Online Community - Comments, Improvements and Feedback

My email notifications have stopped working but I don’t know how to fix it. 

Hi how are you? On a car forum I used to use you could reactivate an older post you just clicked on a little box that was on the same screen as the original post, it was a “quote” button. It therefore took the post and took it right to the top as newest post, you could add your own reply underneath it, the “????” Quotation marks were also included, so not embedded!  

so if I wanted to reply to the very middle post here(84)  I could click quote and a copy would appear right here,making it relevant, the original was left in its original place to keep it in context of the time it was used., 

take care and nice to hear you,, I enjoy your contributions, your spirit.()

(P.S. ...in all the times I have used "The Internet", I have never seen a Site where this function is an option. It is either there or not.)

And also as I write this... I see what you mean!!

To "CareTwo".
...'Evening... This reply concerns only the first paragraph of your own Reply. I offer slight apology, or slight confusion, or both...

By "three replies" I also meant your own, insofar as it being a (nested/sub) Reply to another Reply, to "Martian Tom" (Cat/Kitten to Cat!), despite yourself asking the question to which I then offered answer. The "three replies" were CareTwo, SpottyTortoise, and ElephantInTheRoom. I mix-up terminology when it comes to the Internet, and so that is what I meant... especially by "Apology"...

But yes, I think you are right concerning the "Load More/Previous" possibly truncating Replies/Sub-Threads inappropriately and possibly randomly... but! - I still think that not much can be done about that (it is an automated thing), for all content is random content.
All I can try to offer, is to keep in mind that all Threads are *Linear*, and so "Load more/Previous" simply does exactly what it says. To keep track of it, I follow the newly-added LINES.

(...Alas, as I write this, a new thing occurs to me to support reasons for adding options to change things as well: If I want to SAVE the entire Page, I would have "click click click"...! It is hard to "please all of the people all of the time", is it not? (!) )

Disambiguating Cynosure, your reply highlights one of the problems with 'load next' and 'load previous' in that you state 'out of the three so far' and there being only two earlier posts displayed.

It would help matters if the loading happened automatically (or, as you mention, the functionality can be turned on or off per user).

If the software NAS are using does not allow a global setting of nested or unnested replies then it is a pretty poor piece of software.

I feel this new software is a backward step for me as a user. To give one other example (which I have mentioned in this thread), the old forum allowed the user to change the background colour and I changed mine to black as I preferred that to white; the choice of colours was limited but at least there was a choice.

...Just found out that you can now type Reply directly onto the Home Screen (!!), if *this* reply to myself shows up...

... Difficult to know to whom (out of three so far) I should direct reply, and so I aim this at "Caretwo".

I kind of very much like the "load next" "load previous" business, yet I can indeed see how it can be irritating. If it is there for the reasons which I myself appreciate, then those reasons are --- to save memory or screen-space, when using a smaller or tiny device (like mine)...?

Perhaps there should be a way to turn certain functions on or off... but, to elaborate what I said before, I do not think NAS can do anything about the display order of Threads (oldest, votes, newest, etc.) because if someone wants to Post something right in the middle of a very Long Thread to a deeply nested answer... then, well, that is what can happen. (Good Evening to all.)

Spotty Tortoise said:

Is it sad to be thrilled by something that should have worked all along?

I think the same about myself ...... mmmmmm

hi Spotty....not stalking you.....just please don’t your still about x

Completely agree, it's just too time consuming and brain frying.

On a hugely positive note I was just reading this through my email notification and wanted to chip in and when you hit the reply button of course you are taken to the sign in screen...... I hit the sign in button and it brought me straight back here!!!

Is it sad to be thrilled by something that should have worked all along?

Thank you both

When I click 'View online' in an e-mail notification I am taken straight to the posting so that may be a short-term fix for you.

I agree that the presentation of posts is a mess and it needs sorting; all this 'Load Previous' and 'Load Next' really annoys me and there are times when I just give up on threads (particularly new threads where I have not requested notifications).

To Martian Tom,

Currently in the Home Page, you must click upon that exact reply, ("Read More") and it should take you to that reply, wherever it is in any Thread. Yet so far, that is all (and before November, I am uncertain that anyone could even do *that*.)

Upon another Thread:
community.autism.org.uk/.../autistic-people-on-the-n-a-s-internet-and-how-to-use-it-2
...I am asking for "NAS" to add certain Buttons:

- Back to Top
- To End (Of Thread)

...and I pointed out that there is already also a row of buttons:

<oldest votes newest>

...which is near the start of all Threads, and so you might want to have a go at that ("newest") button... despite it, as I said, showing everything in "a sort of backwards, crazy order". This last, I do not think that NAS can do anything about, for the Internet is unpredictable. In any case, make of this Reply what you will, and a Good Evening to you... and to your Rainbow Cat/Kitten (!).

