Colonel_mortis

If there are polls in the middle of the topic then yeah they could definitely get lost, but I would imagine polls like that to be pretty ephemeral anyway - if you want a poll that everyone sees, you add it to the first post (or recommend it).

You've already shipped the fix as the change to applications/core/modules/front/system/ajax.php in 106143. There's some other related bugs that I'll file a ticket for, but upgrading to that patch release fixes my local repro. (It is because of the service worker.)

One frequent complaint that I see is that every question is mandatory, which forces members to add a "not applicable" option when they have multiple questions. The poll title is a waste of time, given that there's already a topic title and poll question title I think it would be really neat if polls were attached to posts rather than to topics - that would force people to actually read the first post before answering the poll, and would allow for people to add polls in replies (and other places such as status updates) too

One frequent complaint that I see is that every question is mandatory, which forces members to add a "not applicable" option when they have multiple questions. The poll title is a waste of time, given that there's already a topic title and poll question title I think it would be really neat if polls were attached to posts rather than to topics - that would force people to actually read the first post before answering the poll, and would allow for people to add polls in replies (and other places such as status updates) too

One frequent complaint that I see is that every question is mandatory, which forces members to add a "not applicable" option when they have multiple questions. The poll title is a waste of time, given that there's already a topic title and poll question title I think it would be really neat if polls were attached to posts rather than to topics - that would force people to actually read the first post before answering the poll, and would allow for people to add polls in replies (and other places such as status updates) too

If there are polls in the middle of the topic then yeah they could definitely get lost, but I would imagine polls like that to be pretty ephemeral anyway - if you want a poll that everyone sees, you add it to the first post (or recommend it).

One frequent complaint that I see is that every question is mandatory, which forces members to add a "not applicable" option when they have multiple questions. The poll title is a waste of time, given that there's already a topic title and poll question title I think it would be really neat if polls were attached to posts rather than to topics - that would force people to actually read the first post before answering the poll, and would allow for people to add polls in replies (and other places such as status updates) too

Fwiw I've also had several reports of this since upgrading to 4.6, acking the privacy policy or validating the account. There were no corresponding requests in the backend, and from the one person who gave me some more details after it worked it seemed like the request was just super delayed in the browser. My current hypothesis is that it's a service worker issue but I have nothing to corroborate that.

Fwiw I've also had several reports of this since upgrading to 4.6, acking the privacy policy or validating the account. There were no corresponding requests in the backend, and from the one person who gave me some more details after it worked it seemed like the request was just super delayed in the browser. My current hypothesis is that it's a service worker issue but I have nothing to corroborate that.

One frequent complaint that I see is that every question is mandatory, which forces members to add a "not applicable" option when they have multiple questions. The poll title is a waste of time, given that there's already a topic title and poll question title I think it would be really neat if polls were attached to posts rather than to topics - that would force people to actually read the first post before answering the poll, and would allow for people to add polls in replies (and other places such as status updates) too

I've not really played around with achievements yet, but I think that's all the more reason to give this feedback now.
My initial impression as a user on this site is that it's not obvious:
What points are How I get points, and how many points things are worth How many points I have How the ranks compare (beyond just that each one is higher than the previous) (ie how many points each rank is worth) What I can do to unlock new badges (there's an argument that some badges should be secret, but certainly most should not) These are the sorts of things that experienced members will figure out within a couple of weeks, and maybe all that information is available for users somewhere that I'm not immediately seeing. However, the fact that I'm not immediately seeing it is the problem. For achievements to really work they need to be walk-up usable - a new member needs to be incentivized to ask questions, to post good answers, and to come back to the site next week, and right now, it doesn't do that.
On the user menu, it highlights my rank and progress, which is great, but I want to click it and see more details. It feels weirdly non-interactive, and leaves me wanting more info.
For a good case study, take a look at Stack Overflow. I can look at all the badges, and see my progress towards them. I also see a graph of my rep (which on SO is less valuable because rep is compounding as people find your old questions, but on forums would be a more active incentive to keep increasing it).
Building on the SO example, wouldn't it be neat if achievement ranks could be configured to actually benefit you? Even the group promotion rules are conspicuously missing the ability to promote by rank. I want to set some rules like "level 1 can only use forums, level 2 can use blogs and status updates, level 3 can post news, level 4 can use classifieds, level 5 gets more messenger storage, etc", which I think would be a great way to incentivise engagement and give users a goal to work towards that is more than just a slightly different coloured icon on their profile picture.
Also, and this is borderline a bug, the default badge descriptions are inconsistent - some don't have descriptions, some have passive descriptions ("a week since joining"), some have present tense descriptions ("making your first post"), and some have past tense descriptions ("visited daily for a week"). There's also no way to edit them (which I will report as a bug).
Another thing - wouldn't it be nice if getting a badge could give you points? As far as I can see, that's not a thing at the moment.

