Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) : Discussion and Group Therapy Thread

[mnementh]

@mnementh Noooooooo, that is the "Quote" button that you refer to with your arrow saying "Here"

I think that mansaxel is thinking about when your post is not the next in line and so the linkage is broken, if you get my drift, hence why I mentioned using either the @ followed by the members name, or quoting their post with all the padding removed.

And now we're back to wanting mailing list functionality out of a forum. Most of the users don't care for mailing lists; that's why we're doing this and migrating away from groups.io.

We have unlimited thread/subforums/tags to organize individual ideas within when it is needed. And now that we're in our own space, we don't have to worry aboot "TPTB" suddenly deciding we're too rowdy and dumping the OT Nazi hammer on us.

We don't need threading in the TEAnonymous thread; the whole point is kindof the general "stream of consciousness" thing as it evolves of its own accord, and following that stream where it leads us in the moment.

Some folk cannot take off the engineer hat for even a moment; I personally come to this space explicitly to turn off engineer mode and just play.

Cheers,

mnem
This sandwich tastes like socks. Discuss.

[bd139]

Worth noting that linear forums don't deal with large quantities of different topics in one thread so actually having The TEA Thread in here is probably a bad idea. Branch out a bit

[bitseeker]

Many (most?) forums tend to have a flat structure. Hence, linking to a post mid-thread doesn't truly exist in such systems. However, you can provide a contextual link by using the quoting feature to include a short, relevant piece of the post to which you're replying. This will automatically include the metadata reference for orientation.

Nevertheless, I get the concept for the Reply To This Post function. It's essentially to generate that reference metadata without having to quote any text from the post to which you're replying. That may be possible to add via extension, which I could investigate. If it requires base source code modification, then I avoid those kinds of enhancements since it makes updating the software significantly more of a headache and can get you stuck on a particular version.

Since we're no longer limited to a single thread for TEA, if a topic of discussion in here starts to grow, do give it its own thread/topic and link to it.

[bitseeker]

Regarding mailing list functionality, I haven't dug deeply into it, but I did see an extension that enables sending of posts and topics to a mailing list. So, we might be able to have the forum send new content to a mailing list system that would then distribute posts via email. However, that'd be a one-way distribution with no way to reply by email.

Since I haven't tried it, I don't know if the extension would provide the message ID linkage to enable mail clients to properly thread replies. If it doesn't, then it doesn't seem to provide much benefit over using the existing topic subscription functionality.

In any case, this is something that can be explored once we get the main forum functionality and the TEA look-and-feel in place.

[mnementh]

Worth noting that linear forums don't deal with large quantities of different topics in one thread so actually having The TEA Thread in here is probably a bad idea. Branch out a bit

I spent some time mulling over where to put the TEA Thread when I started it... after careful consideration, I deliberately put it right in the middle of the TE subforum because fuck eevBlog, that's why...

mnem
...very cordially, of course.

[Specmaster]

You know what, this is beginning to feel like home, sure it has a few rough corners here and there but as we discover them, bitseeker works his magic and looks into it and thinks that most if not all of what has been mentioned ought to be doable, but we need to remember that Rome was not built in a day.

It certainly seems to be a workable alternative and is not too different in appearance to the SMF that we have become accustomed to, what is the view of other users about this format?

[bitseeker]

I know Cerebus wants to really put the forum to the test, so I'll wait until he's had a chance to do some more of that. Meanwhile, given the significant shift in activity level between here and Groups.io, I'd say it's a good sign that the basics are OK so far.

Yes, most issues raised thus far will be easy to address (and many have already been taken care of). A few will take writing some code if an extension doesn't already exist or will require creating/"borrowing" artwork.

Has anyone used the topic and/or forum subscription/notification feature yet?

Spec, there is an extension that enables user selection of which side of the post the author's avatar and info appears. I'll let you know when I add it so you can try it out.

[vk6zgo]

We have unlimited thread/subforums/tags to organize individual ideas within when it is needed. And now that we're in our own space, we don't have to worry aboot "TPTB" suddenly deciding we're too rowdy and dumping the OT Nazi hammer on us.

To any noobs without the EEVBlog experience, we are "TPTB"!

Cheers,

mnem
This sandwich tastes like socks. Discuss.

Of course it does, it's a sock sandwich!

[MED6753]

Has anyone used the topic and/or forum subscription/notification feature yet?

Yes, and I thought at first it wasn't working. Turns out gmail thought it was spam and put the responses there. Fixed it.

