General Comments
| Jul 28th 2011, 04:24 | |
w1rfiSuper Moderator Total Topics: 0 Total Posts: 0 |
There is a link that will let you view new posts. It is right above the red text near the top of the page that tells you that you will be wouff honged if you don't read the rules. You can either put in some limiting terms or just click the submit button to see all of the posts in reverse chronological order. 73, Ed Hare, W1RFI ARRL Lab Technical forums moderator |
| Jul 28th 2011, 10:44 | |
w1rfiSuper Moderator Total Topics: 0 Total Posts: 0 |
Well, I was moslty right about the view-new-post feature. The link to it is indeed on the site. You can leave the search boxes blank, tell the software to order the results by the last post timem, or put in terms and combine the view-new-post and search functions. The screen that results orders the topics (threads to of us forum denizens) by last post time, but if you then click on a topic, it is ordered oldest first. You either need to scroll down the page to see them all and get to the new ones or click the amost invisible page number corresponding to the last page of results. If there are more than 15 results, the software put them into multople pages. On the list of topics that first appears, you can click on the page number. Once you are in the results screen, you can switch between pages by clickng the page number that will be in one of the blue bars across the page near the bottom of the page. You will see this after scrolling down to the end of the results. On my monitor and colors, the "Dislaying 1-15 of 17" is in easy to ready yellow,as is the page number of the page I am viewing. The other pages are in a blue color only slightly different from the color of the bar. At first, I didn't even notice that there were other page numbers, so you have to look carefully for them, The "view last post' entry screen and the 'search posts" entry screesn are identical, so both are really calls to the searching function. 73. Ed Hare, W1RFI ARRL Lab Technical forums moderator |
| Jul 28th 2011, 10:52 | |
w1rfiSuper Moderator Total Topics: 0 Total Posts: 0 |
There may be a configuration issue somewhere. There are other non-functional functions. If you click on the w1rfi on the left of this post, it will show stats for my posts in a summary table. Apparently I have never logged in to the site and have done zero posts. The software then lists the 22 posts I have made. :-) I'd expect that most of the bugs should be shaken out soon. Keep reporting them! 73, Ed Hare, W1RFI ARRL Lab Technical forums moderator |
| Jul 29th 2011, 00:33 | |
W0BTUTotal Topics: 0 Total Posts: 0 |
We fully understand how it works, Ed. What I was trying to say is that it eventually needs to be changed so that it works like the examples I gave. :-) 73, Mike www.w0btu.com |
| Jul 29th 2011, 12:54 | |
K3FUTotal Topics: 0 Total Posts: 0 |
Ed, and the rest of the ARRL staff, I do sincerely wish you the very best of success with these new forums. Having seen other (unmoderated or semi-moderated) forums about amateur radio on-line descend into chaos and wholly personal attacks from extremely virulent and sociopathic trolls, I don't want to see that happen here. I'm sorry to see that ARRL staff won't participate in even moderated Usenet newsgroups anymore, for example (the articles and followups to the newsgroup can be controlled by the moderators, but direct E-mail replies to the article authors unfortunately cannot). Good ways to keep these forums from being ruined and unusable include: no anonymity/forgery/sock-puppeting (only ARRL members, identified by callsign, can post), and a reasonably comprehensive set of common-sense rules that are fairly and certainly applied, including bans against personal attacks, excessively vexatious and repetitive criticism, and other bad-faith participation (such as injection of deliberate or careless falsehoods in order to generate argument). I do hope you have a moderation staff of more than just you, as moderating any on-line forum can become a significant day-to-day workload, and even with no anonymity and clear rules, you may find yourself having to deal with at least some offenders who won't understand the rules, or think that they don't apply to them. 73, Paul, K3FU ARRL Life Member Chief Moderator, rec.radio.amateur.moderated/rec.radio.info |
| Jul 29th 2011, 14:00 | |
W1RFIAdminTotal Topics: 0 Total Posts: 0 |