I've not really played around with achievements yet, but I think that's all the more reason to give this feedback now.
My initial impression as a user on this site is that it's not obvious:
What points are How I get points, and how many points things are worth How many points I have How the ranks compare (beyond just that each one is higher than the previous) (ie how many points each rank is worth) What I can do to unlock new badges (there's an argument that some badges should be secret, but certainly most should not) These are the sorts of things that experienced members will figure out within a couple of weeks, and maybe all that information is available for users somewhere that I'm not immediately seeing. However, the fact that I'm not immediately seeing it is the problem. For achievements to really work they need to be walk-up usable - a new member needs to be incentivized to ask questions, to post good answers, and to come back to the site next week, and right now, it doesn't do that.
On the user menu, it highlights my rank and progress, which is great, but I want to click it and see more details. It feels weirdly non-interactive, and leaves me wanting more info.
For a good case study, take a look at Stack Overflow. I can look at all the badges, and see my progress towards them. I also see a graph of my rep (which on SO is less valuable because rep is compounding as people find your old questions, but on forums would be a more active incentive to keep increasing it).
Building on the SO example, wouldn't it be neat if achievement ranks could be configured to actually benefit you? Even the group promotion rules are conspicuously missing the ability to promote by rank. I want to set some rules like "level 1 can only use forums, level 2 can use blogs and status updates, level 3 can post news, level 4 can use classifieds, level 5 gets more messenger storage, etc", which I think would be a great way to incentivise engagement and give users a goal to work towards that is more than just a slightly different coloured icon on their profile picture.
Also, and this is borderline a bug, the default badge descriptions are inconsistent - some don't have descriptions, some have passive descriptions ("a week since joining"), some have present tense descriptions ("making your first post"), and some have past tense descriptions ("visited daily for a week"). There's also no way to edit them (which I will report as a bug).
Another thing - wouldn't it be nice if getting a badge could give you points? As far as I can see, that's not a thing at the moment.

I've not really played around with achievements yet, but I think that's all the more reason to give this feedback now.
My initial impression as a user on this site is that it's not obvious:
What points are How I get points, and how many points things are worth How many points I have How the ranks compare (beyond just that each one is higher than the previous) (ie how many points each rank is worth) What I can do to unlock new badges (there's an argument that some badges should be secret, but certainly most should not) These are the sorts of things that experienced members will figure out within a couple of weeks, and maybe all that information is available for users somewhere that I'm not immediately seeing. However, the fact that I'm not immediately seeing it is the problem. For achievements to really work they need to be walk-up usable - a new member needs to be incentivized to ask questions, to post good answers, and to come back to the site next week, and right now, it doesn't do that.
On the user menu, it highlights my rank and progress, which is great, but I want to click it and see more details. It feels weirdly non-interactive, and leaves me wanting more info.
For a good case study, take a look at Stack Overflow. I can look at all the badges, and see my progress towards them. I also see a graph of my rep (which on SO is less valuable because rep is compounding as people find your old questions, but on forums would be a more active incentive to keep increasing it).
Building on the SO example, wouldn't it be neat if achievement ranks could be configured to actually benefit you? Even the group promotion rules are conspicuously missing the ability to promote by rank. I want to set some rules like "level 1 can only use forums, level 2 can use blogs and status updates, level 3 can post news, level 4 can use classifieds, level 5 gets more messenger storage, etc", which I think would be a great way to incentivise engagement and give users a goal to work towards that is more than just a slightly different coloured icon on their profile picture.
Also, and this is borderline a bug, the default badge descriptions are inconsistent - some don't have descriptions, some have passive descriptions ("a week since joining"), some have present tense descriptions ("making your first post"), and some have past tense descriptions ("visited daily for a week"). There's also no way to edit them (which I will report as a bug).
Another thing - wouldn't it be nice if getting a badge could give you points? As far as I can see, that's not a thing at the moment.

