• For our 10th anniversary on May 9th, 2024, we will be giving out 15 GB of free, off-shore, DMCA-resistant file storage per user, and very possibly, public video hosting! For more details, check a look at our roadmap here.

    Welcome to the edge of the civilized internet! All our official content can be found here. If you have any questions, try our FAQ here or see our video on why this site exists at all!

What Would You Like To See?

Arnox

Master
Staff member
Founder
Messages
5,314
Are there things that bug you about this forum? Some things that were brought to my attention already are that there are too many sub-forums and they should be collapsed down further. Also that the theme is too dark and not very Escapisty.

Let me know down in the comments below and I'll see what I can do!
 

Monoochrom

Disciple
Sanctuary legend
Messages
275
If I'm being honest, I think this place will need some pretty major (as I see it) reconstruction if it is to make a suitable Escapist Replacement. And there would be some things that would have to be done that have little to do with Forum Software settings as well.

It'd be a lot, so tell me if you care to hear.
 

Arnox

Master
Staff member
Founder
Messages
5,314
Monoochrom said:
If I'm being honest, I think this place will need some pretty major (as I see it) reconstruction if it is to make a suitable Escapist Replacement. And there would be some things that would have to be done that have little to do with Forum Software settings as well.

It'd be a lot, so tell me if you care to hear.
Please put it all down. I may not be able to get everything (such as badges) but chances are, I can get a sizable portion done.
 

bluegate

Disciple
Sanctuary legend
Messages
292
These are just some personal quality of life things, so feel free to not care about them too much;

It would be nice to have the Post Assistant with BB Code buttons above the Quick Reply box.

It would be nice to be able to quote people in the Quick Reply box.

It would also be nice if you were able to add some custom CSS to the Shoutbox pop up so that it properly scales with the pop up window.
At the moment you can resize the popup but the chat remains small ( max 180px for the chat canvas ), probably wasn't much of a problem with desktop resolutions back in 2003, but on 1920x1080 it's a bit small.

A bit of a personal complaint with the theme is that it's too "wide" for me, having my eyes zoom from the far left to the far right of the screen all the time is a bit tiring.
And yes, I did try the other two themes, but I pretty much prefer the darker nature of this one, same as I'm using a dark theme on the Escapist.

But these style related things are things that I can easily remedy myself through some creative tinkering, so I wouldn't worry about them if I were you unless more people can relate to these points.

About that badges thing, if there is no mod available to implement a Badge system like the Escapist, I wouldn't mind looking into creating mods for SMF and seeing what I can throw together.
 

Arnox

Master
Staff member
Founder
Messages
5,314
bluegate said:
These are just some personal quality of life things, so feel free to not care about them too much;

It would be nice to have the Post Assistant with BB Code buttons above the Quick Reply box.

It would be nice to be able to quote people in the Quick Reply box.

It would also be nice if you were able to add some custom CSS to the Shoutbox pop up so that it properly scales with the pop up window.
At the moment you can resize the popup but the chat remains small ( max 180px for the chat canvas ), probably wasn't much of a problem with desktop resolutions back in 2003, but on 1920x1080 it's a bit small.

A bit of a personal complaint with the theme is that it's too "wide" for me, having my eyes zoom from the far left to the far right of the screen all the time is a bit tiring.
And yes, I did try the other two themes, but I pretty much prefer the darker nature of this one, same as I'm using a dark theme on the Escapist.

But these style related things are things that I can easily remedy myself through some creative tinkering, so I wouldn't worry about them if I were you unless more people can relate to these points.

About that badges thing, if there is no mod available to implement a Badge system like the Escapist, I wouldn't mind looking into creating mods for SMF and seeing what I can throw together.
- You're in luck. I remember seeing a mod that added the BBCode buttons above the Quick Reply box.

- I'm not quite sure I understand you. Just click "Quote" for everyone you need to quote. I used to have a nicer Multi-quote mod installed in but it seems to have disappeared.

- I'm afraid I can't write any code. Just edit it. And even if I could, let me tell you, I barely got the shoutbox working as it is by having to downgrade to an earlier version of it. And that was with some edit hacks. (I heard it's because it doesn't clean out the data from the database properly when uninstalling/upgrading the mod.) As you can see, it's still pretty glitchy. This is due to the simple fact that a few of the mods I once had that worked perfectly fine broke when I updated the site from 2.0.7 all the way up to 2.0.15. This is due purely to PHP 7 which is the current version of PHP the host is running now. I wanted to stay at 5.6 but they were gonna kill it by the end of the year, so I said whatever and decided to just upgrade.