[bitseeker]

Yeah, Gmail isn't familiar with this IP, yet, and the domain is young. Just keep your eyes peeled on the spam folder and mark any that end up there as "not spam." Often, it only takes one or two tries to get it to do the right thing, and the more people that do it, the better it'll be going forward. When I get DKIM working, that'll help, too, but nowadays email is just a pain thanks to all the spammers.

[MED6753]

Gmail is a quick learner. It's working fine now.

[Specmaster]

Has anyone used the topic and/or forum subscription/notification feature yet?

Yes, I have selected notification but for me that option does not appear to be working, and it certainly is not going into my spam folder either, maybe it just doesn't like outlook

[bd139]

outlook.com (and office365) are absolutely the worst thing for rejecting emails. They accept them at the MX and never deliver them to the client.

The annoying thing is that everyone thinks it's just them it's happening to. Until you work for lots of companies you don't see that the issue is as frequent as it is. We send 50k (solicited) emails a day from report notifications to password reminders, warnings etc out from AWS SES and outlook.com has the worst deliverability score of all of them. We have people working full time debugging these issues with clients.

[MED6753]

Has anyone used the topic and/or forum subscription/notification feature yet?

Yes, I have selected notification but for me that option does not appear to be working, and it certainly is not going into my spam folder either, maybe it just doesn't like outlook

It's a little confusing to make sure it's set. Go to the "Topic Tools" pull down and "Subscribe" should be checked. You have to left click it and you'll get a message that it is indeed set. Then check to see if you get notifications.

[Specmaster]

Has anyone used the topic and/or forum subscription/notification feature yet?

Yes, I have selected notification but for me that option does not appear to be working, and it certainly is not going into my spam folder either, maybe it just doesn't like outlook

It's a little confusing to make sure it's set. Go to the "Topic Tools" pull down and "Subscribe" should be checked. You have to left click it and you'll get a message that it is indeed set. Then check to see if you get notifications.

Arh, yes I see it, it was already ticked which made me think it was all set up, once I left-click it I get a message telling I'm subscribed and the "subscribe" changes to "unsubscribe" and the tick disappears. As you say it is confusing.

[bitseeker]

Yeah, it's the (computer) age-old problem of buttons/menus that show current status vs. indicate the action that can be initiated. For a menu item, check marks should only be used to show current status. That's where this feature is failing.

A less confusing option would be to use some other iconography without any check mark, like the other menu items that are also selectable. That'd keep the experience consistent.

[Cubdriver]

That's one thing that makes me nuts about SolidWorks - the file select menu lets you filter what it shows - parts, assemblies and/or drawings. There are three buttons; when 'on' the item type is displayed in the list of files in the window, when 'off' it is not. The buttons are either white, or light gray, depending on whether they're off or on. You must look closely to tell if it's gray, because it's a very light gray. And I always wind up toggling them multiple times when I want to select, because I can never remember if gray is on or off. Not sure why they couldn't make the button turn oh, I dunno, maybe GREEN when it's on and red when it's off? No, instead it's white and a slightly darker white. <facepalm>

-Pat

[bd139]

“It’s the wild colour scheme that freaks me,” said Zaphod whose love affair with this ship had lasted almost three minutes into the flight, “Every time you try to operate on of these weird black controls that are labelled in black on a black background, a little black light lights up black to let you know you’ve done it. What is this? Some kind of galactic hyperhearse?”

― Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

[Specmaster]

Well, so far I have not any email notification despite there being new posts, are emails only sent out at certain times of the day or what Does anyone actually know

[bitseeker]

Emails are sent out in batches throughout the day, rather than on a fixed schedule. If there's no traffic, they may not go out right away, but they have been going out. I'm going to subscribe to this thread to get a feel for how it's behaving.

[Cerebus]

As for "reply to post"... it's right here:

No, that's "quote whole post" not "reply to post".

We can understand how you get the two concepts confused, we've seen your posting style!

[Cerebus]

I know Cerebus wants to really put the forum to the test, so I'll wait until he's had a chance to do some more of that. Meanwhile, given the significant shift in activity level between here and Groups.io, I'd say it's a good sign that the basics are OK so far.

Well, it's not just me, we all need to hammer it and see what breaks or what's lacking.

I don't have a "testing plan" and I don't intend to have one. The 'gotchas' tend to become apparent when someone tries to do something 'obvious' to them and the wrong thing happens, or all hell breaks loose; that'll come from people trying to use it.