I've not really played around with achievements yet, but I think that's all the more reason to give this feedback now.
My initial impression as a user on this site is that it's not obvious:
What points are How I get points, and how many points things are worth How many points I have How the ranks compare (beyond just that each one is higher than the previous) (ie how many points each rank is worth) What I can do to unlock new badges (there's an argument that some badges should be secret, but certainly most should not) These are the sorts of things that experienced members will figure out within a couple of weeks, and maybe all that information is available for users somewhere that I'm not immediately seeing. However, the fact that I'm not immediately seeing it is the problem. For achievements to really work they need to be walk-up usable - a new member needs to be incentivized to ask questions, to post good answers, and to come back to the site next week, and right now, it doesn't do that.
On the user menu, it highlights my rank and progress, which is great, but I want to click it and see more details. It feels weirdly non-interactive, and leaves me wanting more info.
For a good case study, take a look at Stack Overflow. I can look at all the badges, and see my progress towards them. I also see a graph of my rep (which on SO is less valuable because rep is compounding as people find your old questions, but on forums would be a more active incentive to keep increasing it).
Building on the SO example, wouldn't it be neat if achievement ranks could be configured to actually benefit you? Even the group promotion rules are conspicuously missing the ability to promote by rank. I want to set some rules like "level 1 can only use forums, level 2 can use blogs and status updates, level 3 can post news, level 4 can use classifieds, level 5 gets more messenger storage, etc", which I think would be a great way to incentivise engagement and give users a goal to work towards that is more than just a slightly different coloured icon on their profile picture.
Also, and this is borderline a bug, the default badge descriptions are inconsistent - some don't have descriptions, some have passive descriptions ("a week since joining"), some have present tense descriptions ("making your first post"), and some have past tense descriptions ("visited daily for a week"). There's also no way to edit them (which I will report as a bug).
Another thing - wouldn't it be nice if getting a badge could give you points? As far as I can see, that's not a thing at the moment.

I've not really played around with achievements yet, but I think that's all the more reason to give this feedback now.
My initial impression as a user on this site is that it's not obvious:
What points are How I get points, and how many points things are worth How many points I have How the ranks compare (beyond just that each one is higher than the previous) (ie how many points each rank is worth) What I can do to unlock new badges (there's an argument that some badges should be secret, but certainly most should not) These are the sorts of things that experienced members will figure out within a couple of weeks, and maybe all that information is available for users somewhere that I'm not immediately seeing. However, the fact that I'm not immediately seeing it is the problem. For achievements to really work they need to be walk-up usable - a new member needs to be incentivized to ask questions, to post good answers, and to come back to the site next week, and right now, it doesn't do that.
On the user menu, it highlights my rank and progress, which is great, but I want to click it and see more details. It feels weirdly non-interactive, and leaves me wanting more info.
For a good case study, take a look at Stack Overflow. I can look at all the badges, and see my progress towards them. I also see a graph of my rep (which on SO is less valuable because rep is compounding as people find your old questions, but on forums would be a more active incentive to keep increasing it).
Building on the SO example, wouldn't it be neat if achievement ranks could be configured to actually benefit you? Even the group promotion rules are conspicuously missing the ability to promote by rank. I want to set some rules like "level 1 can only use forums, level 2 can use blogs and status updates, level 3 can post news, level 4 can use classifieds, level 5 gets more messenger storage, etc", which I think would be a great way to incentivise engagement and give users a goal to work towards that is more than just a slightly different coloured icon on their profile picture.
Also, and this is borderline a bug, the default badge descriptions are inconsistent - some don't have descriptions, some have passive descriptions ("a week since joining"), some have present tense descriptions ("making your first post"), and some have past tense descriptions ("visited daily for a week"). There's also no way to edit them (which I will report as a bug).
Another thing - wouldn't it be nice if getting a badge could give you points? As far as I can see, that's not a thing at the moment.