- I actually can compress the "boxes" down so the text doesn't stretch out that far via a CSS edit to the theme files. It's actually nice because you can edit the CSS files within the admin CP and SMF gives you a handy preview in realtime of what your edits will look like. Keep in mind though, there will be nothing at the right/left side of the screen to fill those gaps and I don't know if everyone really wants that yet.

- I actually can put in badges. Kind of. For one, I'd have to give all of them out. They can't be given out automatically. Now there IS an extensive Quiz mod for SMF, but it doesn't have any way to reward users with a badge or profile item or whatever. I've have to pretty much do that all myself. Also, the mod may not even work properly since it's built for SMF 2.0.2/3 which was made when PHP 5.6 was the latest thing. Furthermore, users wouldn't be able to select which badges to show on their profile. I'd have to select it for them. It's just a huge mess... :(
 

bluegate

Disciple
Sanctuary legend
Messages
292
Arnox said:
- You're in luck. I remember seeing a mod that added the BBCode buttons above the Quick Reply box.
Huzzah!

Arnox said:
- I'm not quite sure I understand you. Just click "Quote" for everyone you need to quote. I used to have a nicer Multi-quote mod installed in but it seems to have disappeared.
Sorry about that, I dun goofed when writing that sentence.
When I first tested it yesterday I didn't have the Quick Reply box expanded so it went to the Reply page, apparently when you have it expanded it will add the posts to the Quick Reply box, my bad. :)

Arnox said:
- I'm afraid I can't write any code. Just edit it. And even if I could, let me tell you, I barely got the shoutbox working as it is by having to downgrade to an earlier version of it. And that was with some edit hacks. (I heard it's because it doesn't clean out the data from the database properly when uninstalling/upgrading the mod.) As you can see, it's still pretty glitchy. This is due to the simple fact that a few of the mods I once had that worked perfectly fine broke when I updated the site from 2.0.7 all the way up to 2.0.15. This is due purely to PHP 7 which is the current version of PHP the host is running now. I wanted to stay at 5.6 but they were gonna kill it by the end of the year, so I said whatever and decided to just upgrade.
Ah yes, it's always fun to update to a newer PHP version when using older software :D

Arnox said:
- I actually can compress the "boxes" down so the text doesn't stretch out that far via a CSS edit to the theme files. It's actually nice because you can edit the CSS files within the admin CP and SMF gives you a handy preview in realtime of what your edits will look like. Keep in mind though, there will be nothing at the right/left side of the screen to fill those gaps and I don't know if everyone really wants that yet.
As I said, it's something that I can remedy on my end, in my own browser. No need to pay too much attention to it, I just thought I'd mention it.

Arnox said:
- I actually can put in badges. Kind of. For one, I'd have to give all of them out. They can't be given out automatically. Now there IS an extensive Quiz mod for SMF, but it doesn't have any way to reward users with a badge or profile item or whatever. I've have to pretty much do that all myself. Also, the mod may not even work properly since it's built for SMF 2.0.2/3 which was made when PHP 5.6 was the latest thing. Furthermore, users wouldn't be able to select which badges to show on their profile. I'd have to select it for them. It's just a huge mess... :(
Well, if you ever need any help, I'm not averse to helping out.
And I'm not talking about getting access to your server, installing a copy of SMF on a server of my own and tinkering with mods there should be sufficient.


Something I just noticed:
The Image for the Spoiler Tag in the Post Assistant seems to be broken;
http://intosanctuary.com/Themes/Sanctuary_Default/images/bbc/spoiler.gif

And another thing regarding the Shoutbox;
Although you said you can't code, there is a little annoying something with the Shoutbox in Chrome, when you click on any of the BB Code buttons, it doesn't automatically refocus to the chat input field.
This is caused by outdated JavaScript usage in http://intosanctuary.com/Themes/default/shoutbox.js

Line: 181 & 182
Code:
	// any time we set a style, focus at the end
	if (!Shoutbox.first) document.getElementById("shoutbox_message").focus(document.getElementById("shoutbox_message").value.length - 1);
The original purpose of this piece of code, as described, was to refocus the chat input and place the cursor at the very end of the text.
The main problem with this piece of code is the usage of .focus( --- ), namely; the wrong kind of data is provided in the place of those ---.
The original coder's intention was to provide the cursor's position through ---, but that isn't how that piece of code works nowadays.

