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digitalmars.D - How do you get comfortable with Dlang.org's Forum?

reply biocyberman <biocyberman gmail.com> writes:
Want to learn something from you guys.

forum.dlang.org is by far the biggest gathering point for Dlang 
users. So, even though I wanted to get away with using 
stackoverflow.com, I have to come back here. However, to me it 
easier for me, I would like to know how you guys get comfortable 
with using the forum?

 From my experience with forum platforms like vBulletin, phpBB, 
Invision Power, and even interfaces of Google group, and Github 
Issues, I still find it very difficult to understand the logics 
of using dlang's forum. FYI, I am not a new user of internet, I'd 
rather consider myself someone can take pain to learn new useful 
things. And I've administered some forums myself. Yet I would 
like to name a few things below. They may irritate some 
hard-working contributors of dlang community. But I by no means 
want to make this a discussion of hate. So, how do you guys 
overcome these problems:

=====
1. No post editting. After clicking send, and found out that you 
made mistakes in the post, but you can't edit the post anymore.

2. Old-day quoting presentation. I always feel reluctant to read 
texts that stays after two levels of quotes, like this:
  >First post quoted
  >>Second post quoted
  >>>Third post quoted
  >>Second post quoted
....

3. No Rich-text format support. No minimal bold/italic support.  
Some tools to emphasize important points will make it easier to 
let the readers know what the posters want to say.

4.  No code formatting. Same feeling here. I am reluctant to post 
more than 5 lines of code.

5. No image support. In many cases a screenshots will be helpful 
to communicate problems.

6. Last but not least, a trendy feature: tags, keywords for 
threads so we can locate related threads easily.

=====

If I may say it honestly, and despite the useful 'save unsent 
draft' feature, the forum is by far the most user-unfriendly 
forum platform ever (by appearance). But I may be totally wrong, 
because users here are using the forum in totally different ways, 
and it may even has some nice perks that I haven't heard of.  I 
would like to enjoy a full joy of using the forum, like you are 
having.
Feb 23 2018
next sibling parent rikki cattermole <rikki cattermole.co.nz> writes:
Don't think of it as a forum.

Think of it as just a bunch of public email chains.
Because that is what it is under the hood.
Feb 23 2018
prev sibling next sibling parent reply Jonathan M Davis <newsgroup.d jmdavisprog.com> writes:
On Friday, February 23, 2018 13:47:16 biocyberman via Digitalmars-d wrote:

 If I may say it honestly, and despite the useful 'save unsent
 draft' feature, the forum is by far the most user-unfriendly
 forum platform ever (by appearance). But I may be totally wrong,
 because users here are using the forum in totally different ways,
 and it may even has some nice perks that I haven't heard of.  I
 would like to enjoy a full joy of using the forum, like you are
 having.


dlang's "forum" is really a newsgroup. It's accessible via NNTP, mailing
list, and the web interface. Many of us never use the web interface, and the
functionality in the web interface is limited, because all it's doing is
posting to the NNTP server and fetching the messages from there to display
in the web interface.

And none of the features that you're talking about really make sense when
you're dealing with NNTP or a mailing list. It's all just plain text.

- Jonathan M Davis
Feb 23 2018
next sibling parent reply Adam D. Ruppe <destructionator gmail.com> writes:
On Friday, 23 February 2018 at 13:55:44 UTC, Jonathan M Davis 
wrote:

 And none of the features that you're talking about really make 
 sense when you're dealing with NNTP or a mailing list. It's all 
 just plain text.


Well, nntp actually supports basically all that stuff: you can do 
multipart/alternative for rich text and mime attachments for 
inline images, all kinds of stuff. I think it might even allow 
editing in the protocol, though propagating that to email users 
might be bizarre (still doable though).

So it isn't *actually* a technical limitation... though a lot of 
us might never use those features because we do interface with it 
as a plain text thing.
Feb 23 2018
parent Jesse Phillips <Jesse.K.Phillips+D gmail.com> writes:
On Friday, 23 February 2018 at 14:47:00 UTC, Adam D. Ruppe wrote:

 On Friday, 23 February 2018 at 13:55:44 UTC, Jonathan M Davis 
 wrote:

 And none of the features that you're talking about really make 
 sense when you're dealing with NNTP or a mailing list. It's 
 all just plain text.


 Well, nntp actually supports basically all that stuff: you can 
 do multipart/alternative for rich text and mime attachments for 
 inline images, all kinds of stuff. I think it might even allow 
 editing in the protocol, though propagating that to email users 
 might be bizarre (still doable though).

 So it isn't *actually* a technical limitation... though a lot 
 of us might never use those features because we do interface 
 with it as a plain text thing.


Yeah, I'm pretty sure editing is in there because Pan[1] provided 
the option when I used it.

Actually Pan is a really great way to read the D news groups, but 
as I started to access the forums from many different places it 
was just easier to let the web track messages I'd read. (Pan even 
supports some markdown (bold and such)).


1. http://pan.rebelbase.com/
Feb 23 2018
prev sibling parent reply jmh530 <john.michael.hall gmail.com> writes:
On Friday, 23 February 2018 at 13:55:44 UTC, Jonathan M Davis 
wrote:

 dlang's "forum" is really a newsgroup. It's accessible via 
 NNTP, mailing list, and the web interface. Many of us never use 
 the web interface, and the functionality in the web interface 
 is limited, because all it's doing is posting to the NNTP 
 server and fetching the messages from there to display in the 
 web interface.

 And none of the features that you're talking about really make 
 sense when you're dealing with NNTP or a mailing list. It's all 
 just plain text.

 - Jonathan M Davis


With the recent grumbling about receiving newsgroup posts in 
gmail, it occurs to me that I have no idea how to even do that. I 
imagine I could figure out Thunderbird if I bothered, but I 
primarily use the forum.

Maybe the forum could add a read me at the top that gives 
instructions on others ways to access it with a note that most of 
the regular users interact that way (and how this functionality 
leads to things like not being able to edit forum posts). This 
would probably reduce the number of threads like this.
Feb 23 2018
parent Jonathan M Davis <newsgroup.d jmdavisprog.com> writes:
On Friday, February 23, 2018 15:03:01 jmh530 via Digitalmars-d wrote:

 On Friday, 23 February 2018 at 13:55:44 UTC, Jonathan M Davis

 wrote:

 dlang's "forum" is really a newsgroup. It's accessible via
 NNTP, mailing list, and the web interface. Many of us never use
 the web interface, and the functionality in the web interface
 is limited, because all it's doing is posting to the NNTP
 server and fetching the messages from there to display in the
 web interface.

 And none of the features that you're talking about really make
 sense when you're dealing with NNTP or a mailing list. It's all
 just plain text.

 - Jonathan M Davis


 With the recent grumbling about receiving newsgroup posts in
 gmail, it occurs to me that I have no idea how to even do that. I
 imagine I could figure out Thunderbird if I bothered, but I
 primarily use the forum.


If you want to use gmail, then just follow the "mailing list" link in the
web interface and sign up. I wouldn't suggest using gmail though, because
it's "helpful" and doesn't deliver an e-mails from the mailing list that you
send to the mailing list. That probably displays okay in gmail itself,
because it probably inserts the messages from your sent folder into the
thread, but if you then ever use an e-mail client, threading is screwed,
because all of your posts are missing. And threading isn't going to be all
that great in gmail, because its threading is linear, whereas e-mail threads
are actually a tree.

If you want to use NNTP, then you'll have to find a tutorial somewhere on
NNTP readers. I used to use KDE's newsgroup reader, knode, years ago, but I
got sick of it not being able to track what I'd read across machines,
whereas if you using the mailing list with an e-mail client set up to use
IMAP, then every machine which accesses your e-mail is synced with regards
to what you've read. I'm not aware of any advantage to using NNTP over the
mailing list, but some folks do prefer to use NNTP, and if you use
Thunderbird, you can use it for either e-mail on NNTP.

