DKC Atlas Forum

[Simion32]

That topic is stickied, that's why!
(Your screen shot is too big, Kong-Fu.)

[BlueTronic]

Oh... *whispers*: Crap, I feel stupid.

(Your screen shot is too big, Kong-Fu.)

I know. I can't get the stupid thing to resize.

[cfh]

Use paint instead of PowerPoint for things like that.

Put in spoiler tags.

[Kowbrainz]

Agh!

Next time, use an image upload site like imageshack.us or photobucket.com to upload your images; each supports resizing as well as keeping the images under a certain filesize for those with less fortunate internet connections.

[BlueTronic]

Put in spoiler tags.

Tried that. You can't scroll right to see the important part.

[Qyzbud]

I've ascertained the various sources of your problems... AOL, PowerPoint, inattentiveness.

[BlueTronic]

Neither AOL nor Powerpoint is the problem. If it was AOL I'd be the only one to see it huge. Powerpoint doesn't do anything to the size, either.

[Qyzbud]

...so what does make all of your posted images over-sized, then?

Anyhow, I was just teasing. It was a joke based on all the problems both applications seem to have caused in the past.

[Qyzbud]

Those of you who have no choice but to use the AOL browser, I've made some changes to the forum's security settings which will hopefully make forum life a little more livable. With any luck, you shouldn't find yourself being signed out all the time anymore. I had to lower the security to achieve this, but it's not too big a deal, I don't think. The risk of having your session 'hijacked' is greater now... whatever that means. Anyone know what this means?

Well anyway, hopefully this will be an improvement for AOL users. (a better improvement would be to use Firefox, but I may have mentioned that already... )

[BlueTronic]

Look! An emulation forum!

[cfh]

Your powers of observation continue to serve you well.

</V>

[BlueTronic]

A few more profile fields to make jokes out of

[Kowbrainz]

Interests: Music, uhh... DKC, uhh... humor, uhh... saying "uhh" after everything.

Uhh.... ha ha?

[Jomingo]

Those of you who have no choice but to use the AOL browser, I've made some changes to the forum's security settings which will hopefully make forum life a little more livable. With any luck, you shouldn't find yourself being signed out all the time anymore. I had to lower the security to achieve this, but it's not too big a deal, I don't think. The risk of having your session 'hijacked' is greater now... whatever that means. Anyone know what this means?

Well anyway, hopefully this will be an improvement for AOL users. (a better improvement would be to use Firefox, but I may have mentioned that already... )

Wow, I never noticed this post. Anyway, it worked. I haven't had to login for like a week or so.

[BlueTronic]

I have. Sometimes it logs me out if I've been away for a while, but it never signs me out while I'm online so that's a problem.

[Qyzbud]

That's awesome. I'll keep at it until we've got the best facility possible for everyone; even AOL users! Yessum, I'm just that noble.

[Qyzbud]

I have upped the polling options limit from 10 to 16, to accommodate the extra choices required for character and level type voting. I'd like it if poll starters could avoid making massive polls just to use all the options, but sometimes these extra options may be necessary to cover a certain topic (such as a vote of favourite DKC2 level types).

Hopefully this will be used sensibly!

[Kiddy14]

The risk of having your session 'hijacked' is greater now... whatever that means. Anyone know what this means?

Everybody's helper: Wikipedia And it's even a redirect! =D
A hijacker, from what I understand, is somebody who gains access to your PC/domain/passwords/MSN or anything and starts using it against your will. Kinda dirty huh?

By the way, thanks for the thing about the poll limit! =D

[Blaziken257]

Oh great... these days I REALLY hate the thought of seeing people's computers hijacked.

[Qyzbud]

I completely understand that, but I personally like the 'once bitten, twice shy' approach; there's no sense inconveniencing people just for excessive security measures that are unnecessary. The moment I hear of any 'hijacking' or other such things happening, the security will be set right back to maximum.

[Stone]

I can't imagine doing anything useful with a hijacked DKC-Atlas forum-session. Maybe you have some ideas

[Qyzbud]

Posting hoaxes in the glitch boards?

Keeping on-topic, while posing as Jomingo... just to confuse people.

(don't anyone get ideas, now...)

[Jomingo]

Hey, I don't post off topic that often.

Wait, this is off topic. NOOOO!!!



EDIT: Something on topic, I just noticed that we can't writer things with the slash through it. Not a big deal, but it would be cool if we could.

[Kiddy14]

Do you think you'd be able to get used to either holding Control as you click, or right-clicking and choosing Open Link in New Tab?