What it does nowadays:
Firefox - It focuses on the chat input, but doesn't move the cursor. It effectively ignores the faulty data.
Edge - It focus on the chat input, but doesn't move the cursor. It effectively ignores the faulty data.
Chrome - It doesn't focus. It is a bit more strict and throws an error stating that the wrong data is being provided for .focus( )


I would personally suggest replacing the above code snippet with the following;
Code:
	// any time we set a style, focus at the end
	if (!Shoutbox.first) document.getElementById("shoutbox_message").focus();
This should refocus the chat input in all browsers, but it doesn't move the cursor.

3 lines could be added to make the cursor move to the end of the chat input, but I find that this is a counter-intuitive thing to do as it needlessly takes control away from the user.
If you are typing in the middle of a sentence and decide to make your message bold, you'd have to move the cursor back to where you were typing, which is annoying.
 

Monoochrom

Disciple
Sanctuary legend
Messages
275
Ok, so these are thoughts that I am sharing SPECIFICALLY in regards to attracting Escapist Users.

There are too many at the Time. The more Sub-Forums the more difficult it is to keep the Forum as a whole active and in my experience, nothing scares potential Users off more then Empty Sub-Forums. The amount also actually makes the Forum less intuitive and the creative Naming and Descriptions, personally I'm not a Fan, those things should be descriptive and formal in tone. At the least I would have most Forums collapsed as standard, but I'd personally consolidate.

I think you should make a second Administration Account. Use that for the creation of Administrative Threads and write those with a Formal Tone, use your normal Account for your normal posting habits. You know, just for the sake of a consistent tone when you are creating offcial Threads.

I mean stuff like this

These days, a forum is secondary to the site itself. An image hosting site with a forum on the side. A blogging site with a forum on the side. A gaming news outlet with a forum on the side. And that's alright. But back in ye olde times, forums used to be a main attraction, not just a side thing. Forums were the de facto form of social media before even MySpace came along.

This forum aims to bring that back. And not just that, to be the one forum to rule them all. To give members as much posting freedom as possible while still keeping things stable and under control. We do gaming articles although that's not what we focus on. We discuss history although we're not a history site. We share blueprints although we're not an engineering site. This is what the Sanctuary is. Not another website with a pathetic me-too forum attached to the side of it. We are the draw. We are the attraction. That and the freedom to say what you mean. To post what you want within reasonable limits.

These days, the internet would have you believe that unless you're famous, your views don't count. That you need to obey everything a corporation says. That nobody cares about what you contribute. But over here, we care, because you are truly our source of "content". We want to hear your questions. We want to see what you're good at. What you know. What you wish to know. You need to get out of the mindset that the internet has put you into for way too long. We want you to open your mind.

You definitely won't agree with everything here and we don't and never expect you to. There may be some sub-forums that you will never even look in. (Although I think every sub-forum deserves at least a look.) But as long as you try to give everything a fair chance, that is the spirit of what we are. Just keep these things in mind as you browse and post on this site.

You are essentially stating your overall intentions for this place, I think it would work better and come across more competent with a formal tone.

Make no mistake. Who gets picked as staff here is treated INCREDIBLY seriously. If the admins pick someone to be staff (all global moderators, and admins must be approved by the existing admin or admins), it will be because they have excelled completely. The people we pick must be model posters. We will only accept the best and will expect a lot out of them no matter who they are. They will be held to a very high standard but, as a result, they will BE the standard and will also hold a very high level of respect from me and the other admins. They are the keepers of the Sanctuary.

In case there's any doubt though, I want to make it clear that I don't care if I can't find anyone suitable for a staff position. I don't care if I have to take care of the entire site myself, and I don't care if I can't keep up all the way. I will never promote unsatisfactory posters to a staff position because I have to. It will always be because I want them to be there.