Maybe the web interface should have more instructions for using alternate
interfaces, but the mailing list is pretty self-explanatory, and it's not
that hard to search how to use NNTP if you care.


 Maybe the forum could add a read me at the top that gives
 instructions on others ways to access it with a note that most of
 the regular users interact that way (and how this functionality
 leads to things like not being able to edit forum posts). This
 would probably reduce the number of threads like this.


For some reason, the fact that it's using NNTP is only one of the "random
tips" that the front page of the web interface cycles through:

'Random tip: Much of this forum's content is also available via classic
mailing lists or NNTP - see the "Also via" column on the forum index.'

It should probably be more explicit about that. I doubt that it would
ultimately fix the problem of folks complaining about wanting improvements
to the web interface as if it were discourse or something though. That would
require folks to pay more attention than many folks seem to, and the more
text you provide explaining the details, the more likely the are to ignore
the whole explanation.

- Jonathan M Davis
Feb 23 2018
prev sibling next sibling parent reply psychoticRabbit <meagain meagain.com> writes:
On Friday, 23 February 2018 at 13:47:16 UTC, biocyberman wrote:

 If I may say it honestly, and despite the useful 'save unsent 
 draft' feature, the forum is by far the most user-unfriendly 
 forum platform ever ....


So, to your question: "How do you get comfortable with 
Dlang.org's Forum?"

by lowering your expectations ;-)

I don't mean that to be too crtical .. cause I actually find the 
forum works very well for what I expect from it - which is not 
alot ;-)

again.. not trying to be critical here, just pointing out the 
obvious.

The forum is eternally in NNTP compatability mode, which is why 
it doesn't have all those fancy features. I don't see that 
changing anytime soon.

(btw. if you were born after 1990 or so.. so might have to google 
what NNTP is ;-)

If there is one change that I would really like, it's dark theme 
- cause I mostly do stuff at night, with a low lamp, and bright 
white backgrounds are 
really..really...really...really...really.......annoying.
Feb 23 2018
next sibling parent reply =?UTF-8?Q?Ali_=c3=87ehreli?= <acehreli yahoo.com> writes:
On 02/23/2018 06:25 AM, psychoticRabbit wrote:


 If there is one change that I would really like, it's dark theme


I've never needed myself but most browsers allow overriding themes.

Ali
Feb 23 2018
parent reply psychoticRabbit <meagain meagain.com> writes:
On Saturday, 24 February 2018 at 01:53:48 UTC, Ali Çehreli wrote:

 On 02/23/2018 06:25 AM, psychoticRabbit wrote:


 If there is one change that I would really like, it's dark


 theme

 I've never needed myself but most browsers allow overriding 
 themes.

 Ali


yeah..I tried this a while back, but unfortunately it's effect is 
'global', rather than per site.

i'd also like to see D conf videos go dark theme too ;-)
Feb 23 2018
parent reply Johannes Loher <johannes.loher fg4f.de> writes:
On Saturday, 24 February 2018 at 02:27:27 UTC, psychoticRabbit 
wrote:

 On Saturday, 24 February 2018 at 01:53:48 UTC, Ali Çehreli 
 wrote:

 On 02/23/2018 06:25 AM, psychoticRabbit wrote:


 If there is one change that I would really like, it's dark


 theme

 I've never needed myself but most browsers allow overriding 
 themes.

 Ali


 yeah..I tried this a while back, but unfortunately it's effect 
 is 'global', rather than per site.

 i'd also like to see D conf videos go dark theme too ;-)


There are Browser extensions gor this (e.g. 
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/stylish-custom-themes-for/fjnbnpbmkenffdnngjfgmeleoegfcffe?hl=en)
Feb 23 2018
parent reply psychoticRabbit <meagain meagain.com> writes:
On Saturday, 24 February 2018 at 04:13:15 UTC, Johannes Loher 
wrote:

 There are Browser extensions gor this (e.g. 
 https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/stylish-custom-themes-for/fjnbnpbmkenffdnngjfgmeleoegfcffe?hl=en)


Hey. thanks for the tip.

though..I just refuse to use chrome ;-)

(in the 90's companies made their name for not being Microsoft. 
As Microsoft wanted to dominate the world. I wonder if that same 
situation exists now, except, now its not being Google).

anyways... a quick search and I discovered something similar for 
firefox.

so I might check that out.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/stylish/
Feb 23 2018
parent "Nick Sabalausky (Abscissa)" <SeeWebsiteToContactMe semitwist.com> writes:
On 02/23/2018 11:24 PM, psychoticRabbit wrote:

 
 (in the 90's companies made their name for not being Microsoft. As 
 Microsoft wanted to dominate the world. I wonder if that same situation 
 exists now, except, now its not being Google).


Oh, it DEFINITELY does. The only difference is that instead of a 
monopoly, it's now an oligopoly of Google/Facebook/Apple each trying to 
pull the same shit MS was famous for running in the 90's, in each of 
their respective domains.
Feb 23 2018
prev sibling parent number <putimalitze gmx.de> writes:
On Friday, 23 February 2018 at 14:25:55 UTC, psychoticRabbit 
wrote:

 If there is one change that I would really like, it's dark theme


I used to use Firefox Addon 'Colour That Site!' but its not 
available for current Firefox version. Today the built-in Reader 
Mode might just do it (click the little 'paper sheet' in address 
bar, if it's available for the site). It has a white-on-black 
mode too (click 'Aa' ..).
Feb 24 2018
prev sibling next sibling parent reply Ali <fakeemail example.com> writes:
On Friday, 23 February 2018 at 13:47:16 UTC, biocyberman wrote:

 Want to learn something from you guys.



 I would like to know how you guys get comfortable with using 
 the forum?


Dlang forum in my opinion, is one of the most tolerant and 
friendly programming language forums

So the experience is not really just how you edit a post
it is also how friendly, responsive and friendly everyone else is

I think it is too late to migrate to a new platform,
plus if they ever introduce, say a discourse based forum like 
rust or ocaml
the community (already small) might end up divided
Feb 23 2018
parent Biocyberman <biocyberman gmail.com> writes:
I didn't mean the human part, meant the forum's functionality.
Ali wrote:

 On Friday, 23 February 2018 at 13:47:16 UTC, biocyberman wrote:

 Want to learn something from you guys.


 

 I would like to know how you guys get comfortable with using the forum?


 
 Dlang forum in my opinion, is one of the most tolerant and friendly 
 programming language forums
 
 So the experience is not really just how you edit a post
 it is also how friendly, responsive and friendly everyone else is
 
 I think it is too late to migrate to a new platform,
 plus if they ever introduce, say a discourse based forum like rust or ocaml
 the community (already small) might end up divided
Feb 23 2018
prev sibling next sibling parent reply JN <666total wp.pl> writes:
On Friday, 23 February 2018 at 13:47:16 UTC, biocyberman wrote:

 =====
 1. No post editting. After clicking send, and found out that 
 you made mistakes in the post, but you can't edit the post 
 anymore.

 2. Old-day quoting presentation. I always feel reluctant to 
 read texts that stays after two levels of quotes, like this:
  >First post quoted
  >>Second post quoted
  >>>Third post quoted
  >>Second post quoted
 ....