Have you guys ever tried medium-clicking anytime? It's faster

Ok... so.. as a suggestion, what about a shoutbox? Umm... not really real-time like IRC, but I think it's easier to codified it or however it is called. Oh.. I shouldn't be saying that, the only HTML I know is to make bold, italic and that stuff xD
Anyway, what do you mods think of it?

[Jomingo]

I don't know... I've only seen a shoutbox on two forums before, and they both looked very... what's the word... "unprofessional"? I don't know, it just seems out of place.

[Kiddy14]

Oh...yeah... ok...

I would appreciate it, but there are other things that should be done first.

Just thought it would be a cheap IRC alternative until the IRC is made =)

And what about languages packs? Like Deutsch or... Spanish?
I think those would be more useful when the board gets more people, but just a suggestion of a future-feature =)

[Qyzbud]

we can't writer write things with the slash through it a strikethrough effect.

Actually, Jomingo... your above quoted statement was as accurate as your grammar.

All you have to do is this:

[s]Strike me lucky![/s]

There is no button for it, but if you do want to use the strikethrough effect, just surround the text with an opening and closing s tag. A quick way to do this is to click the [B] (bold) button, then change both b's to an s. That or I could just add a strikethrough button.

[Simion32]

[s]Strike me lucky![/s]

Let's see...

[i]text[/i]

Very clever, I didn't know about that tag!

It has the same basic effect of an <xmp> tag in HTML, does it not?

EDIT: It's a bit confusing though, as tags still work within the "pre" tag... how on earth do you use it?

[Qyzbud]

I'm actually not aware of <xmp> tags... but the [pre] BBCode I created for use here does two things; preserves whitespace, and assigns a monospace font. I guess it's like a less obtrusive version of the [code] tags, so it's useful for inserting ASCII art/diagrams/tabular data in a post. I don't know an efficient way to negate individual BBCodes for illustrative purposes, but (as you figured out) you can just wrap the inner character(s) of a BBCode within another BBCode, and you get an acceptable solution, and one with a handy emphasis on the important characters.

[Simion32]

I'm actually not aware of <xmp> tags...

Any other HTML tag within the <xmp>'s will be displayed as text. I wonder if there is such a BBCode equivalent ... not that it would be used much here, though.

That [pre]text[/pre] tag will be useful, now I don't have to use code boxes!

[Simion32]

Four posts in a row? Seriously, use the edit button.

How else will anyone know a post has been edited/changed without practically stalking the topic 24-7?

My suggestion to remedy this would be:
Give users the option (during post-editing) to mark a thread as "last post edited" when said post is also the last in the thread. If someone gets out of hand with marking threads using said method, you could disable their ability to use that feature, and/or temp-ban them (or whatever discipline is appropriate).

I have no idea if that's possible to implement, but it would significantly decrease the number of reasons you would need to double post for.

[Kiddy14]

Give users the option (during post-editing) to mark a thread as "last post edited" when said post is also the last in the thread.

You can also call it "Mayor Edit" And leave it un-checked as default. Or viceversa, call it "Minor Edit" and leave it check as default, but I think the first one is better =P

[Simion32]

I think the first one is better =P

I also agree. I usually don't make spelling mistakes (thanks to Firefox spell-checking). Though sometimes I forget to use correct grammar or have worded some statement badly - so I edit the post to make it sound better (that is, if no one has replied yet). I think it would be better to have it called "Major Edit" and have the check-box unchecked by default.

What are your thoughts on this idea, Qyz?

[Qyzbud]

It's a fine idea, and I'll look into it. Anyone who abuses this function for the sake of bumping the topic can be dealt with accordingly, as you said.

[cfh]

Hehe, I watch too much YouTube...

This sounds like a great idea, I hope it's possible.

[Jomingo]

Yeah, I brought this same problem to Qyz's attention a while ago when I edited my post instead of double posting but he didn't notice that it was edited, obviously. This sounds like a good idea, I think it'll work.

[BlueTronic]

All I do is when I need to double post (and they're more than 2 days apart) I let it slide. When I need to triple post, I take everything in the first to posts and edit it into the most recent post. Then, I edit the first 2 post and make them both say "**DELETE THIS POST**" and a mod usually deletes it (Since a user can't delete his post after it's already been read).

[Simion32]

Well, this sort of thing would make it easier, and would put less stress on moderators/admins having to go through and delete posts...

You shouldn't need to to double post once/if this feature comes to life.

[Jomingo]

I agree, but good job KongFu for finding a way to make it work without changing anything. I think that this idea is the easiest way though.

