tonyv

I use a similar approach. My community is exclusive, and my policy for years has been that you have to ask to join. I kept registration deactivated and had an announcement visible to guests telling hopefuls to use the Contact Us link to write to me. I would then temporarily re-activate registration so the prospective member could register. Lots of users joined that way, and I knew that spammers weren't going to write to me. Since activating PBR, I've been able to re-activate registration, and almost no spammers even try to register, because they're too busy "posting" ... or at least they think they are! 😉 With this feature and the spam control rating option, it leaves very few IP addresses, user names, and email addresses for me to Google and run through WhoIs, Project Honeypot, etc. It's working out great for me.

Isn't that an individual user's browser setting?

I have it activated. Haven't had a single incident of spam, but that's because I have to manually approve each registrant. I do look at my online users list and find it amusing to see some user busy posting a topic in a forum where I know we will never see his post. Why? Because he won't be approved, or he won't even bother registering after trying to post, because he's a spammer lol.

I might want to do that. Mine is a poetry board, and I and other users are often doing unusual things with the way lines are laid out, spaced, indented, etc. I have it set for double space (ENTER key set for a new paragraph), but a lot of people are posting their poems with a space between every line. I don't know if they want it to look that way or if they don't know they can hold down SHIFT and hit ENTER to make it so there is no extra space from one line to the next. I think it looks stupid in a poem, it stretches it out and makes it long so you have to scroll a lot to read it; I single space each line. But I think people who write more than just one single paragraph block wall of text might appreciate the ENTER key making a double space...for paragraphs. But okay, with single space option, they can hit the ENTER key twice for each paragraph. Like you, I just want every option to be available.

I get it, but I don't want it automatic. What if for some reason I don't want the space? I have to live with it or switch to the standard editor to fix it because the lowest common denominator doesn't know to hit ENTER twice? I don't want the software dumbed down and designed for idiots.

I understand. You can't control what every member does. No matter how you set it, some people have no clue what they're doing, and some have no sense when it comes to aesthetics. I have concluded that I can only do what I can do, and that's make my own posts look good. If someone asks me to help him make his post look better, I would. Another thing people will do is copy rich text from their posts elsewhere (online, word documents, etc.) and paste it into the editor, sometimes yielding horrible results. They're too lazy or stupid to type directly or to take any extra effort to fix what they've copy/pasted. If they won't take pride in how their stuff looks, what do I care? My posts look good.

So, it looks good/normal until you change the spacing to single-spaced? This is something I'm concerned about. Right now I have it set so that you hit the ENTER key if you want a double space; if you want a single space after a line you hold down SHIFT and hit the ENTER. When it comes to the latter, someone making a new post could use a quote and then hit ENTER twice to separate the text of his reply from the quote box for a cleaner look. I would like to change it so that it makes a single space after hitting only ENTER, but I'm worried that something like this might happen with old/existing posts. I think changing this setting should affect new posts only, not posts already in existence all over the community ...

I get an email notification for every new topic, but I'm not sure if that's just an option for admins. The one thing it doesn't do is let me know of any replies in those new topics unless I go to those topics and participate/follow.

Dark mode is neither necessary nor desirable.

Not mine. Facebook is not allowed on my community.

Engagement without substance is at best overrated, more accurately useless. I want substance, not clicks. I don't need their noses in an app if they're only gonna click LIKE and not write anything.

The broader market and that kind of engagement is ass. I avoid it to the max. I won't activate any feature(s) like that on my forum.

How I hate sms. It's ancient technology. My messaging is all over data, where "Läheme käime sõõmas" doesn't look stupid like "Laheme kaime soomas." Furthermore, I don't see why there is all this crying for push notifications. Maybe it's because I've always had all seven of my email accounts pushed instantly to my smartphone's unified inbox over Exchange ActiveSync / IMAP technology. I know everything that happens on my forum (and this one & others, too) instantly. So easy to see what's going on when I have...push email! I would hate being forced to live in separate individual apps when I can see it all (and go instantly to a topic to reply if I choose) from my unified inbox thanks to push email.

I believe you're being sincere, but I just don't agree. And that's okay. Forums are primarily for certain types of discussion (e.g.paragraph style posts) just like social media is primarily for certain types of discussion (e.g. broadcast messaging). From what I've read those groups are a timeline-driven mess. I wouldn't waste my time posting on them.

Another sound-byte cliche like "change is good." Only for people who want social media to begin with. There's nothing wrong with logging in tomorrow to read a post if that's when you have the time to do it. It's better than showing up now when you're out of time (like I am now) and half-assing it.