The Lemon Fool

stooz wrote:I have been making changes to the polite discussion room.
1) all posts over 12 months old are being removed.
2) it is invisble to guests
3) Its probably invisible to you;

This is quickly rectified by going to your User control panel (click your name) and manage groups - you can request to be a member of the "Discussion Group"
there is no approval or otherwise - you are just in - then you get full access to continue seeing and posting.

This is a Work In Progress so apologies if this is difficult or not working. Please post here or PM me if you have any difficulties.

This is not to discourage or otherwise but to clarify we welcome the forum and its debates but it is now a little more private and removed from Trolls and deflecting from the investment based nature of the site.
Long may the discussions continue.

My bold.

How do the changes affect the ability of Trolls to post on the board when they can follow the same instructions to rejoin as above?



HYD

JoyofBricks8 wrote:Unaccountably my post congratulating this decision has disappeared.

Hi,

I removed it because it contained some off-topic comment that risked provoking a PD-style debate here. But thanks for the congratulations and other thanks

And for the record your original post did not use the word 'congratulations' or 'thanks' at all. I know because I soft-deleted it so I can still go back and read it.

All the best.
C

stooz wrote:Discussions are considered live and active. Any topic not visited are no longer active and relevant.

To clarify: is this a correction to your original statement "all posts over 12 months old are being removed" to say that what it was actually intended to say was "all topics that have gone 12 months without any new posts are being removed"? Or are you saying something about how topics are considered that isn't directly about when things are removed?

By the way, this is just about making certain I understand the change - I completely agree that the impact of non-financial topics on the costs of a site described as "Discussion forums for UK shares, Personal Finance and Investment" should be kept under control!

Gengulphus

Gengulphus wrote:I completely agree that the impact of non-financial topics on the costs of a site described as "Discussion forums for UK shares, Personal Finance and Investment" should be kept under control!

Gengulphus

Shame that the site seems to be going the way of TMF already (moving non-financial boards to the 'Fringe' to start with and eventually scrapping the whole lot).

Is the £20 voluntary annual subscription paid by non-financial board users not worth as much as the £20 paid by the others?

HYD

Howyoudoin wrote:

Gengulphus wrote:I completely agree that the impact of non-financial topics on the costs of a site described as "Discussion forums for UK shares, Personal Finance and Investment" should be kept under control!

Gengulphus

Shame that the site seems to be going the way of TMF already (moving non-financial boards to the 'Fringe' to start with and eventually scrapping the whole lot).

Is the £20 voluntary annual subscription paid by non-financial board users not worth as much as the £20 paid by the others?

HYD

HYD,

We are talking about ONE board. So keep it in perspective.

Clariman wrote:

Howyoudoin wrote:

Gengulphus wrote:I completely agree that the impact of non-financial topics on the costs of a site described as "Discussion forums for UK shares, Personal Finance and Investment" should be kept under control!

Gengulphus

Shame that the site seems to be going the way of TMF already (moving non-financial boards to the 'Fringe' to start with and eventually scrapping the whole lot).

Is the £20 voluntary annual subscription paid by non-financial board users not worth as much as the £20 paid by the others?

HYD

HYD,

We are talking about ONE board. So keep it in perspective.

Of course. But it always starts with one board. It was LOST back on TMF, which was the equivalent of PD on here. That's all i'm saying.

HYD

stooz wrote:But also it is a very large forum that contributes to the site being slow. ... This is one forum but is effecting the rest of the users here.
I appreciate this seems heavy handed but we need to take positive actions to balance the site for everyone.

I seriously doubt that's the case. phpBB and MySQL are very scalable, and TLF is hardly a big phpBB site by any measure.

However, if you do believe that forum size notably affects site performance, then you should do the same with the HYP board, which is also a "very large" forum. I'm sure all of us non-HYP non-PD posters would be grateful for that positive action to balance the site for everyone.

UncleEbenezer wrote:More proliferation of subjects of the kind that generate more heat than light on many of the other boards here?

That was the reason for not removing it entirely

Gryff

I won't be able to please everyone but there are more complaints and time spent on pd than any other forum here .
I welcome off topic areas, i love the cars and bikes for example but this room crosses the acceptable use that applies to all.
We all do this volunteerily so it's needs to be at a human cost as well.

To answer some questions above
Deletion rules:
Auto-prune post age:
Number of days since last post after which topic is removed.
365 Days
Auto-prune post viewed age:
Number of days since topic was viewed after which topic is removed.
365 Days

The topics also drag the site down with our advertisers and SEO rank and that affects what servers we can afford to pay for. Everyone is suffering site outages at the moment.

This isn't a thin wedge. It's the only forum that is off topic and the posts are increasingly rule breaking.
I have not removed it. In fact it's now more of a free vip membership.
Enter if you want but it's not forced to be part of anyone's life here. Only if you choose to enter.
You wouldn't put a smokers area in a primary school playground. Sorry for the obscure analogy.