[Kiddy14]

Besides, if somebody who isn't a mod replies to your last (third in a row) comment, and then a lot of people also reply, it's possible for any mod to not notice your **DELETE THIS POST** message and leaving it there till the eternities. The thread can get messed up. And as Simion said, it takes out the stress for looking for those messages in a thread and deleting them.

[Jomingo]

Well, after you put DELETE POST you could then report that post, which will make it pop up in my little box thing, and I'll notice it and Delete it. But as you said, there must be an easier way.

[egruntz]

I realize that this topic hasn't been discussed for about a month, but I would like to bring up that the DKC Atlas logo for the atlas2 skin theme is off-pattern with it's background:



I don't know...it bothers me, for some reason. Also, on the first page of this thread, you mentioned that you were going to try to make the forum look more like the actual website. I would really like to see that happen (unless the atlas2 skin was what you had in mind). The design of the trees and the sky and the paper-looking text areas is really neat.

EDIT: Also, is showing the time of the day that a member joined really necessary (displayed in the forum mini-profile to the right)? It just makes it all seem elongated.

[Simion32]

I also think that the join date for members doesn't need to be displayed there; it can be in their profile where it belongs. But then again, it wouldn't affect the forum much, because there is a certain size each post must be to accommodate for avatars and the like.

So I vote the "Date Joined" to stay where it is already.

[Qyzbud]

Welcome to the DKC Atlas community, egruntz.

The atlas2 forum style (AKA theme/skin) is an early work-in-progress. Certainly not ready to use just yet. In fact, I didn't intend to have it available on the theme selection list yet. I've now disabled it from the list, but I'll enable it again, marked 'BETA' when it's ready for public use. Don't hold your breath, though...

As for your suggestion regarding the join date on mini profiles; that's something I'm planning to address very soon. I'm thinking of either simplifying it to show less detail, or changing the format to something quite different:

Current:
Joined: Sat Jun 28, 2008 4:14 pm

Proposed:
1. Joined: June '08
2. Joined: 2 days ago -this would change accordingly, of course


For the 2nd proposed format, I'm thinking it would good to have it stay very simple, only giving single, complete units of time.
(for example; Joined: today, then 1 day ago - 6 days ago ... 1 week ago - 3 weeks ago ... 1 month ago and so forth)

Full join date/time could still be shown in the main user profiles, as it currently is.

How does that sound?

[egruntz]

Welcome to the DKC Atlas community, egruntz.

Well, thank you.

The atlas2 forum style (AKA theme/skin) is an early work-in-progress. Certainly not ready to use just yet. In fact, I didn't intend to have it available on the theme selection list yet. I've now disabled it from the list, but I'll enable it again, marked 'BETA' when it's ready for public use. Don't hold your breath, though...

What a bummer. I much more prefer thin and narrow layouts rather than thick and wide. Good to know that you're working on it.

For the 2nd proposed format, I'm thinking it would good to have it stay very simple, only giving single, complete units of time.
(for example; Joined: today, then 1 day ago - 6 days ago ... 1 week ago - 3 weeks ago ... 1 month ago and so forth)

Full join date/time could still be shown in the main user profiles, as it currently is.

How does that sound?

I like it! It's sort of how Neopets displays their users' joined dates (I think some members there are up to seven years). Anyway, it's much better than the overly-detailed display that we have now. I really don't see how the exact time the user joined is necessary.

[Jomingo]

I don't think anything is necessary. I think that it should remain in the profile, but not next to every post. I think that maybe there's something more important to put there.

[egruntz]

I don't think anything is necessary. I think that it should remain in the profile, but not next to every post. I think that maybe there's something more important to put there.

Well, usually that's the area where statistics of that member would go, like how many coins they've earned (from making posts). But I really would discourage that idea, as it really just brings about a lot of spam just to get a higher ranking/currency. The avatar, username, title, post count, and joined date of a member is all that's really needed for that sub-profile (as well as the messaging buttons).

While we're still small on the subject of the atlas2 skin, Qyzbud, the "return to DKC Atlas website" link at the top of the page brings me to a 500 Error.

[Kiddy14]

I also think the Joined info should stay only in the member's profile, rather than his/her posts.

I was thinking it may be better a Last Post Date or a Last Login Date to it.

[Jomingo]

I like that idea better.

[Kiddy14]

Cool! =)

Anyway... um... I was kinda wondering, can we have a Calendar?

You know, many forums have one... to point out I don't know... special celebrations inside the forum. Or just to see all of the birthdays in one place.