Post Here about the New Version (Xenforo) of the FOG

[peter halle]

This is a post for Seth:

What are you trying to do and perhaps I can help.

Peter

 

[Econoline]

it had to do with attaching photos to a direct message. Seth said there was an icon, bottom left of the reply. I posted a screenshot showing that there was no icon, bottom left.

 

[peter halle]

it had to do with attaching photos to a direct message. Seth said there was an icon, bottom left of the reply. I posted a screenshot showing that there was no icon, bottom left.

That is not enabled. Same as in the previous software.

Peter

 

[Econoline]

That is not enabled. Same as in the previous software.

Peter

Ok, what is the reasoning for having it disabled?

 

[peter halle]

Ok, what is the reasoning for having it disabled?

My recollection is that the original thought process way back when was that people come to the forum to share, learn, teach, and discuss. Sharing of images in public (once that ability was introduced) was to be part of all that. The sharing of images privately could, and can still, be accomplished in numerous ways outside of the forum. Additionally, whereas the admins and moderators don't have permissions to read or moderate what is said in the private messages, having the ability to attach images of any type of content is just another risk to the friendly, open, sharing culture that has enabled this forum to survive when so many others similar have disappeared.

Peter

 

[Econoline]

My recollection is that the original thought process way back when was that people come to the forum to share, learn, teach, and discuss. Sharing of images in public (once that ability was introduced) was to be part of all that. The sharing of images privately could, and can still, be accomplished in numerous ways outside of the forum. Additionally, whereas the admins and moderators don't have permissions to read or moderate what is said in the private messages, having the ability to attach images of any type of content is just another risk to the friendly, open, sharing culture that has enabled this forum to survive when so many others similar have disappeared.

Peter

Understood.

 

[mino]

One more request/suggest post from me:

On the old forum, the Classifieds ads were not shown in the user's "Unread posts" stream, now called "New posts", by default. IMO this is a desirable configuration as the section can potentially flood the "New posts" stream and has a pretty specific audience anyway.

Thus I have three items to that topic:

A request to mimic former forum behaviour.
If at all possible, please exclude the "Off Topic" forums from the "New posts" notification stream by default.

A proposal for a marking the US/NA-specific forums explicitly to avoid confusion.
IMO the "Classifieds", the "Dealers Area", "Ask Festool" and possibly even the "Festool Announcements" forums should be moved there for a start as these are US/Canada-specific and it can get confusing at times for non-US members. Not sure how .. maybe changing "Festool" to "Festool USA" in the "Ask Festool" forum, adding "North America only" suffix to Classifieds and Dealers forum name etc.

Either way, I believe the fact FUSA graciously hosts this forum warrants the having their "own" section for US/NA-specific topics and Classifieds are inherently US-specific just from the American English name ... yeah, it took me a little to figure why "so much secrecy on a tool forum, Classifying things and what not .. Heh."

A wishlist item to allow "unsubscribing" from individual forums to not show up on user's "New posts" stream.


Thanks!

EDIT: clarity

 

[peter halle]

@mino , although Seth and I can't make any of the suggestions happen that you wrote due to the differences between mod vs admin I do want to understand you you were writing about in your request. There are many ways of reading the forum and here is what I did on the other version as well as this one:

In the old version, on the home page I would scroll down to the bottom of the page and there would be the lists on new posts. Everything including classifieds were there. I have no remembrances if I checked a box somewhere to not exclude anything.

On this version I click on What's New and then I am presented with the all the new posts.

Is that what you you saw and are also now seeing?Peter

 

[mino]

@mino , although Seth and I can't make any of the suggestions happen that you wrote due to the differences between mod vs admin I do want to understand you you were writing about in your request. There are many ways of reading the forum and here is what I did on the other version as well as this one:

In the old version, on the home page I would scroll down to the bottom of the page and there would be the lists on new posts. Everything including classifieds were there. I have no remembrances if I checked a box somewhere to not exclude anything.

On this version I click on What's New and then I am presented with the all the new posts.

Is that what you you saw and are also now seeing?Peter

Thanks for the comment.

What you describe is the "All posts list" that does not distinguish if a /logged in/ user read a thread/post or not.

The naming changed a bit on what I mean, on the old forum there was a link on the top right "Unread posts", or something like that, not have a screenshot to reference precisely.

That was an actual link that can be bookmarked and showed new posts which the specific user did no read/click on yet. It worked like that with the exception of the Off Topic section posts like Classifieds etc. Someone must have explicitly excluded those back then.

