Official Request Thread
 

This thread is to request new functionality that doesn't currently exist on this forum. We may no promises on what may be added, but we are open to hearing any ideas for features that would be beneficial to the community. OT posts will be removed.

Re: Official Request Thread
 

What is a OT post?

Re: Official Request Thread
 

Off Topic

Re: Official Request Thread
 

I'd like to request that existing quotes don't get filtered out when you're quoting a post. Or at least only from 1 or 2 nesting levels on. I have difficulty to find what exactly I wanted to cite when those quotes are removed.

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I will see about changing the setting to be a little more liberal. You should check out what I just posted in the questions thread about the multiquote feature as that may be valuable to you as well.

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This not something really important,but I think the Bookmark and Tags boxes should be under the quick reply box.

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Seconded. :up:


In case it was lost in the shuffle, I'd also like to second the request that we have multiple/custom site themes. :happy:

Re: Official Request Thread
 

The Bookmark and Tags boxes are placed as they are by design to encourage their use, which helps our placement within search engines. I may not have explained that properly or thoroughly because it's not my area of expertise, but this is a marketing tool and as such will remain as is. Please view it as a way to help the company reach new users.

The theme is an integral part of our complete site design and corporate branding - also not subject to change.

We appreciate your suggestions, but I'm afraid these particular requests won't go on our list of considerations. I hope you understand.

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Ok now I see.I get it now.Thanks for reading my post.

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The quick reply box only shows up for logged in users, so it shouldn't impact crawlers from search engines or visitors at all if you move it, I think.

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Wrong concept, I think. It's not that having these bookmark/tag boxes help the search engines. We're supposed to use the Bookmarks, which, by linking to Shrapnel's pages, will boost it's rankings.

I suppose as marketing concepts go, it's not too annoying. I won't use them, not out of malice, but just because I don't use that type of site. I'm not really convinced that ignoring the requests of your current users in favor of marketing concerns is really a good policy, but this is a minor issue.
It really does feel like bad design, though. Separating the reply section from the thing you're replying to with unrelated boxes. I'd probably have put them at the top. Maybe more obtrusive, but easier to get to for those who are interested and not disrupting the conversation.

Re: Official Request Thread
 

Again, I'm not the internet marketing expert on the team, but my understanding is the benefit comes in when users choose to utilize the bookmarks and tags. Therefore, we want their availability to be obvious and easily accessible to our users.

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This is very, very (very!) minor, but personally I like(d) it when you can see the last pages of a long post displayed on the forum page, instead of only the first few.

As in: Threadname 1,2...7,8 instead of the Threadname 1,2,3... last page, as it is now. (Unless this can be set by personal preference? I couldn't find it, but then, I have been known to be blind on occasion. )

Re: Official Request Thread
 

Saying we will not be making the requested change is not the same as ignoring the request. When Mindi opened this thread she clearly stated that we will not be able to meet all the requests which will be posted here. We are happy to consider your requests and are interested in your suggestions, but our decisions are made with many factors in mind. We hope you will come to accept what's been described as a minor annoyance in hopes it will help achieve our marketing goals.

Re: Official Request Thread
 

I'm not sure I understand completely what you have in mind, but I'm pretty sure there is a setting in your User CP which will make the adjustment. Try reading through this part of the FAQ and let me know if that doesn't answer your question:
http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/faq.p...aq_vb3_user_cp

Scroll down to the Thread Display Options under Other Settings and Options if my link doesn't take you straight to that section.

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So I was thinking about this one, it's something I'm told I do too much. :p

Anyways, I wondered what the harm is in allowing custom themes for existing users? Obviously you want this look for the newcomers and the surfers and wanderers(and you've put a lot of thought and effort into it), but we've already purchased products from Shrapnel, I think. ;) So I just sort of thought if there was a built in theme customizer that perhaps it could be opened up just so that we could play with it, and make it more attractive in relation to our own personal desktop/browser themes.

For example, I'm using a kind of minty layout right now, and while these blues are perfectly serviceable in most ways, they're just not very attractive on my setup.

Again, not trying to interfere with your efforts, it's just something I'd like to see implemented for those of us who already believe in the Shrapnel method. <3

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Well, you present a persuasive argument...and I can see how that would be a cool feature. We wouldn't want to use standard vBulletin presets, though, which would mean designing these ourselves. Something that labor intensive isn't likely to happen in the near feature, I'm sorry. Cool suggestion, though.

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I was missing that as well, although I agree it's extremely minor. It was nice to see 1,2,3..17 and think "wow! 17 pages!", whereas now there is no indication of the size of the thread.

Anyway, if anyone finds out how to change this, please post and let us know!

