The double post feature is not helpful!

[Dean C]

Ok guys, lets calm down for the meantime. The situation as it stands is that we understand entirely some peoples concerns about this double posting prevention feature. However, the situation from my point of view as a moderator is that it's eased a lot of the problem of bumping of impatient users That's what we aimed to do and it's achieved that.

[JohnBee]

Well Dean C
Let me start off by saying that calmness, is always within me

I have read your post and I completely understand your take on the situation.
I am somewhat disappointed that vb.org was not able to find a more harmonious
solution to this problem, perhaps where we could avoid taking away from the
none abusive members in response to the less respectful.

Despite this discomfort, I still consider this forum a very valuable resource for vbulletin
addons and support, but also feel this feature has taken the shine off having open
conversations in certain areas.

I still see room to further customize for this hack where you might achieve
the same results without compromising on the useful discussion features for
those who do not abuse the system.

[kall]

Pray tell, what would be the point of 'being able to disable the feature if you need to'?

That would totally defeat the purpose of it. If that would work, there would be no need for the Feature.

Your problem with it is really quite invalid anyway. If you post to a thread where you are the last poster, what need do you have of that creating a new post?

I can't think of any situations.

Your problem is that the thread itself is not bumped. It will get bumped once someone ELSE posts to it.

This is how a discussion works. One person posts something and awaits a response. Any changes to the idea of that post can be made using the Edit function. A new post is needless and pointless.

[JohnBee]

How about a system that gathers a users habits and applies the hack accordingly.

or...

What if moderators could flag a user as abusive and he would inherit the double
post restriction.

Additionally, although you raise an interesting point your missing another rather large
one.

Ex: Amie posts a thread asking for help. (she subscribes)
Joe answers Amie with some ideas.
Amie thanks Joe and says she will try it and post her results in the thread.

Everyone waits for new activity on that thread.... using the new posts or
subscription feature....

Do you see a problem with this?

[kall]

Originally Posted by JohnBee

Ex: Amie posts a thread asking for help. (she subscribes)
Joe answers Amie with some ideas.
Amie thanks Joe and says she will try it and post her results in the thread.

Everyone waits for new activity on that thread.... using the new posts or
subscription feature....

Do you see a problem with this?

Yes. Amie should have applied the change *before* posting to thank Joe. That way, she could report the results and they would get sent out.

Or, anyone interested in the thread can just go check it out. At any time.

[Revan]

Originally Posted by JohnBee

Ex: Amie posts a thread asking for help. (she subscribes)
Joe answers Amie with some ideas.
Amie thanks Joe and says she will try it and post her results in the thread.

Everyone waits for new activity on that thread.... using the new posts or
subscription feature....

Do you see a problem with this?

No, I don't. In fact, I think you pretty much owned yourself with that one.
If you had said that JOE subscribed, THEN the point would be half valid. Then again, Joe wouldn't need to subscribe, because he has said his piece and will check back at a later time (which may very well be the next day) if he is interested in knowing if his fix worked.
Amie doesn't need to post a new reply, thus sending herself an email saying there has been a new reply, when it is infact her own.
I said it was half valid, because even if Amie edits her own post with the result and a small fix to the code (thus making it work), the other people monitoring the thread would sooner or later post a reply of their own, thus enabling the Email and New Post for all the rest of the users monitoring the thread.

[KW802]

[tangent] Is anybody else seeing strange line breaks in JohnBee's postings when viewed with the Dark Blue style or is just me? It's almost like the posts are being entered line by line instead of allowing the word-wrap to kick in. Strange.[/tangent]

Back on topic... it's extremely annoying having people reply to their own posts over & over again without either quoting the text that they are responding to or editing their last post. Not only is the double-post hack needed but should be nominated to be a stock option.

[JohnBee]

Revan

Even though I think its great that some people like this hack, which I'm sure it was
written to fill a need but as I mentioned my the alternate thread no matter how you
look at it despite what you feel it does result in lost functionality for some people.

Not you... but others, not the people you refer to as stupid or pretense with censored
words but the ones who do not abuse the forum uses. I'm not telling you or anyone
one else here that you have to agree with me that was not my objective.

My point was to let the site administrators know that for me the hack removes some of
the forum functionality for some people. (again not in your case) but for others.

I hope the Administrators of this forum will consider adjusting the hack so that it can
be adapted to individual members posting habits either by moderator flag or a
calculated system.

That would be a great move towards a better system for everyone imho.

Is anybody else seeing strange line breaks in JohnBee's postings when viewed with the Dark Blue style or is just me? It's almost like the posts are being entered line by line instead of allowing the word-wrap to kick in. Strange.

It may be because I am using an ie intergrated spell checker, perhaps it adjusts
the line breaks when it returns after processing. I can look at the settings
but the Speller is a life real saver for a frenchman like myself.

Oh and this is my first legitimate use of the double post feature

o, I don't. In fact, I think you pretty much owned yourself with that one.
If you had said that JOE subscribed, THEN the point would be half valid. Then again, Joe wouldn't need to subscribe, because he has said his piece and will check back at a later time (which may very well be the next day) if he is interested in knowing if his fix worked.

You missed the entire point.

I am to tired to break it down into small pieces with more details I have to put in
some time on a large project this evening. Perhaps this weekend I will entertain you
with a clearer explaination on how functionality is lost when two people use
the forums for troublshooting. But at this time I am overworked and behind
schedule.

Reading some of your other post I have to say that you seem like a smart guy.
I just don't see why you discredit yourself by calling people names and lashing out
with language that prompts the word censors.

I can't see how all those posts you speak are the result of intentionally bad people.

[Brad]

Please understand that the hack was put in place mainly for the sake of the mods. It does not matter how many times we post 'Please do not bump your thread until someone replies or 24 hours has passed'. People still do it, and when you consider that we have newbies coming in all the time not reading or following the rules you can understand why such a hack was finnaly developed. In short, we spent way to much of our (limited) time dealing with this issue.

Going back and forth about this issue solves nothing, so lets try to work on improvements. Tracking user habbits is not going to solve anything imho, it is a waste of mySQL and resources, not to mention we are going to have to work out the bugs if we added code to do this.

My solution (asuming things about vB 3.whatever they call it here). If this makes it into the next major version we might be able to use it with the double post hack.

Heres your basic situation:

-xuser, yuser, and quser are subscribed to threadid 123

-puser makes a reply to threadid 123

-xuser, yuser, and quser recive an email telling them that a new post was made in threadid 123, xuser checks the thread but does not reply, yuser and quser are AFK and do not read the thread durring this time.

-puser makes a double post (which is auto merged with his last post), while merging the post a query checks if any users are subscribed and viewed the thread in the time peroid between puser's first post and puser's double post, query returns xuser.

- new email is sent to xuser telling him that puser *edited* his last post. All other subscribed users do not get emailed because they already have a link in the last email and have no viewed the post yet.

[Chris M]

That works in theory, except for those that don't subscribe to the thread

However another addition could be to update the "new posts" feature, so that it shows up as an edited post in the new post searches and also when you view the forum that contains the thread in question

Satan