BankFodder

So are you saying that we shouldn't have a choice?

Yes but if you have a post number plug-in – which you can switch on or off – then you have three choices. You can either refer to the number – simply not displayed at all, or refer to a post by your method. How wonderful to have three choices. Far more likely to address the diversity of needs – and is that such a bad thing? And of course nobody yet has managed to explain why having a Choice is such an undesirable thing. It all sounds a bit Republican to me

Damn! You spoiled a good idea. I wonder if anyone can make a contribution to answer that problem. Of course the solution then is to have a numbering system – or at least have a choice to implement it or not implement it. However, simply having the date to the top left hand side of each post is visual clutter and I have to say when it's in my peripheral vision I've had a lot of trouble focusing on the content of the post. I'm sure I can't be the only one In fact, having a share button on the right-hand side and a clickable but otherwise useless generalised date on the left-hand side is simply a duplication which makes the visual clutter even more unnecessary and seriously interferes with the ability to focus on content without any perceptible benefit in return. Of course, we could agree to set everything to GMT – which I think would be very appropriate and also very acceptable to subjects of Her Majesty We could refer to it as UTC or Zulu if that makes it more acceptable

Well it would still be interesting to know the answers to the to the points which I made in my previous post – two posts up from this one as I don't have a number to refer to. It's the post that I made one hour ago – although of course this will change as the thread gets older so for the avoidance of doubt, to the question I asked in this post: but here's a suggestion which maybe will satisfy everybody. I also hadn't realised that the dates were clickable although that wouldn't be necessary for the suggestion below. As clearly the date of each post is logged somewhere, how about actually having the date and time each post was submitted. This would allow people to refer exactly to the post that they made – whether it is a member view or a moderator view. At the moment, there is a certain amount of "visual clutter" which might interfere with focusing on content. Instead of using "posted two hours ago" or "posted August 28" which is actually visually cluttering and is also using information which is quite unnecessary because it is so obvious - such as the word "Posted", how about replacing that with simply the date and time that it was posted. So that when you see "Aug 28, 14.31", it becomes obvious that the post was submitted on August 28 at 2:30 PM and therefore it becomes very easy to refer to whether you are a moderator or a member. That means that you could say something like – "if you go back and check my post about eight pages ago in this thread dated Feb 10 23.49, you will see that I've already described what happened…", Then this will provide a precise reference for everybody, no misunderstanding and also it will have the advantage of removing visual clutter because unnecessary words such as "Posted". It will have been replaced with useful and functional information and also it will be several characters shorter than the current "visual clutter" because the month names would have been shortened to their traditional three letters and the word "Posted" would have been replaced altogether. If this is felt to be to "legacy" then there can be a setting somewhere to make this a matter of choice so that the nay-sayers will be able to dispense with it altogether but those in favour will be able to decide to use the system. I know that I have posted the above suggestion in a slightly mocking manner – but if you can get over that and treat this as a serious suggestion then maybe you'd like to let us have your comments. It seems to me that this is a way forward. If you wanted you could also give an option to decide whether to have a 20 4 o'clock or 12 o'clock so that the date might say "Sep 14, 10.31pm" if you prefer- although the AM/PM would just make things longer and for Europeans would be unnecessary visual clutter. Of course it would mean at some point that one would include the year that the post was made – but this would probably be a bit shorter than what is being used at the moment and at least the visual clutter would have a purpose. 2019, Aug 14, 20.21 I think that it is important to distinguish between useless visual clutter and useful visual clutter. I would add, that simply having a generalised date of posting is generally speaking quite unhelpful. With lots of threads, there can be a flurry of posts the same date so simply saying - if you look at the posts which were made on August 28 – when there might be 10 or 15 posts, it is pretty nebulous – and August 28 really becomes visual clutter without any particular purpose. Having a specific time makes it very useful.

Thanks for this. However, you haven't explained how depriving your clients of Choice is not compatible with a modern forward-looking approach. Also, let me ask you this: If a developer comes along and puts a new post-number plugin on the Marketplace, will you prevent it?

Also, to add to this conversation – which apart from the other reasons seems to be suggesting that it's not useful and that people complain et cetera, I've noticed that the plug-in which now doesn't work on the new version of Invision had 659 downloads. by the standards of any third party plug-in or application in the marketplace – this is a huge amount. I can imagine that the number of people who have complained or the number of Invision software architects who have decided that posts numbers must not be available, pales into insignificance against the 659 downloads which presumably have been made by forum administrators and their probably hundreds of thousands (and maybe millions) of forum members who are seeing this "visual clutter" every time they are browsing their respective forums and have no problem with focusing on content. Go figure.

Just to add, there are references here from various people to – a number of complaints been received – or complaints being received from several people. Of course that leaves the thousands of other people who haven't complaints – either because they find that it is useful or because it simply doesn't bother them at all. On our forum we have had no complaints out of 400,000 people.