On the new forum, on the left top, an equivalent-ish functionality is the "New posts" link at https://festoolownersgroup.com/whats-new/posts/ which works the same as it has the "unread" filter active by default.


I am not sure if Xenforo even supports such configuration, so really a techie needs to look if even feasible ..

 

[MikeGE]

I am not sure if Xenforo even supports such configuration, so really a techie needs to look if even feasible ..

It is possible to exclude a forum (node in XenForo talk) from the new posts view. Unfortunately, this must be done in the AdminCP and will affect all members. This is not a change I would appreciate.

There is a third party add-on that allows members to individually deselect nodes or threads to view without affecting other members, but this add-on must be purchased, installed, and maintained by the Administrators. As I have discovered with other sites I owned and managed, some add-on developers tend to be slow with keeping up with the XenForo developers and some stop working, behave unpredictably, or disrupt operations when a new XenForo patch is installed.

 

[peter halle]

I sure am glad that @MikeGE has some experience with this software. It's new to so many of us and things that were second nature after years on the previous forum are not so second nature now. I went exploring yesterday after your post and found references to extra cost add-ons for ignore type functions and also found some not so positive reactions to those as Mike noted. Personally, I like it the way it is just because I try to get my eyes on virtually every post and although the SPAM filtering is much more agressive now, things still do slip thru and the Classified Area is a prime target. I am sure I would adjust if Festool would make changes, but its up to Festool and one major reason that they invested the time and money to make this change was for ease in maintenance and peace of mind versus just waiting for what seemed to be the annual 2 to 3 day outage / stowage event that caused distractions from normally scheduled work functions.

Peter

 

[mino]

It is possible to exclude a forum (node in XenForo talk) from the new posts view. Unfortunately, this must be done in the AdminCP and will affect all members. This is not a change I would appreciate.
...

Thanks for the info, some good news then.
---

The thing is, it is how the "old" forum worked. Please consider there are many non-US members for whom especially the relatively high-volume Classifieds posts are completely irrelevant. Unfortunately, there are times when more than half "new (unread) posts" are from Classifieds and it is often non-obvious from the post titles.

That is ignoring that FOG has an explicitly separated off-topic forums section called .. "OFF-TOPIC", so I believe it is logical to not "spam" all users with posts from an explicitly off-topic section.

All I can say is the personalised "New posts" feature is mostly unusable without this. IMO those who want/need to see all new posts can still use the general new posts stream Peter referred initially.

---

@peter halle
I too do not think any addons for custom stuff like this are a good idea. I do stand my ground that Off-topic forums are .. meant to be off-topic. Bugging people with them is kinda counter-intuitive to that. Please note I am referring the personalized "New (unread) posts" stream. Not the global all-new-posts one.

I will add one use case why I believe this is more important than just some "mino's concerns":
A person who wants to technically contribute/advise other members mainly is THE most valuable member /in general, not talking about anyone in particular/ for a community. But it is exactly that type of a member who will generally not want to be bothered with the "fluff". If such a member does not have an easy and/or automatic way to filter out fluff from his posts stream .. he/she will most likely give up monitoring for any help/advice-needed posts. There is only so much hassle people are willing to go through to help others.

OT:
There was one feature I sorely missed on the old forum - an ability to "unsubscribe" from replies to a thread to which I replied. Eventually, solved it by deleting all my posts from all long running threads and avoid posting to them since. Works(TM) for me, though not sure that approach is desirable for the community. I mention it because that is how casual members act. They adapt/give up/life-is-too-short but rarely make the effort to complain about these "small" things.

 

[peter halle]

@mino I will adapt to whatever Festool chooses to do. @Administrator_MAFA you might want to check out this thread from reply 127 on for some suggestions.

Peter

 

[MikeGE]

@mino, I take your point about the Classified threads, and as a U.S. expat living in Germany, nearly all of the items listed for sale or want to buy are irrelevant to me. Unfortunately, without being able to identify the location of the seller or buyer, I can't determine the relevancy without viewing the thread contents.

There is a built-in function with XF that enables custom prefixes for threads if the Administrators desire to implement it. Once enabled, anyone creating a new thread in the Classified forum must select a prefix from a dropdown list. The prefix text can be anything the Administrators wish to use, and here is a screenshot from the AdminCP showing what I use on one website. Being able to change the status from For Sale (FS), For Trade (FT) to Sold is very helpful.



I set the default selection as FS, but the thread creator can change the prefix to suit the reason, including changing the status later. Here is a screenshot showing what a member would see when creating a new thread in the Marketplace forum.