The site must be set up so the register and login do not crash and burn all the time, THEN set it up so that ONLY registered users can post thus eliminating trolls.
I want to see the name of the person posting NOT anonymous!
sigh
Well, I suppose an apology is in order for not posting sooner. My bad. I went off and got married - immediately followed by a multi-week crazy push to get the Public Action product out of beta. I was hoping some of the improvements we did to the product and the guiding of new users into this community would speak for themselves, but admittedly, this stuff is not as visible as it could be.
July 1 we came out of beta. Many of the features we released over a series of weeks preceding this event we had worked on for several months and are on the backend. This allowed us to offer a ‘real’ product with all the basic knobs and levers that stations and shows would expect. Hopefully, you’ll now see more reliable servers, better support now directly from CT staff, integration into the CT web site, and an overall growth of public broadcasting participation as we add six new stations to the network.
For the front-end, we now have two different RSS feeds, a watch-this-discussion feature, secure registration and login, better flagging, playback support for some audio and video files, and endless fixes to things like list sort-orders and automated email notifications.
For what it’s worth, the Car Talk folks and I are listening and have learned a tremendous amount about where the tool needs improvement (yes, we know it needs improvement). Now that we’re no longer catching up on old, promised features, our next series of efforts will hopefully address some front-end usability issues (e.g. navigation, logging in, anonymous posting, and that darn post-your-reply light box), and how to best incorporate edit-a-post and discussion archiving. There’s a lot to do, and we’re not a big team, so bear with us as we march on towards continual improvements.
Last but certainly not least, you should check out the new Car Talk Community page featured on the cartalk.com homepage, where those seriously dedicated few from the old forums have been recognized in the “Our Heroes: The Car Talk Leaderboard”. While it’s a small gesture, I think it’s clear that no one thinks those who make this place a vibrant community are unimportant.
-Keith
A direct link to the heroes:
http://www.cartalk.com/content/timekill/topusers.html
So, where are these new features you say have been added? I see no edit feature, I see no flagging of new posts. Congratulations on your marriage and all, but the world and a large public bulletin board should not stop because one person is off for a couple of weeks. There needs to be a backup person or two handling day-to-day stuff, and that includes keeping people informed.
I notice even you had to use “reply” to add a comment to your previous note.
Me also …
Most of this should be fixed now. SSL should only show up on the registration page and when you log (for passing login data). The secure/insecure items alert should also be gone now. We’re still trying to find loose ends, so if you find one, please post the URL.
The “logging people off” problem is a bit of a mystery. If this is a bug (as opposed to how the system works, but is just annoying), someone please help me replicate. The system shouldn’t be spontaneously logging people off.
Hey! I’ve posted questions on other forums before and got less-than-professional and useless information. I recently had a friend with a rotten running Ford pickup that stumped several local shops that really drained from friends wallet. Yssterday I posted a question. WOW! I got like 4 REALLY intuitive, professional suggestion of things to try. I mean, I was SHOCKED! I know a lot about engines in general but lack both equipment and experience with EFI systems. These respondents really rock when it comes to diagnosis from just a little bit of info. I’ll be spreading the word to others about whats going on here and how this site is a direct connect to the experts!
There are two RSS feeds now available. One can be found at the bottom of our topic index page here. The other is found at the bottom of each discussion. Click on the RSS image that looks like this: http://action.publicbroadcasting.net/images/publicAction/icon_rss.gif
The first feed gives you a running list of every discussion. The second gives you a running list of every comment on the specific discussion that you pick.
If you’ve got suggestions, we’re open to other thoughts. These just seemed like two good places to start.
The one-long-huge-paragraph bug that removed all your formatting was fixed.
We fixed this. Thanks for pointing it out.
Congrats on getting married! Understandable why little seems have been done around here lately. Hopefully our complaints and suggestions are put second by you, behind your new wife. May your marriage be long and happy.
Looking forward to the upcoming improvements.
The cursor is still broken!
That’s because it is read-only.
When you post, you are always taken to the last page of a multiple page topic, instead of the page your post is on.
This has to be the most zxnrbled-up BBS I have ever used:
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No cursor. (Don’t give a “Firefox bug” error for an excuse that nonstandard IE “extensions” were used in the design.)
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No editing to fix errors.
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After a post, you are not taken to your post, but to the last page.
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No cursor.
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Can’t see the post you are replying to.
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Can’t quote the post replied to.
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No cursor.
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Blue popups cover what you are trying to read.
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If you look on the Internet for info for your post, when you return, the post text is gone.
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There is no cursor.
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The hybrid and accessibility forums are gone.
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The cursor doesn’t work.
Please dump this mess, and get standard software that works right.
Well, I think you ought to open up the old bbs until you get this one together. This is a mess. User unfriendly, hard to use and post, and design wise----junk.
There was little or nothing wrong with the old one, why mess up a good thing so terribly???
If things are happenin’ at cartalk central, we ain’t heard nothin’ about it. Y’all get married, again? Or, are you jes’ giving us the silent treatment?
Wow, so a few weeks later I come back, hoping that the board will have gotten some usability upgrades and I see squat. For the love of Mike, at least have this post/edit box pop up at the bottom of the thread so we can scroll back and read the bloody thread we’re replying in. This is how every one of my posts goes:
“Well, the thing with your car is…” Crap,what year of car was that? Select all, Copy, close reply, go back and read thread, hit reply again, Paste… “…the '93s all had a different timing chain tensioner. Is there any play when you…” CRAP. Did that other guy already suggest this? Select all, Copy, close reply, go back and read thread, hit reply again, Paste…
And it goes on like that. I have said this quite a few times, other people have said this quite a few times: Why such an arcane forum system? Who sold what to whom to get locked in to this? It’s easily the least user-friendly bit of web BBS that I’ve ever used.
I’m having a problem with showing ‘login’ when I have logged in but not subsequently logged out. I will try to ‘comment’ and the message indicates I need to login. When I ‘back’ and look at the right column I see ‘Welcome Researcher’ and the ‘logout’ prompt. To reactivate a logged in condition I ‘logout’ and ‘login’ again. Then I have to find the posting again because the login returns to the ‘topic index’. Pretty annoying.