Architecht

6 hours ago, Marwood & I said:

Oh, and why are you posting on a weekend? You never post on a weekend 

In the office working on a big project. I also tend to contribute more when I'm tracking a thread where the community is actively giving good feedback / reflecting on the state of the boards, etc.. So once I'm engaged, I kind of track it through until it dies down a bit and people move on to other things.

6 hours ago, Marwood & I said:

It must be hard to react positively, and without complacency

I think it's pretty common for me to react to requests for changes and make them. I generally look for consensus / broad support for change requests though, but it's not a one dimensional decision like "Hey, if it's popular, do it!". It depends on these factors:

1. How broadly supported is it?
2. Is there a strong segment of members opposing it or simply remaining silent (indicating it's not beneficial to them)?
3. Is it a self-evident win with no appreciable downside? What's the ratio?
4. How costly / time consuming is the change?
5. Where does its benefit/cost ratio fall in relation to other improvements being worked on? (remember, this area covers far more than changes to the boards)

There are usually some passionate members around with a few ideas that they are convinced are clear wins - but they don't always consider the broader picture of all of the above factors.  Or if they do, they weigh them differently than I do and/or than the CCG folks who actually set budget and priorities do. That can make the lack of reaction to a "sure fire win" (in one person's opinion) feel like complacency.

If a bunch of people request is, there's no notable downside, few people are in opposition, and it's cheap and easy to do (making it not very competitive with other planned improvements) - those are easy. But most requests aren't that clearly a win. 

I would say between you and me, for example, that you can sometimes get pretty enthusiastic about some ideas that are mostly championed by you, and maybe endorsed by a couple of other people. When you don't see that self-evident improvement acted on quickly, it feels pretty bad. From my point of view, I read them, put them through the above set of considerations - and often just wait to see if they gain momentum. It doesn't mean they aren't good ideas. I mean, someone has to think of it first - lack of popularity doesn't mean it's bad - but it does effect priority.

For example, on the likes system - many people at first didn't even want likes and wanted them removed. Should I have acted on that feedback? No. It wasn't universal. Over time, others came out and said they enjoyed the feature - and even more telling was the fact that many people were using them.

We put like limits in place because they were being actively abused by some - both fake accounts, and people trying to treat it like a competition that they could/should rig. A few people noted it was restrictive. Also, I after watching the system for a while, it seemed that despite the competition rigging, the most popular posts would probably rise to the top despite the shenanigans to exchange likes. So we raised them and took advantage of an easy tweak to provide even more to long time / highly active members because it was an easy way to raise limits without incurring abuses from fake accounts.

After that, many folks got quiet about it and seemed to not be hitting the limits much.

In this thread, as the usage and popularity of the like system continued to grow, it seems that more people were legitimately hitting the like limits again. So I raised it again.  It's just based on "watchful waiting" - which is a concept used in medicine because often it's better to see how the condition evolves than to do something more active and risk incurring more harm than good.

It's like that for most product development / product management. You can't make all of the people happy all of the time. But you can keep improving within the boundaries of budget / priority you're given.

11 hours ago, nepatkm said:

But not the re-quoting over and over again.  , that’s where the like icons have helped out a bunch though. 

And the way the new software handles quotes - only quoting one post by default instead of nested quotes - and allowing you to easily highlight part of a post and quote just that - has really cut down on quote spam.

On 2/16/2018 at 8:49 AM, Dick Pontoon said:

I've had them turned off for a good 10-11 years. Ugh. Even if load times weren't an issue, all that visual clutter is. Can't stand them.

Although, I will point out that there's a cool little x in the upper right of every signature where you can choose to turn all sigs off OR just hide that person's sig.

So when someone has a HUGE signature, you can ignore it.

The problem is we want some of those spiders. We'd just like them to be polite and not hit the boards with the equivalent of 400 users constantly browsing the site. Some spiders are polite, some you can give hints about how fast you'd like them hit the site, and some (like Baidu) don't care what you think. If you ban them, you lose search engine traffic. I would just up the server resource for LEGIT spiders, but telling legit from bad actors can be a real chore, AND we're already at the top end of the cloud hosted plan provided by the boards.

But if we have regular problems due to server load, we'll definitely either cut back on the spiders or break through to a new class of hosting as needed. But not if it was a temporary blip.

6 hours ago, Columbia Comics said:

@Architecht

Have any explanations for this?

Nothing that I know about. That cloudflare Ray ID isn't actually an error message. More like a tracking code for the servers involved, I think. Usually when you see a cloudflare error, it means that the servers BEHIND cloudflare aren't responding in a timely manner so cloudflare gave up. Unfortunately, that also means that you as the user (and me as an admin) don't get to see the real error message.

But if it isn't continuing to happen, it may have just been a temporary issue with server load.

