new thread
As much as I love this place .... its frustrating as hell to use !!!
There are so many much better forum applications out there !!
Would anybody be able to bring this board into the 21st century ?? Please !!
You do have point considering the variety of formats out there such as ezboards but I believe the programmer of this site takes pride in devising his own software.
I would like the threads to have independent links opening to separate pages and have only the thread title visible rather than have each reply extend beneath the topic post.
It would add a degree of useability for members to navigate through with ease.
All very valid points .... and who am I to argue anyway !!
I didn't realise it would cost a lot of money to transfer to a differant format .... guess there is no such thing as a free lunch afterall !!
Its true, many "fancy" functions other forums have are pretty useless and take up bandwidth ..... but if there was a way to see all the replies to a thread at once, it would be cool !!
Perfectionist, hehehe, the name says it all, doesn't it?
I love this board and there is nothing the matter with it at all. It's very functional and despite it's 'oudatedness', it is still sufficient. I do agree, most forum applications are alot better and have more features these days but it is unnessesary. The cost involved to program and implement would be huge, i can assume. Besides, this board has a really intimate, cosy vibe the way it is. I wouldn't want to change a thing!
Why don't you start donating money to Victor to upgrade the board? If it is such a problem for you.
I don't think irregular posters have any merit to make a decision like this, it is up to the Webmaster, and not you :)
I have always found the straightforwardness of this board refreshingly modern. Boards where the essential message is buried among gobeldygook proclaiming hair length, some kind of avatar violating copyrighted material, and poem snippet signature along with giant photo of the children/pet/whatever stuck on every single post seems more like a place fascinated by the technology than the purpose. To me this board is more with the times than that since all the toys people tire of over time have been left out from the start.
I think it is grand that a new arrival can get an answer from another recent arrival who already learned the information. We don't need post counts to give status, it becomes knowledge, wisdom, and entertainment instead.
Perhaps the one message at a time viewing is what is frustrating for you? Patience is a virtue and not unrelated to getting long hair. To see the structure of replies and load only pages of interest rather than all in a thread works well for many of us. I know I really appreciate it when checking in from a dial up connection.
Elizabeth
I think the interface at the Long Hair Community is superb. It's my favorite type of board.
I also love this board the way it is. It's made from scratch so it is just what it should be. Maybe other boards have more bells and whistles but if the admins here get bored with maintaining a site they don't enjoy and abandon it, then where would we be?
Thanks again to all of you guys who program and maintain the board, we owe you much :)
I don't see what the problem is... i've never had a problem using this forum as I have with most others. It's straightforward, and actually quite easy to use...
-Ardroth
I seem to remember asking a question similar to this a year or so ago. The response I got was that it's been rbought up a few times, but the fact is that the current board has all the features that it needs. Anything else is just clutter and I would agree with that.
Also, given the simple interface of this board, I would assume (moderators, correct me if I'm wrong on this) that the back end administration is just as easy to use.
Quality, not quantity :)
Such a pity. I am so sorry.
Why not pick one up?
Anybody? How about having yourself donate all of the funds so that you will be happy? Victor,Bill, and all moderators have done so much with hundreds of free donated hours of their time to make this place what it is today. And I dare say it is tops! Nobody else has complained. That is until now.
If there are any differences to be made, I think they would only be minor ones. The good thing about this board is that it isn't littered with fancy graphics, applets, frames, etc., that slow down page loading times. Granted we all post a pic or two here and there but you know what I mean.
So perhaps it's better for it to remain relatively plain in it's appearance, as the more bells and whistles you get, the harder the server must work.
LukeB
hi,
at the beginning i also thought and suggested that it would be better to use an other forum software (e.g. vbulletin etc) but i have changed my mind 'cos:
- u don't have to search hundrets of sub-threads to find the messages u want
- i have the url in my favourites ... only have to click it and i see the new messages (diff. colour between visited and not visited links)
- it (re)loads very fast 'cos there are no stupid big graphic features (which are imho not required in a forum except the avatar)
- i think it's easier to maintain than forums with alot of sub-threads and othe features
- maybe it's cheaper 'cos amaik bill wrote the source code for that board himself
of course there are some bugs in that software (like the '2 ppl posting at the same time-bug) but i think the mods/admins are very encouraged and as u can see there are nearly no trolls/spammers etc. on that board ...
only thing is, if you don't visit the forum daily, u miss a lot of interesting posts/threads :)
@mods/admin: keep up the good work and the forum 'clean' - u r doing really good work !
greez,
ALH
...so give it a go.
