The Forum

Hmmm, I still think it may require more areas though.
Just a minute ago I thought I would start a new thread announcing a module I created… but where would I do this?
If I was a new visitor I would be confused as to whether I should post under Module Design, Module Support or General Discussion; This could lead to people posting under the wrong areas and causing a mess.

thoughts?

Thus spake “bsmith”:

Maybe we need an Game Modules:Announcements forum? (Maybe also a
Vassal Engine:Announcements forum, for things like release announcements?)


J.


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For release announcements we could probably just use a sticky thread in General Discussion, like the one in there right now; This would ensure the post always stays at the top of the thread.
We just put a Sticky up there called “Latest Stable Release” or something like that, then just update the first post as we release new versions.

But I do think we need a dedicated area for Module announcements, maybe even just Modules:General Discussion would suffice.

Ben, three more things about forum setup:

  1. Have you tested what happens when a forum user not subscribed to the
    mailing list posts to the forum? I.e., does their post show up on the
    mailing list?

  2. It would be good to set Mailman to deHTML messages, otherwise we’re
    going to end up with a lot of quoted garbage on the forum.

  3. About the subdomain: The first two things I’d try if I couldn’t
    remember the subdomain are “forum” and “fora”, not “forums”. Once
    we’ve gone public, were stuck with it, so we should think about whether
    this is the subdomain we want. (I don’t think of what we have in the
    plural, hence my preference for “forum”.)


J.


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There should be no effect in this case, the message should still be forwarded normally. I have not tested it yet though.

It does get rid of quoted garbage at the end of messages, I added a bunch of regular expressions to chop it all out. I’ll just see how this goes. at this stage it looks clean but I’m aware that I’ll need to adjust things as we go ahead.

This was discussed some time ago, I did mention this exact concern but I believe Rodney wanted to stick to the plural “forums”; I do agree with you here.

Ben

P.S. Where the heck does “fora” come from? Jurassic Park? :smiley:

Thus spake “bsmith”:

I made a test account so I could test this. As soon as I receive the
confirmation email for it, I’ll try it and let you know what happens.

The setting I’m referring to is under “Content Filtering”. It’s called
convert_html_to_plaintext. This is something that I’d exepect most list
readers would want anyway.


J.


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OK, I’ve set that to Plain Text so see how it goes.

Thus spake “bsmith”:

Fascinating. I didn’t see your PS until I looked at the message in
the forum. Something chopped it off when it went out to the list.

“fora” is the plural form of “forum” in the nominative, accusative,
and vocative cases in Latin, so says my resident Latin expert (my wife).


J.


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Thus spake “bsmith”:

Thanks. It should go fine. All of the Mailman lists I admin
are that way, and it works quite nicely.


J.


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Thus spake Joel Uckelman:

Also, the Reply-to: Couly you set the reply_goes_to_list to “This list”?
Otherwise we’re going to end up with a lot of unintentional off-list
posting.


J.


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I spotted another potential problem just now: The confirmation email sent by phpbb has neither a From nor a Sender header, which makes it pretty likely to be flagged as spam. If there’s an admin address associated with the forum, the From should be set to that. If not, I’d suggest setting the From to messages-owner@forums.vassalengine.org, the admin address for the mailing list.

OK, I’ve made those two previous requested changes. Also set the Admin e-mail to messages-owner@forums.vassalengine.org.

Thus spake “bsmith”:

Thanks.

Posts to the forum by non-list subscribers do make it to the list,
so that works.

You can delete the two test accounts I created—uckelmantest and
uckelmantest2—since I’ve now tested what I set them up to test.


J.


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I tried to register another account, uckelmantest3, to check that the registration email From is correct. It is, so you can delete that test account as well.

I’m satisfied that things work now, with the exception of the PS from one of the messages up this thread being cut off when it went out to the mailing list.

The PS was added when I Edited the original post; Which would explain why you didn’t see it. :slight_smile:

I’m off to bed, I’ll be back here in around 9 hours. Hopefully by then others will have had a chance to sign-up and check things out.

Thus spake “bsmith”:

You can do that? Huh, so I could end up saying anything you wanted. :slight_smile:


J.


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It occured to me just now that the mail bridge makes it possible to post to a
thread without incrementing the “Views” counter associated with that thread.
This raises the rather amusing possibility of threads where there are more
posts than views. :slight_smile:

It’s the case right now that I can see a list of everyone who has an account
if I click on Memberlist in the header. Is that something we want to restrict
to the forum admin (or at least not make available to anyone who happens to
sign up for an account)?

I’ve left it wide open for testing Joel but a short time after it goes public, when the majority of legitimate users have created an account, I’ll turn on Admin authorization. This way accounts will not be created automatically, I’ll have to check them then manually enable them.

From my experience, it’s almost impossible to stop rogue forum accounts from being created. I’m fairly convinced spammers pay students to create dud forum accounts in their spare time. I ended up asking custom questions on the login page such as “Are you an alien?” and “How many legs do you have?” with the default set to six or something similar. It would fix the problem for about two months, then dodgy accounts would start popping up again!