General Website Queries: 2018 Onward

The present arrangement is fine with me. I only ever look at a small fraction of the threads here, and just assume the mods do whatever they need to in order to keep things at such a high level. I know it's a difficult job, and I sometimes wonder why they put up with it. This place is as free of BS as any forum I've ever seen, so keep doin' whatcher doin' mods.

Having said that, there is one forum that has (or at least had) a system of reactions that I like and feel it works well. There are four options, with appropriate icons: Like, Agree, Thanks, and Awesome. The last few times I've been there, the setup had changed, and I haven't spent enough time there to figure out what's going on for sure. I'm pretty sure that arrangement involves a software add-on that has to be purchased. Implementing such a change would, I'm sure, be much easier if we still had our Gandalf.
 
It seems to me that the 2 reaction emojis we have available mean slightly diffrent things to different people. Humans are generally more subtle and nuanced than emojis, but I am glad that we have the 2 that we have and I wouldn't want to lose them.

Personally, I use the like one to say 'yeah, I agree' and I use the love one to say 'excellent!" or sometimes "that's hilarious!"

If I feel the need to say anything else (as I sometimes do) I will usually hit reply and type my response. You can always insert other emojis into the text of your message - and there a bewildering array of them, some of which seem to express very complex emotions I have yet to experience! :actw:
 
I preferred the range of options we had, but the only one I would particularly want back is the 'sad' reaction. I find it is a useful option when it doesn't feel quite appropriate to 'like' (for example with the posts regarding Enola's recent passing). I did 'like' and 'love' a lot of tributes, but it would have been nice to have the sad option too. It's not a reaction I've seen misused or abused but it sounds like I've missed something.
 
Cloudbusting said:
I preferred the range of options we had, but the only one I would particularly want back is the 'sad' reaction. I find it is a useful option when it doesn't feel quite appropriate to 'like' (for example with the posts regarding Enola's recent passing). I did 'like' and 'love' a lot of tributes, but it would have been nice to have the sad option too. It's not a reaction I've seen misused or abused but it sounds like I've missed something.
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I think the main problem was with the 'laughing' one, which really should only be applied to jokes, not denigrating someone else's post by suggesting it was laughable. Everyone who makes the effort to post deserves some level of respect until they prove otherwise.
 
Cochise said:
I think the main problem was with the 'laughing' one, which really should only be applied to jokes, not denigrating someone else's post by suggesting it was laughable. Everyone who makes the effort to post deserves some level of respect until they prove otherwise.
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If they could be turned on or off on demand, the laughing one would be good for a jokes thread.
 
Cochise said:
I think the main problem was with the 'laughing' one, which really should only be applied to jokes, not denigrating someone else's post by suggesting it was laughable. Everyone who makes the effort to post deserves some level of respect until they prove otherwise.
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Yeah I can see the potential problems with that one. Now I just tend to 'like' things which make me chuckle, or, if something really makes me laugh, I might actually comment (@escargot's post about the 'balloon knot' avatar being one example :chuckle:)
 
Sid said:
I think it would be a good Idea to ask people (politely), to hit the 'reply' button when they intend make add a comment to a comment that's already been entered on here, as half the time I'm reading stuff and then have to track-back and search on the written stories to try and find out what the heck they are making comments about?
Maybe the 'reply' button should be highlighted maybe in red &/or, in Bold?
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Yithian said:
Trust me when I say we have messaged a couple of people about it repeatedly with little positive change.

It might actually be possible to alter the colour of the reply button, but I'm very pessimistic about the chance of it altering behaviour.
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Surely in these cases, the poster is replying to the last comment on the thread?
Otherwise, it would be a bit presumtuous of them to think that we would know what and who the heck they were replying to.
 
Floyd1 said:
Surely in these cases, the poster is replying to the last comment on the thread?
Otherwise, it would be a bit presumtuous of them to think that we would know what and who the heck they were replying to.
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No, in most of the odd comments/inputs that I've noticed, they can be just an obsolete comment to others that have also previously entered an obsolete comment, like it's being used for social messaging, not making any valid comment on anything related to any valid posts?
 
Sid said:
No, in most of the odd comments/inputs that I've noticed, they can be just an obsolete comment to others that have also previously entered an obsolete comment, like it's being used for social messaging, not making any valid comment on anything related to any valid posts?
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If you use a screen reader it's very very difficult. Same with videos pictures etc that don't have any editorial comment.

But people Know Their Rights! :rollingw:
 
Sid said:
No, in most of the odd comments/inputs that I've noticed, they can be just an obsolete comment to others that have also previously entered an obsolete comment, like it's being used for social messaging, not making any valid comment on anything related to any valid posts?
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Sometimes I have posted a reply to a comment that I believe to have been the last one (and therefore not needing a 'quote' to make sense) only to press the Post Reply button - and then realise that there were three more pages after the page I was on... Sometimes we need a 'blush' emoticon.
 