A while back, we were getting spammed by some keyword research scraping spider that was pounding the boards. We banned those IP addresses, but lately, I've been seeing the number of guest accounts spiking upwards. I can see right now that some Chinese computers are hammering at the servers. Could be the Baidu (Chinese search engine spider), or it might just be a customer of theirs buying server space in their cloud offering.

The year you joined the boards:

https://getyarn.io/yarn-clip/0274cb18-92af-42e5-a0e8-8a34e248a7d8

Now... whenever now is:

https://getyarn.io/yarn-clip/6c0dd545-6e9e-4f0f-9155-a0cfc46ac227

6 minutes ago, Dick Pontoon said:

Arch, I don't care what everybody says... you're alright!

7 minutes ago, COI said:

I get the irony and I get the ebb and flow thing, but at some point there is enough of a change in climate that it's worth discussing and not simply dismissing. And I'm not suggesting that you're dismissing it, but the tongue-in-cheek way that you've kept track of these kinds of threads may have the unintended effect of diminishing or obscuring some of the points being made here.

Also, I'd like my custom title back, please. 

Fair point. I do view these things from the long perspective, so the sentiments of the moment are always in that context for me, and that can make it feel like I'm not listening.  That said, part of the reason I have a list of these threads at all is because I do listen. I know they exist because I care about how people are feeling.

These boards are great, and the knowledgeable people rummaging around here are a treasure. The community is supportive, and has camaraderie and friendships, and drama, and all the things you see in a vibrant, caring group.

You guys should all be proud of the community you have created, and proud of being members of it. 

Time to update the end is coming thread?

Sadly, some of the old links don't work, and I couldn't identify them all

Ironically, each successive thread about how the boards are past their prime has more replies than the previous versions. 

That said, I do think the growth of social media, and things like facebook groups have reduced the "market share" of conversations that message boards have. A dedicated message board like this is still the best way to have long form conversations among aficionados, but some of the other avenues for discussion have soaked up some users.

I always read these threads with interest (even though I am being a little tongue in cheek about it with the below thread), because there is a real ebb and flow to the community that is important to respect. I'm always interested in how I can help the community grow, either by leading, following or getting out of the way.

Oh, and by the way - like limits raised a bit.

4 minutes ago, lizards2 said:

But at least you are periodically re-seasoned for tastier posting...., 

 

13 hours ago, porcupine48 said:

15 hours ago, The Resurrection said:

I have been here for 10 years now and havent achieved "seasoned veteran" BUT I got a custom title from Arch, so that wins.

But it was briefly taken away...and you lost the ...aaaarrrgh! 

There's a weird behavior in the boards that we have tried to get the software vendor to fix. Basically, when someone passes the post count threshold, they become a seasoned vet. But because it's a boards-only permissions group, when you log out and back in, it resets you to a "member". As soon as you make another post, it promotes you again.

It's a bit annoying.

20 minutes ago, RockMyAmadeus said:

No. 

Excessive micro-management and aggressive control of what, where, when, how, and why people post is why this thread exists in the first place.

Utopia is fantasy; it does not exist in the real world, and trying to force it is what drives and has driven people away. 

Well, that's one view. Granted, sometimes the creation of a sub forum for which there isn't interest creates a ghost town. But sometimes it allow people with interest in a topic to gather together and feed off of each other's enthusiasm.

38 minutes ago, Marwood & I said:

I think so, yes. I battled away with Arch on it for a time but just ended up making myself unpopular. I thought I had some good points really, but no one joined me in the fight so I gave up. There's some history here, if you're bored for 10 minutes:

I still think it's silly that 99.9% of us have to live with a cap, which was brought in to stop a handful of people running riot. If you turned off the Leaderboard, which as I understand it is the only visible manifestation of like volumes, then there would be no need for a cap. 

But I'm going over old ground here, we have Arch's position on it and that's that.

 

I'm not opposed to raising like limits. I just think it's better to find a number that's needed by most users, than to take the cap off entirely. Ideally, abusers would hit the limit, but most legitimate users wouldn't notice that there is one.

Seasoned vets have a higher limit because they aren't going to be fake accounts liking things to be disruptive, but because some switch flips when you hit 10k posts and you are now better at liking. It was just a convenient pre-existing group to grant more likes.

We already raised the limits once. We'll probably do it again if the cap is being run into repeatedly by normal users.  It's just that, as Marwood says when he brought it up previously (and we raised the cap at that time), after that "I thought I had some good points really, but no one joined me in the fight so I gave up." -- It didn't seem like many people were running into the limit.

So it seems we're somewhat close to where the limit should be. Maybe a little low.

14 hours ago, Mercury Man said:

So true.   The percentage of people who actually read the stuff in between the covers is pretty low here.   The reason I am in this hobby, is I like reading the stories, and looking at the various art styles.  Most of the people on the Modern boards are more about getting that lemming-hyped variant, putting it in a sealed case, and oogling over the latest sales price on ebay.   Well LA-DEE-FRIGGIN-DAA!

