Maintenance 18/09/2013

Fengol

OMG The wiki is gone!

So here's the deal. The forums are currently 56MB and the wiki was 4.6GB because even though it was locked down it was just filling up with spam. It started impacting the accessibility to the forums and our ISP stopped backing up our data because we were over the limit.

After the focus of rAge 2013, the committee will redress the best way to provide a knowledge base for the association.

Tuism

WHOA. Dat wiki!! And we haven't even really got use of it yet, right? How do other wikis deal with spam? I think it's ok to just wipe the wiki right now? We only really have a few key bits of writing in there, could we just copy those and wipe?

dislekcia

The easiest way to nuke most of the spam happening now would be to kill all user accounts and disable signups. People can sign up again after rAge and we've got a solid system in place.

Nitrogen

I hope you're not suggesting blocking signups for the forums - we've already had people being turned away and not signing up because of the Batman bug.

You should rather lock the wiki and grant access on a case-by-case basis.

LexAquillia

@Nitrogen, I think @dislekcia is referring to the user account on the wiki, not the forums

dislekcia

@Nitrogen: I was talking about wiki accounts, yes.

Tuism

wiki is separate from the forum :) Thank goodness :)

Nitrogen

Ah okay thanks for clearing that up :)

damousey

a little off topic, or at least a suggestion rather than actual maintenance:

something that's been bugging me for a little while, when following a link out of a post, I feel it would be better if the default behaviour was to open the link in a new tab/window rather than replace the discussion in this tab. A lot of discussions here have links in the OP which would be better to open in parallel.

And I know I can just ctrl+click or "open in new tab" but since so few forums require it nowadays I tend to forget. Basically, this isn't expected behaviour to me, but maybe I'm alone.

Elyaradine

Middle-click does the same thing. I prefer that, because if I want something in a new tab, I middle-click and that always works and doesn't require keyboard input. In which case I personally get a little annoyed when I click a link and it opens a new tab when I didn't intend for it to.

Fengol

Sorry @damousey, but I don't think I'm going to open threads in new tabs/windows. Middle-click, as @Elyaradine suggested, is what I use when I want to keep open the main Discussion window.

duncanbellsa

Sorry just a question, in our profile panel is says we have notifications, but when I go there it's empty?
What is supposed to be shown there?

Fengol

The notifications are turned off at the moment (presumably a previous requirement) and when I turned them back on it shows you ALL your previous notifications. The user is supposed to delete the notifications after seeing them but I want to update the PHP to only show the last 5 notifications. Unfortunately this will probably only happen after rAge 2013 at which point the notification indicator will make a lot more sense.

duncanbellsa

Ah alright I see... Cool :)

Tuism

I personally prefer to open all links in new window, it's my expected behavior. Sure I can do it manually but when I don't remember to, having to click back and the page has to reload... Is irritating.

WelshPixie

Weighing in as a middle-clicker. On forums I don't really expect links to open in a new window, I middle-click by matter of habit.

hermantulleken

No... (Edit: to "No" was to @Tuism's comment) the whole web has to standardise: if you click, the same tab should be used. At least, that is what I expect. I always have millions of tabs open... I prefer to manage them myself. Having to close tabs that are opened for me (or rather, the ones I left from) is irritating...

Fengol

What we need is a Vanilla plugin that is managed by user preference. Anyone want to practice their PHP?

Tuism

It's ok, I can middle click as well as anyone else XD Clearly I'm in the minority here XD

Gazza_N

A humble request: I would very, very much like the ability to directly skip to the last post in the thread from the discussion list, rather than having to click into the thread and scroll to the bottom of the first page to get there. :)

Fengol

@Gazza_N I already does that though?

dislekcia

@Fengol: He means for threads that don't have new conversations. A "last" link, if you will.

Nitrogen

@fengol said:

The notifications are turned off at the moment (presumably a previous requirement) and when I turned them back on it shows you ALL your previous notifications. The user is supposed to delete the notifications after seeing them but I want to update the PHP to only show the last 5 notifications. Unfortunately this will probably only happen after rAge 2013 at which point the notification indicator will make a lot more sense.

I dont understand - surely showing ALL notifications is better than showing none? I routinely unhide the notifications in Firebug to read them, and they seem work fine.

Does Vanilla have the ability to switch themes (even just css only) on a per-user basis? If so, I'd like to try my hand at restyling the site without disrupting those that prefer the way it is now.

Tuism

Yeah, a while ago I realized that our forum looked exactly like a million others. Guess it's called vanilla for a reason :p but I think it's not a big biggie for now.

Gibbo

Hiya! This may have been covered already but I couldn't find anything in previous Maintenance threads - the 'About' section of people's profiles (with links to their blogs/websites/soundclouds etc.) seems to have disappeared, or has it been moved?

Fengol

@Gibbo, the About section is back. I switched it off when we were happening the site drop that was due to the wiki and I forgot to switch it back on again.