I also know though that I am (sadly) imperfect. As such, the people I pick in the future may disgrace themselves. And if there's another thing I want to make clear, it's that if someone is getting too power-crazed and/or being a general idiot, I will not hesitate to demote that person back to peasant level. Keep in mind though that EVEN IF you've been demoted, you can still earn your honor back and be repromoted. It's just rather hard. And it will get much harder each time you are demoted. There will be no lowly moderators. Only global moderators.

Just remember, if you want to join the staff, make sure you're active, professional, literate, and at least somewhat courteous. It also helps to inject a little bit of style into your posts, you know, so I know you're not some weird robot.

That is another example, it just seems kinda unnecessary because we have little context for you as a Admin. This just doesn't really mean much to anybody, we can't really know what specifically you think of as a model User. And specifically the bolded part is kinda concerning out of a Users perspective. With all due respect, if the workload becomes too much, you should sooner reconsider your ideas of how the Team should work then leave the Users hanging. I mean, why make such definitive statements at this point? Rigid functioning is part of what is killing the Escapist afterall, you should be prepared to let things happen more naturally as needed is what I'm saying.

You need to keep your Thread on the Escapist fresh, the place has still been bugging. Also send invitations to Users personally. Create Threads to stimulate posting, mostly of the Gaming and Pop Culture nature. I'd avoid politics like the plague...and if more people come over, I'd consider soft banning the subject as a whole for a few days if things get out of hand. You should really try to avoid the same problems being transferred here. I'd recommend (despite the Chatbox) a stickied Chat-Thread.

I'd get a lighter Design and reduce the Width of the Forum. Also the Header is too blurred. I know bluegate can pretty much change it for himself, but that was a workaround due to inability to change it on the Escapist, I'd consider accepting his help to keep such things a function of the forum itself. If the Software is found to be too constricting you could always look for new Software.

Basically my thoughts for the time being.
 

JoJo

Outlander
Messages
5
I agree with Mono on sub-forums. A few active sub-forums are a lot more inviting to browse than a zoo of inactive or even dead ones.
 

Vendor-Lazarus

Arch Disciple
Sanctuary legend
Messages
949
Indeed, another here for less specific sub-forums in favor of more generalized ones.
Popular topics can then receive child boards to keep things organized.

For example, where would I post about Numismatic stuff in today's layout?
 

Arnox

Master
Staff member
Founder
Messages
5,314
Vendor-Lazarus said:
Indeed, another here for less specific sub-forums in favor of more generalized ones.
Popular topics can then receive child boards to keep things organized.

For example, where would I post about Numismatic stuff in today's layout?
The Money Money Money... sub-forum, but a big sub-forum update is coming now I think.
 

Vendor-Lazarus

Arch Disciple
Sanctuary legend
Messages
949
I'm having a bit of a rough time adjusting to these new quotes.
Since they are not nested, they strip out all previous quotes and jumble the post together, forcing one to find the start and end of previous back and forth.

Maybe it can be a good thing, treating posts as blocks instead of ever more increasing nitpicks. ,)
Though a determined person can easily get around it.

So, to turn this into a simpler and more direct question;
Is there an add-on/mod for quote options, or is this it?
Thanks!
 

Arnox

Master
Staff member
Founder
Messages
5,314
Monoochrom said:
Ok, so these are thoughts that I am sharing SPECIFICALLY in regards to attracting Escapist Users.

There are too many at the Time. The more Sub-Forums the more difficult it is to keep the Forum as a whole active and in my experience, nothing scares potential Users off more then Empty Sub-Forums. The amount also actually makes the Forum less intuitive and the creative Naming and Descriptions, personally I'm not a Fan, those things should be descriptive and formal in tone. At the least I would have most Forums collapsed as standard, but I'd personally consolidate.

I think you should make a second Administration Account. Use that for the creation of Administrative Threads and write those with a Formal Tone, use your normal Account for your normal posting habits. You know, just for the sake of a consistent tone when you are creating offcial Threads.

I mean stuff like this

These days, a forum is secondary to the site itself. An image hosting site with a forum on the side. A blogging site with a forum on the side. A gaming news outlet with a forum on the side. And that's alright. But back in ye olde times, forums used to be a main attraction, not just a side thing. Forums were the de facto form of social media before even MySpace came along.

