote from Drunken Clam on March 27th, 2014, 07:57 PM
Quote from Nao on March 27th, 2014, 07:50 PM
Personally, whatever the forum, on the homepage I'll only use either the recent topics, unread posts, unread replies and recent posts links. Or, if I have to deal with a board index, I'll look for the last post's date on the right of each forum.
That's exactly what I do. :cool:
+1
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Re: Board icons: what's the point?
« Reply #4, on March 27th, 2014, 11:28 PM »
TBH... the icons on the menu look a bit old fashion to me. the one for media could just give the count to right side, all other icons should remain. on the boards except like you say the new or just a number or a green dot.



I voted. in the poll!

regards,
Maxx

Nao

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Re: Board icons: what's the point?
« Reply #5, on March 28th, 2014, 12:08 AM »
Quote from Maxx on March 27th, 2014, 11:28 PM
TBH... the icons on the menu look a bit old fashion to me.
But this has nothing to do with the topic..? ;)

Menu icons are mostly taken from a single icon set, to keep a semblance of harmony, but it's hard to get it right. In fact, my concern would be mostly with the notification numbers next to Admin and Media, which I find too 'visible, even though it was exactly the point.
Quote from Maxx on March 27th, 2014, 11:28 PM
the one for media could just give the count to right side, all other icons should remain. on the boards except like you say the new or just a number or a green dot.
Again, nothing to do with the topic...... :^^;:

This is what I'm talking about ;)

📎 boardicons.png - 4.19 kB, 126x130, viewed 458 times.

Re: Board icons: what's the point?
« Reply #6, on March 28th, 2014, 12:17 AM »
I know and sorry , but just thought I'd bring it up, while it was on my mind :(
But those are not really needed as mentioned above...transparency would be better!

regards,
Maxx

Bunstonious

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Nao

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Re: Board icons: what's the point?
« Reply #8, on March 28th, 2014, 07:30 AM »
Nope, PSP 7. My tool of choice for the last 10 years.

Maxx, transparency? Don't get it.

Fishing for more votes!

Bunstonious

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Nao

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Re: Board icons: what's the point?
« Reply #10, on March 28th, 2014, 09:29 AM »
Don't bother, I just don't like other tools for bitmap editing... Not even recent versions of PSP. This one's something like 10 years old, maybe more, but I just like it better.

I could have used a vector arrow for my screenshot, PSP7 has these, I've used them before, but it would have taken a couple of minutes to get it right, and my goal was to just point at the icons. What's the problem with my funny arrows..?

Anyway. Poll is tied for now... I'm a bit concerned, because I don't know where the bug started, so saying 'fix' is easier said than done. Pandos, if you want me to fix... Can you help? :P
Re: Board icons: what's the point?
« Reply #11, on March 28th, 2014, 09:49 AM »
I'm currently doing a fair compare of SMF 2.0 vs Wedge's codebase, looking for topicseen in the first and [';]seen in the second...
Interestingly, no code seems to have been changed, apart from renaming topicseen to seen.

I also did a thorough compare within Display.php, MessageIndex.php and Subs-Post.php, and couldn't find any single difference, really.

So, my guess is that I didn't create a bug... It's just a flawed system. If you want a proper 'unread' status on boards, you'll *have* to do better than store stuff into a (volatile) session variable.

If anyone is willing to help fix this, then feel free to offer your services. Otherwise, I'll eventually remove boardseen and seen variables altogether.

Pandos

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[Poll] Re: Board status icons: what's the point?
« Reply #12, on March 28th, 2014, 09:56 AM »
Sorry, dropped my vote for the wrong choice :)
I'm for the second solution. But if you want to have it fixed, I can look into this.

As far as I can see, it could be a problem with caching and/or sessions. But I must look a bit deeper.
# dpkg-reconfigure brain
error: brain is not installed or configured

Nao

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[Poll] Re: Board status icons: what's the point?
« Reply #13, on March 28th, 2014, 10:18 AM »
I don't *want* to have it fixed... I tried to, but I don't see the point in spending two days on fixing something that's hard to fix (session variables, YAY!), and that I don't even see the point of. Even back in the SMF days, when I was a die-hard fanatic of the software and didn't consider forking it for a second (well, that wasn't possible anyway), I thought these 'topicseen' links were UGLY and had no point. I never used the feature. I mean, I see these icons, some of which are differently styled, etc, but it's just... There. "Okay. Fine. What else? Let's look at Unread Topics now..."
So, basically, I really think that some competitor added that feature at some point in the early 2000's, let's say it was vBulletin or something else, and the SMF guys got requests from a few people about adding the same thing to SMF. For the life of me, I can't see why you'd want to visit a board BECAUSE it has unread posts. You'd want to view the Unread Topics page. DONE.

(Y'know, you can remove a vote after you cast it, as long as the poll allows it... This one does ;))

Pandos

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[Poll] Re: Board status icons: what's the point?
« Reply #14, on March 28th, 2014, 10:27 AM »
Yeah, just changed my choice :)
And yes. It's very ugly to handle with this kind of things and I believe that the majority of users will use the recent topics feature.
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