New Forum Format

Re: mine of September 15th, I made sure that all my attempts at making edits were within the 15 minute time limit.Most disturbing was the fact that, having pushed the "Post Comment" button, I was unable to change anything and couldn't delete all or any part of my post.
The lesson for me seems to be not to push the "Post Comment" button until you are entirely satisfied with what you have written and the idea of copying and pasting from a word processor has just become too difficult. Seems to rule out longer well-considered posts!

@Badger - The quote button/feature wasn't working and displaying correctly with the new forum software. So they probably just removed the button until it can be figured out. I know, a big disappointment. It was one of my favorite features in this forum to. In the mean time, people have been quoting by changing the color and style of the text of the quote.

Personal or "not so Personal" messaging:

Perhaps it's a matter of age but my Forum experience is degraded by a PM system that advertises it's protocol as, 'Post and Comment' rather than 'Send and Reply' I also find "Add" rather than "Forward" rather jarring to my sensibilities. I have no clue how public a personal conversation might become as people get added to what was initially intended as a personal communication.


Maybe I went through the Looking Glass one too many times. 😆

There used to be a button at the top with a drop down menu where it was possible to choose the index to all members. How is that done now? Also, can't figure out where to go to change my password.

@
[email protected]Click on [email protected] at the top for your password, dont know about the other.

Would it be possible to make the forum let you know which discussion and when a user mentions your login name.So if I was to put @rook in a post, when the user rook logged on, a list of any new mentions of this user would appear for rook.
Hope this makes sense.

p.s. Hope you do not mind using you as an example rook 😀

Ok so then above idea already does exist and some how it worked in the above post by accident, I dont know why it dosent work other times when I want it to ~X( grrrrr!

EDIT ok i get it you have to type it you cant cut and past:(
silly me.

Conversations

I like a lot of what's been produced and am slowly learning to exploit some of the new features in the Forum. However, don't plan on my "liking" any post more than another.

Sorry guys, I'm totally against the "Social Networking" trend in this Forum. The [twitter/facebook/google+] flavor of the forum seems inappropriate in an environment where anonymity is important.
Recently, two personal messages (aka conversations), not intended for my eyes, appeared in my "Inbox" then vanished an hour or so after they appeared.

I've not been into hooking-up via the Aneros Forum and it's ancillary facilities but if I were I would deeply regret having my deepest personal feelings opened to others outside the sphere I had intended.

I have no clue whether we were victims of a database, programming, or design error or perhaps something as simple as a backup-restore problem. All strange since one of the "pm's" was only a few hours old while the other was nearly a week old.

There was another possibility since there was a similarity in addresses that may have caused someone to make a cockpit error. Perhaps it would be better to return to a Member list and not attempt to automate the addressing of "conversations."

I endorse the KISS principle. Let's get back to straightforward personal email and knock off the social linking.

"To:" "From:" "Cc:" & "Blind Cc:" work for me.

otoh, for public posts in the forum, the links seem appropriate.

... rook

KISS. Keep It Simple, Stupid.

I endorse this product and/or service.

Yes! I totally agree with Rook and Twiltin.

@CT - Any word yet on disabling e-mail notifications for accepted answers?

Oh, and another thing: Does anyone else have trouble from time to time with it opening up above the last post you've read, like at the top of the page? It happens to me at least 20% of the time, and I'm making extra sure I am clicking in the right place.
What's going on with that?

Hmmm, when the forum was in the transitionary phase it was accessible on iPhone, this was great for me, however its since not availible. I can get the desktop site using chrome but cannot reply. Would love the mobile access back

@CT - So I've noticed over time with this new forum version that I goto the "General Discussion" area to see what is being talked about and what kind of questions are being asked. I view all posts in that category that are new. And a few times I happen to get back into "All Discussions" again, and notice that there are still new posts. And so today I browsed through the different categories and saw that a lot of these new posts that are in other categories appear like they should be in the "General Discussion" area.

What's going on here? Is this forum software error? Or user error of not knowing where to post and no one is moderating in terms of moving discussions to appropriate areas?

This doesn't bode well for the over all health of the forums. Particularly when I realize that I've missed all sorts of discussions and questions I could have responded to. So likely this has confused other users to. In addition to categories of posts not being in appropriate places.

I also notice that there is a "Blog" forum category that doesn't seem to have anything to do the Blogs. Huh?

Am I misunderstanding something, or is there problems that need to be corrected here?

@CT - Two other things...

One feature I see missing that was in the old forum software version, is numbering of posts within a thread. I find this important when there is a certain post within a large thread that you need to refer someone to. You need to be able to tell them what post number it is.

