Modern Vespa

Hmmm. Definitely broken. Should only scan for about half a second. Sounds like javascript paused at that moment.

Next time it happens, can you hit reload instead? I'm curious if it will kick in again.

I have a hunch that Chrome has (for whatever reason) attempted to load the page in the background at some point when you were away and then paused the javascript timers that ordinarily run while the scanning is happening.

On that hunch, I've added a new trigger when the tab becomes visible which will kick-start scanning again. Hopefully that will fix the problem. If it doesn't, do please let me know.

Yes, great success! Seems to be working. I'll let you know if it starts again. Thank you.

It looks like I received one or more "thumbs down" for a post. I noticed this because I received a few "thumbs up" for it, but the post is rated as "neutral". I have not received any notifications about "thumbs down". Is that intentional?

Yes. Thumbs-down notifications don't exist. There aren't even any notification icons for them:

Thanks for your answer.

Too bad. People might not notice that a post is poorly received or at least received differently than expected. If necessary, they could also correct the post, e.g. if it was misleading.

It's a fair point, and something I have considered and wrestled with on and off for several years. My gut feeling is that people are more likely to be irritated than informed by a thumbs-down notification, and then become even more irritating to everyone else as they lash out.

The goal of notifications is to increase engagement. A thumbs-down notification doesn't really achieve that goal, and there are other signs if a post is garnering multiple thumbs-down votes.

Was MV down?

(screenshot shows German summer time today).

Yes, same 503 here. No doubt Jess will let us know WTF happened - nasty bots perhaps?

No clue. I was out on a walking tour. Birdsnest alerted me the server was down and I rebooted it from my phone.

In any forum index page, I used to be able to hit the 'last post' dated button beside the last poster's name - but now it's under the name not beside it, so I always get the profile instead. So of course I then hit the 'last post' button on the LHS to get where I want.

Is this deliberate as part of the 'clean-up', do I need to relearn 18 (?) years of muscle memory? Inquiring minds would like to know.

No deliberate change, at least not recently.

You mean this thing? It's been next to the date for quite a while.

(but I might be misunderstanding)

Next to - yes, as in 'to the right of' (IIRC). Not underneath, where fat fingers inevitably get the poster's profile instead. Or maybe I'm completely mis-remembering!

I'm confused. It is to the right of the date -- at least on my view. Is yours different than what I posted?

No - I meant to write "it's now under the poster's name" not under the date. Even with a short name (like yours or mine), on my laptop at least, trying to tap the 'last post' button nearly always gets the user's profile.

IIRC, the date and that button were both to the right of the poster's name. In a separate column? I can't remember.

It's been in this arrangement for... I'm not sure. At least a year? Maybe multiple years?

the main problem I was trying to solve in arranging it thus is that long usernames -- even when truncated -- tend to push the width of that column too much, and having a long username AND the date AND the last-post button pushes it out too far.

That said, I see your point about fat fingers. I'm just not sure what to do about it.

And that said, I would also suggest relying on the delta on the left of the topic title -- especially when using the site from a touch device.

uploading photos is what needs to be fixed

example when I use the iPhone and take a pic and upload it magically it resizes and accepts the HEIC format .

now when I send that HEIC same pic to the MacBook and use the MacBook to upload the pic I have to change it and format it it and get rid of the HEiC for it to load. PITA.

cant the program that allows the phone pic to load be the same as when using the MacBook as well?

It is the same. The MV server does not know what device you are uploading from, nor does the server do anything different for any device.

Most likely, the iPhone is uploading a reduced-size version of the file, and the Mac is not. And for some photos that are over the size limit, that makes the Mac not work properly.

Forward a photo that you know doesn't work to: support@modernvespa.com and I will take a look at the details. Make sure to send it from the Mac, so the phone doesn't reduce the size for email as well.

I ask again: is it possible to limit the number of posts for new accounts (max. 1 or 2 posts in the first 12 hours, starting from the first post)? Or a waiting time of 5 minutes between the first and second post, 10 minutes between the second and third, and then 30 minutes between each subsequent post?
Limiting the creation of new topics could also help.

Yes, it's possible. Just a small matter of actually coding it. It's not a super high priority because the moderators can (in most cases) clean up the entire mess with one button click, which marks the user as a spammer and moves all of their topics (and / or individual posts) to the graveyard in one swell foop.

Limiting the creation of new topics is probably not in the cards, as creating a new topic is exactly what most (legitimate) new users do first.

