Modern Vespa

Your untidy, hastily written version is MUCH neater & more legible than my version of the same writing style.

I picked my style up from doing lettering in drafting classes in college.

It turns out, my dad & my brothers also have similar writing styles. I've heard it referenced as "write-print."

The observant among you may have noticed something slightly different in the list of topics today. I've made a few changes to the "status cell", which is that square to the left of the name of each topic (see below). I'm leaning on that cell even more than before to show subtle bits of information that registered members might find useful.

(The status cell is largely unadorned for those not logged in to the forum).

As mentioned a few posts back, the dog-ears are back, indicating that you've replied to the topic at some point in the past. I've added a new color of dog-ear as well -- purple -- to mirror the "OP" corner that you see while viewing a topic. If you've got a purple dog-ear in the status box, then that indicates that you posted that topic.

And finally, the background color of the status cell conveys an additional piece of information, though subtly. For topics that have been updated since your previous visit (specifically, when you were last active in a previous session) the status cell takes on a very subtle blue tint. Topics that were updated prior to your last visit will retain the grayer status cell background.

I experimented with a line drawn between two topics to indicate the time of your last visit, but I found the line to be fairly visually imposing. It also had some notable shortcomings, in that there's no way (with the information at hand) to place the line right on a page boundary. It's quite easy, however, to determine if a topic was updated before or after a given time. So that's what I went with.

I hope these changes make it somewhat easier to tell what's going on. I'm slightly concerned that they add to the visual "clutter", but let's live with it for a little while and see if this works.

Don't know if it's already been mentioned, but it's a shame that some of the best MV contributors slowly drop down the Best Karma rankings having passed on, people like Judy, Bitza, Aviator will (i presume) eventually drop out of the 100, and future generations of MV users won't even know about some great people.

Are you suggesting a special list?

If it can't be done within the confines of the existing rankings with some timey wimey algorithm, then yes..

Maybe along the lines that if you've achieved (say) top 10 status, and left this mortal coil within the top 10, it would be nice to be able to see these people frozen in time so to speak.

To get into that position they have evidently contributed enough to the community to achieve MV immortality?

Just my thoughts (whenever I see those I've mentioned gradually sliding away).

I get where you're going with this, but I can't see a workable way to make it happen.

Currently, those who have passed slip down the list not because they are losing karma, but because everyone else is gaining it. In order to keep them frozen in time, we would have to freeze everyone else on the list in order to keep them in the same position. And that seems counter-productive.

That said, a separate list of people who have passed is possible.

I think that would be fitting if it can be done

Of course, no one is going to be dying to get on that list, and yet..

Favorite topics don't seem to get the star icon in synthetic subforums. But they do in the "real" section, like General Discussion. Seems like a bug?

You're right! It was systematically missing from the queries of all the synthetic forums (except for Favorites, of course). I added those bits to the queries and it appears to be working now.

Thanks!

Hm. It seems like there may be something wrong with a recent update and link generation from the "new" page ( https://modernvespa.com/forum/new ). Links out to topics now seem to only have the form: https://modernvespa.com/forum/view/unread/topic with no variable. I.e. all links are 404.
This is for topic links and "arrow" buttons on that page. Things seem to work other places, link the main landing pages, etc.

I don't think the purple dog ear is working properly in the synthetic subforums. It seems to flag me as the OP for many topics I am not.

It also seems the grey dog ear takes precedence over purple. Should it be other way around? If I'm OP, it's clear I've contributed to the topic, but not vice versa. So it loses info to prioritize grey?

This is what I get for making changes right before I go to bed. I am sleepy and inattentive, and then I'm asleep when something goes wrong.

Looking into the multiple problems that my "fix" last night broke.

besupa, berto, Witch - I think I have fixed the problem from last night. But as I just woke up and haven't had any tea yet, I'm still sleepy and there's every chance I might have still missed something.

Give it a try.

jess Great—thank you! Poking around a little, things are working as expected so far.

jess it looks right to me too!