This forum aims to bring that back. And not just that, to be the one forum to rule them all. To give members as much posting freedom as possible while still keeping things stable and under control. We do gaming articles although that's not what we focus on. We discuss history although we're not a history site. We share blueprints although we're not an engineering site. This is what the Sanctuary is. Not another website with a pathetic me-too forum attached to the side of it. We are the draw. We are the attraction. That and the freedom to say what you mean. To post what you want within reasonable limits.

These days, the internet would have you believe that unless you're famous, your views don't count. That you need to obey everything a corporation says. That nobody cares about what you contribute. But over here, we care, because you are truly our source of "content". We want to hear your questions. We want to see what you're good at. What you know. What you wish to know. You need to get out of the mindset that the internet has put you into for way too long. We want you to open your mind.

You definitely won't agree with everything here and we don't and never expect you to. There may be some sub-forums that you will never even look in. (Although I think every sub-forum deserves at least a look.) But as long as you try to give everything a fair chance, that is the spirit of what we are. Just keep these things in mind as you browse and post on this site.

You are essentially stating your overall intentions for this place, I think it would work better and come across more competent with a formal tone.

Make no mistake. Who gets picked as staff here is treated INCREDIBLY seriously. If the admins pick someone to be staff (all global moderators, and admins must be approved by the existing admin or admins), it will be because they have excelled completely. The people we pick must be model posters. We will only accept the best and will expect a lot out of them no matter who they are. They will be held to a very high standard but, as a result, they will BE the standard and will also hold a very high level of respect from me and the other admins. They are the keepers of the Sanctuary.

In case there's any doubt though, I want to make it clear that I don't care if I can't find anyone suitable for a staff position. I don't care if I have to take care of the entire site myself, and I don't care if I can't keep up all the way. I will never promote unsatisfactory posters to a staff position because I have to. It will always be because I want them to be there.

I also know though that I am (sadly) imperfect. As such, the people I pick in the future may disgrace themselves. And if there's another thing I want to make clear, it's that if someone is getting too power-crazed and/or being a general idiot, I will not hesitate to demote that person back to peasant level. Keep in mind though that EVEN IF you've been demoted, you can still earn your honor back and be repromoted. It's just rather hard. And it will get much harder each time you are demoted. There will be no lowly moderators. Only global moderators.

Just remember, if you want to join the staff, make sure you're active, professional, literate, and at least somewhat courteous. It also helps to inject a little bit of style into your posts, you know, so I know you're not some weird robot.

That is another example, it just seems kinda unnecessary because we have little context for you as a Admin. This just doesn't really mean much to anybody, we can't really know what specifically you think of as a model User. And specifically the bolded part is kinda concerning out of a Users perspective. With all due respect, if the workload becomes too much, you should sooner reconsider your ideas of how the Team should work then leave the Users hanging. I mean, why make such definitive statements at this point? Rigid functioning is part of what is killing the Escapist afterall, you should be prepared to let things happen more naturally as needed is what I'm saying.

You need to keep your Thread on the Escapist fresh, the place has still been bugging. Also send invitations to Users personally. Create Threads to stimulate posting, mostly of the Gaming and Pop Culture nature. I'd avoid politics like the plague...and if more people come over, I'd consider soft banning the subject as a whole for a few days if things get out of hand. You should really try to avoid the same problems being transferred here. I'd recommend (despite the Chatbox) a stickied Chat-Thread.

I'd get a lighter Design and reduce the Width of the Forum. Also the Header is too blurred. I know bluegate can pretty much change it for himself, but that was a workaround due to inability to change it on the Escapist, I'd consider accepting his help to keep such things a function of the forum itself. If the Software is found to be too constricting you could always look for new Software.
I'm sorry this took so long. I kinda forgot you replied. lol

Concerning community building: I'm kind of leery about PMing people directly about the site on the Escapist as I don't want to annoy them. I bumped my original Sanctuary topic to the top with the URL right in the OP as well as create an additional thread which also had the URL of my forum. Those threads got a lot of views. If they didn't want to switch over then, something tells me they're not gonna wanna switch over now. Another thing too is that I'm still getting some final things ready such as SSL, so if I do PM people about it, I have something more to show them.

Concerning design: The width of the forum MAY be a pretty easy fix actually. What I'm worried about is that by constricting the width more, it's going to screw with the mobile layout of posts which is already pretty optimal. Now SMF DOES have a dedicated mobile mode, but the last time I dealt with it, it was kinda meh. And I hate mobile versions of sites too.

