You misunderstand.

The moderators are the ones who are annoyed.

--truss.

I do. I learned my first big lesson about that by making one of my first posts in the "NXE Hostility" thread. That was very, very stupid of me, not just because of the resultant vitriol spewed by all sides (oddly enough, none of whom disliked NXE) but in resurrecting a thread that was far too cumbersome to begin with. And the fact that my own theories about DJ/Lucifer thread has gotten resurrected a couple of times since I posted something I figured would more or less cap off discussions there makes me think that such a feature is pretty important. (Never mind that both "resurrections" were of questionable merit.)

There's a big tendency - of everyone on the boards - to go off-topic pretty quickly, and get involved in an off-topic discussion without meaning to. The ability to break such off-topic threads off into a brand-new thread in a more appropriate area would be a welcome addition. After all, half of the 30+ threads are ones that have about 30 posts on the subject originally stated and lots of others that aren't even distantly related. I don't mind it when people go off-topic, but when threads start getting cumbersome, such a feature would make them far more managable.
-Eliot "Longer than I'd meant to write" Lefebvre
-=()=-
We're only given a little time in our lives to waste. Make the most of it.
Electronic Transcendence Productions
Producer of, um, stuff for an unspecified time-period.
Thoughts of the moment, and such

Well since this thread already has 25 posts I think we should either start the unimportant subthreads now or let it die. You choose people...

Pangaro, known asshole in five countries
Paying atention to the wrong part of the speech since 1986
Member of the Narn Bat Squad

>A better, more flexible feature would be the presence of a "start a
>new thread with this reply" function.

Which, I recall, was either #1 or #2 on my personal Requested Feature list.

>As it is, I'm always a little reluctant to step in and lock things
>because I fear people will go, "Hmm, here's a thought - oh, but this
>thread's locked, so I guess I won't bother posting it."

Well, if the feature you describe were properly implemented, you could do a "reply to new thread" to an article in a locked thread. You just couldn't reply within the thread.

If a thread is so ridiculously off-topic or offensive that you don't even want anyone to think about replying to it, don't lock the thread... delete it.

--truss.

... I know.

Hence "as it is". Right now that's not possible, and so I fear people won't bother going the long way around to break new comments out of old threads; they'll just let the new comments die unposted.

Not that this is always a bad thing; if people lost interest in posts containing nothing more than "you made me snarf" and Narn Bat Squad references, I wouldn't lose any sleep...

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor in Chief, Netadmin
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/

indeed.... its taken me a while to think through how to break a new post out from an old thread... I think a reply to new would be an excellent addtion to the board. If Zoner himself can't do it, maybe we can talk the DCI board people into making it a new standard feature??

___________________

Jer told Vaughn about me. I am once again a victim of Murphy's law...

Not to sound dense or imply density, but how hard would it be to add that to the "print" statement that writes "Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top" in every message? True the poster might have to add the topic of their new thread, but that is the point anyway -- isn't it? Isn't the board coded in Perl?

Static-Pulse
- the most impulsive post alive
DarkBeast.com

>>A better, more flexible feature would be the presence of a "start a
>>new thread with this reply" function.
>
>Not to sound dense or imply density, but how hard would it be to add
>that to the "print" statement that writes "Edit | Reply | Reply With
>Quote | Top" in every message?

I have no idea. I'm not a programmer. That is more or less the feature I was suggesting, though.

Adding it to the statement that adds the list of options is probably trivial, but unless perl is CLULESS, actually getting that option to then work would likely require some actual effort.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor in Chief, Netadmin
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/

>I have no idea. I'm not a programmer. That is more or less the
>feature I was suggesting, though.
>
>Adding it to the statement that adds the list of options is probably
>trivial, but unless perl is CLULESS, actually getting that option to
>then work would likely require some actual effort.

If you guys don't mind out-sourcing, I'd be happy to look at it and see what I can do. I know a couple of things about Perl, and enough about my own skills to say, "Sorry, this is above me."

