Polishing this Site

I'm sure many agree ... A couple points ...

One is that the site has been run on an all-volunteer basis in peoples' spare time. As the site owner there are some things that only I can do, such as make software upgrades. For most of the life of this forum I've had a day job and could only squeeze in spare moments here and there to keep the software updated and do improvements. Doing an excellent job of polishing etc may require a larger commitment than someone could do in their spare time after work hours. Fortunately (or not) I was laid off of my job recently and one version of my future is to take make my websites a full time living to have more ability to make a bigger impact on various issues. At the moment however income from my websites is maybe 1/10th of a living income.

Another is that the site software needs to be updated to Drupal 6, this will fix some of the issues. In particular it will give access to an 'advanced forum' module which is supposed to make the forum features more forum-like. Not sure what that means but it may be what you're asking for.

You're begging a question here -- so I'll ask it -- what would make this a 'great' site? (besides 'polish'?)

About polish: Do you have specific ideas of polishing improvements to make?

;) :?
well i think this forum is just fine . as an old fart I beleive in the KISS principle !! If you make it more complicated I'll have to go back to school just to partisipate !!! the only thing I would do is make the print bigger? Keep up the good work David !! LaTeR

David - sorry to hear about the job! Hopefully you got some sort of wonderful buyout and thus you can afford to focus your time on the EV intersts :-)

I used to agree that more polish would be nice. However, I've come to like the site - after all "content is king".

the only thing I would do is make the print bigger?

What browser do you use? On Firefox (and on Microsoft IE7 (the copycats!)) just press CTRL and + and voila! The text gets bigger - repeated presses makes it continue to grow. Depending on how well the site is implemented will affect whether or not the flow of the pages get's disrupted. To make it smaller press CTRL and -

The first lesson is free ;-)

What is a Browser ??

Sometimes I cant remember which threads I was posting on. Is there a feature that allows me to show my last posts so I can find them easily?

Click on your username in any of your posts and it will bring-up your profile. Click on "Track" to see a list of all your posts. You can also start by scrolling down and clicking on "My Account" on the right side of the screen. Again, you would click on "Track".

Click on your username in any of your posts and it will bring-up your profile. Click on "Track" to see a list of all your posts. You can also start by scrolling down and clicking on "My Account" on the right side of the screen. Again, you would click on "Track".

But that only shows all the threads one ever posted in in order of the latest post posted by anyone.

A thread which one has posted in a year ago wold come up on top if someone else just posted something in it recently. That can make it tricky when you are looking for a thread you posted in a few weeks ago!

........................................................................................

A feature which I would like would be something that alerts you when a not so interesting thread (for yourself, anyway) has gone off topic and has become interesting. It happens a lot.

Sometimes it would be nice to have a very brief summary of the thread, but who would have the time to do it?

A feature which I would like would be something that alerts you when a not so interesting thread (for yourself, anyway) has gone off topic and has become interesting. It happens a lot.

Oh so you want the site to read everybody's mind and detect what's "interesting" or not? Uh...?

David,
I been reading this site for years now and remember you from the old Zappy yahoo group and other goups. I'm so sorry to hear you been laid off. I think you do a great job on this site and hope it will work into a successful full time job.
P.S. You been using the same picture for years now, how about a new one. lol.
Regards,
Paul

A feature which I would like would be something that alerts you when a not so interesting thread (for yourself, anyway) has gone off topic and has become interesting. It happens a lot.

Oh so you want the site to read everybody's mind and detect what's "interesting" or not? Uh...?

That would not work, because most of us are wearing aluminium foil hats!

If one could edit their posts forever, or for a much longer time,
it would allow me to clean up my posts, add pictures, make corrections,
and improve wording.

Thus, the quality of my topics would improve.

Off-topic posts clutter things up, but are harder to deal with.