Martian Tom wrote:

'Is there any way that a recently-posted comment can be seen at a single click, without having to go through (possibly) loads of nested replies?"

Almost at a single click yes if recieving notifications ~ use the lightening bolt icon for notifications at the top of the page, click on the appropriate notification/s and bypass all the nested concertina disorderly accordion from Autistic and Aspergian hell on a website stuff.

Sorry to moan again, but I simply cannot cope with thread streams as they are currently posted.  I see a new posting and my natural impulse is to go to the end of the stream to see the last comment... only to find that it isn't there, but has been posted in response to someone else's comment, and is therefore nested away.  So, I have to then go through all the 'Load more' sub-headings until I find the appropriate post.  This is bad enough on a short thread, but on one which has had, say, 30 replies?  Forget it.

Is there any way that a recently-posted comment can be seen at a single click, without having to go through (possibly) loads of nested replies?

Can I please ask why sending pictures while in PM setting is no longer working?

it just says after trying,” the file does not match the needed file extension, it then lists an awful lot, it used to work up until recently? Many thanks,

I have a deep loathing of telephones in general and mobiles and 'smart' phones in particular.

I can use my landline telephone well enough, but mobile phones and smart-phones are pretty irrelevant to me ~ I am a call me at home type, as dealing with the outside world and people is tricky enough without adding telecommunication device distractions to it all.

Being a supporter of open software, I am not a fan of Apple.

I know nothing of Apple technology etc, but am well into non-profit corporations like Linux etc ~ yet so not in the specifically or technically detailed sense.

WebPM said:

Noted. We'll see what can be done.

It will be very very much appreciated, thankyou.

(Keeping in mind I use a screen colour app) One thing I was at first very pleased about with the upgrade was the quote function, for whilst typing the quoted text now appears in a high-lighted panel, making it perfectly easy in long posts to differentiate from the text I am writing ~ major bonus.

The major bonus is though completely lost once posted, what with there only being a vertical line to differentiate quoted text from personally written text. This does nothing to assist horizontal visual tracking when reading as it is more of a distraction as @Misfit61* mentioned ~ being that the bold vertical bar and bold horizontal user name are more substantial in perceptual registration than the quoted standard text itself.

Another eye-strain problem previously mentioned is that the font-size posted on page is one size, whereas the font-size in the reply box is another size as being 25% smaller ~ as results in excessive peripheral and central refocusing. Might it be here that in terms of font-size ~ one size really would fit all?

Oddly enough though, when the reply box has been initially activated on my laptop ~ the font-size text cursor starts off larger then becomes smaller when it is ready to be used. So providing this is not just a particularity of my laptop's or browser's adaptive functioning, perhaps this as site operation can be taken advantage of?

I just hope from a particular day on all forums that the reply box will present exactly what will appear on screen once posted, as one forum I use allows you to write in the preview box ~ so no bother with creative type-setting and layout.

Have a good one, and many many more

DT

*The @User-Name Mention function is not for me coming up with the appropriate names, but if it works once posted this will be deleted and only therefore present in the e-mail notifications.

Noted. We'll see what can be done.

Interesting discussion. What we've done is to install a standard upgrade to the forum software (which is also a standard, off-the-shelf package). That was principally intended to improve the Questions/Activity lists in users' profiles, so that they related more obviously to the user whose profile you are viewing. What do you think? Are they more like you would expect?

We've also (I hope) fixed the issue with losing my message text when signing in to post it. Again, do you agree?

So, the standard upgrade appears to have removed some information from the mobile view, in ways that I confess I didn't notice when testing. Mea culpa. We'll take a look.

The lines (again, added as standard, not specifically by us) are to help you read the indentation/threading. So, my reply, Robert124's and Disambiguating Cynosure's are all directly to Misfit61's post of 28 November, but then we have some that are replies to the replies, and get indented more. I know that this way of displaying messages is something that not everyone prefers.

Deepthought said:

Hold on a minute ~ perhaps 'caretwo' knows what is what here?

Sorry, I do not.

I have a deep loathing of telephones in general and mobiles and 'smart' phones in particular. I have a mobile for emergency but do not own a 'smart' phone. I was given an Android tablet as a present a while ago but rarely use it and know very little about mobile computing.

Being a supporter of open software, I am not a fan of Apple.