The complete absence of any in-reply-to back references is galling. While Mnem has loudly said that we don't need threading (brutally, that just means that he doesn't like threading) we most definitely do need the ability to see what someone's replying to - it doesn't have to be presented as fully fledged threading, but life is a lot easier if a message has a "replying to message #12354" link that you can use to track a conversation back. In the absence of that we just get either excessive quoting or apparent non-sequitors and a style of conversation that's much harder to follow. Both phpBB and SMF suffer in this regard (but at least SMF puts a back-link in a 'quote') and the few popular BBSes that do have some semblance of that (e.g. discourse) I think we've all dismissed as "Not fit for any attempt at an adult conversation rather than the wibblings of wokes, trendies, hipsters, 'makers' and self described 'influencers'" - so whatever I'd like, I don't think we'll be seeing that soon.

[tggzzz]

I just remembered why i hate phpBB (besides it being PHP and all that).

There is no bleeping "reply to this post" button. Threading is so completely remote to phpBB that I can't understand how people manage. SMF is in that regard much better. And I really dislike SMF, for it is about as stable as the car that Heath Robinson and Rube Goldberg built a test series of back in the 30s.

The Thread worked on SMF because of the reply to this post function (and in spite of the rest of SMF) and if we're going to have this TE stream of consciousness it will end up long-winded sooner or later, even if we have Discord to let off some steam. Not being able to reply to a specific post while catching up is going to suck big time.

At this level of suck, groups.io wins by a really large margin.

To illustrate, this is how we talk:

Code: Select all

2274     Oct 18 Specmaster      (  96) [tea] ISP's who do you use and your finding? #TEAngents   
2275     Oct 18 tggzzz          ( 134) ├─>                                                       
2276     Oct 18 Specmaster      (  54) │ ├─>                                                     
2277     Oct 18 tggzzz          (  71) │ │ ├─>                                                   
2278     Oct 18 MED6753         (  48) │ │ │ ├─>                                                 
2279     Oct 18 Specmaster      (  57) │ │ │ │ └─>                                               
2280     Oct 18 tggzzz          (  96) │ │ │ └─>                                                 
2281     Oct 18 bd139           ( 143) │ │ └─>                                                   
2282     Oct 18 bd139           (  49) │ │   └─>                                                 
2283     Oct 18 bd139           (  62) │ │     ├─>                                               
2284     Oct 18 Specmaster      (  93) │ │     │ └─>                                             
2285     Oct 18 bd139           (  54) │ │     │   ├─>                                           
2286     Oct 18 Specmaster      ( 672) │ │     │   └─>                                           
2287 r   Oct 18 Cerebus (Ian)   (  90) │ │     └─>                                               
2288  sF Oct 18 To tea@groups.i (  69) │ │       └─>                                             
2289     Oct 18 Cerebus (Ian)   (  72) │ └─>                                                     
2290 r   Oct 18 tggzzz          (  90) │   └─>                                                   
2291  sF Oct 18 To tea@groups.i (  51) │     └─>                                                 
2292 r   Oct 19 Cerebus (Ian)   ( 135) ├*>                                                       
2293     Oct 19 Specmaster      (  58) │ ├─>                                                     
2294     Oct 19 bd139           (  45) │ │ └─>                                                   
2295     Oct 19 Specmaster      (  64) │ │   └─>                                                 
2296     Oct 19 bd139           (  47) │ │     └─>                                               
2297     Oct 19 Specmaster      (  74) │ │       └─>                                             

This is a screen-dump from my email reader (mutt in a terminal), where it threads the mails it's received from groups.io for one of our popular tangents. The discussion is scattered, people reply to specific posts, and then there's reaction to that, and then another reaction. And so it goes on. This is hopeless to follow if you only can reply in a straight line.

Just so. Exactly.

Except I use thunderbird/seamonkey - but can change to something else (i.e. anything that uses the standard mbox format) if I become annoyed.

[tggzzz]

And coming along a few days later either indented subthreads or quoted context is essential.

[tggzzz]

Nothing wrong in quoting a post in a reply if your post is relating to something in that post, or of course you could always start your post with the at sign and then the member's name, i.e. @bd139, @specmaster etc.

On a lot of forums quoting is very over used and gets in the way. It may be the mindset the forum develops or the software, but there's absolutely no need for the amount of quoting done. For instance a lengthy post will be quoted in its entirety and answered in the next post with a couple of sentences, which just adds clutter.

Here I pointlessly quoted your post to illustrate the point. It should be clear I was replying to your point on quoting. Had your point been made 6 posts before, the quoting would have been relevant. It bears on the question of threading made earlier.

And coming along a few days later either indented subthreads or quoted context is essential.

Like that