Keep up the good work, Gary

Strange, I can edit today's post and one from the 21st, but not one from the 22nd.
What is going on with this ability to edit my posts?
Thanks, Gary

Policy is to not allow edits to the top post in a thread. For comments edits are allowed so long as there hasn't been a reply to the comment. As soon as there's a reply to the comment it cannot be edited. Some of that is administrative choice on our part, some of that is the behavior of Drupal.

If one could edit their posts forever, or for a much longer time,
it would allow me to clean up my posts, add pictures, make corrections,
and improve wording.

Thus, the quality of my topics would improve.

Off-topic posts clutter things up, but are harder to deal with.

Keep up the good work, Gary

You can edit V-Blog entries you make, even after others have commented.

But I think it is harder for people to find the entries in a V-blog.. That's difficult for me to be sure about, though. Unfortunately the "counter" does not work any more on V. A year ago you could see how many "reads" there had been of a thread; on some other forums this feature is available, and quite interesting.

Maybe it can be turned on again now that the software and hardware has been upgraded?

The edit policy means that the first (or any) post cannot be kept up to date with the "latest" info (or a Table of Contents) or links to it.
This forces one to read through hundreds (even thousands) of posts to find the desired info.
That overhead limits the effectiveness of the forum.

Also, accidentally-placed side-by-side pictures that force the "page" width to be too wide to read the other posts' text on one line ... cannot be fixed, unless you can fix that. Like Henry42's post in the My XM-5000Li Experience topic. Thanks.

Maybe some of you do not know about the Recent link at the top right corner of your screen. To findout how this works click on this graphic;

Also, accidentally-placed side-by-side pictures that force the "page" width to be too wide to read the other posts' text on one line ... cannot be fixed, unless you can fix that. Like Henry42's post in the My XM-5000Li Experience topic. Thanks.

I think you must be using I.E., Mozilla is a much better browser and will compensate for the side-by-side images automatically, I.E. does not.

Hope this helps.
Grandpa Chas S.

I uploaded one picture and another shows up.

Philip

I am not very convinced about the new font being used for posts. The headline font is good but the post text is difficult to read. Seems to be roman italic. A shame we moved away from the previous font.

Norman

I am not very convinced about the new font being used for posts. The headline font is good but the post text is difficult to read. Seems to be roman italic. A shame we moved away from the previous font.

Norman

The theme currently used on V now has exactly the same font style declaration as before.

I find it hard to tell the difference but it does seem a bit easier to read than a couple days ago.

I uploaded one picture and another shows up.

Philip

I've since worked on image uploading... there is a button in the toolbar above edit areas, it looks like a sunset/sunrise picture, click on that and you have several options for attaching images. You can specify a direct URL, you can specify a size, and you can upload images. The image upload uses the IMCE system we'd had in the previous incarnation of V.. and you can also use the "insert image" link which also launches the IMCE system.

Both of those work correctly (now) so far as I can tell.

...This site is getting harder to navigate...whats going on???

The navigation is pretty much the same as it was before I upgraded it to drupal 6. Maybe you can explain what's on your mind.

..also noticed posts being deleted, moved, shunted, and silenced - is this website a front for NAZI activities, or is it that the moderators/site managers also work for the American Govt. or media...

some say silence is golden.... but at what cost??

goodbye democracy.

(I will know the answer to these, and many more questions should this post be deleted)

Do you understand what Nazism really is? Any operator of an internet forum routinely does what you are talking about. When a post is made in an incorrect forum should we leave it in the wrong place or should it be moved? If a post is made that violates policies should we leave it published? Those kind of things are routinely done by forum owners all over the Internet. Nothing new here.

You can edit V-Blog entries you make, even after others have commented.
But I think it is harder for people to find the entries in a V-blog.. That's difficult for me to be sure about, though. Unfortunately the "counter" does not work any more on V. A year ago you could see how many "reads" there had been of a thread; on some other forums this feature is available, and quite interesting.
Maybe it can be turned on again now that the software and hardware has been upgraded?

The counter is working gain, thank you!