Static-Pulse
- the most impulsive post alive
DarkBeast.com
(edited for longevity)

Careful - that's Zoner's favorite tree you're pissing on. MegaZones are very territorial creatures. I'd be more careful if I were you. :)

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor in Chief, Netadmin
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/

That's what I was afraid of...

*slowly moves away from the thread before breaking into a run*

Static-Pulse
- the most impulsive post alive
DarkBeast.com

Well, um, no offense or anything, but isn't that kinda stupid? I mean, You've all been complaining about the lack of this feature for close on a year now, and all we've heard is "I'll get around to it." Now, I know that we are getting this for free, and the expense is coming out of your pockets and what not, but if someone offers their help, and you turn it down because you're feeling posessive about an open-sourced(?) program, then why they hell did you open-source it, or give us a place to rant about it?

--
-Pasha
Umm, right....I'll be with you in just a sec now...

Well, um, I didn't open-source it. DCForum doesn't have anything to do with me or EPU or anything.

All I'm saying is, Zoner's the local DCF hacker, and if somebody else codes a function, he'd have to be the one to integrate it with our install, and if somebody else had coded it, chances are he would refuse to do so in favor of coding it himself, which he might or might not actually get around to doing.

In this case, I can be fairly confident in saying that he won't implement anything new on these boards as they now stand, since DCF 6.0 is out of date. He'd have to upgrade to whatever's current, then start hacking that.

And, given his overall motivation level lately, I wouldn't hold my breath.

I'd like to see the "reply in new thread" function too, but I've learned long since the negative value of hounding Zoner about things. It gets them not, and possibly never, done.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor in Chief, Netadmin
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/

He said as much at NekoCon; since 6.2 is buggy as hell, he's waiting for 6.21, I believe, and once the boards are upgraded, then he'd start working on new features.

-- Sean --

http://www.thebrokenlink.org The Broken Link 4.0 is live!
"All tribal myths are true, for a given value of 'true'." -- Terry Pratchett
Follow my random thoughts
Follow my creative process

6.2.1 got released a week or two ago - while Gryph and I were doing the wiring job from hell. When I got back I was busy catching up with email, job hunt, news, and forums - including this one. My plan was to work on porting the 6.1 hacks to 6.2.1 this week. Monday I finally put together my new box to use for the work. Tuesday I was going to connect it and set it up. But it didn't work. It won't POST - just beeped. And in the process of trying to sort that out I appear to have fried the CPU. I did something very stupid - I powered on a 1.4GHz Athlon without the heatsink on the CPU. Then I got a nice burn on my knuckle.

Jer had a 1.4GHz Athlon too - and he offered to help me sort it out. So I trucked over to Worcester and we played swap the CPU. My CPU in his box did nothing - which seems to indicate it is indeed dead. His CPU in my box was back to the beeping. The beep code appears to be the "Not happy with memory" one - which could be the DIMMS, the CPU cache, or the controller on the MB.

But the fun came when we put things back where they started - his CPU back in his box now does nothing. So it looks like either my MB killed his CPU, or my CPU killed his MB. (Or both I suppose, though I'm trying not to think about that.)

So now I plan to get up Wednesday morning and find a PC repair shop that'll do a rush on these to try to make them work tomorrow. And then cry over the money I don't have to spend in the first place.

But, hopefully, I'll have a working system for the weekend to hack on.

-MegaZone, megazone@megazone.org
Personal Homepage http://www.megazone.org/
Eyrie Productions FanFic http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
See what I'm selling on eBay

I really ->LIKE<- AMD hardware, but ye gods, does it really have to be a space heater/PC combo all the time?;)

>But the fun came when we put things back where they started - his CPU
>back in his box now does nothing. So it looks like either my MB
>killed his CPU, or my CPU killed his MB. (Or both I suppose, though
>I'm trying not to think about that.)
>

I'd vote the mobo, only because CPU's are fragile beasts, and AMD CPU's doubly so <whaddya want for cheap?>. If it turns out to have been the CPU< save it, it may be a first;)

Anyway, a potentially useful/useless tidbit:

My lovely Socket A mobo is VERY picky about it's RAM... does not like the higher density chips <spent an hour talking with a tech at Crucial divining why two clips of PC133 CAS2 refused to work in my system, what I get for being an early adopter>. Prolly not the problem, but something to keep in mind.