Could the problem be caused by the fact that emails (which are 
underneath the forum) are threaded, but this forum is linear? It 
also causes a lot of offtopic discussions derailing the threads, 
while it'd be hidden in a subbranch when threaded. Perhaps that 
is something that could be considered (or there is a hidden 
threaded mode I am not aware of?).
Feb 23 2018
next sibling parent ag0aep6g <anonymous example.com> writes:
On 02/23/2018 03:52 PM, JN wrote:

 (or there is a hidden threaded mode I am not aware of?).


Click on "Settings" in the upper right corner. There you can change the 
"view mode" to threaded.
Feb 23 2018
prev sibling parent Jonathan M Davis <newsgroup.d jmdavisprog.com> writes:
On Friday, February 23, 2018 14:52:33 JN via Digitalmars-d wrote:

 On Friday, 23 February 2018 at 13:47:16 UTC, biocyberman wrote:

 =====
 1. No post editting. After clicking send, and found out that
 you made mistakes in the post, but you can't edit the post
 anymore.

 2. Old-day quoting presentation. I always feel reluctant to

 read texts that stays after two levels of quotes, like this:
  >First post quoted
  >
  >>Second post quoted
  >>
  >>>Third post quoted
  >>
  >>Second post quoted

 ....


 Could the problem be caused by the fact that emails (which are
 underneath the forum) are threaded, but this forum is linear? It
 also causes a lot of offtopic discussions derailing the threads,
 while it'd be hidden in a subbranch when threaded. Perhaps that
 is something that could be considered (or there is a hidden
 threaded mode I am not aware of?).


Both e-mail clients and the web interface can display the e-mails as either
linear or threaded. Regardless, It's typical for quoted sections to be
marked with >, and as stuff gets quoted multiple times, the >'s get deeper.
Regardless, having quoted text can help considerably in both following
what's being said as well as seeing what someone is responding do
(especially if something goes wrong with the threading, which does happen
from time to time).

- Jonathan M Davis
Feb 23 2018
prev sibling next sibling parent Adam D. Ruppe <destructionator gmail.com> writes:
On Friday, 23 February 2018 at 13:47:16 UTC, biocyberman wrote:

 So, even though I wanted to get away with using 
 stackoverflow.com


A bunch of us are on stackoverflow too, and it could use some 
more stuff. I like SO for archiving too, even if you get an 
answer here, SO is a lot easier to search so copying the answer 
to there to be a clean reference for later might be worthwhile.


 phpBB



wished it had was a better email interface. You can turn on 
subscriptions and get some notifications, but I wanted it to just 
include the text of the post in the email too!

The reason is that I like to keep up on basically all posts. I 
don't necessarily read them all, but I do skim everything posted 
on the learn, general, and announce groups. Everything.

On a web forum, the time spent clicking and loading links would 
actually make that pretty painful (I do still do it on some low 
traffic phpbb sites tho), and getting the notifications can have 
lag between responding.

With email, I know within a few minutes of a post that it was 
there, and I can skim it in a matter of seconds from any location 
that I'm online.


I understand though that the casual user isn't interested in 
following everything so this isn't as important to everyone 
else... but it is a major plus for me.


 1. No post editting. After clicking send, and found out that 
 you made mistakes in the post, but you can't edit the post 
 anymore.


I think you meant "editing" ;)

But I didn't like edits on phpbb either because they are really 
hard to see. There's no notification of an edit and finding the 
before and after difference is just really painful.

So I prefer the follow-up post anyway, unless perhaps it is 
within a few minutes and the post hasn't actually been read by 
anyone yet. On phpbb, I would proofread stuff with preview before 
sending. Here... well, I don't do that, and I think we should 
just encourage that by making the "Send" button actually be 
"Preview" - force them to see it before hitting the final send.


 2. Old-day quoting presentation. I always feel reluctant to 
 read texts that stays after two levels of quotes, like this:


Yeah, this is terrible, but it is bad form to over quote anyway, 
including on phpbb. You should quote just enough to jog the 
reader's memory of the topic, and cut the rest out. If you need 
the parent, the "in reply to" link on the side (or in the email) 
can pull it back up in full.

So I generally just ignore most quoted things in posts.


 3. No Rich-text format support. No minimal bold/italic support.


You can always write *this*. Or [b]this[/b]. It might not be 
automatically rendered, but the reader will know what you meant.


 4.  No code formatting. Same feeling here. I am reluctant to 
 post more than 5 lines of code.


So for this, I almost always use ddoc style:

---
code here
---

And again, it isn't automatically rendered, but we know what it 
means.


 5. No image support. In many cases a screenshots will be 
 helpful to communicate problems.


yeah. links to images are ok though.


 6. Last but not least, a trendy feature: tags, keywords for 
 threads so we can locate related threads easily.


and I'm meh on this just because I don't think a forum is really 
useful for referencing later anyway. There's some value in the 
archive if you really want to see people's old arguments, but for 
stuff like Q&A, I'd rather copy/paste that end result over to 
Stack Overflow.


 I would like to enjoy a full joy of using the forum, like you 
 are having.


So I use the emails for most reading. Only go on the web 
interface to post (the email reply thing is buggy. I'd really 
rather use it though), or to navigate old stuff/share existing 
links.
Feb 23 2018
prev sibling next sibling parent reply Steven Schveighoffer <schveiguy yahoo.com> writes:
On 2/23/18 8:47 AM, biocyberman wrote:

 Want to learn something from you guys.
 
 forum.dlang.org is by far the biggest gathering point for Dlang users. 
 So, even though I wanted to get away with using stackoverflow.com, I 
 have to come back here. However, to me it easier for me, I would like to 
 know how you guys get comfortable with using the forum?
 
  From my experience with forum platforms like vBulletin, phpBB, Invision 
 Power, and even interfaces of Google group, and Github Issues, I still 
 find it very difficult to understand the logics of using dlang's forum. 
 FYI, I am not a new user of internet, I'd rather consider myself someone 
 can take pain to learn new useful things. And I've administered some 
 forums myself. Yet I would like to name a few things below. They may 
 irritate some hard-working contributors of dlang community. But I by no 
 means want to make this a discussion of hate. So, how do you guys 
 overcome these problems:


thunderbird NNTP client.


 
 =====
 1. No post editting. After clicking send, and found out that you made 
 mistakes in the post, but you can't edit the post anymore.


Meh, its possible with NNTP, but this also allows abuse of editing. I 
don't find this that horrible. Maybe pay attention to the spelling 
corrector?


 
 2. Old-day quoting presentation. I always feel reluctant to read texts 
 that stays after two levels of quotes, like this:
   >First post quoted
   >>Second post quoted
   >>>Third post quoted
   >>Second post quoted
 .....


Thunderbird substitutes those with nice colored bars, so I can easily 
see the level of quotes.


 
 3. No Rich-text format support. No minimal bold/italic support. Some 
 tools to emphasize important points will make it easier to let the 
 readers know what the posters want to say.


TB has these, though I prefer plain text. It supports a crude form of 
markdown, so *bold*, _underline_ all are enhanced by TB. Emoticons turn 
into graphics too ;)


 4.  No code formatting. Same feeling here. I am reluctant to post more 
 than 5 lines of code.


You can use a link to a code sample on https://run.dlang.io/ which 
allows your code to be tested in the browser as a bonus.


 
 5. No image support. In many cases a screenshots will be helpful to 
 communicate problems.


Yeah, this is a limitation I'm not sure how it can be overcome.


 6. Last but not least, a trendy feature: tags, keywords for threads so 
 we can locate related threads easily.


If you want to tag posts on your own, TB does this.

-Steve
Feb 23 2018
next sibling parent reply Biocyberman <biocyberman gmail.com> writes:
So far so much better :)

I really appreciate all answers given so far. Sorry I haven't found a 
way to reply to everyone.