Why trim the boards? Because I feel they hold little historic value and joined with me trying to move to a more powerful platform, the size to transfer from the basic system is limited by the suppliers. Mysql etc will cope way bigger, but we are restricted by the supplier not the software.
The new platform will have unlimited expansion and I can remove any post pruning.


I have considered introducing more private rooms that can be for select users on invitation (like more than 50 posts) so you gain more forums the more you contribute but no-one else agrees with that style

The trolls are discouraged by hiding it from Google and people registering just to stick there nose in.

An unexpected side effect of the changes is that it now possible to gives recs, er, sorry, thanks, to posts on Polite Discussions.

Another reason for remainers and leavers to argue.

HYD

Howyoudoin wrote:An unexpected side effect of the changes is that it now possible to gives recs, er, sorry, thanks, to posts on Polite Discussions.

It may or may not be intentional but I see you have signed up and I trust you don't mind my asking a couple of questions.

As that is the case (I haven't) have you thanked anyone there? I ask as I can see Has thanked: 264 times from your profile. Would this number increase if you thanked someone at Polite Discussions?

Similarly, I see you've posted just under 900 times here but Search user’s posts reveals 604 matches. That lower figure would be after the Polite Discussion changes, being the main reason for the lower figure. If you click on Search user’s posts via memberlist.php?mode=viewprofile&u=4572 what number shows for you?

The good thing this end is the list of Unread posts I see is considerably shorter than of old. I imagine that would change should I decide to sign up.

PinkDalek wrote:Similarly, I see you've posted just under 900 times here but Search user’s posts reveals 604 matches. That lower figure would be after the Polite Discussion changes, being the main reason for the lower figure. If you click on Search user’s posts via memberlist.php?mode=viewprofile&u=4572 what number shows for you?

Experimenting, I find that Search user’s posts currently reveals 604 matches for Howyoudoin when I'm not signed up to Polite Discussions, but 885 when I am signed up to it (yes, the latter number really is 2 fewer than "Posts: 887" states). Note that such experiments are easy, because the Usergroups control page has "Resign selected" as well as "Join selected" options (and indeed "Demote selected" as well, whatever that means!).

Gengulphus

PinkDalek wrote:

Howyoudoin wrote:An unexpected side effect of the changes is that it now possible to gives recs, er, sorry, thanks, to posts on Polite Discussions.

It may or may not be intentional but I see you have signed up and I trust you don't mind my asking a couple of questions.

As that is the case (I haven't) have you thanked anyone there? I ask as I can see Has thanked: 264 times from your profile. Would this number increase if you thanked someone at Polite Discussions?

Similarly, I see you've posted just under 900 times here but Search user’s posts reveals 604 matches. That lower figure would be after the Polite Discussion changes, being the main reason for the lower figure. If you click on Search user’s posts via memberlist.php?mode=viewprofile&u=4572 what number shows for you?

The good thing this end is the list of Unread posts I see is considerably shorter than of old. I imagine that would change should I decide to sign up.

Yes i've signed up as I enjoy reading Polite Discussions. Much more than I enjoy posting on there.

To my knowledge, i've never thanked anyone on PD simply because it's not possible to thank anyone on that Board (at least it wasn't until today).

I get 887 and 885 for the number of posts i've made and under Search user's posts. No idea what causes the 2 post difference.

HYD

Howyoudoin wrote:
I get 887 and 885 for the number of posts i've made and under Search user's posts. No idea what causes the 2 post difference.

HYD

I presumed the difference reflected the number of posts deleted.

DM

dionaeamuscipula wrote:

Howyoudoin wrote:
I get 887 and 885 for the number of posts i've made and under Search user's posts. No idea what causes the 2 post difference.

HYD

I presumed the difference reflected the number of posts deleted.

DM

Just 0.2%?! Pfft, must try harder.



HYD

Howyoudoin wrote:

dionaeamuscipula wrote:

Howyoudoin wrote:
I get 887 and 885 for the number of posts i've made and under Search user's posts. No idea what causes the 2 post difference.

HYD

I presumed the difference reflected the number of posts deleted.

DM

Just 0.2%?! Pfft, must try harder.



HYD

That would be the difference between hard and soft deletes, possibly.

Howyoudoin wrote:To my knowledge, i've never thanked anyone on PD simply because it's not possible to thank anyone on that Board (at least it wasn't until today).

One could always apply a random Thanks and see if the number moves, then retract the Thanks at a later stage. I ask only out of interest!

dionaeamuscipula wrote:

Howyoudoin wrote:
I get 887 and 885 for the number of posts i've made and under Search user's posts. No idea what causes the 2 post difference.

HYD

I presumed the difference reflected the number of posts deleted.

DM

Could be duplicate posts deleted.

TJH

Clariman wrote:

JoyofBricks8 wrote:Unaccountably my post congratulating this decision has disappeared.

Hi,

I removed it because it contained some off-topic comment that risked provoking a PD-style debate here. But thanks for the congratulations and other thanks

And for the record your original post did not use the word 'congratulations' or 'thanks' at all. I know because I soft-deleted it so I can still go back and read it.

All the best.
C

Good manners cost little, I find. I think my tone was rather supportive of your decision, no?