Little things that bug you/me about the forum

[joker_josue]

For as long as I can remember, spammers have used new accounts to create backlinks in their profile. Like this. It would be really nice to remove the possibility to enter a Website (and maybe other text) for any one who hasn't earned at least 1 Merit.

I had never thought about it. But, you can really use this field to take advantage of the good ranking of the forum in search engines, to spread information, probably questionable.

[LoyceV]

If I've seen this correctly, I think that when someone edits the last post in a topic that I've read, that topic shows up in bold font again on the board list (for instance: Meta). It would be nice for Watchlist to behave the same: when the last post gets edited, Watchlist should show it (again).
Context: edit vs create new post.

[LoyceV]

Session verification failed.

Isn't it enough to go back and refresh the page? This happens when you (for instance) click "edit" after leaving the page open for a few hours.

[hosemary]

It would be nice for Watchlist to behave the same: when the last post gets edited, Watchlist should show it (again).

Better: "Watchlist" and also "Show new replies to your posts."

Session verification failed.

Isn't it enough to go back and refresh the page? This happens when you (for instance) click "edit" after leaving the page open for a few hours.

I have also got that error a few times.
It happened when I was trying to make a long post and had to keep the page open for a long time before clicking "Post" button.

Of course, not necessarily a few hours. I may be wrong, but I think keeping the page open for more than 30-40 minutes would be enough for getting that error.

[joker_josue]

I encountered this problem today, “Session verification failed. Please try logging out and back in, then try again.”, though this problem can be solved simply just by logging out and back in (logged out/in fixes it), but just wondering why it happened this time?

This is not a bug, it is something that happens on practically all user interaction sites

When we enter the page, it is sent from the server to the user's browser.
Then the server waits for the response, in this case from a post.
But this has to be done within a certain period of time, otherwise the connection between the browser and the server disconnects.
This happens for security reasons, in order to prevent abuse or data theft.

So, when you have the window open for a long time and then click on make post, this message appears, so that that page reconnects to the server.

(Note that this is a simple explanation of how it works, without getting too technical.)

[LoyceV]

Considering how long it took me to learn to use the Watchlist, I think it would be very helpful for new users to enable this option by default (without changing it for existing users):

I don't understand why anyone would not use the watchlist. You can configure the watchlist to be exactly the same as "show new replies to your posts" by configuring your posts to be auto-watched ~ After this is done, you can unwatch topics that you don't want to see.

[Pmalek]

Sometimes (not always), posting in the Wall Observer thread takes a very long time, and sometimes caused me to double post). I guess this is caused by the thread size, and I'm not sure if that can be fixed (but it would be nice).

I don't think it's a problem in that thread specifically. Here is what I am experiencing on the forum in general. The first post I make on the forum after logging in for the day always takes a bit. The delay is maybe 5-6 seconds before the forum accepts and takes me to the new post I wrote. Every subsequent post after that is submitted much faster. Are you noticing that as well?

I wrote the above post back in March. I don't know if it was PowerGlove's magic again or if theymos changed something, or perhaps it's my VPN, Cloudflare, or a different reason, but I don't experience those delays when submitting my first post of the day after logging on. Bitcointalk feels snappier now and the posts get accepted faster. I personally haven't made any changes to my software of hardware that could explain the difference.

[Cricktor]

...snip...

Wasn't it so that theymos added indices here and there in database tables of the forum (or other optimizations) where for whatever reason indices were missing. Frankly, I don't remember when he announced such optimizations and if the effects were observable right from the start after announcing. And I'm too lazy right now to search for it...

Anyway, it's nice for you to have a better experience with the forum and I can't complain, too. Less of a bug, more of a Yay!

[PowerGlove]

Quoting from another thread:

I'm always interested in hearing people's suggestions and learning about pain points that I haven't experienced myself.

Here's one (I've waited a few hours before posting to trigger it again, but I'll only know if it was long enough when I click Post):

Your session timed out while posting. Please try to re-submit your message.

It's probably not a bug but a feature, but I've seen this far too many times. I often leave a tab open and come back to it hours later. Sometimes it takes me days, in that case I don't mind the error. A couple more hours would be appreciated.

I think it's likely that this one (and similar session-expiry notices) will be partially addressed soon...

SMF has a "keepalive" mechanism that was disabled at some point (for good reason). I came up with a pretty nice fix for this which I shared with theymos a few days ago.


As some of you already know, I'm winding down my forum-improvement efforts and will soon be spending less time here. If there's anything in particular that you'd like me to try and get done before moving on, then the next few weeks/months would be the right time to share those thoughts with me (either in this thread, or with a PM, I don't mind).

[ESG]

I would like to talk here, about the organization of the watchlist,
the topics that we are saving/watching, and when we go to edit watchlist,
 the topics cannot be organized by subject,
 that it would be easier to find topics that we have saved for later reading,
 but I talk too much....

[Peanutswar]

I'm not sure if someone already recommended this, but its when making a quote with the other user's post and of course the OP tag is already added on the thread, so I guess this could apply too at the thread when quoting.

[fillippone]

As some of you already know, I'm winding down my forum-improvement efforts and will soon be spending less time here.

This is sad news for me.
Hopefully, "winding down" doesn't mean "stopping".
Thank you for your incredible work on the forum, the tech substrate that allows this community to thrive.
Sometimes, we get the work for granted, but it isn't.

 

[PowerGlove]

Sadly, theymos and I recently decided that we're too out-of-phase to be working on the same project. There's a chance that, at some point in the future, we'll find enough common ground to be able to work together, but, for now, everyone should consider me to be "retired until further notice".

(I will still try to add some value here and there, when I can, in my capacity as a volunteer. But, realistically, people should expect me to become more and more distant as I slowly invest my energy into other things.)

I wish I had some wise words to mark the end of my short-lived attempt to improve things around here, but, I don't. All I can really say is that I love you guys, I love Bitcoin, and I'm sorry that I wasn't able to make more of a difference.

Locking the thread.