Not content with the forum kind of running smoothly today, I pushed out a new notifications system that I've been working on in the background for about a week.

You still access your notifications in exactly the same way, but everything you see is entirely new. I've been accumulating a parallel set of notifications in the background for several days now, so these will show up as new, even if you've seen the same notification in the old system. Also, since it only goes back a few days, you'll be missing older notifications. But these get trimmed off the bottom anyway -- but usually after more than a month or so.

The new system groups notifications together (as did the old system, sort of) but now you'll actually be able to see all of the people in a particular notification group.

Gosh, I hope this works.

Nice look to the new Notifications jess. Thank you.

Thank you for carrying out my request, much appreciated.

Almost 15 years ago, dissatisfied with the way this forum (and, at the time, all forums) failed to properly track which topics I had read vs. which ones were new, I set out with an ambitious goal to invent an improved approach. The state-of-the-art technique at the time was to push topic-read data into cookies on the client, but this had a whole bunch of shortcomings. For one, reading any forum on multiple devices would inevitably lead to confusion (since cookies are mostly device-specific). And if your browser flushed cookies, then you lost track of any topic status that may have been stored there.

My radical approach was to store all topic-read data -- for every single registered user -- in the database. I actually don't think it was a particularly insightful move, but for some reason that's not how any of the forums (at least, the ones I examined) did it. Maybe this was just me independently inventing something obvious that others had already invented. But today, almost all forums do it this way.

So I had occasion to return to that code, a decade and a half later, with fresh eyes. The way I solved the problem at the time, while functional, left a few things to be desired. It was overly complex, and now that I've had some years to really understand usage patterns, I can see it didn't need to be quite as complex as I had initially imagined.

I've just pushed a somewhat simpler form of topic tracking to the server. Hopefully, you won't notice anything different at all. But given the scope of the change (this affects a lot of the core functionality of the forum) I'm always nervous when I hit the "publish changes" button.

If you see anything odd -- blank pages, pages that should have topics but don't, or topics that don't seem to be tracking new posts correctly -- drop me a note here in this thread and I'll take a look.

And screenshots are almost always helpful.

So I am in the process of re-writing the Holy Grail* of the forum software -- the bit of code that turns a topic into HTML, suitable for your browser to consume and display. It's quite the endeavor -- one of the largest bits of code in the forum, and also one of the cruftiest.

There is a bunch of archaic stuff in there too, like support for polls. Yeah. Did you know the forum used to support polls? I turned off that feature years ago, because of the propensity of some newbies to post polls like "Should I paint my bike? Yes / No" with very little other information by which we might make an informed decision. And really, that kind of thing didn't need to be a poll.

So I killed polls for everyone. But not before I got one really subversive poll onto the forum. Only you can't tell now that it was subversive, since the poll options aren't displayed. Ah well. It was fun, trust me**.

Anyhow, this is all a very long way to say that I don't think I will be supporting the poll feature in the new code.

* If the page that renders topics is the Holy Grail, then the page where you type up your posts is the Ark of the Covenant. Or something like that.

** The poll options were:
A I prefer the ONE TRUE oatmeal addition, raisins
B I am a dirty heathen and prefer chocolate chips in my oatmeal cookies
C I don't like oatmeal cookies, so I ruin them by putting nuts in them so that nobody else will like them either

I like how Bulldog89 got negative karma for declaring that they didn't like cookies.

Tough crowd, but warranted.

A I prefer the ONE TRUE oatmeal addition, raisins
B I am a dirty heathen and prefer chocolate chips in my oatmeal cookies
C I don't like oatmeal cookies, so I ruin them by putting nuts in them so that nobody else will like them either
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Occasionally I look at this thread to see what you're doing even though most goes right over my head till I saw the oatmeal. Love everything about oats. I would even eat c and spit the nuts out. I also want to make oat whiskey but it's low yield and several batches are required to get a gallon from my still. If I ever get a batch done I'll send you some to try. Thanks for all your hard work keeping this sight going.

