Suggestions for improving the forum

In re:
1) I agree. Ideally the posting order should be a personal option. Short of having that option, I'd prefer the old, chronological method too. Perhaps David can tell us if a software update later will provide such a choice?

2) Agreed. I'm fluent in html already, so this isn't a big issue to me. However, pressing a button to open and close tags is easier, and certainly makes the forum more accessible for folks who don't yet speak basic html.

3) I haven't heard of a google website registration option -- if it exists, I wish it wouldn't as such an option would further threaten the web's egalitarian heritage. I agree (if one wishes to be found) being near the top of search results is good. Meta tags on the main pages should be sufficient to get us there.

4)I agree that direct democracy via internet polling is a worthy goal -- it's the only effective method of governance that's self-sustainable. I don't think it's achievable right now though. Direct democracy requires an educated and active electorate. With ~90% of the hits on most forums (including the old V) from unregistered "lurkers", even if participation is high, the quality of the decisions on average won't be.
. We already have in place a representative government whose members were (for the most part) elected, active, educated, and with a vested interest in the betterment of V is for Voltage. We should (for now) mostly go with their decisions, perhaps giving a "yeah or nay" to contentious issues. Or, to vote down changes that seem to one or more of us to suck, said concerned members can post their own "do you think we should keep it this way" kind of polls.

One problem I see with our leadership already is some member's drive to add more and more people to the ranks of leadership, leading as it always has to a top-heavy, do-nothing-but-bicker result (research any national governmental congress for proof of this . Another problem I see is our lack of a "no confidence" or "impeachment" mechanism to axe the occasional leader who, for whatever reason, doesn't deserve to be there.

--xyster

My rides

A view counter on the index page would be cool, so we can see how active a topic is.

Some kind of link to send a personal email to members would be another nice thing.

xyster,
That's strange to hear coming from you, since it was your idea, until you said you saw no need to continue since Ken was back over a month ago. Do you even know what the current structure looks like, or have you even asked. You seem to still be making assumptions, based on what I have no idea.
FYI the current structure is exactly like you suggested, why now is it all wrong.
What ever happen to the Mission Statement and General Guidelines For Moderators you volunteered to do way back in Oct.
Since you just seem to have dropped the ball, we had to do something, or we would still be just waiting for the old V to return as you seem to indicate that's what you were going to do.
And your still waiting, we are moving on and making progress.

Peace Out,
Gman

Please stop by the V Refuge for the latest news about the V is for Voltage Recovery effort and status.
http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/VRefuge/

Peace Out,
Gman

Fechter,
That's already available, just click the name of the person you want to contact, and then click there contact link. Yours is http://visforvoltage.org/user/7/contact and you can also send a copy to yourself.
I guess we could ask David to put it in the How To if you think that would help.
I do agree most things here you just have to browse around and figure out yourself. At first I had a lot of problems, I know I bothered David a lot. He has a computer technical mine and I don't, so the communication wasn't always the best, until he broke it down for me. Sort of like the Cops on Sanford and Son.
The old V also had a Getting Started area I believe, we could probably do something similar here in the Administration/HOW TO area.
We probably need some instructions with words those of us that lack computer lingo and knowledge can understand.
Chas could do it, but he is currently swamped with other things right now.
We probably need a help or FAQ type of thing.
If more people would let us know where they are having problems or don't understand something, they can now do it in private by going to the contact drop down above, and click support or email it to support@visforvoltage-moderator.net someone will be glad to help with the problem, or get the information to the appropriate person.

Peace Out,
Gman

Please stop by the V Refuge for the latest news about the V is for Voltage Recovery effort and status.
http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/VRefuge/

Peace Out,
Gman

1) I'm pretty sure that's not possible with the forum built into Drupal. The "reply anywhere" model works great when you don't use the flatforum layout which I've implemented here. The flatforum layout is simply the layout of the page and doesn't rearrange the comments.

2) They will come eventually. The site is running drupal 5 rc1, so the software is not officially released yet. There is an addon module which adds the kind of buttons you desire, but the module hasn't been brought forward to drupal 5 yet. It should be available soon.

3) I've already done some registration with the search engines. It takes time for the search engines to catch on to the existance of new sites. I've linked to this site from a couple of my sites, plus registered the RSS feed and other access points to some of the search engines and blog aggregation sites. There is an addon module (not yet brought up to drupal 5) which will improve this even further, and when it gets brought up to drupal 5 I'll install it.

4) hmmm...

- David Herron, http://www.7gen.com/

- David Herron, http://www.7gen.com/

www.cocamuseum.com
www.compra-segura.com
Hello everyone. It would be nice to be able to look at all the posts from previuos forum. There was so much good stuff there. Surely it won't all disappear? Couldn't that be done? What is this here now? Is this a temporary forum? Destined to be completely deleted at any given moment? All this information stored electronically. Imagine every bit of information ever known, stored electronically, and then everything disappears in an instant. Is there a hard file backup where everything is recorded? It's a shame.

www.cocamuseum.com
www.compra-segura.com

electricridefl.
Most of the data has been saved, but it's infected.
I have several of them, and can see the old images and some of the post in a text format. It will take a lot of time going through the 12+GB that I have access to. We do have some people looking at it, but it seems there will be some cost involved cleaning it up.
I posted a page at the V refuge, and luckily David saw it was infected, so I immediately removed it.
The problem happens when you try to open it.
After we complete some administrative stuff, that will probably be our next task, to clean up the old data if there are no legal liabilities since it all came from Ken's old site.
I know the V Recovery Team is working on it.

Peace Out,
Gman

Please stop by the V Refuge for the latest news about the V is for Voltage Recovery effort and status.
http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/VRefuge/

Peace Out,
Gman

Fechter,
Thanks for starting this, did you ever come up with a list of suggestions?

Brooks

Brooks,
Community Development Specialist

Maybe I missed it and it can be done: Looking for an e-mail to be sent when a post is replied to?
Jeff

That seems like a century ago.
Webmaster David has made a steady stream of improvements since then. Things work pretty good now.

I like the new look on the home page.

Jeffkay,

Yes you missed it. If you edit your user account and scroll down to the "Private message settings" you will see where you can set emails for unread messages. If you only want an email for post you created the scroll down a little further to the "Subscription settings" and select "Autosubscribe".
Checking this box allows you to be automatically subscribe to any thread you create or post a comment to. You will receive an email with a title and link to the post.

The link in this post will only work for Jeffkay anyone else needs to look on the right side of the screen and scroll down to the "My account" link.

Chas S.
My Bicycle Pages

Moderator Captain

Fechter,
Yeap I agree, more things seem to be working better, but there is room for some improvements.

Yeah, the above does seem like a century ago.

Anyway, you can also click on "My Subscriptions" in the navigation menu and subscribe to new content in several different ways. I do that and get emails all day long about new messages and comments.

- David Herron, http://davidherron.com/

- David Herron, davidherron.com, 7gen.com, http://www.7gen.com/store
- EVT 4000, Charger bike (rebuilt), Vego 600sx (rebuilt), Electrified Electra Townie
- Lectra motorcycle

Well we finally got so close after over 40 weeks of working together as a Community, now it seems some members never really wanted a democratic approach.

It seems the Poll: Which form of Domain Ownership do you prefer? has been removed, and nobody knows why.

Brooks,
Community Development Specialist