New forum Style

That's funny. I have had the same discussion with the team. Still have to wait for there last answer. See thispost.
I agree, this is NOT a good change.
Martin.

...throws his hat in the ring...

The Team answered:
I guess they won't change it back, to what is was.
Martin.

Would like it the way it was also.

However, in the meantime, we'll just have to keep on asking John and Matt to edit them for us. Once we've all done that a few times (sorry John and Matt ) then they can demand the 'edit post' option back again, and have a very good reason why it should be there!

Dan

EDIT: Edited just because I can at the moment - making the most of it.

Lest the memory of such a short time ago pale, the following was posted 11 pages into this (currently) 23 page thread.

[quote="Peter Bargh"]I can't really see why you cannot enjoy a photo at 550pixels[/quote]And this, in the reporting system today:

[quote="Peter Bargh"]in theory you shouldn't even need an edit option[/quote]I'm sensing a similar mindset, to be honest.

Please, Peter, don't make it as hard to get our point across this time.

It's not as critical an issue as the image-size one, I know. But it is a nuisance the way it is right now, and I'm clearly not alone in thinking this.

And you did say this:

As another person who misses this feature, and can't believe that it would be at all difficult to put back, I should like to add my support for Chris's request.

For the grammar-obsessed (not me, of course) it is useful if not essential, but for those who sometimes move images, it IS essential.

Somebody said there were pros and cons. What are the cons?

Cheers

G

You tell me I'm still figuring out the answer to that Q.
Maybe Richard from the Team can enlighten us.
Martin.

Well the only 'con' I can think of is that it used to be possible to edit a post after further posts had been added, so it would have been theoretically possible to change the sense of a discussion in an evil way.

The trouble with theoretical possibilities, is that some of them are bad, so it is tempting for those with power to base policy on them (always for our protection), rather than on the much more mundane, actual reality.

The fact of the matter is, there aren't any trolls here, seeking to distort people's argument and manipulate threads for their own ends. We're mostly a decent bunch with a common interest, and hang out here for our own and others' benefit. Occasionally something kicks off, but it's usually due to misunderstanding rather than malevolence, and it's all pretty self-policing.

And even if there were bad people around, there are much better ways of dealing with them than penalising the decent majority with pointless and unnecessary restrictions.

I can only say Chris, lets keep the pressure on
It's not like we are asking unreasonable things here. IMO it's starting to look a bit like: Be quiet you all We gave you a new toy, but we decide how you play with it.
Martin.

Sounds like the forum is a mirror of the real world then...

Would be asking too much to create a better world in this forum, me thinks.

Sadly, I fear that the only thing that motivates those in power to make the real world better is to live in it, and mostly they don't.

This is what annoys me about the bug reporting system - it's for their convenience (bug tracking, basically - knowing what's fixed and what isn't), not ours. Had I not cc'ed this thread with part of the exchange with the team on this issue, I wouldn't have known that Martin had raised exactly the same issue as I had, or that he was meeting the same resistance as I am.

If they used the forum themselves, and entered into proper debate with us about its usability, they might discover the irritations for themselves and make it less of a struggle for us to persuade them to fix them.

Don't worry, we read everything and I get to see all the wonderful things you say about me/us. They are really heart warming words!

And IMHO it's like we given you a toy and you've thrown it straight out of the pram because it's not like the one you had last time.

After six years of editing a forum with, at any one minute, between 1000 and 2000 people on line (most PU forum has attracted is 121) we have learned a lot about how they work, the type of people they attract and the type of problems that occur. Yes we made some mistakes in our implementation of this new forum, and I've apologised for any inconvenience caused, and we've adjusted our system to be flexible to your requests?

We have a forum edit restriction because it can be abused. Yes you may be in a safe and friendly nothing-goes-wrong forum at the moment, but all you need is the troll to arrive or a few to get upset and then you'd see what an all time edit option could do.
(Analogy - how many of you live in wonderful neighbourhood where there's never any theft? And of those how many do not have a lock on the door?)

You have unlimited time to get your forum post right using the preview facility. You then have 20 mins to correct errors. Do you really need more? We really are not trying to be stubborn and if we think you have a point we are, as you've found, but don't seem to want to acknowledge, very flexible.

The way words come out in a forum may make me sound arrogant, but John's met me on numerous occasions I'm not stroppy. I'm human and I do make mistakes, but I like to think I'm more flexible than most site owners, I'm accused on ePHOTOzine of being too flexible, bending backwards to make everyone happy.

Good feedback. I'll see if we can have an option that shares certain reports. It's not something I've seen on other sites but we may be able to implement something.

Does anyone else have problems with the text not displaying in the posts? I find that posts at the top and bottom of the page do not render the text until I scroll them up or down so they are off the browser window and then scroll them back into view. This happens at work on two different PCs both running XP Pro SP2 one with IE6 and the other IE7 and my home PC with XP Pro SP3, IE7.

You just aren't listening, are you?

This is currently not a forum with 1500 people online. It is a smaller, well-functioning community, and at present, we don't need to lock up all the law-abiding members of that community just in case a bad person turns up.

If one troll turned up, the best way of dealing with that person would be to ban him, and allow the rest of us to continue using our freedoms responsibly.

If fifty trolls turned up, then I would agree with you that all sorts of restrictions would then become necessary - but those of us that like the sort of community that it has been, would probably no longer be here.

Then why haven't you addressed the point I've made several times now, that there is not even a risk of abuse if the post to be edited is the last one on the thread?

So in that case, there is no need, even in your world of imagined problems, to apply any time limit (or any 'edited by' message).

But that aside, enforcing these restrictions is based on paranoia that is currently unfounded.

In a year's time, it might be well-founded, but today it is not.

By the way...

No, that's not why we threw it out of the pram, and your perception that this is the reason is a large part of the problem.

We threw it straight out of the pram because on day 1 it was crap.

And if we hadn't screamed and shouted, and done a lot of testing that you should have done, it would still be crap.

550 pixels on a photographic forum - my god, what were you thinking?

It is not crap now - it's a lot better. That's why people aren't complaining so much.

Not because, idiot luddite users that we all are, we're just getting used to the new look, but because the real problems that existed at the beginning are now less severe.