Many seems to be using the forum's web interface as a second - tier of 
interaction. I still don't know what can justify this practice.  But 
anyway, for the time being I downloaded seamonkey (because I was 
searching for a NNTP client). I actually find it easier to read the 
'forum' in Seamonkey.

As a test, I am replying directly through Seamonkey.


Steven Schveighoffer wrote:

 On 2/23/18 8:47 AM, biocyberman wrote:

 Want to learn something from you guys.

 forum.dlang.org is by far the biggest gathering point for Dlang users. 
 So, even though I wanted to get away with using stackoverflow.com, I 
 have to come back here. However, to me it easier for me, I would like 
 to know how you guys get comfortable with using the forum?

  From my experience with forum platforms like vBulletin, phpBB, 
 Invision Power, and even interfaces of Google group, and Github 
 Issues, I still find it very difficult to understand the logics of 
 using dlang's forum. FYI, I am not a new user of internet, I'd rather 
 consider myself someone can take pain to learn new useful things. And 
 I've administered some forums myself. Yet I would like to name a few 
 things below. They may irritate some hard-working contributors of 
 dlang community. But I by no means want to make this a discussion of 
 hate. So, how do you guys overcome these problems:


 
 thunderbird NNTP client.
 

 =====
 1. No post editting. After clicking send, and found out that you made 
 mistakes in the post, but you can't edit the post anymore.


 
 Meh, its possible with NNTP, but this also allows abuse of editing. I 
 don't find this that horrible. Maybe pay attention to the spelling 
 corrector?
 

 2. Old-day quoting presentation. I always feel reluctant to read texts 
 that stays after two levels of quotes, like this:
   >First post quoted
   >>Second post quoted
   >>>Third post quoted
   >>Second post quoted
 .....


 
 Thunderbird substitutes those with nice colored bars, so I can easily 
 see the level of quotes.
 

 3. No Rich-text format support. No minimal bold/italic support. Some 
 tools to emphasize important points will make it easier to let the 
 readers know what the posters want to say.


 
 TB has these, though I prefer plain text. It supports a crude form of 
 markdown, so *bold*, _underline_ all are enhanced by TB. Emoticons turn 
 into graphics too ;)
 

 4.  No code formatting. Same feeling here. I am reluctant to post more 
 than 5 lines of code.


 
 You can use a link to a code sample on https://run.dlang.io/ which 
 allows your code to be tested in the browser as a bonus.
 

 5. No image support. In many cases a screenshots will be helpful to 
 communicate problems.


 
 Yeah, this is a limitation I'm not sure how it can be overcome.
 

 6. Last but not least, a trendy feature: tags, keywords for threads so 
 we can locate related threads easily.


 
 If you want to tag posts on your own, TB does this.
 
 -Steve
Feb 23 2018
parent reply Jonathan M Davis <newsgroup.d jmdavisprog.com> writes:
On Friday, February 23, 2018 16:51:01 Biocyberman via Digitalmars-d wrote:

 So far so much better :)

 I really appreciate all answers given so far. Sorry I haven't found a
 way to reply to everyone.

 Many seems to be using the forum's web interface as a second - tier of
 interaction. I still don't know what can justify this practice.


The NNTP and mailing list interfaces predate the web interface by quite a
bit. The web interface was added primarily as a means of making it easier
for more casual folks to comment. Those who wish to use it as their primary
interface to the newsgroup are free to do so, but anyone looking for the
feature set of the web interface to change needs to understand that the web
interface is just one interface to an NNTP server and not your typical forum
software.

- Jonathan M Davis
Feb 23 2018
parent reply Biocyberman <biocyberman gmail.com> writes:
We may need a survey to have a good overview about users opinions.

Speaking on behalf of myself, after additional inputs from many 
excellent and respectful users in this 'forum'. I can say that, on the 
scale of 1 (least geeky) to 10 (most geeky), I would put forum.dlang.org 
to the level 8 of geekiness required to use the forum. It may be natural 
for long-time users, but for newcomers, it is very challenging.

Mentioning 'challening', here is an excerpt from a fictional interview 
with the inventor of C++:

=====
Interviewer: I see, but what's the point?

Stroustrup: Well, one day, when I was sitting in my office, I thought of 
this little scheme, which would redress the balance a little. I thought 
'I wonder what would happen, if there were a language so complicated, so 
difficult to learn, that nobody would ever be able to swamp the market 
with programmers? Actually, I got some of the ideas from X10, you know, 
X windows. That was such a bitch of a graphics system, that it only just 
ran on those Sun 3/60 things. They had all the ingredients for what I 
wanted. A really ridiculously complex syntax, obscure functions, and 
pseudo-OO structure. Even now, nobody writes raw X-windows code. Motif 
is the only way to go if you want to retain your sanity.

Interviewer: You're kidding...?
(https://www-users.cs.york.ac.uk/susan/joke/cpp.htm)
=====
I hope it is not offensive to bring up C++'s problems and relate them to 
D, but the point I am trying to make is *accessibility*. Provided that 
dlang community is not a the point of saturation, and still needs to 
grow, things need to be: Accessible (less geeky, less restrictions); 
Easy to learn and implement; Safe and Fast to program and to run. That 
would make a good acronym: SAFE safe-accessible-fast-easy, all go in 
parallel :)


Jonathan M Davis wrote:

 On Friday, February 23, 2018 16:51:01 Biocyberman via Digitalmars-d wrote:

 So far so much better :)

 I really appreciate all answers given so far. Sorry I haven't found a
 way to reply to everyone.

 Many seems to be using the forum's web interface as a second - tier of
 interaction. I still don't know what can justify this practice.


 
 The NNTP and mailing list interfaces predate the web interface by quite a
 bit. The web interface was added primarily as a means of making it easier
 for more casual folks to comment. Those who wish to use it as their primary
 interface to the newsgroup are free to do so, but anyone looking for the
 feature set of the web interface to change needs to understand that the web
 interface is just one interface to an NNTP server and not your typical forum
 software.
 
 - Jonathan M Davis
Feb 23 2018
next sibling parent reply bachmeier <no spam.net> writes:
On Friday, 23 February 2018 at 17:56:29 UTC, Biocyberman wrote:

 Speaking on behalf of myself, after additional inputs from many 
 excellent and respectful users in this 'forum'. I can say that, 
 on the scale of 1 (least geeky) to 10 (most geeky), I would put 
 forum.dlang.org to the level 8 of geekiness required to use the 
 forum. It may be natural for long-time users, but for 
 newcomers, it is very challenging.


I have to admit that I don't understand this. I don't think it 
would be possible for it to be simpler to use this forum. No 
registration needed, plain text messages, just click "Reply" and 
type in your message. Additional features would make it more 
complicated.
Feb 23 2018
next sibling parent reply "H. S. Teoh" <hsteoh quickfur.ath.cx> writes:
On Fri, Feb 23, 2018 at 10:01:44PM +0000, bachmeier via Digitalmars-d wrote:

 On Friday, 23 February 2018 at 17:56:29 UTC, Biocyberman wrote:

 Speaking on behalf of myself, after additional inputs from many
 excellent and respectful users in this 'forum'. I can say that, on
 the scale of 1 (least geeky) to 10 (most geeky), I would put
 forum.dlang.org to the level 8 of geekiness required to use the
 forum. It may be natural for long-time users, but for newcomers, it
 is very challenging.




Hold it right there.

You're saying that it's a bad thing for a *programming language* forum
to have a high geekiness rating?  Implying that *programmers* (y'know,
ostensibly the target audience of said forum) are not geeky enough to
know how to operate a geeky forum?

Whoa.  I think I need to sit down.



 I have to admit that I don't understand this. I don't think it would
 be possible for it to be simpler to use this forum. No registration
 needed, plain text messages, just click "Reply" and type in your
 message. Additional features would make it more complicated.


