Mat Barrie

You know Tom, I don't know where this mythical documentation for every product in existence you refer to is. You refer to every product you have including a manual, yet... well, lots of software doesn't. I'll do a quick inventory of a sampling of my start menu now (I'll include the OS itself even). I'm excluding "F1 Help" since that's essentially inline help.

Microsoft Windows - No Manual.
Google Chrome - No Manual.
Microsoft Office - No Manual.
Microsoft Visual Studio - No Manual.
MYOB Accounting - Quick Start Guide.
Beyond Compare - No Manual.
Apple iTunes - No Manual.
Kayako SupportSuite - Manual Available!
Microsoft SQL Server - No Manual.
Seapine Surround SCM/Testtrack Pro - Manual Installed!
Stardock Multiplicity - No Manual.

As you can see, lots of stuff with no manual. And you're also completely ignoring what they've said many times - that the majority of their customers prefer articles, guides, inline help, etc over the three hundred page book they printed last time. It doesn't make commercial sense to write an entire manual for three people.

You know Tom, I don't know where this mythical documentation for every product in existence you refer to is. You refer to every product you have including a manual, yet... well, lots of software doesn't. I'll do a quick inventory of a sampling of my start menu now (I'll include the OS itself even). I'm excluding "F1 Help" since that's essentially inline help.

Microsoft Windows - No Manual.
Google Chrome - No Manual.
Microsoft Office - No Manual.
Microsoft Visual Studio - No Manual.
MYOB Accounting - Quick Start Guide.
Beyond Compare - No Manual.
Apple iTunes - No Manual.
Kayako SupportSuite - Manual Available!
Microsoft SQL Server - No Manual.
Seapine Surround SCM/Testtrack Pro - Manual Installed!
Stardock Multiplicity - No Manual.

As you can see, lots of stuff with no manual. And you're also completely ignoring what they've said many times - that the majority of their customers prefer articles, guides, inline help, etc over the three hundred page book they printed last time. It doesn't make commercial sense to write an entire manual for three people.

Disagree entirely with the auto-update. It's just too much of a security risk for IPB to have write access to executable files. Think about it. What happens if someone finds a security hole in IPB? They then have the ability to upload files to the disk of the server in writeable locations! How about if someone manages to exploit IPS' server itself (it's happened before)? Well, they can then deploy an "upgrade" to IPB which deploys malware to tens of thousands of web servers across the globe!

Down with auto-update.

Disagree entirely with the auto-update. It's just too much of a security risk for IPB to have write access to executable files. Think about it. What happens if someone finds a security hole in IPB? They then have the ability to upload files to the disk of the server in writeable locations! How about if someone manages to exploit IPS' server itself (it's happened before)? Well, they can then deploy an "upgrade" to IPB which deploys malware to tens of thousands of web servers across the globe!

Down with auto-update.

I just don't get it. The flow of user interaction is completely bass ackwards. You have to go around to several different places to deal with it all. I think it's best demonstrated by example:

Let's say a spammer comes along, registers a new account, posts a spam topic, etc. Here's how I have to deal with it under IPB 2.3:

- Get a report PM
- Open the topic
- Copy the username to my clipboard
- Log into the ACP
- Find the user
- Delete any topics/posts they've made
- Delete the user (I choose to delete, rather than ban, but it's the same net effect)
- Delete the report PM

And now in IPB 3.0, the flow hasn't improved at all:

- Get a report email
- Check the report center and open the report
- Open the topic
- Copy the username to my clipboard
- Log into the ACP
- Find the user
- Mark then as spam
- Delete any topics/posts they've made
- Delete any PMs they've sent
- Delete the user (I choose to delete, rather than ban, but it's the same net effect)
- Handle the report

That's a lot of steps for something that happens every day or so. Here's what I'd like to see happen:

- Make the report center more feature-filled. I should be able to both get to the topic in question and also act upon it.
- I should be able to mark a user as spam, delete their topics and PMs, and delete/ban them in one fell swoop. One button to handle everything in one place. Simple as pie!
- Put those buttons, links, actions, etc in the topic itself, in the report center, and in the ACP. Let me take care of this stuff easily.

At it's core, I don't want to both have to log into another area of the site and perform similar actions in separate locations in the software. I had thought the report center was going to handle that, but it's really just a specific PM-handing system to replace what we had before. Boring! Let it actually do something. On smaller boards or ones that only get occasional spam, it's overkill to have a system just for managing reports. But if it actually adds functionality, the benefits come back to those kinds of customers.

Thoughts? Am I missing something incredibly obvious?

Oh, no one's saying don't make hooks, etc. Just saying that it's not something IPS could really add to the core product without it getting to the point where you install IPB and are faced with 39,742 settings in 242 categories. Hooks/mods are the right answer for making this kind of thing easier.

No it isn't, it's an unparallelled pain in the rear. The software's unencoded, so anyone who doesn't legitimately have a license would just remove the screen asking for the key anyway, and it'd just become to IPB what the CD key is to Windows - a pain in the butt for legitimate users and a 30 second hack for illegitimate users.

You can count that as disagreement.

No it isn't, it's an unparallelled pain in the rear. The software's unencoded, so anyone who doesn't legitimately have a license would just remove the screen asking for the key anyway, and it'd just become to IPB what the CD key is to Windows - a pain in the butt for legitimate users and a 30 second hack for illegitimate users.

You can count that as disagreement.

So it seems that pretty much everything but the status updates (and maybe signatures ) support reporting (usually from an easy to see button). Why can't status updates be reported as abuse?

For an example, look at your status updates here...

This is not the correct answer.


This is the correct answer.

A couple of years ago, there was an entire series of IPB where the IPS link was removed, and there was only a link to the Invision Board site. This theoretically could have worked out for hosting companies, etc, but then IPS put back the IPS link and that was the end of that.