Vendor-Lazarus said:
I'm having a bit of a rough time adjusting to these new quotes.
Since they are not nested, they strip out all previous quotes and jumble the post together, forcing one to find the start and end of previous back and forth.

Maybe it can be a good thing, treating posts as blocks instead of ever more increasing nitpicks. ,)
Though a determined person can easily get around it.

So, to turn this into a simpler and more direct question;
Is there an add-on/mod for quote options, or is this it?
Thanks!
This is actually a convenience setting I switched on. If it's not on, it will be the standard quote behavior which tends to create "quote pyramids" with long discussions and I find them to be overcluttering and annoying. Having said that, if people really want it on again, I can turn normal quote behavior back on, but I won't like it though...
 

bluegate

Disciple
Sanctuary legend
Messages
292
I'm sorry if this comes across as nitpicking, but there's a horizontal scroll bar on all pages with the Neutrality theme.

A suggested fix for this:
File: /Themes/Neutrality/css/index_navy.css
Line: 56
Code:
/* This division wraps the entire forum when a forum width is set. */
div#wrapper
{
   margin: 0 auto;
   min-width: 764px;
   max-width: 2300px;
   border-width: 0 1px 2px;
   border-style: solid;
   border-color: #668ccc;
}
Add "box-sizing: border-box;" before the closing curly bracket , making it look like:
Code:
/* This division wraps the entire forum when a forum width is set. */
div#wrapper
{
   margin: 0 auto;
   min-width: 764px;
   max-width: 2300px;
   border-width: 0 1px 2px;
   border-style: solid;
   border-color: #668ccc;
   box-sizing: border-box;
}
 

Arnox

Master
Staff member
Founder
Messages
5,314
bluegate said:
I'm sorry if this comes across as nitpicking, but there's a horizontal scroll bar on all pages with the Neutrality theme.

A suggested fix for this:
File: /Themes/Neutrality/css/index_navy.css
Line: 56
Code:
/* This division wraps the entire forum when a forum width is set. */
div#wrapper
{
   margin: 0 auto;
   min-width: 764px;
   max-width: 2300px;
   border-width: 0 1px 2px;
   border-style: solid;
   border-color: #668ccc;
}
Add "box-sizing: border-box;" before the closing curly bracket , making it look like:
Code:
/* This division wraps the entire forum when a forum width is set. */
div#wrapper
{
   margin: 0 auto;
   min-width: 764px;
   max-width: 2300px;
   border-width: 0 1px 2px;
   border-style: solid;
   border-color: #668ccc;
   box-sizing: border-box;
}
Done. :tup:
 

Monoochrom

Disciple
Sanctuary legend
Messages
275
Arnox said:
I'm sorry this took so long. I kinda forgot you replied. lol

Concerning community building: I'm kind of leery about PMing people directly about the site on the Escapist as I don't want to annoy them. I bumped my original Sanctuary topic to the top with the URL right in the OP as well as create an additional thread which also had the URL of my forum. Those threads got a lot of views. If they didn't want to switch over then, something tells me they're not gonna wanna switch over now. Another thing too is that I'm still getting some final things ready such as SSL, so if I do PM people about it, I have something more to show them.

Concerning design: The width of the forum MAY be a pretty easy fix actually. What I'm worried about is that by constricting the width more, it's going to screw with the mobile layout of posts which is already pretty optimal. Now SMF DOES have a dedicated mobile mode, but the last time I dealt with it, it was kinda meh. And I hate mobile versions of sites too.

This is actually a convenience setting I switched on. If it's not on, it will be the standard quote behavior which tends to create "quote pyramids" with long discussions and I find them to be overcluttering and annoying. Having said that, if people really want it on again, I can turn normal quote behavior back on, but I won't like it though...
Keep in mind that people on the Escapist don't know what's going on. I think a lot of them are holding out in hopes that this purchase thing will pan out. If the Site were to suddenly go down, you'd probably see a influx of Users, I've been down this kind of path before, if something like that happens people will show up if only to see if anyone else around here know's whats going on. I also wouldn't just spam everyone, but I for instance doubt that any User that was in support of WW staying open for instance would not welcome a invitation. I'm also not adressing that to you alone. I'd invite people myself if my Hands weren't metaphorically tied. Basically, if any of you have Forum Friends that aren't already here, tell them to come over, the more the merrier!