Well, obviously non-programmers (or should I say, "non-geeky
programmers", whatever that might mean) have every right to be able to
operate a forum dedicated for a programming language without any undue
handicaps, so we have to make concessions on the level of "geekiness"
required to participate in the programming language discussions that
take place here, such that said discussions would be more accessible to
said non-programmers (or "non-geeky" programmers, whoever they may be).

P.S. I think my geekiness-11 brain just blew several fuses and 2
transistors.  Please excuse me while I take a break to go off to the
brain shop to replace them. Maybe I'll pick up an oxymoron compensation
diode on the way as well.


T

-- 
Gone Chopin. Bach in a minuet.
Feb 23 2018
parent reply Vang Le <myemail mail.com> writes:
H. S. Teoh wrote:

 On Fri, Feb 23, 2018 at 10:01:44PM +0000, bachmeier via Digitalmars-d wrote:

 On Friday, 23 February 2018 at 17:56:29 UTC, Biocyberman wrote:

 Speaking on behalf of myself, after additional inputs from many
 excellent and respectful users in this 'forum'. I can say that, on
 the scale of 1 (least geeky) to 10 (most geeky), I would put
 forum.dlang.org to the level 8 of geekiness required to use the
 forum. It may be natural for long-time users, but for newcomers, it
 is very challenging.




 
 Hold it right there.
 
 You're saying that it's a bad thing for a *programming language* forum
 to have a high geekiness rating?  Implying that *programmers* (y'know,
 ostensibly the target audience of said forum) are not geeky enough to
 know how to operate a geeky forum?
 
 Whoa.  I think I need to sit down.
 


I don't mean to go into the good vs bad direction. What I was saying is 
that it is hard to get comfortable and use the forum the most 
effective/convenient ways. The forum should not be a technical barrier 
for members to communicate conveniently.

With that said, I am glad that I put up the questions and got a bunch of 
useful tips to use the forums. FYI, the most useful one is to install a 
NNTP client and use the 'forum' the way it is, a NNTP server with a web 
interface.

 

 I have to admit that I don't understand this. I don't think it would
 be possible for it to be simpler to use this forum. No registration
 needed, plain text messages, just click "Reply" and type in your
 message. Additional features would make it more complicated.


 
 Well, obviously non-programmers (or should I say, "non-geeky
 programmers", whatever that might mean) have every right to be able to
 operate a forum dedicated for a programming language without any undue
 handicaps, so we have to make concessions on the level of "geekiness"
 required to participate in the programming language discussions that
 take place here, such that said discussions would be more accessible to
 said non-programmers (or "non-geeky" programmers, whoever they may be).

 P.S. I think my geekiness-11 brain just blew several fuses and 2
 transistors.  Please excuse me while I take a break to go off to the
 brain shop to replace them. Maybe I'll pick up an oxymoron compensation
 diode on the way as well.
 


We need to take a break sometimes, too much geekiness everywhere slows 
us down. At least that my experience.

  > T
Feb 28 2018
parent reply "Nick Sabalausky (Abscissa)" <SeeWebsiteToContactMe semitwist.com> writes:
On 02/28/2018 12:48 PM, Vang Le wrote:

 I don't mean to go into the good vs bad direction. What I was saying is 
 that it is hard to get comfortable and use the forum the most 
 effective/convenient ways. The forum should not be a technical barrier 
 for members to communicate conveniently.
 
 With that said, I am glad that I put up the questions and got a bunch of 
 useful tips to use the forums. FYI, the most useful one is to install a 
 NNTP client and use the 'forum' the way it is, a NNTP server with a web 
 interface.


Speaking of which, and I apologize if this is inappropriate context, but 
has anyone found a good Android NNTP reader for this? I wasn't really 
able to find much when I looked, so I just use DFeed when I'm on the go, 
which is great (fantastic, really!) as far as web interfaces go, but a 
proper native reader would be really nice if anyone has any good tips!
Mar 01 2018
parent rikki cattermole <rikki cattermole.co.nz> writes:
On 02/03/2018 3:08 AM, Nick Sabalausky (Abscissa) wrote:

 On 02/28/2018 12:48 PM, Vang Le wrote:

 I don't mean to go into the good vs bad direction. What I was saying 
 is that it is hard to get comfortable and use the forum the most 
 effective/convenient ways. The forum should not be a technical barrier 
 for members to communicate conveniently.

 With that said, I am glad that I put up the questions and got a bunch 
 of useful tips to use the forums. FYI, the most useful one is to 
 install a NNTP client and use the 'forum' the way it is, a NNTP server 
 with a web interface.


 
 Speaking of which, and I apologize if this is inappropriate context, but 
 has anyone found a good Android NNTP reader for this? I wasn't really 
 able to find much when I looked, so I just use DFeed when I'm on the go, 
 which is great (fantastic, really!) as far as web interfaces go, but a 
 proper native reader would be really nice if anyone has any good tips!


I've used[0] in the past to read, but not for writing.

[0] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.piaohong.newsgroup
Mar 01 2018
prev sibling parent Patrick Schluter <Patrick.Schluter bbox.fr> writes:
On Friday, 23 February 2018 at 22:01:44 UTC, bachmeier wrote:

 On Friday, 23 February 2018 at 17:56:29 UTC, Biocyberman wrote:

 Speaking on behalf of myself, after additional inputs from 
 many excellent and respectful users in this 'forum'. I can say 
 that, on the scale of 1 (least geeky) to 10 (most geeky), I 
 would put forum.dlang.org to the level 8 of geekiness required 
 to use the forum. It may be natural for long-time users, but 
 for newcomers, it is very challenging.


 I have to admit that I don't understand this. I don't think it 
 would be possible for it to be simpler to use this forum. No 
 registration needed, plain text messages, just click "Reply" 
 and type in your message. Additional features would make it 
 more complicated.


I'm with you on that. The forum is one of the best I've 
encountered. Of course the missing editing is due to the nntp 
infrastructure and can be justified: uneditable posts forces one 
to be careful and it avoids 1984 like history rewriting.
The enforcing of proper quoting is also a nice feature that works 
remarquably well.
Feb 24 2018
prev sibling parent Jonathan M Davis <newsgroup.d jmdavisprog.com> writes:
On Friday, February 23, 2018 18:56:29 Biocyberman via Digitalmars-d wrote:

 We may need a survey to have a good overview about users opinions.

 Speaking on behalf of myself, after additional inputs from many
 excellent and respectful users in this 'forum'. I can say that, on the
 scale of 1 (least geeky) to 10 (most geeky), I would put forum.dlang.org
 to the level 8 of geekiness required to use the forum. It may be natural
 for long-time users, but for newcomers, it is very challenging.


I don't understand this at all. The web interface is extremely simple.
You're just reading and writing plain text like you would in an e-mail
client that wasn't using html. There aren't complicated controls to learn.
You just read and type. No, you can't format your text in fancy ways using a
rich text interface, but that doesn't make it any harder to read and write
text. And the interface really isn't all that different from your typical
web forum, many of which don't provide any rich text editing capabilities
beyond putting a piece of text in italics or bold.

I'm sorry if the web interface does not fit your vision of a what a web
forum should look like, but I don't understand how you can argue that it's
hard to use. It just lacks some of the fancier features that some other
forum software has. You can choose to use it or not, but plenty of folks use
the web interface with no problems, and they're not all hardcore
programmers.