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Okay, I understand what you're asking now.:doh: One thing to keep in mind is that the number of posts per page can be adjusted in your User CP. If you go into Edit Options, then Thread Display Options you'll see a menu for Number of Posts to Show per Page. The range is 5 to 50. So if I refer you to what I see as page 4 of a thread, for someone else that may be page 1. That's kind of an aside to point out we need to get in the habit of referring to post numbers rather than thread pages.

If you go to Display Mode, also under Edit Options (or you'll also find it in the black menu bar across the top of the page when viewing the forum home page), try selecting Hybrid Mode. Then at the top you should be able to see Page 1 of 8, etc. Does that do the trick?

Re: Official Request Thread
 

First of all : thanks to Shrapnel team for the work. I've been trying some of the new V-Bulletin's options these last days and they are cool. As well as the in-process tuning I can see. :happy:

My request : when I read a thread, I would like to see at the bottom of each post a small button linking to the top of the page. That's because I'm very lazy and typing Ctrl-Home can really exhaust me to death. Moving the cursor on a near and nice "go to top" button, on the other hand, could save my life.

One alternative : a button / link to the forum hosting the thread I'm reading (in the old forums, you had an 'index' link that was doing this job). This will be ever cooler than the first option because I take the risk of typing Ctrl-Home for the only purpose of clicking afterwards to the forum's link.

I may name my next pretenders Annette, Mindi, Richard and so on if you can handle this :bow:

Re: Official Request Thread
 

One more request:
one of the things that were really nice in the old forum was the "view all posts" link. It was very useful for the cases when you wanted to store some interesting discussion topic on your machine. I always did so when I found a strategy thread that I thought is really good and important. It's always easier to save a year-old thread locally than to search for it and it allows storing really useful things in one place.
That's why I think, it would be very, very nice if we had that option back.

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I second Herode's post.

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Even in non-hybrid mode, you can see the page count in Firefox at least.

From the forum page, just mouse over any "Last Page" link and you'll see an url in the status bar like:
So, 6 pages for that one.

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BTW, to add to this, there is another issue with this. The way vbulletin works (which is actually better designed software wise) much of the presentation layer is stripped out of the core application software and stored in the database templates. Because of this most major mods are de-coupled from the application and actually applied through the templating system. So what that means is that for every style you have, which in turn holds literally hundreds of individual templates, you have to modify each template for every modification to the site.

Because of that not only is it a maintenance nightmare from a labor standpoint but it also makes it very easy to forget to apply an update to a mod to one template versus the other.

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Could you remove the once a minute cap on PMs? I understand it's in place to prevent spammers from abusing the PM system, but I can't possibly imagine that's a problem in the first place since a spammer would have to go to the work of registering an account and then spamming everyone on the board.

Jazzepi

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Amhazair and llamabeast,

Do these issues adequately address your requests?

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Glad to hear you're beginning to enjoy the new features! I'm going to check with Mindi to see if this possible.

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At the top of this page go to "Thread Tool" and select "View Printable Version" form the pull down list. At the top right there's an option to view all posts on one page. You can then either do a save page as a txt file or use your print dialogue to print to pdf file.

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I remember seeing this discussed elsewhere but cannot recall the outcome. I'll check into this.

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Still playing with the new options and layouts, I eventually found that Forum Jump combo at the bottom of the page.
It was a bit too far from the last post, that's why I didn't noticed it at first. I collapsed the "Quick Reply" and the "Posting Rules" boxes. Now it's OK and I liberaly use it. Thus, the request for an "index" link is no more relevant for me.

Still, a little button at the end of each post linking to the top of the page could be nice :)

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Ah, sorry I hadn't answered you before. I had seen your earlier replies. To be perfectly honest though, I'm not very computer literate (slight understatement ;)) and I've also been very busy these past few days, getting home really tired, and didn't feel like trying to decipher "complicated" (okay, I'm sure they're quite simple, it just didn't seem that way to my tired, protesting brain) instructions.

I'm quite sure that once things settle down on my end, and I can bring myself to actually ponder the deceptive codical structure you disguised your instructions as, I'll manage to discover the message. :p

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You would be surprised, there are dozens and dozens of banned spammers who created accounts to spam our forums. With the ability to now send to multiple people the same PM, the likelihood that someone could spam hundreds or even thousands of accounts in a short period of time has increased dramatically. As a small company that doesn't have administrators on the board 24x7x365, this is not an acceptable risk considering what that kind of spamming could do not only to our userbase and reputation but also to our server.

How the heck are you hitting the flood control that quickly anyway? You either have lightening fingers or need to be introduced to the wonders of instant messaging services. :D:nana:

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Mindi is going to explore options for this once all the issues of broken functionality are fixed.

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Me...obtuse?:typing: I'm willing to bet if I can do it, you can, too! Just hope it actually delivers the desired effect.

