Upcoming changes to the forum

[John Robinson]

I'm working on the following changes to the forum software:

Thread URLs will change.

Old links will be redirected to maintain bookmark compatibility. The new links will be more descriptive, offering the date of the article and perhaps a meaningful filename.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1510575/posts doesn't say much.
http://www.freerepublic.com/2005/10/27/freeptoon/p1 says so much more.

Time zone handled by browser.

The timestamps on threads will change to your computer's local time zone, but only if you have JavaScript enabled. Otherwise they will be in US/Eastern. Your FR preference will be ignored (and will be phased out in favor of browser-side time zone handling.) The beauty of this arrangement is that as long as your computer displays the time in your time zone, FR will "Do The Right Thing"(tm).

Fixed number of comments.

No more than 50 comments per page will be shown. Your preference of 20, 100 or 250 is going to be ignored. I know this is a bit of a heartbreak for some, I understand it is a sacrifice. There are very good and very strong reasons this is changing.

Article text.

Only the first page of the thread will show the article text, and will always show the article text. Subsequent pages will only ever show a summary. In the future, a little browser-side magic could make the article text appear when you click a link.

All for one and one for all.

Everybody logged in or not will see the same content and links. For example, in the existing software, if you're not logged in you won't see the "Report Abuse" links. This check is going away, everybody will now see the same row of buttons.

In exchange, we'll have cache-friendly forum pages. This means:

• Faster downloads. If nothing changed on the thread you won't have to download it again. Also, local caches can store the page and deliver it much quicker.

• Better response time. Our servers will have to do less processing. Better yet, the front-end server will probably already have a generated copy of a thread in cache memory. Your request will be served instantly.

Update 10/30/05

I've expanded the scope of changes. I'm cleaning up the information we present to search engines like Google and Yahoo. Our site will be more useful to third-party search engines and thus more useful to you. For the most part this will not directly impact our human visitors. There will be changes that could break bookmarks of certain types of pages, but the chances such bookmarks have ever been made are slim.

[eyespysomething]

SY- Ping

JR- Cache servers rock.

[John Robinson]

Perhaps you're looking for something the opposite of the killfile, to make select user's comments stand out from the rest.

[getmeouttaPalmBeachCounty_FL]

Hi Mr. Robinson,
Hope you're having a great evening! While you're treaking the system, I'd like to add to the chit-chat that having a way to search our own posts would be very helpful. If we already have that feature, then forgive me...I haven't found it. But, you know...something like what IE has. Maybe even something where we could pull up a list of every thread we have posted to?

[rdb3]

It would be a quick way to filter some of the random comments out and look for the replies with substance. Not that I'm trying to pay you a compliment or anything rdb!

Of course not! I ain't nobody. Just a dude with a broken body and a broken brain.

Not that there's anything wrong with that. </Seinfeld>

If you want a Google GMail account, FReepmail me.

[John Robinson]

Ah, in my new URLs, there will be a page #, you should be able to walk through all the page #s seqentially until you get a 404 Not found. But I don't think its a good idea to autoping every poster to a thread. We used to have it. I disabled that feature years ago because of popular complaint. You used to be able to address a post to "all" to ping everybody on the thread.

You'd like the API stuff I want to do. Are you familiar with the C# .NET libraries for parsing JSON (JavaScript Object Notation)? Basically, I want to use JSON (rather than XML) because my API is specifically intended to be used in client-side Ajax-style JavaScript, and there is no more natural encoding to JavaScript code than JavaScript data.

[WVNan]

LOL. You know rdb3, I never before noticed that little r before you blew it up bigger. (Note to self. Have eyes checked soon)

[deport]

Note from PROSOUTH:

I didn't see it listed but an EDIT button would be nice to correct errors or tempers.

[John Robinson]

I'd really like to change the look of the forum, in some minor ways, but we'll see how that goes in testing. Some of the changes I do believe we'll see are related to where certain pieces of information are placed and grouped. For example, "topics" and "keywords" will be merged into a single list and displayed in a sidebar close to the top of the article. The reasons for these changes will be non-trivial, they will be an effort to simplify the interface and make it more inviting to new users.

[John Robinson]

Edit is definately a desired feature. Comments and articles.

[Just Lori]

I abhor puke-inducing cutesy smilies, avatars, and other images that add nothing to the discussion.

I agree, John! You're doing fantastic and I thank you!

[uglybiker]

I didn't see it listed but an EDIT button would be nice to correct errors or tempers.

Oh no! If we had that, we wouldn't have 'hugh' and 'series'!

Besides, when someone posts something really stupid, I wanna be able to throw it in their face for years to come!

(Hey numbnuts! Remember this?)

[Incorrigible]

Perhaps you're looking for something the opposite of the killfile, to make select user's comments stand out from the rest.

Yes, that would do it!  How to make it user selectable would be the challenge.

 

[Lauretij2]

Whatever.

[Incorrigible]

Maybe I'll start using one of these... much to John's chagrin!

 

[uglybiker]

I think taglines could be dispensed with.

What's wrong with taglines?

[John Robinson]

Hm. Hmmmm... Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm......

[Cheburashka]

You're welcome. Glad you like it. But answer the question! Does it? ;-)
---
Only when you're doing wheelies.

[BreitbartSentMe]

FWIW, an edit feature would be nice, however I'd like to see it append something like Edited by Bush_Democrat at HH:SS DD:YY:YY to the end of the post, so someone can't 'kitty' edit some flame-worthy comment out after they incited a riot on the thread... (just replace 'kitty' with, you know)

[Krodg]

While you're treaking the system, I'd like to add to the chit-chat that having a way to search our own posts would be very helpful. If we already have that feature, then forgive me...I haven't found it.

Go to search, type in your user name, click "by poster" and hit enter. Pretty simple!