-={(Astynax)}=-
"Darkness beyond Twilight"

Interestingly this is with 4 256MB sticks of registered PC2100 ECC DDR SDRAM - from Crucial.

Jer and I both didn't think the 'ECC" bit should be an issue - and the MB wants PC1600 or PC2100 DDR SDRAM - unregistered is ok for 2 sticks, but registered for 4.

-MegaZone, megazone@megazone.org
Personal Homepage http://www.megazone.org/
Eyrie Productions FanFic http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
See what I'm selling on eBay

>Interestingly this is with 4 256MB sticks of registered PC2100 ECC DDR
>SDRAM - from Crucial.
>
>Jer and I both didn't think the 'ECC" bit should be an issue - and the
>MB wants PC1600 or PC2100 DDR SDRAM - unregistered is ok for 2 sticks,
>but registered for 4.

if I may inquire, who's the manufacturer for the mobo?
I have an Asus (and, more specifically, one with the ALiMaGik 1 chipset...no I didn't nameit that, and yes...I'm pretty sure it should be caps'ed like that)

anyway, my board is so incredibly finiky with memory it isn't even funny...for one, most crucial memory just plain does not work in it. For two, no ECC memory will work in it...at all.

Admittedly, from the sounds of it, there's something else wrong...but considering how much tsurus my board gave me, I figured I'd pass the info n, in hopes of preventing author-explosion...

(edited for typos...oops)

ABit - KG-7-RAID

-MegaZone, megazone@megazone.org
Personal Homepage http://www.megazone.org/
Eyrie Productions FanFic http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
See what I'm selling on eBay

I'm not an asshole - some of the features in this copy of DCF didn't originate from me. I have incorporated hacks from other people - when they're well written and make sense. But it does mean that I have to maintain them, and possibly port them forward when we upgrade. So I don't just toss in any old thing.

>In this case, I can be fairly confident in saying that he won't
>implement anything new on these boards as they now stand, since DCF
>6.0 is out of date. He'd have to upgrade to whatever's current, then
>start hacking that.

Which is one reason I was trying to get my new dev box running today, so I could patch DCF 6.2.1 to be compatible with the hacks we're using and upgrade the forums. Unfortunately, as Gryph knows, it appears the CPU, and possibly the MB, of my new box is toast. And, in trying to trouble shoot it with Jer, it looks like we fried *his* CPU and/or MB.

Tomorrow I'll go to a local repair shop and see if we can sort this mess out.

But, yes, since - one way or another - we'll be upgrading from 6.1 to 6.2.1 RSN, and 6.2.1 has a lot of changes, I'm not willing to add new hacks to 6.1 at this point since I'd only have to recode them into 6.2.1.

>I'd like to see the "reply in new thread" function too, but I've
>learned long since the negative value of hounding Zoner about things.
>It gets them not, and possibly never, done.

True - I have a negative reaction to nagging. If it annoys me it turns me off on the whole project.

But I have a laundry list of things to deal with in 6.2.1 just to port 6.1 hacks over. Then I can look at this - I don't think it will be too hard to do. And it is something I thought of myself a long time ago. I'd been waiting for 6.2 - which was delayed. And it shipped with too many open issues - so I waited for 6.2.1. Which was repeatedly delayed. The whole time going "Well, I know that if I start working on this in 6.1, David will release 6.2.1 the day I finish..."

-MegaZone, megazone@megazone.org
Personal Homepage http://www.megazone.org/
Eyrie Productions FanFic http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
See what I'm selling on eBay

>Well, um, no offense or anything, but isn't that kinda stupid?

No. Their site, their board. The offer was made as an offer, and in the same light that I wouldn't want MegaZone (no offense) poking around my domain, I respect and understand they might not want me to poke around theirs.

