babble is rabble.ca's discussion board but it's much more than that: it's an online community for folks who just won't shut up. It's a place to tell each other — and the world — what's up with our work and campaigns.
Suggestion box:: no whinging and whining please
August 10, 2010 - 12:49pm
obligatory non-editable placeholder
A thread for suggestions on improvments as opposed to whinging and whining about particular moderator calls - there are already threads for that purpose:
To start the ball rolling, I would like to suggest two technical changes
1) Make the first post editable (novel idea that)
2) Change the default for linked items from "open in same window" to "open in new window", if someone wants to have it open in the same window, make them use the draw-down menu
3) Be more merciless in getting rid of trolls, misanthropes, and so on. Maybe a standard parting shot, like, "See you in Hell," or "hasta la vista, m--- f---- ", or .... The ocassional mistake is fine; the deep, satisfying pleasure of watching a troll turn to stone is worth it.
LOL... and then babble can start a side-business.... stone troll statues for gardens.
But back to technical matters, general question for other babblers, when you use the pretty little clipboard function to quote material, do you find that each paragraph appears on screen as a single long line, requiring you to hit preview before being able to read what you pasted? I have found this happens when ever I use the paste function and it is very cumbersome.
Yes. I hate the text box. Also, having to remember the formatting to set up a quote is really aggravating. I find I have to edit to fix formatting far too often - and sometimes the formatting fucks up anyway.
Not user-friendly or intuitive. Too fiddly.
Why don't we send trolls out through the emergency chute with a case of beer?
I don't doubt there can be friction and heat when certain newcomers are allowed to takeover an entire thread and transform it into a lesson in bad arithmetic and pseudo-scientific babble. That's frustrating when certain posters are allowed to have it all their way while moderators focus on your every syllable and utterance while essentially ignoring the provocateur posting falsifiable nonsense.
But are we on the left so insecure that we can't ignore an obvious few wayward right-whiners and closet fascists? Put 'em on ignore.
Thanks for my laugh of the day, Fidel! Actually, not my first. It's been a good day.
I don't post derisive or mocking commentary directed at you. If I did I would be scolded for it lickity split.
The text "editor" is horrible. There's no list long enough for the number of basic, basic useability flaws in it. I can try to communicate these to the tech folk (actually, I have done), but there's not a lot of money to spend on upgrading the upgrade.
What's this text box you're talking about?
I type out "quote.../quote" every time I quote something. Then I have to go back and make sure every line I type is lined up against the left side of the text field or else I have spacing and font size problems. Sometimes I have to edit a single post a half-dozen times just to make it legible, never mind the regular typos and stylistic monstrosities that I might want to fix.
Oh yeah, the font is too small when I type stuff out, so I sometimes can't see the problems and catch them before hitting "Post comment."
Catchfire: see the "troll" comment above for appropriate fund raising suggestion.
I don't think it would be a difficult (or costly for that matter) to change the default for whether links open new window or same window.
[ducking in case it already exists and I have just repeatedly missed it]
A sticky (locked so it doesn't get filled with silliness) about what html coding can be used would be a good thing, instructions like those cute bits like
strikethroughwhich could be easily accessed in a single place. Perhaps with solicited entries for commonly asked questions on how to do things. How to quote multiple posts in a single posting, etc. The idea being to house them in one place without the commentary.[/ducking]
I noticed that we use tinyMCE. Would it be a licence violation of some sort to upgrade tinyMCE to something like this fuller featured tinyMCE editor? Apparently it's free under the LGPL open source license, browser friendly, added to sites with just a few lines of code, and is "very easy to integrate into other Content Management Systems" etc.
I don't mind the current editor though. It's Firefox and the way it demands that I okay each and every bit of text cut and pasted into tinyMCE that I'm not wild about. Does anyone know how or whether that security feature can be shut off in Firefox? I heart the browser, but the security feature drives me bananas.
I like all of bagkitty's suggestions. Have often been frustrated to follow a link and have to return by the long, long route. Also, i lose text when i make an error in pasting, which happens a lot, as i'm a klutz.
For the single long line problem: after pasting in a quote, go to Preview Comment to fix the formatting, then continue writing.
Perhaps GOD will take a break from inflicting "natural" disasters for long enough to come in and respond to some of these.
Absentia: - the problem I find with using the preview comment to fix the formatting is, unless you have already opened a duplicate tab or window, you lose the ability to look at the rest of the comments in the thread... of course this might explain some of the really bad paraphrasing that has been known to occur.
I still like my "sticky" idea. Is this a solitary vice or does anyone else find it attractive?