As I said, the previous plug-in worked perfectly well for us. We had no complaints. But I agree with you, it doesn't look as if it's going to happen any time soon. The Invision team seems dead set against it

The previous post number plug-in which now doesn't work with the new version of Invision, was perfectly adequate to our needs. Anything on top of that would be a bonus. It was a plug-in so there was a choice for the nay-sayers not to install it, and there was a choice for the rest of us to install it. I'm not sure what's wrong with that

If it is simply included as an option, then there is absolutely no reason why it should bother anyone who doesn't want to use it or that it would get in their way. I don't see what the problem is with choice. The people in favour of post numbers are simply advocating choice. In other words we are proposing a facility which will satisfy you if you don't want it – and would satisfy us who do want it. The approach of the nay-sayers is simply to say "we don't think it's useful – so we don't think anyone else should have it".

I take it that's a No, then.

Let's hope that the developer who produced the excellent post number plug-in for the previous version comes up with modifications which make it work in the new version. Then we will have choice and everybody will be happy. I don't see what problem Invision have with customer choice

And the amount of "visual clutter" is really quite minuscule. I have a sense that the software architects have made a decision and prefer not to make a U-turn.

Thanks for this, @Malwarebytes Forums. It hadn't crossed my mind about the effect on disabled persons, but of course you are right. Of course it's a shame that one needs to fall back on legal requirements – when I think that a far more customer-facing approach by Invision would be simply to facilitate client choice as part of their mission. The support function with Invision is excellent but the software architecture function I find to be rather prescriptive and I don't think it's necessary

I tend to agree that topic views can be very helpful – and of course it is for forum administrators to decide what they need for their particular community.

You are absolutely right to recognise that there is a diversity of users. As a forum administrator I definitely don't want to impose a way of doing things on our users. As far as I'm concerned they are entitled to make their own choices that we need Invision support behind us to allow this to happen. I don't know about people being "hung up" about them. It's simply that some people find them useful – and others don't but it's their choice This certainly seems to offer one solution – and we will probably try it. However, for ordinary people who aren't necessarily particularly computer-confident, they may find it a bit geeky and a simple plug-in to produce the post numbers would be very handy. There was a plug-in available for the previous version of Invision. I'm hoping that somebody will produce a new one

I can assure you that writing the above posts took very little time indeed

I've shared these comments with our site team and some of the members on our forum. The action has been incredulity and hilarity. If you are really concerned about "visual noise" then what's wrong with putting the post number in the pop-up under the three dots . . . with all of the rest of the moderator/editing options. That way you clear out this offensive and objectionable "visual noise" allowing the "post content to be the focus" and also you return a very useful function to people who want to refer quickly to information contained in a previous post in a very long thread. Once again, surely it is reasonable to let the forum administrators decide how much "visual noise" should appear on each post. Surely it is up to forum administrators to decide how far to go in resolving the balance of interests in helping members to focus on post content. Surely it is the forum administrators should be able to make these choices. Surely it is the job of Invision simply to provide options and not to make decisions for forum administrators. In fact one of our members said: and that's true. The problem of "bloat quoting" is already significant and it simply adds a great of length to an already very long thread and makes it much more time-consuming to get round. Being able to refer to post numbers is simplicity itself and makes navigation of a thread much easier. I suppose that if Invision went into the book publishing business we would be told that in future, books would not carry any page numbers or even chapter numbers because they were simply "visual noise" and it was important to let the page content be the focus. Bravo.

Thanks. I don't really understand what you're saying – but still it would be very useful and much appreciated feature of notification emails.

well if you agreed – how about doing a plug-in?

Thanks @Paul E.. You are absolutely right. Settings have been changed and it's installing.

Okay well what we are looking for is the ability to attribute truncate/not truncate to groups. At the moment it is global in settings/emails/truncate.not truncate so that the decision to truncate an email applies to everybody including site team. We really need it in group settings so that each group can be configured individually to receive truncated new post notifications or not truncated new post notifications. I think this would be a very popular plug-in and it's a bit of a mystery as to why Invision haven't made this standard – unless they hadn't thought about it

Thanks – but will this also allow notification emails of new posts to be selectively truncated? I have a feeling that you can only do it with private message notifications. Is that right?

I agree completely. This is exactly the kind of thing which is needed. Will invision implement it or will somebody like @Adriano Faria come along and write a plugin for us

Actually I've just found the source of the graphic/icon. It's in icons and logos> default share images I deleted it and this is the resulting auto tweet: When I upload a smaller graphic to fit in the little square to the left of the tweet, simply scales up and gives a very large but blurry image. I don't know how I can get back to our original small neat graphic which I posted in the post above this one