A user ignore list would be great. If I don't like someone or we have a beef between us, I put him on the list and don't see anything he posts. And it would be a plus if simultaneously it's the other way around too…

Oatmeal raisin cookies are vile.
Chocolate Chip Oatmeal cookies are not much better.
I've never had nuts in oatmeal cookies, but I also have no desire to.
Oatmeal cookies are best when pure, without adjuncts.

At the risk of being ejected from this topic or worse, marginalized for my heretical views, I submit the following:

A. While I will eat oatmeal with raisins, my preference is savory: sun dried tomatoes, bacon bits, a dab of butter and a splash of hot sauce.
B. Already admitted to heathen status so, yes, chips in my oatmeal cookies, even better with chocolate chips AND raisins.
C. No nuts in my cookies of any kind. Ever.

That's it, I will accept my fate from here.

Bob

This is acceptable. While I prefer the chewiness of raisins in oatmeal cookies, chocolate chips are a reasonable and inoffensive alternative.

The real gist of the poll was to shame people who put nuts in oatmeal cookies, thus ruining them. These people might even think they're improving the cookie. But they are objectively wrong.

continuing the tangent
and risking future admittance to the clubhouse


Am I the only "kitchen sink cookie" baker / eater / aficionado?!?
Put it all in! Oats, raisins, currants, dried cranberries (craisins!), dried apricots, all the chips - dark, milk, white, butterscotch - and of course ALL the nuts. Whatever's in the pantry, fridge or freezer will probably get chopped up and added to the batter.
Y'all don't know what yer missin!


(edited to add butterscotch. How could I forget butterscotch? Yum!)

(But it's good to see you, even if you are an indiscriminate cookie baker)

indiscriminate?
INDISCRIMINATE?!?
hrumph


More for me


(good to be seen hugs to you and yours! )

A user reported a bug this morning about not being able to attach PDFs. I'm not entirely sure why it broke, but it was definitely broken. I've made a few adjustments to the code and it seems to be working again.

wbdvt, for finding and reporting this forum bug, I hereby bestow upon you the MV Entomologist Award. Wear it with pride.

Jess any more thoughts on adding a memorial section to the members area?

It's on hold at the moment -- I'm working on some other higher-priority stuff. Also, I'm having trouble coming up with a design / layout that accommodates the various things that the Members area needs to support.

OK Jess, When using my phone ( Samsung S22 ) on the log in page, after I type in my email or user name and password it instantly sends me to the main page like I'm not logged in. No avatar showing but when I scroll down I'll see my user name in the Who is Online section. Everything works like I'm just a lurker. Only prob is with trying to log into MV, all other websites and functions on my phone are working. I've changed passwords and that didn't work. If the prob is my phone oh well but I'm stumped when my user name shows up as being online. No error message comes up.

So this bit might be a cookie problem. Is it possible you've restricted the use of cookies on your phone, or possibly just inadvertently restricted cookies for modernvespa.com?

Blocking cookies will definitely cause the behavior you are describing. I wouldn't read too much into this part -- when you log in, a session is created for your account. That session will show up in the list of names on the main page for a full hour before the session is removed for inactivity. So your name could have been there from a previous (and recent) session, or it could be that you did in fact log in, but then can't use the session that was created because of a lack of cookies.

Something to check, at least.

I haven't ever messed with cookies on this phone but I'll dig in and check.

I know it seems unlikely, but I'm otherwise stumped.

BajaRob I'm watching the logs right now, if you want to try.

I'm out of time for my lunch break so I'll try tonight. Thanks for the help.

Boom! All of a sudden it works. Don't know what happened but I'm back in the game!

I was having a similar struggle yesterday and earlier today, entering credentials and clicking "Login" only refreshed the login page. I was able to connect with Jess via email and it seems to be sorted now.

Bob