Making little tweaks to the editor might SEEM like a little thing. But, every little thing ends up taking more resources than one might expect. So, all the code is probably stored in a repository, and they probably have a staging server set up somehwere to test changes. The staging server may or may not be identical to the live server--there may still be some development happening there in certain stages. So, any changes must be made to the stage, then tested, probably in a series of browsers, then the change could be made to the production server. But, there shouldn't really be one off changes made to the production server here and there. Making small changes every week is much harder to keep track of then making a chunk of changes every month or two. So, it may be weeks after testing the change on the staging server before to gets put live, which requires documenting the steps to make the change as well as the steps to properly test them.
In addition, it there are likely resource issues as well. Probably rabble is low on funds to pay for the work, and probably the web shop is low on time to volunteer. Now, perhaps there may be other people who have the knowledge to make the changes, who also have the time to volunteer, but that opens up all kinds of other stuff. Can a new person be trusted to make the changes and not screw things up? Does the new person have the expertise to fix seemingly unrelated issues if the small change introduces other, bigger problems? How many people can have access to the admin password before it gets out of hand? If the new person will not be using the admin account to make changes, are they going to have to continually ask for various new permissions to be added to their account, and is this going to take up time for other IT admin people who already have enough to do?
And then perhaps what is really the bigger issue: Rabble.ca is more interested in putting resources into rabble than babble. So the "small, easy fixes" that babblers want to see probably take a back seat to the "small, easy fixes" that rabblers are asking for.
So Rabble can send the dev team a list of changes that they'd like to see--but then, the dev team needs to look at all of those changes, estimate how long each one might take in isolation, and then try to figure out which changes are related. So, Rabble may want change A and B prioritizied, but, it may be the case that change D, a less urgent change and more time consuming change, automatically fixes change A, and change D will be necessary in the long run. So, does it make sense putting a chunk of time/money into a throwaway fix for change A? Or, change B might be due to an incomplete feature set in a module, and a new release might be right around the corner, or...it might not. Is it worth spending the resources on building the code out when it's kinda likely that the code to do that could be released in the next few months?
I'm saying all this to explain that the changes that we are most likely to get are not necessarily those changes that you suspect might be just a settings click away--but they are the changes that integrate easily into the development process.
The change I'd most like to see is that I'd like to see the Active Topics page show a link that says "3 new posts" with a link to the first new post in the thread (new for the logged in user, new content since the last time they looked at the thread). It's super easy to do in Drupal, and since that page is a view it's fairly easy to make the change. But, I don't have access to anything, and I know that any requests for changes get pased from the modes, to editorial, to the dev team, who then evaluate, and so I'm not that hopeful.
I think having a FAQ page stickied somewhere is a great idea, and it's a change that babblers could work togehter to build. Speaking as a site builder, if users from a site built a good FAQ or "Getting Started" page, I'd be sticking this up in a heartbeat. So bag kitty, I'd say if you are so motivated, start writing it up in a thread and get people to add to it.
Babble keeps misspelling stuff I write. It's very frustrating.
Holy moly! My predictions are true - there is a quarterly rabble reaction thread marathon!
To voice an underlying sentiment that comes out in a number of threads: maybe we should have as many outings as the number of blowouts! And maybe people could show up to them instead of "()@R()*#@()$)(@#*$()@#*)@#$)#(*$@)(*$)(@#-ing" in front of the computer!
Could we get the Sarcmark added to the emoticon options?
LTJ: you couldn't make that open in a new tab could you? Bad LTJ, bad, bad.
Problem is that if you have to use one, or use other means to spraypaint your words neon red so some people get it, it kind of defeats the purpose.
PWD?
May I request that either (a) the "Remember me" option on the log-in screen be actually made to work the way it was intended if you click it or (b) the "Remember me" option on the log-in screen be removed?
Because, honestly, "Remember me" suggests that either you won't get forcibly logged out every however-often-it-is-I-end-up-getting-forcibly-logged-out even though your browser is typically up for days at a time or your username and password are automatically filled in for you without any need to start typing things in.
This has happened to me with at least three separate versions of Firefox.
Is that a "no whinging and whining" complaint? ;)
Sorry about the login difficulties. I haven't heard of this problem before.
On the "smiles" page, could we have a "rolling eyes" smilie and also a "sarcasm" icon?
Also, I have seen a "beating a dead horse" smiley, complete with flies. I'm sure I could find it if no one is familiar with it.
Good.
Until you do, people can always link to this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7IU1bzZheWk
More smilies. Got it. I'll see what I can do! You can always link to images on smilie catalogue websites.