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[fabiothebest]

Is it possible to delete a comment or only editing is allowed? I didn't find a delete button.

[imron]

Deleting is not possible.   Doing so (especially once other people have replied) destroys threads. 

 

We prefer people to think before they post, and to stand behind their words. 

 

The new upgrade also preserves edit history, so it's possible for admins to revert posts where someone edits them to be empty. 

 

Think before you post, and don't post things you don't mean. 

[Gharial]

One's posts are one's own and to do with as one wishes, surely? Or is this site claiming ownership of submitted content?

 

Incidentally, can the view of one's Content (whether what one started, or just posted in) be extended beyond the past 365 days? And I'd prefer it if looked like the listing of Followed Content (but even that doesn't seen to include stuff until there have been replies to or following it).

 

Seems a bit silly then to talk of destroying threads when the admin is destroying the functionality of this site and ignoring any objections. Or have I missed some sort of fiddly procedure that's supposedly much better (more "powerful", more "flexible", yadda yadda) than the previous, straightforward one?

[imron]

4 hours ago, Gharial said:

Or is this site claiming ownership of submitted content?

The site does not claim ownership of submitted content, but the terms and conditions *everyone* agrees to when registering for the site state that 'Posting of a message here grants the site the right to use that message in perpetuity.'

 

So the content is still yours you just grant the site a licence to use it forever.  That's really the only way a discussion forum can work, because although your posts are your own, they are made up of a conversation that is owned by multiple contributors.

 

4 hours ago, Gharial said:

can the view of one's Content (whether what one started, or just posted in) be extended beyond the past 365 days?

At the top of each stream there are a bunch of options, one of which is 'Time Period', click on that and you can adjust it to any number of days you want or to show all content.

 

4 hours ago, Gharial said:

Or have I missed some sort of fiddly procedure that's supposedly much better (more "powerful", more "flexible", yadda yadda) than the previous, straightforward one?

No, but what you have missed is that running on old versions of the forums software presents a security risk because it is no longer supported by the developers and no longer gets security updates.  That means there will always be a need to upgrade to later versions if we wish to keep the forums secure, even if we feel there is no pressing need for any of the new features.  Unfortunately that sometimes means getting new features along with the upgrade even if they weren't desirable, but we also get good new features too (I quite like the new highlight to quote feature).  Overall, there are some things I like about the new site, there are some things I don't like, but I think it's ok.  The vast majority of value of the forums for me is in the content and discussions, and that is still accessible across upgrades, even though the updates sometimes take a bit of getting used to.

[roddy]

Yeah - not copyright or ownership, but I think what can be referred to as a soft license - to use that content on the site, and in a limited number of off-site uses - something you post might end up emailed out in notifications or included in RSS feeds, maybe syndicated on other sites. Also, your content is your content, but it also becomes part of something larger, the overall discussion, which would be damaged by its absence (hopefully, otherwise what was the point of it?). Remove your first post and you've made everyone else's posts meaningless.

 

Fabio - if there's a specific post you want to get rid of, use the 'report post' link at the top of every post to let us know. It depends on circumstances - a simple duplicate post we'll delete. An embarrassing question from last month which got lots of discussion, probably not. An embarrassing question from five years ago which got no replies - probably. 

 

 

[Gharial]

@Imron: Yes, security updates are one thing, but "upgraded" features quite another. Do you try to tell the software developers where they're going wrong, or are they not that interested in "nitpipcking" feedback?

 

BTW I'm not the sort to delete my posts, but I can sometimes see why others might delete theirs from wherever.

[abcdefg]

I use lots of pictures in making food and tea posts. This last upgrade has somehow removed the formatting from my old posts, making them look odd and be clumsy to use as reference material. Wish that hadn't happened.

[imron]

On 2/13/2017 at 9:39 PM, roddy said:

Imron, those links you flagged up now work as they should.

@roddy, not sure what's changed recently (or if I missed them the first time) but here are a bunch more links that have stopped working - most of the ones in this post.

[mungouk]

@imron — All of those links are working fine for me here in BJ... maybe a cacheing thing?

 

 

[Shelley]

@imronLinks all working for me too in the UK.

[roddy]

They work, but they don't all go to a specific page / post like intended. Am working on it. Slowly. 

[Shelley]

Ok, thanks.

[roddy]

Basically these are very old links, which I think were never meant to be noticed by users - they were output by the search engine and would, when clicked, redirect to a standard url. At some point the developers had the search engine output standard urls and also removed the redirect code, or at least the part of it that got to the correct page / post. However, any links which had been copy and pasted directly from the search engine page into a post stopped working, as they relied on that redirect code. I've raised the issue before and they put the redirects back, but it looks like they got removed during an upgrade. This issue is on my 'list of things to check after an upgrade', but I tend to only check that with the major upgrades, so didn't spot this. 

 

I've got a ticket in - my view is that these are native urls and should either be supported, or rewritten during the upgrade process. I suspect the developer's view is "Wait, where did these come from? 2011? What am I, a historian?" 

 

Edit: "Further investigation.... escalated... may take longer than usual"

[imron]

For that post I suppose I could just go and add them all in again manually. I usually use that post as a handy reference when I need to find something I've written because it's easier to find than the individual posts themselves (e.g when I wanted to link to the reading speed post in this topic, but then found the link no longer worked, which prompted my post above).

 

However I guess there are probably countless other links scattered throughout the forums that use the same or similar format, and it'd be a shame if they all stopped linking directly to the post and only to the start of the topic.

 

 

[roddy]

Not countless: 290 posts I can see with that format of link. Figure that a lot of posts are effectively never read and that often the first page of a topic is the only page...

 

I'll push to get it working, but if it's not possible we can manually edit the ones that we spot, or maybe figure out some clever search and replace option. 

 

Don't edit that post for now, at least, that's the one they're looking at to see what the problem is. 

[roddy]

They're being particularly slow with this one - I did tag it as low-priority, but I suspect it's also a headache they're hoping will go away. Imron, if you want to update those links go ahead, but could you leave the old ones in place with an 'old links, don't use' tag, as support staff will at some point be looking at that post to see what's wrong. Or I'll do the updating myself if it becomes apparent there's no fix, although that'll depend on my figuring out which of your excellent posts each is meant to point to. Apologies for hassle and delay. 

[roddy]

@imron there's a patch coming for the issue. I've asked if I can get hold of it and skip the review & release wait. 

 

[imron]

No rush.  I only use that post every few months or so when I want to link to a previous thing I've written.

[roddy]

On 6/1/2019 at 12:30 PM, imron said:

here are a bunch more links that have stopped working - most of the ones in this post.

Never confirmed, but that got patched and the links were working. However, I've just added updated versions using the more recent links, in case that support disappears. I've left both sets in the post, do you want to check they're going where they should and delete the old ones if you're happy?

[imron]

Thanks.  I've deleted the older links.