Hi, Paul. It's nice to see you here. I am probably the only HQ staffer that has regularly pariticapted in on-line forums that have general discussions, rather than narrow interests like QRP. Before it turned into a cesspool, for the very reasons you describe, I used to participate in rec.radio.amateur policy and rec.radio.amateur.misc, but at some point, they went downhill, and, if they still exist, the last time I looked at them, I was aghast at how far down that hill was. It may be a bit better under the Google umbrella, but I just haven't looked in years I commend you for what you are accomplishing with a moderated discussion group within the usenet forums structure. My lack of participation is not at all intended to be critical of that good work, just a matter of time and preference. As much as I can see why moderation is helpful, I'm a "right now" sort of guy, and the inherent delays in moderation tend to be a bit frustrating for me. I am pretty sure that my own posts could be deemed unecessary to moderate, but the delays in getting responses from others don't match my own posting style. I have been an occasional poster on qrz.com, eham.net, amfone.net and others, and my participation there runs in cycles, based on time and interest, and my willingness to tolerate the few who like to debate for debate's sake. It may not always be as blatant as the trolling you describe, but there are those that like to take a postiion and discuss it, much like we were assigned in high-school debate class. To their credit, qrz.com and eham.net do a good job at trying to balance the benefits of having a free and instantaneous exchange of differing views and ideas and the need to have that exchange take place in a wholesome environment. This has especially true of late, and although those sites are not necessarily a full "family channel" environment, I don't hestitate to recommend them, or rec.radio.amateur.moderated, but I've found the semi-moderated sites to meet my needs and at least be reasonably productive to use. This is even better, as if I am going to spend time on discussion boards, what more natural place for me than here. Like it is on other sites, posts from me are a balance between entirely personal or entirely professional, or somewhere in between. Here, they lean a bit more toward the professional, in that I was never asked to pariticpate on other on-line forums on behalf of ARRL. (There were even a few questions about whether I should particiate or not, but I set that straight real quick!). Here, it is expected that I will moderate the technical forums, and my participation as a member on other forums is welcome, as well. I am enjoining a number of those discussions to help kick start this project and because as an experienced denizen of the forums world, I can help mentor other staff in the sometimes-tricky art of posting without stirring the pot. :-) Members here reading my posts will usually be able to tell the difference between Ed the QRP ham vs Ed the ARRL Lab Manager and Ed the Moderator. Even so, everyone sees the world from their own unique perspective. I will say that my interest in helping ARRL through employment there stems from my interest in Amateur Radio, and that the pay scale at HQ is such that working there is a choice, not a necessity. :-) As to moderation, I intend to moderate by example and leadership. Posts critical of ARRL, if appropriately stated, should not be reasons for moderation, even in cases where I believe the criticism to me misdirected. If someone is unhappy with ARRL for a reason that I don't think is correct, I would rather hear it and be able to offer additional information that may change the poster's mind. And I've said it, but I'll say it again, the profanity laced diatribe will be instantly deleted and the poster will no longer be able to post, with no recourse. This is a family channel, in a community with a wide range of values, so even mild profanity will not be acceptable. If an adjective is truly needed, it will have to be the dang rig that blew up, although simply saying that the rig blew up may suffice. Punctuation or (expletive deleted) is really not a good approach either. But other than that, I expect that semi-moderated can be made to work. Posts like yours help, as it sends a message that the view of the Internet as the wild, wild west where anything goes is not what most people want, and that the few that say that are the few who want to use the Internet as an excuse for doing things that are simply not acceptible in most of society. My thanks go to all who have helped realize that here. So far, unless our web-content manager has had to delete any posts, I haven't seen a single thing that I believe requires moderation, in any form. That speaks well to the ARRL members that are participating. 73, Ed Hare, W1RFI ARRL Lab Technical forums moderator |
| Jul 29th 2011, 18:02 | |
KE2IVTotal Topics: 0 Total Posts: 0 |
I'm a lifetime member of the ARRL. While I appreciate the League's desire to enhance communications with and between members, I do not think that instituting forums on the website is wise. All too often these forums become places for shouting matches, insults and general negativity. There are simply too many people who just lose all sense of propriety when they sit at a computer keyboard. One sees it on every forum not just in ham radio, but generally all over the internet. Perhaps it will be different here -- although I doubt it. Certainly, unless the moderators intend to be actively interventionist I am all but convinced that this forum site will deteriorate quickly into a viper pit of insult and innuendo as do so many others. |