Anything to say in regards to my tone policing? lol
 

Arnox

Master
Staff member
Founder
Messages
5,314
Monoochrom said:
Keep in mind that people on the Escapist don't know what's going on. I think a lot of them are holding out in hopes that this purchase thing will pan out. If the Site were to suddenly go down, you'd probably see a influx of Users, I've been down this kind of path before, if something like that happens people will show up if only to see if anyone else around here know's whats going on. I also wouldn't just spam everyone, but I for instance doubt that any User that was in support of WW staying open for instance would not welcome a invitation. I'm also not adressing that to you alone. I'd invite people myself if my Hands weren't metaphorically tied. Basically, if any of you have Forum Friends that aren't already here, tell them to come over, the more the merrier!

Anything to say in regards to my tone policing? lol
Alright then. I'll look through the WW thread.

And tone policing? WTF is that? XD We don't "tone police" here.
 

bluegate

Disciple
Sanctuary legend
Messages
292
Arnox said:
Done. :tup:
Awesome!

Could I also bother you to add the following to the very end of these files?
You probably use the dark theme still and it's fine there, but in the Neutrality and Sanctuary theme, the shout box's input is a bit hard to read.

Files:
/Themes/Neutrality/css/index_navy.css
/Themes/Sanctuary_Alt_1/css/index.css

CSS Snippet
Code:
/* Shoutbox Chat Input Hot Fix
------------------------------------------------- */
input#shoutbox_message {
    background-color: inherit !important;
    color: inherit !important;
}
What the shout box looks like at the moment at the top,
What it would look like with the above changes at the bottom
 

Arnox

Master
Staff member
Founder
Messages
5,314
bluegate said:
Awesome!

Could I also bother you to add the following to the very end of these files?
You probably use the dark theme still and it's fine there, but in the Neutrality and Sanctuary theme, the shout box's input is a bit hard to read.
Done.
 

Vendor-Lazarus

Arch Disciple
Sanctuary legend
Messages
949
Arnox said:
This is actually a convenience setting I switched on. If it's not on, it will be the standard quote behavior which tends to create "quote pyramids" with long discussions and I find them to be overcluttering and annoying. Having said that, if people really want it on again, I can turn normal quote behavior back on, but I won't like it though...
I didn't like those pyramids on the Escapist neither.
What would be perfect is if it only takes 2 quotes, your questions and their reply, keeping the quote structure (instead of current jumbled text) and a sense of Q/A continuity. Don't imagine that's possible though.

Maybe we could learn to answer through whole blocks instead.
I could go either way.
 

Arnox

Master
Staff member
Founder
Messages
5,314
Vendor-Lazarus said:
I didn't like those pyramids on the Escapist neither.
What would be perfect is if it only takes 2 quotes, your questions and their reply, keeping the quote structure (instead of current jumbled text) and a sense of Q/A continuity. Don't imagine that's possible though.

Maybe we could learn to answer through whole blocks instead.
I could go either way.
It may be possible, but I'd have to edit the main server files to do so. I have no idea where to start. lol

EDIT: Found the relevant code in Post.php:

Code:
// Remove any nested quotes, if necessary.
			if (!empty($modSettings['removeNestedQuotes']))
				$form_message = preg_replace(array('~\n?\[quote.*?\].+?\[/quote\]\n?~is', '~^\n~', '~\[/quote\]~'), '', $form_message);
I have no bloody idea though how to get that to clip all but the last two quotes.
 

Vendor-Lazarus

Arch Disciple
Sanctuary legend
Messages
949
Trying to understand the code from my own programming experience looked at lot easier from the outset..
It was not.. I only got halfway, if that.

Anyway, a 2 hour session of searching various sites led me back to SimpleMachines forum (in a roundabout way) and this thread and post specifically;
https://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php?topic=198456.msg1295877#msg1295877

It might not work entirely..See the rest of that thread.
A lot of other people on that forum also wanted to limit nested quotes to 2-3 max.
Some say that using reply only is better, since it doesn't bog down the database.

Soooo. I'm up far too late and should really attempt to sleep now.
I'll continue checking for viable solutions tomorrow.
 

Houseman

Zealot
Sanctuary legend
Messages
1,074
Arnox said:
I have no bloody idea though how to get that to clip all but the last two quotes.
Lemme take a crack at it. But first, I'll use this post to test some things out.