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90% of car drivers say they are above average drivers.
90% of computer users say they are below average users.
Of course, those are both impossible.

Gandalf Parker

Re: Official Request Thread
 

That would be very cool! And it's nice to have the printable version. But at the top right I see this instead, not "view all":

"Show 50 post(s) from this thread on one page"

The link looks like:

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/print...?t=29054&pp=50

I tried doing this, but it didn't help, it still only gives 50 posts:

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/print...=29054&pp=9999

Re: Official Request Thread
 

Well, that sounds like a terrible mess! I won't expect a miracle then. ;) Just remember one day when you're bored (I know you're all kinds of busy now, but eventually), that a lot of users wouldn't mind if there were just some simple color scheme options. If they were buried in the User CP, no one is going to dig it up before they bask in the glory of all of this blue for awhile - or if they do find it that fast, they must really be that averse to these colors. :p

Anyway, if there were a couple other options eventually, with colors selected to go nicely with the Shrapnel logo (and maybe even make it jump attractively out of the background. ;)), it would be cool.

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That's the same that phpBB3 does and most of MediaWiki. I really hate it because that means that something that you mod is usually tied to a template. It's extremely difficult to add something if you're not a core developer.

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I see, yes. So as it is now, a lengthy thread would need to be saved in a series of pages. I'll look into the possibility of improving this down the road.

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I had to find a modification to put into vb to do this as vb by default strips everything but the last reply I think in order to keep things "clean". Anyway, I have installed a mod that allows nested quotes again and have set it to 3 which I think is a good number as a cut off.

Hope this helps!
Mindi

Re: Official Request Thread
 

Please add the ability for a user to delete his own threads, particularly if noone has yet replied to them. I was testing out the new prefix thing to see how it looked, and can no longer delete my posts. :(

Re: Official Request Thread
 

Please ask a moderator to delete your threads, and they'll be happy to do so.

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I hope the option to view all post in a single page is fixed soon. I just tried viewing this forum as printable and got http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/print...?t=40202&pp=10 . Changing it to &pp=50 doesn't help. No matter what do, the forum only lets you see 10 posts at a time. Is the number of posts you can view based on the thread length? In any case, it's rather weird.

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In my opinion, that is quite lame. Why increase the burden on moderators unnecessarily? Most forums in my experience allow one to delete mistaken threads as a matter of course... Surely the option would be subject to the same 30 minute (?) rule on post edits, and would be disabled if there are any replies.

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We're not aware that it's broken... The default setting for vBulletin is to show 40 posts per page, and Mindi has raised that to 50. It's likely to stay that way. If we remove the cap, it's possible that loading an extremely lengthy thread into one page would bring the server to it's knees if it happened often enough.

The question is, why are you only able to see 10 posts per page? It shouldn't matter when you're using the view printable version, but have you adjusted the settings in your user cp under edit options?

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I agree it's a pain in the butt and I, too, wish it wasn't necessary. Based on past experience, though, this setting will save the moderators time and headaches when fights occur. The reasoning is it's much easier to delete threads than it is to moderate a complaint when evidence has disappeared. If you send me a pm with links to the threads, I'll be happy to delete them.

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There is a "top" link at the bottom of each page. Not sure what we can do about adding one to the bottom of each post...

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<!-- / icon and title -->Check it out, we may regret it later - but here it is: <!-- message --> Shrapnel Games now has a chat feature for the community. This feature can be accessed through the quick links tab on the toolbar. Please understand that this kind of feature cannot be constantly monitored, so please remember that our forum rules apply in chat as well. If you violate the rules in chat, you may be banned from using that feature. If the chat feature becomes a resource for trolls and user fighting, we will have to disable it's use, so please play nice.;)

Re: Official Request Thread
 

Aye. And that's why it shouldn't let one delete a thread that has been replied to (aside from moderators), just threads with only the first post in them (up to the normal editing time limit).

In a fight situation, someone might post a nasty thread, then think better of it and want to delete it. As it is, they can edit out the text, but it still leaves a thread clogging the boards. Of course, if they want to delete it after some flaming went on to cover up the evidence, they should be stymied, same idea as the 30 minute edit rule.

Somebody had already taken care of it. :)

I'd recommend against adding one to each post... Posts are already horribly cluttered with useless cruft as it is. If anything, they could stand to go on an IM and silly progress bars diet! All that really needs to be there is the avatar, edit/quote buttons, who posted it, and when (eg: SEnet's boards). Everything else just makes the task of reading posts more annoying by increasing wasted space and emergent scrolling. If one wishes to look up all the extra info, its just a profile click away!

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I'm wondering if anything can be done to trim down on the social networking bookmarks chicklets. Many of these sites I've never heard of.