I don't know if it is a priority of the board administrators, but the format lends itself very well to narrowband (as opposed to broadband) internet access. This improves access to many who can't get or can't afford broadband, including much of the third world.
It could simply restrict the avatars to a given format (pixel by pixel), signatures disabled, or pictures in them disabled. A good argument for a threaded board (such as phpBB, VB, UBB etc) is that the threads aren't lost with time, like they are here. No need for a post count either, it can be deactivated.
phpBB would be nice.
I like it almost as it is.
I would very much like to have the main listing sorted after *last post in thread* instead of first post. That way an active topic wouldn't drop way down the board after a day or so.
It should be possible to comment in a thread that's a couple of days old, and still have a chance that someone else is going to see that post.
I love the board but this feature would be so much nicer than quickly losing threads.
Victor mentioned this view, which gives you rather what you are asking for:
http://the-light.com/longhair/threadview2.html
Try it! You may like it! I use it more than the standard link.
http://the-light.com/longhair/threadview2.html
Top level threads show in the top-left frame,
Click on a message, and it will show in the bottom left frame.
Click on a reply, and it will show in the frame to the right.
-Oren
I like that format a lot. Never knew it existed. Thanks for posting the link.
I tend to agree, but I doubt if it will happen. Navigation is slow, but previous requests to change it got nowhere very much. True, I am too cheap to donate money so can't complain too much, but there we are.
I prefer the three-pane interface, but it was added as an experiment, and I don't think it was ever finished, because AFAIK there is no link to add new threads, so to post a new thread I have to go back to the old interface. Maybe Bill could add that?
We've made a LOT of changes since January 1, 2000. We've left the board to LOOK like it did in 1997 because users are accustomed to that look both here and on other boards, so why make them learn a new "look" just for the sake of changing it?
The moderation system, the users' directory (photos of users), the e-mail system that hides your e-mail addresses, the "previous-next" links, the halved-bandwidth (mentioned below), and the chat room are all 21st Century additions.
Also, we don't see some of the later innovations of some boards as "improvements". Features which require users have Javascript on, require they accept cookies, require they register and log in, suck up users' e-mail addresses for spamming, won't let users upload their own photos, or prevent those with poor vision from enlarging the type, we do not see as plusses.
Navigation is actually faster than at other sites because the pages load instantly with no waiting. We've pared them down to half the bytes that the package came with "out of the box", and then Victor put the site on a very fast server. Our pages are also without advertising or other extraneous graphics which slow down loading. View the source of one of our messages and just about anybody else's, and you'll be shocked at how small our files are!
Our approach has been that users really want to see the words and pictures of other users and nothing else, and that having to deal with the "else" stuff and long waits is disruptive of the main activity here, which is users communicating with each other.
We could show all the messages from a thread on one page, but this means downloading all of the messages for guys who've read most of them already. It's a lot faster to just read the messages you haven't seen. Showing them all together would also confuse "threading", which is often important to understand what is being replied to. One of the major pitfalls of many systems is they handle threading poorly. Others continually move the messages around on the page, depriving the board of any sense of place, and making it tough to use. Here, you can say to yourself, "I have already read all I want on the topic of that clump of messages down there," but if the threads and messages are all moving around, the board has no sense of place, and that is frustrating to users. The human mind is very good at keeping track of places, so we want to tap into that ability instead of thwart it.
The human mind is also very good at keeping track of faces, and that is why that is the only graphics we have. People can come here and sense "in that place they are talking about 'blank', and I saw who is participating." Without the faces, and with the posts scrambled like eggs at breakfast, both of those human-brain-friendly aids - face and place - to keeping track of what goes on here would be lost.
The three-pane interface was one of Victor's projects; I have had nothing to do with it. Ditto for the archives. Victor has been busy with work projects lately so his making changes to his personal web site here has become infrequent.
Bill