Floyd1 said:
Surely in these cases, the poster is replying to the last comment on the thread?
Otherwise, it would be a bit presumtuous of them to think that we would know what and who the heck they were replying to.
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Except that you don't know if another comment gets posted just before yours. I had this problem recently on a thread that I commented that I didn't get what was being referenced and then reread several of the prior posts trying to understand. I then corrected my post adding a comment and mentioning who's post I figured they were replying to.
 
brownmane said:
Except that you don't know if another comment gets posted just before yours. I had this problem recently on a thread that I commented that I didn't get what was being referenced and then reread several of the prior posts trying to understand. I then corrected my post adding a comment and mentioning who's post I figured they were replying to.
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Don't you get a message saying other posts have been added and asking if you want to view them? Not sure whether it will pick up everything within the last however many minutes, but I've seen this quite often.
 
Tunn11 said:
Don't you get a message saying other posts have been added and asking if you want to view them? Not sure whether it will pick up everything within the last however many minutes, but I've seen this quite often.
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Yes, but this doesn't change where your post shows up in the discussion. This shows up when you're in the middle of post as far as I can figure, so that doesn't necessarily put your post directly below the one you're commenting on.

I generally "reply" or mention the poster's name.
 
Horsa said:
If they could be turned on or off on demand, the laughing one would be good for a jokes thread.
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Unfortunately they're board-wide: we can't enable/disable them for individual forums.

I've gone back over this thread. As Yith mentioned earlier, I switched all the other reactions off a while back as there was a small but noticeable group of posters who were using them in the oh-so-clever manner in which they use gifs and artfully-worded posts to push the envelope in the rather touching belief that it's all ambiguous enough to avoid modly prosecution (it isn't).

All of this said, I take the point that most used them appropriately, and their (correct) use has been attested. I will consider whether or not to reinstate a couple or more of them.

If - if - they do return, their use will be very carefully monitored and a return to misuse will result in the whole thing being disarmed. We have better things to do.
 
stu neville said:
Unfortunately they're board-wide: we can't enable/disable them for individual forums.

I've gone back over this thread. As Yith mentioned earlier, I switched all the other reactions off a while back as there was a small but noticeable group of posters who were using them in the oh-so-clever manner in which they use gifs and artfully-worded posts to push the envelope in the rather touching belief that it's all ambiguous enough to avoid modly prosecution (it isn't).

All of this said, I take the point that most used them appropriately, and their (correct) use has been attested. I will consider whether or not to reinstate a couple or more of them.

If - if - they do return, their use will be very carefully monitored and a return to misuse will result in the whole thing being disarmed. We have better things to do.
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O.K. Thank you very much for the information. (I'm very sorry for the suggestion which I initially thought was good if possible. After your communications I realise that that's not possible.)

I'm very sorry that you had to make that decision but understand why it was made & respect both the decision made & the fact that it was your decision to make.

Thank you very much. I appreciate that the administrative & moderation team do the job voluntarily to ensure that the forum remains a well-run, safe & secure place where we have the ability to have fun, friendly & fascinating conversations comfortably & without fear of being mocked, teased, laughed at or attacked. I also appreciate that you have a lot of work to do & lives off the computer. Thank you all for all your hard work.
 
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Horsa said:
O.K. Thank you very much for the information. (I'm very sorry for the suggestion which I initially thought was good if possible. After your communications I realise that that's not possible.)

I'm very sorry that you had to make that decision but understand why it was made & respect both the decision made & the fact that it was your decision to make.

Thank you very much. I appreciate that the administrative & moderation team do the job voluntarily to ensure that the forum remains a well-run, safe & secure place where we have the ability to have friendly & fascinating conversations comfortably & without fear of being mocked, teased, laughed at or attacked. I also appreciate that you have a lot of work to do & lives off the computer. Thank you all for all your hard work.
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And in today's world, that has more importance/relevance than ever. :twothumbs:
 
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brownmane said:
Except that you don't know if another comment gets posted just before yours. I had this problem recently on a thread that I commented that I didn't get what was being referenced and then reread several of the prior posts trying to understand. I then corrected my post adding a comment and mentioning who's post I figured they were replying to.
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Be quicker in replying then!
 
Floyd1 said:
Congratulations. (Or commiserations- depending on your point of view).
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The former, very much. Thank you.
Floyd1 said:
If I were to post (without using the reply button) in reply to a post from three pages back, it would be very arrogant of me to assume that that person (and everyone else) would know what I was referring to.
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Depends on the flow of the thread - if it's tightly focused this isn't usually an issue but nonetheless we encourage people to use quote or reply just to keep it clear. And that's on the poster.
 
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