I've not really played around with achievements yet, but I think that's all the more reason to give this feedback now.
My initial impression as a user on this site is that it's not obvious:
What points are How I get points, and how many points things are worth How many points I have How the ranks compare (beyond just that each one is higher than the previous) (ie how many points each rank is worth) What I can do to unlock new badges (there's an argument that some badges should be secret, but certainly most should not) These are the sorts of things that experienced members will figure out within a couple of weeks, and maybe all that information is available for users somewhere that I'm not immediately seeing. However, the fact that I'm not immediately seeing it is the problem. For achievements to really work they need to be walk-up usable - a new member needs to be incentivized to ask questions, to post good answers, and to come back to the site next week, and right now, it doesn't do that.
On the user menu, it highlights my rank and progress, which is great, but I want to click it and see more details. It feels weirdly non-interactive, and leaves me wanting more info.
For a good case study, take a look at Stack Overflow. I can look at all the badges, and see my progress towards them. I also see a graph of my rep (which on SO is less valuable because rep is compounding as people find your old questions, but on forums would be a more active incentive to keep increasing it).
Building on the SO example, wouldn't it be neat if achievement ranks could be configured to actually benefit you? Even the group promotion rules are conspicuously missing the ability to promote by rank. I want to set some rules like "level 1 can only use forums, level 2 can use blogs and status updates, level 3 can post news, level 4 can use classifieds, level 5 gets more messenger storage, etc", which I think would be a great way to incentivise engagement and give users a goal to work towards that is more than just a slightly different coloured icon on their profile picture.
Also, and this is borderline a bug, the default badge descriptions are inconsistent - some don't have descriptions, some have passive descriptions ("a week since joining"), some have present tense descriptions ("making your first post"), and some have past tense descriptions ("visited daily for a week"). There's also no way to edit them (which I will report as a bug).
Another thing - wouldn't it be nice if getting a badge could give you points? As far as I can see, that's not a thing at the moment.

When topics are merged, the view (manage) requests are redirected, but not any other controller methods, including not embeds. The redirects are really useful, but given that most links are actually in the form of embeds there's a significant gap there.
There's also a lot of room for improvement on stopping people from destructively merging the wrong way on big topics (followers don't get ported across, and are irrecoverably deleted, maybe some other things too). The first post in the topic will always be the oldest, regardless of which was kept, and in almost every case I can think of, that means I would want to keep that post's title and therefore URL as well.

When topics are merged, the view (manage) requests are redirected, but not any other controller methods, including not embeds. The redirects are really useful, but given that most links are actually in the form of embeds there's a significant gap there.
There's also a lot of room for improvement on stopping people from destructively merging the wrong way on big topics (followers don't get ported across, and are irrecoverably deleted, maybe some other things too). The first post in the topic will always be the oldest, regardless of which was kept, and in almost every case I can think of, that means I would want to keep that post's title and therefore URL as well.

I run a large site, so I have a lot of legitimate members and receive a fairly significant number of spammers. I turned it off (but continued to collect members' spam scores) several months ago, due to the volume of requests by legitimate people who were being caught by the spam filter. I've run some statistics based on registrations over the past month, comparing whether they have been flagged as spammer (which is very closely correlated with whether they were actually a spammer (this may not be true - see my post later in the topic)) and the code that the IPS spam service gave. The results are:
+-------+------+----------+ | FASed | code | count | +-------+------+----------+ | 0 | 0 | 77 | | 0 | 1 | 5657 | | 0 | 2 | 3 | | 0 | 3 | 5 | | 0 | 4 | 147 | | 0 | null | 233 | | 1 | 0 | 3 | | 1 | 1 | 616 | | 1 | 2 | 13 | | 1 | 3 | 75 | | 1 | 4 | 155 | | 1 | null | 2 | +-------+------+----------+ Breaking this down:
12% of registrations are spammers 6% of registrations receive a spam score > 1 4% of registrations receive a spam score of 4 So far, these numbers don't seem unreasonable. However,
If someone receives a spam score of 4 ("user is a known spammer"), they have 51% chance of actually being a spammer A precision of 51% is totally useless.
If someone is actually a spammer, they have a 28% chance of receiving a spam score > 1. That's a pretty shoddy recall too.
If I set my site to reject members with a spam score of 4, I will lose ~150 members to the spam filter each month; even if I use 2 as the threshold instead it will still only reduce spam by 28%. That's not an OK trade-off to me.
You may say that the answer to this is to set accounts to require admin validation instead when caught by the spam filter, and that's not unreasonable. However, I'm not logged into ACP every day, so I suspect this would result in the loss of a large portion of the potential registrations who will just go and ask their question on a different forum because they didn't want to wait. Furthermore, it's often not possible to tell whether the account is legitimate just based on the registration info, so that 28% hit rate is going to drop quite a lot more.
I appreciate that catching spam is a very hard problem. However, I believe these number demonstrate that the current system is not fit for purpose, at least with the level of confidence that you currently assign to it ("member is a known spammer" in the config page is a long way from the truth, and "certain spammer" from your marketing materials is an outright lie).

