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tonyv

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Posts posted by tonyv

  1. 11 hours ago, PoC2 said:

    I tried the "post before registering" once, but switched it off after a couple of days due to the spam entries in the records. I laud its intended idea.

    Personally I've taken a very different approach in the past year and it's high barrier, not low barrier

    • Visit my site and you get a fairly blank/minimalist home page.
    • New member applications are only taken one day a week.
    • All new registrations are admin approved and have to fill out a special profile field correctly first to help pass validation.
    • Erased from Google. Erased from The Wayback Machine.
    • "Word of mouth" beats any potential "drive-by" traffic.

    So a high barrier, but I believe that the future of specialist communities (that forum software encourages) is security and privacy rather than "lowest barrier/truck them all in".  Though I suspect how effective that is depends on how established your site is.

    The result is no spam, anyway (and a relative haven for users, who increasingly value privacy).

    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. :cool:

  2. 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.

  3. 1 hour ago, Nehaj said:

    P.S. I really don't see any reason why would you like your reply to look like that from my forum member.

    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. 

  4. 1 hour ago, Nehaj said:

    I understand you, but the problem is non-existent spacing in IPB between quoted part and reply. They should make this automatically.

    For heavens sake, phpBB2 had that much more nicely done. Look at this for example - quote is distinguished not only by spacing, but even by color.

    phpbb.thumb.jpg.097a365a8014409f3b3d7cf2273fbb06.jpg

    And compare it with this:

    ad.thumb.jpg.66084714f820d99dfe54d34c127

    What is more easily readable?


    Can anyone from the staff comment on this?

    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. 

  5. 17 hours ago, Nehaj said:

    Now, the problem is, I can't tell EVERY member to push enter when he quotes ... I just want a new line under quote and that's it ... I don't know does anybody understand me, but I hope that picture is explaining where is the problem. Sorry, English is not my native language.

    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.

  6. 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 ...

  7. 2 minutes ago, Morgin said:

    Weird flex, but ok. Lots of people also like and enjoy the instant notifications. You do you, but as a forum admin, I’m not sure why you’d not want features that people can selectively enable to increase their engagement with your 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. 

  8. 7 minutes ago, Morgin said:

    Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp, Instagram, snapchat, etc etc have all essentially built their broader advertisement based business model around keeping eyeballs in the app and on the screen to increase advertising metrics. There is no better method to increase eyeball time than native notifications. They’ve already figured this out, shockingly around the same time that traditional forums started their engagement and retention decline.

    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. 

  9. 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. 

  10. 3 minutes ago, FASEOFMARS said:

    I didn’t say write I said read not everyone will feel the need to write a paragraph in response to a quick status. Your logic is backwards and only applies to a certain type of discussion. 

    It is no secrete social media has been killing forums. Features like groups make communities look small in comparison. Stories is a popular feature that would help us take it back to the glory days. 

     

    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. 

  11. 3 minutes ago, FASEOFMARS said:

    ... social media is great at killing forums ...

    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. 

  12. 8 minutes ago, Matt said:

    Social media is great at being social medial. Forums are great at being forums.

    Exactly. If you need social media you go to social media. If you need forums, well...that's why I'm here. It's like saying you think diesel is great. Well, it is, and it has its uses/fans. But you don't buy a gasser and say, let me turn this into a diesel, change the engine, rip out and replace the fuel system, etc. You just get a diesel if that's what you want/need. This kind of "change" is bad, impractical, at best. 

  13. On 6/29/2019 at 12:49 PM, FASEOFMARS said:

    With stories users blog their daily life without worrying about everyone seeing it or people looking at it more than once ect...Users want to be able to make posts that only stay up for a day and self destruct...

    Why??? What is the big deal with these dumbass stories disappearing?!? It's nonsensical.

     

    On 6/29/2019 at 12:49 PM, FASEOFMARS said:

    It will also make your site look more complete by todays standards.

    These so-called standards to which you allude are crap. If I wanted to "blog about my daily life" I would do it right on my forum. If I wanted to make disappearing blog posts, I would go to one of those idiotic social media platforms and do that.

     

    On 6/29/2019 at 12:49 PM, FASEOFMARS said:

    clubs, its a wasted feature

    I disagree.

     

    On 6/29/2019 at 12:49 PM, FASEOFMARS said:

    we need to change the way we post

    No, we don't. Thankfully, forums are not childish chatsnap, nor should they be. 

     

     

  14. I'm in this for the long haul. I came to Invision when I realized, pretty quickly, that free options are wholly unsuitable for the longevity I need. When your "free" forum disappears after all you've put into it, you'll have absolutely no recourse. With a paid option there is accountability. Invision has stability and a track record you can count on.

     

    @Matt,Hopefully that's one more you can use. I'd really like to see that promised pic!

  15. 7 minutes ago, Black Tiger said:

    In that case your argument could be used for all spam. 🙂

    It's not such a big deal but it's annoying and at a certain point one gets fed up with it.

    Yea, I probably don't get enough of it to notice. I've never had a single spam post on my board because I screen prospective members carefully and registration is turned off until I'm ready to admit someone. I do hate spam, but I think I hate ads more, because they're more in my face when I'm visiting some site. To me, ads are spam I can try to ignore but I can't just delete. 

  16. I had not used the Our Picks feature until only recently, because I thought the content had to be promoted to social media which I don't use that. As soon as I learned that I could promote content to Our Picks on my own forum I got excited, and I've already featured two topics in Our Picks. When I went to promote my third choice it wouldn't post. It said something about the character limit being 3000, and that the topic I was trying to post ~3200 characters. Why is there a character limit for promoted content? Is it a setting I can change in the ACP? If yes, where?

  17. I love this whole real name thing insofar as the internet is concerned. :rolleyes: Even an IP address doesn't prove who posted something. For example, every one of my posts on this forum, even if attributed to the same IP address, could have been made by a different person … even from the same computer! :ph34r:

    I take note of the varying levels of brainwashing in other areas of life, too. For example, I don't care for the whole "legal signature" thing either. I'll sign my name however I want -- differently every time if I like. Here's how that has gone down in a bank when cashing a check I endorsed with some scribble in front of the teller:
     

    Teller: Is this your actual signature?

    Me: You just witnessed me sign it!

    Teller: Well, could you please sign it so it looks like it does on the ID ...

    Me: Okay
     

    Yea, I guess no one else in the world could have done that. And the picture on the ID even kind of looks like me … :rolleyes:

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