Let's see, can you do... this:
Oh, good, you can, so that bit of code only happens when you quote a post, not when you submit a post.


EDIT:

Nah, couldn't do it. It's easy to do:

[tag]*[/tag]
and then kill all that, but it's harder to do:

[tag] * [tag] * [tag] * [/tag] [/tag] [/tag]
and then erase all the stuff in red, while not causing other issues.

I was able to get close, but I started to wig out if there were more than three quotes, or more than three un-nested quotes in a post.

Here are some of my failed attempts if anyone wants to play with them:

Code:
\n?\[quote.*?\].+?\[quote.*?\].+?(\[quote.*?\].+?\[/quote\]).+?\[/quote\].+?\[/quote\]\n?

(\n?\[quote.*?\].+?\[quote.*?\].+?)(\[quote.*?\].+?\[/quote\])(.+?\[/quote\].+?\[/quote\]\n?)

((?:\n?\[quote.*?].+?){2}.?)(\[quote].+?)(?:\[/quote.*?].+?){2}
 

bluegate

Disciple
Sanctuary legend
Messages
292
Regex is always such fun!

I can't claim much credit for this as I found most of it on the internet, but here are two possible solutions;

#1 Changing the Regex to
Code:
// Remove any nested quotes, if necessary.
         if (!empty($modSettings['removeNestedQuotes']))
            $form_message = preg_replace('~\G(?!\A)(?>(\[quote\b[^]]*](?>[^[]+|\[(?!/?quote)|(?1))*\[/quote])|(?<!\[)(?>[^[]+|\[(?!/?quote))+\K)|\[quote\b[^]]*]\K~', '', $form_message);
For more information see the accepted answer on this page;
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/18754062/remove-nested-quotes/18754616


#2 Creating a Parser function which can be told to easily remove quotes up to a set level
Code:
// Function to remove nested BB Code starting at a certain level
function removeNestedBBCode( $text , $pattern , $level )
{
	preg_match_all( $pattern , $text, $matches, PREG_OFFSET_CAPTURE);
	$nestlevel = 0;
	$cutfrom = 0;
	$cut = false;
	$removed = 0;
	foreach($matches[0] as $quote){
		if (substr($quote[0], 0, 2) == '[q') $nestlevel++;
		if (substr($quote[0], 0, 2) == '[/') $nestlevel--;
		if (!$cut && $nestlevel == $level){ // we reached the first nested quote, start remove here
			$cut = true;
			$cutfrom = $quote[1];
		}
		if ($cut && $nestlevel == ($level - 1 ) ){ // we closed the nested quote, stop remove here
			$cut = false;
			$text = substr_replace( $text , '' , $cutfrom - $removed , ($quote[1]+8) - $cutfrom );
			$removed += ($quote[1]+8) - $cutfrom;
		}
	};
	return $text;
}

// Remove any nested quotes, if necessary.
         if (!empty($modSettings['removeNestedQuotes']))
            $form_message = removeNestedBBCode( $form_message, '#(\[quote[^]]*\]|\[\/quote\])#' , 2 );
The 2 at the end on the very last line is the nesting level for quotes.
This is based on the third answer found on this page, although it took some editing to actually get it to work;
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/18754062/remove-nested-quotes/18754616


If you want to play around with both of these solutions then you can go to https://dev.luckymouse.nl/testMatch.php and play around with them, this could be helpful if you want to determine the nesting level to use, if you were to pick option #2.

You'll always end up with some degree of a mess where quotes are removed from a post but the text surrounding them stays, though.
 

Vendor-Lazarus

Arch Disciple
Sanctuary legend
Messages
949
That such a simple thing like nesting quotes could be so troublesome..
Why can't it simply remove the "offending" 3,4,5th level quotes in it's entirety, instead of causing such a jumbled mess with leftover text while keeping the quoting structure intact?



Seems much easier to teach/educate users to simply create stand-alone sentences when responding to separate quotes.
Use of two,three line breaks or a line of dashes maybe. Then again, that will probably be ignored by the text editor when quoting.
Just like you can't trust the preview for text wrapping or similar.
--------------------------------------------------
Well. The good research and work done here will hopefully make it easier for Arnox to decide. ,)
 
Top