- Jonathan M Davis
Feb 23 2018
prev sibling parent reply "Nick Sabalausky (Abscissa)" <SeeWebsiteToContactMe semitwist.com> writes:
On 02/23/2018 10:18 AM, Steven Schveighoffer wrote:

 
 TB has these, though I prefer plain text. It supports a crude form of 
 markdown, so *bold*, _underline_ all are enhanced by TB. Emoticons turn 
 into graphics too ;)
 


I turned those off in my TB installation. I hate having my software 
messing with my content.
Feb 23 2018
parent Steven Schveighoffer <schveiguy yahoo.com> writes:
On 2/24/18 1:18 AM, Nick Sabalausky (Abscissa) wrote:

 On 02/23/2018 10:18 AM, Steven Schveighoffer wrote:

 TB has these, though I prefer plain text. It supports a crude form of 
 markdown, so *bold*, _underline_ all are enhanced by TB. Emoticons 
 turn into graphics too ;)


 
 I turned those off in my TB installation. I hate having my software 
 messing with my content.


But the cool thing is, you can do that for you, and I can do the 
opposite for me. Hard to do that as easily in a web forum ;)

-Steve
Feb 24 2018
prev sibling next sibling parent reply Kagamin <spam here.lot> writes:
On Friday, 23 February 2018 at 13:47:16 UTC, biocyberman wrote:

 From my experience with forum platforms like vBulletin, phpBB, 
 Invision Power, and even interfaces of Google group, and Github 
 Issues, I still find it very difficult to understand the logics 
 of using dlang's forum.


You make it sound like "I even learned clay tablets" :)


 1. No post editting. After clicking send, and found out that 
 you made mistakes in the post, but you can't edit the post 
 anymore.


Stackoverflow has this feature, and it's pretty popular on forums 
too, because when someone abuses editing, people complain that 
discussions make no sense anymore.


 2. Old-day quoting presentation. I always feel reluctant to 
 read texts that stays after two levels of quotes, like this:
  >First post quoted
  >>Second post quoted
  >>>Third post quoted
  >>Second post quoted


Stackoverflow and github have this feature. Though normally web 
interface hides the angle quotes, so they shouldn't interfere 
with reading.


 3. No Rich-text format support. No minimal bold/italic support.
  Some tools to emphasize important points will make it easier 
 to let the readers know what the posters want to say.


Bold and italic is a wrong way to format text because it's visual 
formatting that lacks semantic. You can use markdown to add 
*emphasis*, it's pretty intuitive, stackoverflow and github have 
it too. Emphasis only expresses emotions, which can actually 
distract from content, you better spend time expressing ideas.


 4.  No code formatting. Same feeling here. I am reluctant to 
 post more than 5 lines of code.


run.dlang.org


 5. No image support. In many cases a screenshots will be 
 helpful to communicate problems.


abload.de


 6. Last but not least, a trendy feature: tags, keywords for 
 threads so we can locate related threads easily.


Usually nobody bothers to fill them, so they won't give you any 
result.


 If I may say it honestly, and despite the useful 'save unsent 
 draft' feature, the forum is by far the most user-unfriendly 
 forum platform ever (by appearance).


If I were to order them by user-friendliness (in descending 
order):
dfeed > forums >>> github > stackoverflow > skype
Feb 23 2018
next sibling parent reply Biocyberman <biocyberman gmail.com> writes:
Kagamin wrote:

 On Friday, 23 February 2018 at 13:47:16 UTC, biocyberman wrote:

 From my experience with forum platforms like vBulletin, phpBB, 
 Invision Power, and even interfaces of Google group, and Github 
 Issues, I still find it very difficult to understand the logics of 
 using dlang's forum.


 
 You make it sound like "I even learned clay tablets" :)


Sorry that it kicked in that way. I didn't mean I know all from modern 
to ancient if that is what you mean with 'learning clay tablets'. But I 
did mean that even with quite some experience, I still find it 
challenging to use the forum. I gave example of an typical forum 
interface to a less typical one. dlang's forum is not anywhere on this 
scale, in my opinion.


 

 1. No post editting. After clicking send, and found out that you made 
 mistakes in the post, but you can't edit the post anymore.


 
 Stackoverflow has this feature, and it's pretty popular on forums too, 
 because when someone abuses editing, people complain that discussions 
 make no sense anymore.
 


I mean to edit a post right after posting. stackoverflow and many other 
forums have 5 minutes or more before they lock editing. Only comments on 
stackoverflow are locked by the way.


 2. Old-day quoting presentation. I always feel reluctant to read texts 
 that stays after two levels of quotes, like this:
  >First post quoted
  >>Second post quoted
  >>>Third post quoted
  >>Second post quoted


 
 Stackoverflow and github have this feature. Though normally web 
 interface hides the angle quotes, so they shouldn't interfere with reading.
 


I mean, the angle quotes are the problem.


 3. No Rich-text format support. No minimal bold/italic support.
  Some tools to emphasize important points will make it easier to let 
 the readers know what the posters want to say.


 
 Bold and italic is a wrong way to format text because it's visual 
 formatting that lacks semantic. You can use markdown to add *emphasis*, 
 it's pretty intuitive, stackoverflow and github have it too. Emphasis 
 only expresses emotions, which can actually distract from content, you 
 better spend time expressing ideas.
 


I appreciate your preference on this. And I agree with out if it is some 
sort of formal writing. In short and informal one, it is a way to give 
visual cues.


 4.  No code formatting. Same feeling here. I am reluctant to post more 
 than 5 lines of code.


 
 run.dlang.org
 


I will use this from now on.


 5. No image support. In many cases a screenshots will be helpful to 
 communicate problems.


 
 abload.de


I am aware of third party sites to upload image, but I meant a built-in 
and in-place image display.

 

 6. Last but not least, a trendy feature: tags, keywords for threads so 
 we can locate related threads easily.


 
 Usually nobody bothers to fill them, so they won't give you any result.
 


I do fill them for every question post on stackoverflow. And I find them 
very helpful.


 If I may say it honestly, and despite the useful 'save unsent draft' 
 feature, the forum is by far the most user-unfriendly forum platform 
 ever (by appearance).


 
 If I were to order them by user-friendliness (in descending order):
 dfeed > forums >>> github > stackoverflow > skype


I think it has much to do with setting expectation right. Haven't used 
dfeed, I had trouble understanding dlang's forum but much less trouble 
with others.
Feb 23 2018
parent psychoticRabbit <meagain meagain.com> writes:
On Friday, 23 February 2018 at 18:51:45 UTC, Biocyberman wrote:

 I think it has much to do with setting expectation right. 
 Haven't used dfeed, I had trouble understanding dlang's forum 
 but much less trouble with others.


Well... D users will reach a some critical mass, at some point, 
whereby things will certainly change, and the main discussions 
will then be going on elsewhere - cause this whole 'tied to NNTP' 
thing is kinda backwards, for 21st century.

Till then, we have what we have.

As for editing, I've always though a git like change log would be 
great, so you can edit as much as you want, and your editing 
history is there for all to see, so that it can't be abused.

Pictures would be so nice.

Code formatting would be really nice.

Theme's would be nice (I'm fed up with bright white backgrounds!)

Lot's of other stuff that most new comers would expect ...

But all that and more, will only come in some different forum .. 
not this one.
Feb 23 2018
prev sibling parent "Nick Sabalausky (Abscissa)" <SeeWebsiteToContactMe semitwist.com> writes:
On 02/23/2018 11:57 AM, Kagamin wrote:

 
 Bold and italic is a wrong way to format text because it's visual 
 formatting that lacks semantic.



gone completely, utterly insane.

For one thing, bold and italic have *always* carried a semantic meaning 
of "emplasis". That's the whole fucking reason anyone *ever* used bold 
or italic in the first place. (Well, that, and to turn late-90's emails 
and web pages into eye-cancer - which is exactly what happends when you 
treat "bold" and "italic" as instances of "style" instead of "emphasis").