For some reason when trying to upload a photo for the where am I thread? of which I've done many times, I'm now getting a "No post mode specified"


Just starting happening, weird.

it hates large files. you'll have to downscale first

Logged in to find the notification bell highlighted in red. Clicked on it - no new notifications. Bell still highlighted. Iirc it used to revert to an outline.

(ps - thanks for 20 years of problem solving!)



Edited to add - a short time later, I tested it again. This time there was a notification. I clicked on the bell, looked at the link and the bell did revert to an outline.

Always good to hear from you, k!

There are a couple things going on here. If the bell is red, there should be a new notification there. If there wasn't, it's a bug.

Is it possible you haven't logged in for a while? I'm thinking there might be a bug where you get a notification, and the bell gets turned on, but then after the notifications go unread for a while (like several months) the notifications get removed (all notifications are eventually culled, read or unread).

The second thing is that if you do get a notification, and the bell turns red, when you click on it, the bell will still be red while you are on the notification page. That's on purpose. If you click on something else (like the logo to go to the home page) then the bell will go back to an outline.

Where it gets tricky, though, is if you use the back button -- your browser may decide to show you a cached page from a few moments ago, instead of asking the server for a new page. In that case, the bell might stay in the state it was at the moment that page was cached.

Can confirm that this happens with Chrome (Version 141.0.7390.108) on MacOS (Sequoia 15.6.1).

My money is on this. It has been a while since I stopped in for a visit.

It's still a bug. Thanks for letting me know.

I think it probably happens on pretty much all browsers.

did you make a change that causes new posts to do appear with a yellow background and fade? unusable in dark mode.

About ten years ago, yes.

thought that might be the case. guess this means for the foreseeable future no MV on my phone - my eyes can't handle day mode on way too many sites and apps

(no point blaming the browser - it's only the result that matters).

MV doesn't actually have a dark mode, so I can absolutely blame the browser for doing a shitty job of faking it. And nothing that MV is doing today is any different than what it was doing yesterday or last week or last month or last year. So if you are seeing a new behavior, yeah. It's your browser.

As an aside, dark mode is not better for your eyes and that is a hill I will die on. If it's too bright then turn down the brightness. Problem solved.

Which is why Apple didn't implement Dark Mode in iOS. Oh, wait. Umm ...

My eyes are not your eyes. My environment is not your environment. My phone is not your phone. My usage is not the same as your usage. Do you see the pattern?

forget it. not worth the converse.

So, this isn't a fix really, because nothing is broken. It's more of a behavior and personal preference. Which amounts to not much.

On another forum I belong to, like this one, I reference other websites and articles. I'll often copy the article title and format the text with BB code. On that forum, I highlight the text I want to modify, and after clicking on a text mod button (bold, italics, quote, size, color, url, et) the text I am modifying remains highlighted. On MV, when I modify the text, the cursor jumps outside the brackets to the end of the line.

It would be nice to be able to highlight a string of text and select bold, italics, font color, font size, url without having to reselect the text.

Does that make sense? I'm sure there are reasons the forum behaves the way it does, but it's a behavior I've noticed for a long time that IMO could be improved.

In the example below, I was able to select the text and using the buttons add all of the BB code around it.

^^^^

Thank you for reminding me how bloody irritating that behaviour is.

So, yes please, fix requested!

request:

something that bugs me is the following scenario:
1. open a thread and read to the end.
2. click reply
3. someone else clicks submit on their reply.
4. I click submit on my reply.
5. the comment I just wrote is now scrolled to.

this I don't like, I would prefer it to scroll to the comment that the person in 3 wrote as I haven't yet seen it and will miss it (no visual hint to scroll back).

I do of course understand the logic of why it does this.

That's happened to me many a time - and once or twice I've missed important Clue. Not sure how that can be worked around. Your own post opening is quite important, as it gives the chance to re-read it and edit if necessary, which sometimes is pretty vital!

Turning down the brightness reduces the contrast
Dark mode has higher contrast
In normal mode many pages render off white with dark grey text

In the German Vespa forum, you receive a notification if new replies have been posted between the time you loaded the reply editor page and your click to the post button. The new replies posted in the meantime are displayed, and in this case you have to confirm the actual submission of your own post again.

I'm hoping it's about time to address the method of posting of images. Other forums (even quite antiquated ones) often have much easier, quicker methods, and also make posting inline images much easier, plus allow finding the ones you've posted before a doddle.

It used to be possible via the email token, but that went away five years ago or so - quite rightly, it was a vector for spam and possibly a security issue.

I know this isn't a smop, it's a S.M.O.P. But perhaps it's due, and perhaps it's something to fill the dark winter hours when eff-all else is happening.