 

Would it help to create  a sub forum of some sort based around story discussions? It might feel a little like the movies sub forum. I could see focusing it a few different ways:

1. Threads about the story line of anything newly released
2. Threads about any story line that you are currently reading right now
3. Other?

On 10/14/2017 at 12:21 PM, 01TheDude said:

Is there a way to go to the unread content using this links above? if not-- this is not a good alternative for me.

Good point. I revised the approach. If you check out the first post on this thread, you will now find a link that shows you all of those threads, and allows you to click on the black dot to jump to new posts. Basically, if you add an "infinite" tag to a post, it will show up in that link.

https://www.cgccomics.com/boards/search/?&type=forums_topic&tags=infinite

They don't provide target dates for their minor releases, but you can get a feel for the range of their timing via their release notes.

https://invisioncommunity.com/release-notes/

On 1/31/2018 at 10:11 AM, Jayman said:

Arch thanks for the reply but when I tap the black dot it always brings me to the beginning of the PM message. Even if the messages extend to a next page, the black dot always brings me to the first posted PM in the conversation. I'm using an iPhone.

You are correct sir. I just tried it myself and that no longer works. We filed a ticket with the boards maker to tell them jumping to a new PM works in the pop up, but not on the all messages screen... they apparently resolved that inconsistency by removing the function from the pop up....

@Scott =)

On 1/24/2018 at 8:22 PM, Jayman said:

When reading PMs, is there a way to have the latest response be at the top? Or must I always scroll down to the bottom of the conversation. TIA!

Looks like you are looking for the second bullet in my original post.

Quote

GOING TO UNREAD REPLIES IN A PRIVATE MESSAGE
Click the black dot from the pop-up you get from the envelope at the top.

NOTE: This currently does NOT work from the full InBox page. We have filed a feature request to fix this.

For the technically minded among you, you CAN just paste this: ?latest=1  onto the end of the URL for a private message and it jumps you there, but that's a pretty difficult way to handle it. Better to just use the black dot from the envelope view.

New members that have no posts can't be seen on the site / directory. This is to protect the privacy of those who signed up through the main site to submit items for grading. Someone who does that does not necessarily want to appear on the message board publicly simply by clicking through to the site.

They are visible once they've made a post.

I added a rule about surcharges for PayPal (or other services if they restrict it). I am also closing this idea - so no explicit action. I'm not adding a rule that expressly allows or disallows it. I'll leave it up to a combination of member complaints and moderator judgement whether something is conforming to the "only offered on the boards" rule.

On 12/29/2017 at 6:11 PM, Dale Roberts said:

OK, I'm trying to send invoices for my sales thread and it is only allowing me to send 25 message a day, What kind of garbage is this? I've got 81 invoices to send. Am I supposed to send them out over 4 days? Thats the most insane thing I've ever seen.  Please tell me there is someway to get around this......

Hm. Well, there is a limit to the total number of new conversations that can be started in a day. That restriction has been in place since we started with the new boards, but it has been set at 50 - so I'm not sure why you saw a limit of 25. We put that limit in to prevent people from using the PM system as some kind of spam machine.

I just upped the limit to 100, though.

On 12/12/2017 at 12:04 PM, Bird said:

@Shadow Images you did not do that correctly I do not think. Hey @Architecht, Shadow has a good question (about allowing violations of paypal's terms of service)

I'm only sort of aware of this one, but here's how I would state moderation position on this kind of question:

We don't allow personal paypal for two reasons.

1. It deprives buyers of protections that they should give up, and
2. It's explicitly against the terms of use of PayPal

If either of those things are also true about asking for an extra 3% for paypal, then I think we would veer towards disallowing it.

If I understand things correctly, it's ok with PayPal if you say something like "3% discount for cash/check", though?

I'm not familiar enough with the specific terms of PayPal use to know in this case what is and isn't acceptable. But if we see enough abuse of those terms, we'd clarify it and add it to the posting guidelines.

On 11/29/2017 at 2:26 PM, Red84 said:

I agree.  @Architecht What say you?

Hm... yeah, that's interesting...

I'd say that I would be concerned someone would end up in a PM conversation trying to "buy" the book, and then get burned. If we leave the bait up, it may catch someone.

Also, it would create a need to make judgement calls about what is a simple guidelines violation versus what is a scammer. Guidelines violation would need to be removed, while scams would be locked, but there would be a large grey area in between. That will get messy.

Theoretically, if they try again under the same terms, their posts will just be removed again. If they just make a new fake account they may not be caught anyway even if we leave their previous attempts up. There probably isn't an ideal treatment here. I might trend towards less complexity in that case.

Thoughts?

On 11/11/2017 at 2:54 AM, Marwood & I said:

For completeness, the main point I was making on the likes front in my post dated October 22 was that my likes would not register, and that I got no 'maximum limit reached' message like I used to. The request for more likes was just an add on in the moment. 

ah!

Yes, I see that now. We'll file a bug with the boards maker. I agree that it's frustrating for that to fail silently, @Scott =)