> I mean, You've all been complaining about the lack of this feature for
>close on a year now, and all we've heard is "I'll get around to it."
>Now, I know that we are getting this for free, and the expense is
>coming out of your pockets and what not, but if someone offers their
>help, and you turn it down because you're feeling posessive about an
>open-sourced(?) program, then why they hell did you open-source it, or
>give us a place to rant about it?

(a) Not only is this free and coming out of their pockets, it's their HOBBY. If your hobby is fun, then extra feature or not, it's working perfectly.

(b) This isn't a question about open-source or DCForums. This thread is about an Eyrie Forum upgrade. (See, the beauty of open-source is that you can modify it for individual uses.) If someone cobbled together a "fix" to have a "start new thread" link, DCForums might take it for future uprades, but until EPU used that upgrade it wouldn't matter. Don't confuse open-source with private use -- unless you'd like me to play with your computer's kernel. ;-)

(c) They opened the forums, I would imagine, to give people a place to DISCUSS the EPU stories. If you want to RANT, then I have a script called klogger.pl that you're welcome to use.

I hope I'm not out of turn replying here. When I made the offer, I did so because I figured if I could help out (and at the same time score fanboy points) all the better. It was never meant as a way to either step on anyone's toes or imply that the board should be better because the users wanted it better. My hope is that my thread/input/meme here is kaputsky...

Static-Pulse
I honestly just figured that hacking with the dcboard.cgi script was as close to interfacing with Vision as I'd ever get... A man can dream!
- the most impulsive post alive
DarkBeast.com

Well, it wouldn't be in dcboard.cgi - that's just the front-end wrapper that calls whatever .pl files are required to perform the task. Implementing the 'reply as new thread' will require modifying a few files. Both to generate the new UI element, and to handle the post properly. I think it'll take hybridizing the 'start new thread' with 'reply' code.

There are a number of things I'd like to add to DCF, this is just one of them.

But I'm starting to grow frustrated with some of the fundamental architecture of the boards, making it harder to do some things that I think it should be. So I've talked with Jer and Josh about ideas for writing a new system from scratch, and putting it on a database (MySQL probably) instead of directories full of flat files like DCF is. It'd also be a good time to fix all the HTML ugliness, etc. Sometimes it is just better to start with a clean sheet of paper. DCF has had a lot of features added to it since I started using it - it was DCF2k 1.0 at the time. Then came 2k 1.1, 6.0x, 6.1x, 6.2, now 6.2.1. More and more it feels like some things are being stretched, or glued on, because the central core hasn't really changed. David is talking about a rewrite for 7.0, but, in a way, I'd like to see what I can come up with. I'm still thinking about it, and how I might license it - GPL, BSD, or a commercial license. ie, will I try to make money on it? If I can produce something decent maybe it'll become the next DCF or something...

Anyway, my current plan is to get my dev box working, then take DCF 6.2.1 and port over the features I'd added to 6.1 that didn't make it into the new code (some of what I created is now standard in DCF). Then I'll upgrade the forums - and AnimeOnDVD.com too. (I help maintain the DCF there, and Chris is waiting on me for the port.)

Then I'll probably do a few hacks to 6.2.1 that I've been holding off on - like the 'reply as a new thread' hack. But some of the more complex ideas I have I'll probably save for my new project. Basically once I get 6.2.1 stable and make people happy, I'm hoping to devote my time to developing the replacement instead of adding more to the old one.

-MegaZone, megazone@megazone.org
Personal Homepage http://www.megazone.org/
Eyrie Productions FanFic http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
See what I'm selling on eBay

DCF is commerical software. We can't let anyone else see the source unless the have a license.

Feel free to pay the $69 for a copy of the source to work on. I personally don't care to violate license agreements, especially when I personally know the author of the program and rather like the guy.

-MegaZone, megazone@megazone.org
Personal Homepage http://www.megazone.org/
Eyrie Productions FanFic http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
See what I'm selling on eBay