Secondly, when has anybody EVER come up with a legitimate, practical 
application for programatically determining the emphasised portions of a 
sentence? Not even the content-thief sites can make any use out of THAT 
psuedo-"semantic web" clue.
Feb 23 2018
prev sibling next sibling parent reply MattCoder <please nospam.com> writes:
On Friday, 23 February 2018 at 13:47:16 UTC, biocyberman wrote:

 1. No post editing...


You should be grateful for this, because I hate systems like: 
Forums, Reddit and whatever, where people can edit/delete posts 
changing the context of things.

MattCoder.
Feb 23 2018
parent reply "H. S. Teoh" <hsteoh quickfur.ath.cx> writes:
On Sat, Feb 24, 2018 at 04:18:29AM +0000, MattCoder via Digitalmars-d wrote:

 On Friday, 23 February 2018 at 13:47:16 UTC, biocyberman wrote:

 1. No post editing...


 
 You should be grateful for this, because I hate systems like: Forums,
 Reddit and whatever, where people can edit/delete posts changing the
 context of things.


[...]

+1. In the old days, it was called "bait and switch". After people reply
to an initial post, edit it and change it into something else
completely. It was one of the trolls' favorite tools.


T

-- 
"The number you have dialed is imaginary. Please rotate your phone 90 degrees
and try again."
Feb 23 2018
next sibling parent reply Patrick Schluter <Patrick.Schluter bbox.fr> writes:
On Saturday, 24 February 2018 at 04:41:44 UTC, H. S. Teoh wrote:

 On Sat, Feb 24, 2018 at 04:18:29AM +0000, MattCoder via 
 Digitalmars-d wrote:

 On Friday, 23 February 2018 at 13:47:16 UTC, biocyberman wrote:

 1. No post editing...


 
 You should be grateful for this, because I hate systems like: 
 Forums, Reddit and whatever, where people can edit/delete 
 posts changing the context of things.


 [...]

 +1. In the old days, it was called "bait and switch". After 
 people reply to an initial post, edit it and change it into 
 something else completely. It was one of the trolls' favorite 
 tools.


Last week I saw a video showing how a forum was shutdown because 
it was alledgedly full of racists. The thread where there were 
"racist comments" was in fact one where the initial question was 
ok, the answers absolutely nice but then the troll changed the 
initial post to something sinister and all the positive answers 
looked like agreement to the racist slur of the first comment. It 
was then demonstrated that the troll was a journalist from a big 
mainstream media. If I find the article again I will give a link 
(it's in french though, might not interest that much).
Feb 24 2018
parent reply Steven Schveighoffer <schveiguy yahoo.com> writes:
On 2/24/18 7:00 AM, Patrick Schluter wrote:

 On Saturday, 24 February 2018 at 04:41:44 UTC, H. S. Teoh wrote:

 On Sat, Feb 24, 2018 at 04:18:29AM +0000, MattCoder via Digitalmars-d 
 wrote:

 On Friday, 23 February 2018 at 13:47:16 UTC, biocyberman wrote:

 1. No post editing...


 You should be grateful for this, because I hate systems like: Forums, 
 Reddit and whatever, where people can edit/delete posts changing the 
 context of things.


 [...]

 +1. In the old days, it was called "bait and switch". After people 
 reply to an initial post, edit it and change it into something else 
 completely. It was one of the trolls' favorite tools.


 
 Last week I saw a video showing how a forum was shutdown because it was 
 alledgedly full of racists. The thread where there were "racist 
 comments" was in fact one where the initial question was ok, the answers 
 absolutely nice but then the troll changed the initial post to something 
 sinister and all the positive answers looked like agreement to the 
 racist slur of the first comment. It was then demonstrated that the 
 troll was a journalist from a big mainstream media. If I find the 
 article again I will give a link (it's in french though, might not 
 interest that much).
 
 


Wow, that's insane. I would be interested in seeing it.

-Steve
Feb 24 2018
parent reply Patrick Schluter <Patrick.Schluter bbox.fr> writes:
On Saturday, 24 February 2018 at 18:46:50 UTC, Steven 
Schveighoffer wrote:

 On 2/24/18 7:00 AM, Patrick Schluter wrote:

 On Saturday, 24 February 2018 at 04:41:44 UTC, H. S. Teoh 
 wrote:

 [...]


 
 Last week I saw a video showing how a forum was shutdown 
 because it was alledgedly full of racists. The thread where 
 there were "racist comments" was in fact one where the initial 
 question was ok, the answers absolutely nice but then the 
 troll changed the initial post to something sinister and all 
 the positive answers looked like agreement to the racist slur 
 of the first comment. It was then demonstrated that the troll 
 was a journalist from a big mainstream media. If I find the 
 article again I will give a link (it's in french though, might 
 not interest that much).
 
 


 Wow, that's insane. I would be interested in seeing it.


It's in the history of my work PC, may be I will find it on 
monday.
Feb 24 2018
parent reply Basile B. <b2.temp gmx.com> writes:
On Saturday, 24 February 2018 at 19:30:52 UTC, Patrick Schluter 
wrote:

 On Saturday, 24 February 2018 at 18:46:50 UTC, Steven 
 Schveighoffer wrote:

 On 2/24/18 7:00 AM, Patrick Schluter wrote:

 On Saturday, 24 February 2018 at 04:41:44 UTC, H. S. Teoh 
 wrote:

 [...]


 
 Last week I saw a video showing how a forum was shutdown 
 because it was alledgedly full of racists. The thread where 
 there were "racist comments" was in fact one where the 
 initial question was ok, the answers absolutely nice but then 
 the troll changed the initial post to something sinister and 
 all the positive answers looked like agreement to the racist 
 slur of the first comment. It was then demonstrated that the 
 troll was a journalist from a big mainstream media. If I find 
 the article again I will give a link (it's in french though, 
 might not interest that much).
 
 


 Wow, that's insane. I would be interested in seeing it.


 It's in the history of my work PC, may be I will find it on 
 monday.


I'm french, i'm interested to know what the hell you talked 
about. Google search gave nothing. Do you referred to the 
journalist who was harassed by people on a gamer forum ?
Feb 26 2018
parent reply Patrick Schluter <Patrick.Schluter bbox.fr> writes:
On Tuesday, 27 February 2018 at 07:33:05 UTC, Basile B. wrote:

 On Saturday, 24 February 2018 at 19:30:52 UTC, Patrick Schluter 
 wrote:

 On Saturday, 24 February 2018 at 18:46:50 UTC, Steven 
 Schveighoffer wrote:

 On 2/24/18 7:00 AM, Patrick Schluter wrote:

 [...]


 Wow, that's insane. I would be interested in seeing it.


 It's in the history of my work PC, may be I will find it on 
 monday.


 I'm french, i'm interested to know what the hell you talked 
 about. Google search gave nothing. Do you referred to the 
 journalist who was harassed by people on a gamer forum ?


No, it was not the Nadia Daam thing, she is probably too 
incompetent to pull that trick off.
As for the link, I checked but haven't found it. It was part of a 
longer youtube video but I don't remember which. Sorry.
Feb 27 2018
parent Basile B. <b2.temp gmx.com> writes:
On Tuesday, 27 February 2018 at 20:09:22 UTC, Patrick Schluter 
wrote:

 On Tuesday, 27 February 2018 at 07:33:05 UTC, Basile B. wrote:

 On Saturday, 24 February 2018 at 19:30:52 UTC, Patrick 
 Schluter wrote:

 On Saturday, 24 February 2018 at 18:46:50 UTC, Steven 
 Schveighoffer wrote:

 On 2/24/18 7:00 AM, Patrick Schluter wrote:

 [...]


 Wow, that's insane. I would be interested in seeing it.


