Feature Requests and Suggestions Thread

Hi,From talking with Admin before, this board's software created with the focus of production-level code and release. Because of that, I thought it might be useful to have a thread where users can suggest features. If this is EXACTLY what you DON'T want, then of course, please close it. Otherwise... I have some suggestions.It was mentioned before that there's no time / resources for doing these feature requests, and I understand. However, it's good to track them; if resources become available (i.e. if you offer an interface for programmers here to help you implement some of these things) then we'll have a place that tracked them.What do you think? I have two features in mind at the current time. Like I said, if this isn't what you're looking for, Admin(s) please just shut this puppy down.Thanks.
Ben

In response to the question "Many short replies vs. fewer but longer messages", I made the following suggestion: I would HIGHLY recommend the second function (Add a way for people to SPECIFY which messages they are replying to). We have a few posters who choose to write one long reply, and this makes the 'notification' feature of replies go away. Although some might not use this functionality, I think some would. Having the functionality would be very helpful.

The 'who's online' area at the bottom of the page is interesting. I think it would be really useful, and easy, to add links to those names in the box to either their profiles, or hte list of their most recent posts.That way I can learn a bit about the other people that are online, which would be cool.Ben

I don't see any need for it. I only see problems.Every message should respond to something in the thread. By definition, to be on topic, you AT LEAST should be responding to the opening post.I don't see any need for the "Post Reply" button. I only see that it allows people to
1. Easily go off topic
2. Post a reply which can be easily missed
3. Add extra length by having admins the poster to use the little red button Ben

Sure.Thanks for being so responsive in even responding to suggestions. I appreciate that.Ben

This is a ... weird one.I changed my avatar the other day. Now, in all of my old posts, my avatar appears to be my new one. That's weird.Instead of keeping a single (calculated?) link per member on their avatar picture, could you do something like this?On update of an avatatar,
- increase the count of 'avatar changes'
- upload the new photo to [username]-[avatar-changes].[extension]
- use THIS URL for generating the avatar for each new post.So that assumes a lot about your system (especially the HTML generation part), but .. that way the avatar wouldn't change for all posts. It's not usually important, but I think it's cooler when reading old posts and learning about the people on the board.And it especially sucks for the threads EXPLICTLY about avatars, when pretty much all of them have changed since then!!Ben

I do agree that it's pretty unnecessary, just a suggestion. I would suggest that, if you're worried about space, you can reduce the allowed avatar size by a lot. 167K or whatever for like a 150X150 picture is pretty unnecessary, unless lots of people like the ability to 'blow up' the avatar picture. I personally would rather have an avatar history.And I agree with the comments on signatures. I did make a signature when I came, but I've never used it--until now. I've been waiting for just the right moment

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keep the change

"replies await"In theory, a nice feature. However, in practice, it's hard for me to use. Here's why:Often a poster doesn't post a reply because the conversation is finished. Mathematically, when a conversation is done, 50% of the time I'll be stuck with a thread saying that "replies await."So my list gets cluttered with "yes" markings that really actually do mask the TRUE "yes" that I should pay attention to. i'm always tempted to post a final "Thanks!" or "See you next time!" message at the end, to clear the "yes" status, but that just pushes the problem on somebody else.To truly be effective, the feature needs some manual way of clearing it. Either by clearing the thread itself from the list, or by clearing the field "replies await", or by adding another field "i.e. ignore!"Ben

Right! I was thinking that too, I forgot to say so. Thanks!

I thought I read somewhere you were going to fix this in dBoard 1.0... so let me know if it's fixed.Wouldn't it be pretty easy to check for double-posts? Simply check if the previous post is a binary match of the previous post. If so, simply return an error.Double-posts are ANNOYING!

I've noticed that both in CREATING and SEARCHING usernames, user names are case sensitive!!Now I know you're busy with fixing up dBBoard 1.0, but this should NOT be allowed in any commercial release. UNDOUBTEDLY you don't want people registering names based on case. For example, I register "percy" (not to be confused with "Percy") . People would get confused, and it could lead to aliasing.Yet the software allows it. It's totally unnecessary (maybe programmatically easier), and can only lead to problems.My STRONG suggestion is to remove that functionality and assumptions. In the MINIMUM case, keep the assumptions (i.e. code that assumes aliases are case-sensitive) but REMOVE the ability to create aliases taht are the same spelling but different case.II

There are some choices in the "Search Forum / Archive" dropdown menu of the search page that are not valid selectionsMain Topic Forums
Side Orders
Forum Bits and Bytes
ArchiveHowever, they look (to me) to be valid (i.e. search all Main Topic Forums), despite their slight background color change.If you use them, you don't get an error--you just get no search results. VERY confusing (at least for me). Took me a while to figure it out.I'd propose one of the three solutions:1. Make them valid search criteria
2. Add client-side script to fail form submission if one of those items are selected.
3. Remove them

Check out posts 29 and 30http://EvC Forum: Biological Reduction and Free Will -->EvC Forum: Biological Reduction and Free WillBen

Check out posts 29 and 30http://EvC Forum: Biological Reduction and Free Will -->EvC Forum: Biological Reduction and Free WillBen(added by edit)
Clicking the button twice only gave me one post.
Clicking the button, then clicking "back", then clicking the button again gave me two posts.In other words, good job (at least for IE!)This message has been edited by Ben!, 29 December 2004 10:18 AM

Nice find Moose.I'll post a message as a reply to Percy, to alert him of the bug. You'll find a better description of the problem there. (The next post)(added by edit)
I posted the bug in the dBBoard thread.This message has been edited by Ben!, 12-28-2004 14:06 AM