Also, regarding the bandwidth issue I brought up earlier. I believe I've figured out what the cause is. So with this new forum software version, each page communicates back with the forum server every few seconds. Likely to update the who's online section, update whether new messages have come in, save drafts that are being written, and probably other things I'm not aware of. The problem with this is that when you use a lot of tabs in the Internet browser like I do of opening each new post in a separate tab, that means each tab is communicating back with the server. That seems like an unnecessary waste of bandwidth on both ends.

Most everything is working good now; the only problem I have is this stupid "Request Time Out" notice if I haven't read and deleted the thread within a few minutes.

@Love_is Thanks for mentioning the bandwidth issue. I tried to describe this to @CT some weeks ago when I opened up a few threads in different tabs, walked away from the computer, and when I came back some time later noticed that a few megabytes had been transferred (unnecessarily in my opinion) in my absence. I'm one of those unfortunates who gets billed by the byte (or kilobyte in my case) with the Internet service I'm currently using, so every little bit helps.

@aneros44309 - No problem. Thanks for backing me up on this issue with your experience. I think it is an important problem to resolve.

@CT - In an effort to make these forums better, and not make your job any more difficult and/or stressful...

I keep seeing new and continued off topic threads in the "Blogs" and "Aneros Chat Center" categories. And I've noticed that Aneros Support has moved some off topic posts, but only when they occur in the sticky/announcement threads. It's my own humble opinion that continued ignoring of where posts and threads should be placed and started should be observed by the moderators. Otherwise the forums here will end up being a huge mess which will be difficult to browse posts within each category. No point in having categories, if the topics for the categories are not observed and enforced. Might as well just have one big General Discussion area if the time and monetary expense cannot be justified to have an employee moderate the forums.

Speaking of which, I'm not sure that a Blogs category makes sense. People are expected to post about their blog posts? Why not remove this category and just add an obvious Blogs link in the forums like you have on the main page of aneros.com?

Just suggestions. Take it all with a grain of salt as needed.
Thanks. 🙂

And another quick addition...
Could also use links for "Chat" and "WIKI", in addition to the "Blogs", in the Forums. Thanks. 🙂

I didn't discover until later that if you start a new discussion from the "all discussions" area, by default it is classified as as Blog.

My carelessness.

@tallguy - That's actually good information to know. In my own opinion I'd classify that one as a forum software bug. So no need to apologize. It actually makes it clear to me now why there are so many posts in the Blogs category. The way this forum software works is not necessarily obvious even to people who have plenty of computer skills and experience. It's probably the least intuitive of all the major forum software upgrades I've seen happen here.

I have become more of a lurker than a poster on the forum in recent weeks because I have become quite confused about how it works. I have been wanting to author a new "General Discussion" thread but I now don't know how to go about it without skrewing it up!

I'm still concerned that one seems unable to refer to other forum members' entries by inserting quotes from them without retyping them from scratch!

I'm still concerned that one seems unable to refer to other forum members' entries by inserting quotes from them without retyping them from scratch!

Cut and paste, perhaps?

@Pommie - Part of the problem as I see it, is that when a user logs into the forum. It defaults the user to the "All Discussions" category. And according to tallguy, when you start a new discussion from that category, it automatically places the thread in the "Blogs" category. All you need to do to start a new discussion in the category you want, in this case "General Discussion", is to actually be within that category first (single left mouse click on the category you want) before clicking on the "Start a New Discussion" button. The category you are currently in will highlight black with gray letters. This should put your new thread in the proper category.

Do you know how to use the highlight, copy and paste functions to quote a user into the post you are making?

@twltin
That doesn't seem to work. Maybe the fact that I am a Mac bloke using Safari from way back makes the difference?

@Love_isNo!

@Pommie - This link should help you out:

http://www.wikihow.com/Copy-and-Paste-on-a-Mac

Once you have the user's text pasted into the "Write Comment" box, highlight it again, and in the tool bar just above the area you type in, choose the "Font Color" option (Looks like a capital T with a square box of four colors next to it) to change the color of the text and also use the "Italic" tool bar button (Looks like a slanted capitol I) so as to differentiate the quote from the rest of your own text.

Keep in mind that this is just a (hopefully) temporary work around, as the Quote function has been broken in the latest version of this forum software upgrade.

@Love_is,Yeah, thanks for that.
It used to be so easy under the old system but I have since found that writing a post in "Word" and then copying it and pasting it into the "Write Comment" box resulted in the original formatting being utterly screwed up, so I stopped doing it.
Maybe I'll give it another go when I have a mind to do so!

@Pommie - Ah! You were the one that had that problem. I didn't realize you were on Mac. Try highlighting, copying, and pasting your typed up post from Word, into TextEdit, and then highlight, copy, and paste from TextEdit into the "Write Comment" box here. This removes the special formatting that Word applies and this forum software interprets weirdly by turning it into just plain text.

@Love_is,AhHa! Thanks!

TextEdit works well for me.