 It's in the history of my work PC, may be I will find it on 
 monday.


 I'm french, i'm interested to know what the hell you talked 
 about. Google search gave nothing. Do you referred to the 
 journalist who was harassed by people on a gamer forum ?


 No, it was not the Nadia Daam thing, she is probably too 
 incompetent to pull that trick off.
 As for the link, I checked but haven't found it. It was part of 
 a longer youtube video but I don't remember which. Sorry.


Patrick, you should keep these kind of things out of there.
Right now you look like a guy who

1. either has been influebced by bullshits from the extreme right 
wing: read-believe-propagate.
2. or is a direct source of bullshits.

For the record: 
https://forum.dlang.org/post/upiiglzypphvaprllqmi forum.dlang.org

That's not nice.
Mar 01 2018
prev sibling parent reply Walter Bright <newshound2 digitalmars.com> writes:
On 2/23/2018 8:41 PM, H. S. Teoh wrote:

 +1. In the old days, it was called "bait and switch". After people reply
 to an initial post, edit it and change it into something else
 completely. It was one of the trolls' favorite tools.


Yeah, the immutability of NNTP posts is a feature, not a bug.

It also has the effect of encouraging people to pause a moment before hitting 
[Send], which is definitely a good thing.
Feb 24 2018
parent reply psychoticRabbit <meagain meagain.com> writes:
On Saturday, 24 February 2018 at 20:29:34 UTC, Walter Bright 
wrote:

 Yeah, the immutability of NNTP posts is a feature, not a bug.


but aren't git changes essentially immutable too?
as long is there is a history of the changes, there is no problem 
with changes.

I'm really only interested in the correct version of the persons 
intention, not some multitude of changes.


 It also has the effect of encouraging people to pause a moment 
 before hitting [Send], which is definitely a good thing.


yeah right. a good thing if we were robots instead of humans.

NNTP is not the future..it's the past.
Feb 24 2018
next sibling parent reply rikki cattermole <rikki cattermole.co.nz> writes:
On 25/02/2018 2:31 PM, psychoticRabbit wrote:

 NNTP is not the future..it's the past.


Good news, mailing lists will exist long after we're all dead and gone.
Right along with those stupid little phpbb installs.

You'd have to transition some very massive and important projects off of 
it and they are significantly harder to use than DFeed is.
Feb 24 2018
parent reply psychoticRabbit <meagain meagain.com> writes:
On Sunday, 25 February 2018 at 01:49:05 UTC, rikki cattermole 
wrote:

 On 25/02/2018 2:31 PM, psychoticRabbit wrote:

 NNTP is not the future..it's the past.


 Good news, mailing lists will exist long after we're all dead 
 and gone.


We don't actually die, cause every atom in our body is billions 
of years old.

Explaining that, is almost as hard as explaining why people still 
use NNTP.
Feb 25 2018
parent Steven Schveighoffer <schveiguy yahoo.com> writes:
On 2/25/18 5:03 AM, psychoticRabbit wrote:

 On Sunday, 25 February 2018 at 01:49:05 UTC, rikki cattermole wrote:

 On 25/02/2018 2:31 PM, psychoticRabbit wrote:

 NNTP is not the future..it's the past.


 Good news, mailing lists will exist long after we're all dead and gone.


 
 We don't actually die, cause every atom in our body is billions of years 
 old.
 
 Explaining that, is almost as hard as explaining why people still use NNTP.
 


My atoms are older. Older atoms prefer NNTP.

-Steve.
Feb 25 2018
prev sibling parent "Nick Sabalausky (Abscissa)" <SeeWebsiteToContactMe semitwist.com> writes:
On 02/24/2018 08:31 PM, psychoticRabbit wrote:

 
 NNTP is not the future..it's the past.


Uhh, so? This isn't fasion. Merit matters, not fad-compliance.
Feb 24 2018
prev sibling next sibling parent "Nick Sabalausky (Abscissa)" <SeeWebsiteToContactMe semitwist.com> writes:
On 02/23/2018 08:47 AM, biocyberman wrote:

 
  From my experience with forum platforms like vBulletin, phpBB, Invision 
 Power, and even interfaces of Google group, and Github Issues, I still 
 find it very difficult to understand the logics of using dlang's forum. 


I really don't see what there is to not understand, for the most part. 
The only real tricky point, really, is just that it's a threaded format 
and the web interface (unfortunately, and mistakenly IMO) insists on 
defaulting to an unthreaded view of an inherently threaded system.

Aside from that though, it's just like any other email or message board 
system:

1. Read the posts in the threads (topics).

2. Hit "reply" on a post.

3. Type your reply.

4. Send.

That's all there is to it: It's nothing fundamentally different from 
anything else that's ever existed (except maybe Google Wave, but, 
well...umm, yea...that was that ;) )


 So, how do you guys 
 overcome these problems:
 
 =====
 1. No post editting. After clicking send, and found out that you made 
 mistakes in the post, but you can't edit the post anymore.


1. Proofread *before* sending. (Just like any letter or email.)

2. Follow-up post if there's any important corrections (hardly a big deal)

3. Don't be a perfectionist (it's just a forum, not a doctorial thesis.)


 2. Old-day quoting presentation. I always feel reluctant to read texts 
 that stays after two levels of quotes, like this:
   >First post quoted
   >>Second post quoted
   >>>Third post quoted
   >>Second post quoted
 ....
 


If you mean the angle-bracket syntax: What's the big deal? Surely not 
just that it *isn't* something brand-new, I would hope?

If you mean reading *all* the quoted text: Don't bother. Just skim 
enough to know what it is that's being replied to, then move on the 
actual message.



 3. No Rich-text format support. No minimal bold/italic support. Some 
 tools to emphasize important points will make it easier to let the 
 readers know what the posters want to say.


Anything beyond *doing this* for emphasis is just wasting your time 
futzing with trivialities that don't matter. You probably have better 
things to be doing. It's just a forum, not a journal article.


 4.  No code formatting. Same feeling here. I am reluctant to post more 
 than 5 lines of code.


Just mark it like anyone else does:

---
code here
---

Or post a link.


 5. No image support. In many cases a screenshots will be helpful to 
 communicate problems.


Just post a link.


 6. Last but not least, a trendy feature: tags, keywords for threads so 
 we can locate related threads easily.


That's would be like adding tags to your emails. Waste of bother. This 
is for discussions, it's not really meant as a database.


 If I may say it honestly, and despite the useful 'save unsent draft' 
 feature, the forum is by far the most user-unfriendly forum platform 
 ever (by appearance).


You don't like its appearance? I think the web interface is WAY 
nicer-looking than any phpbb forum or the latest versions of the popular 
webmail clients, but I guess to each his own. But that's one of the nice 
things about it being a newsgroup instead of a web message board: You 
can use whatever interface you want. Personally, I use thunderbird (I 
even get to use a dark theme that way.)

Aside from maybe code formatting, these are all very trivial, 
unimportant features, and I strongly beleive the second half of the 
following is appropriate here (ie, the "Fire and Motion" aka "Covering 
Fire" stuff):
https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2002/01/06/fire-and-motion/
Feb 23 2018
prev sibling parent 0xFFFFFFFF <0xFFFFFFFF mail.com> writes:
On Friday, 23 February 2018 at 13:47:16 UTC, biocyberman wrote:

 Want to learn something from you guys.

 forum.dlang.org is by far the biggest gathering point for Dlang 
 users. So, even though I wanted to get away with using 
 stackoverflow.com, I have to come back here. However, to me it 
 easier for me, I would like to know how you guys get 
 comfortable with using the forum?

 [...]


As for me, I would like more activity on Reddit.
Mar 01 2018