I had a few complaints about it from my members too, and I ended up fixing it by changing the logic for sending a new notification to not send it if it's from an IP that they have used previously (except moderators and admins, which I retain the old behaviour). Since making that change, I haven't had any complaints from members.
if ( \IPS\Settings::i()->new_device_email && ($member->isAdmin() || $member->modPermission() || \IPS\Db::i()->select('count(*)', 'core_members_known_ip_addresses', ['member_id=? AND ip_address=?', $member->member_id, \IPS\Request::i()->ipAddress()] )->first() === 0) )  

I had a few complaints about it from my members too, and I ended up fixing it by changing the logic for sending a new notification to not send it if it's from an IP that they have used previously (except moderators and admins, which I retain the old behaviour). Since making that change, I haven't had any complaints from members.
if ( \IPS\Settings::i()->new_device_email && ($member->isAdmin() || $member->modPermission() || \IPS\Db::i()->select('count(*)', 'core_members_known_ip_addresses', ['member_id=? AND ip_address=?', $member->member_id, \IPS\Request::i()->ipAddress()] )->first() === 0) )  

I had a few complaints about it from my members too, and I ended up fixing it by changing the logic for sending a new notification to not send it if it's from an IP that they have used previously (except moderators and admins, which I retain the old behaviour). Since making that change, I haven't had any complaints from members.
if ( \IPS\Settings::i()->new_device_email && ($member->isAdmin() || $member->modPermission() || \IPS\Db::i()->select('count(*)', 'core_members_known_ip_addresses', ['member_id=? AND ip_address=?', $member->member_id, \IPS\Request::i()->ipAddress()] )->first() === 0) )  

I run a large site, so I have a lot of legitimate members and receive a fairly significant number of spammers. I turned it off (but continued to collect members' spam scores) several months ago, due to the volume of requests by legitimate people who were being caught by the spam filter. I've run some statistics based on registrations over the past month, comparing whether they have been flagged as spammer (which is very closely correlated with whether they were actually a spammer (this may not be true - see my post later in the topic)) and the code that the IPS spam service gave. The results are:
+-------+------+----------+ | FASed | code | count | +-------+------+----------+ | 0 | 0 | 77 | | 0 | 1 | 5657 | | 0 | 2 | 3 | | 0 | 3 | 5 | | 0 | 4 | 147 | | 0 | null | 233 | | 1 | 0 | 3 | | 1 | 1 | 616 | | 1 | 2 | 13 | | 1 | 3 | 75 | | 1 | 4 | 155 | | 1 | null | 2 | +-------+------+----------+ Breaking this down:
12% of registrations are spammers 6% of registrations receive a spam score > 1 4% of registrations receive a spam score of 4 So far, these numbers don't seem unreasonable. However,
If someone receives a spam score of 4 ("user is a known spammer"), they have 51% chance of actually being a spammer A precision of 51% is totally useless.
If someone is actually a spammer, they have a 28% chance of receiving a spam score > 1. That's a pretty shoddy recall too.
If I set my site to reject members with a spam score of 4, I will lose ~150 members to the spam filter each month; even if I use 2 as the threshold instead it will still only reduce spam by 28%. That's not an OK trade-off to me.
You may say that the answer to this is to set accounts to require admin validation instead when caught by the spam filter, and that's not unreasonable. However, I'm not logged into ACP every day, so I suspect this would result in the loss of a large portion of the potential registrations who will just go and ask their question on a different forum because they didn't want to wait. Furthermore, it's often not possible to tell whether the account is legitimate just based on the registration info, so that 28% hit rate is going to drop quite a lot more.
I appreciate that catching spam is a very hard problem. However, I believe these number demonstrate that the current system is not fit for purpose, at least with the level of confidence that you currently assign to it ("member is a known spammer" in the config page is a long way from the truth, and "certain spammer" from your marketing materials is an outright lie).

If I have a manually added quote (ie a quote added using the quote button rather than by quoting another post), it is often a relevant part of the actual post (especially when it's in the first post in a topic), so it would make sense for those quotes to remain as nested quotes when that post is quoted (especially now long quotes are truncated). It wouldn't be too hard to achieve - just look for the attribution attributes on the quote before stripping it.

Exactly
 
Yeah, some sort of styling difference between the quote types might make sense. I think I'd want something that stands out slightly more than that, such as by adding a left border, such as stack overflow: