Mis-filed Armor Topic

There has been a product review filed in the Armor section but with no reference or link to this other discussion going on over here.

I really don’t care about the existing “site content mechanism”. I am herein proposing a change to that mechanism!

i.e. The ability to do multiple listings of the same information under separate topic headings.
I am not proposing that we list the same information twice but simply that we be given the ability to key the new topic post to multiple divisions within the KitMaker Network.

Not suggesting so much of a content change as simply a programming change.

Maybe this is Jims programming @staff_Jim
maybe it follows from the way the Discourse services have been programmed.
If it is indeed Discourse then maybe the answers to your questions can be found here:

Free advice: I have set my “homepage” on this forum to show all categories and all tags.
This way I see everything that gets posted and need not fear missing anything.
This method may not suit your needs but it is the way I did it.

I guess that is my underlying contention here. The Discourse “package” offers a number of things we all like but it also offers a number of functions that are not just stupid, they are inane! (As in beyond stupid)

And Discourse appears to offer very little latitude for the user (KitMaker) to deviate from the “standard programming package” even though the website you sent me to says Discourse is “fully open source” software.

I may not be an actual programmer but I have worked with programmers to create custom software programs so I have a fairly good idea what this software can do and how it can & WILL accept alterations.

The programming is probably relatively easy,
the tricky part is to convince the product owner that
a specific change is needed or rather that the
product owner wants this change.

The current solution works for me so my motivation to argue for a change is absolutely zero.

On the old site I needed to enable the setting for site content for each forum.
Things have changed but in this particular area the changes are neither worse nor better
than what we had before.

Again if the software is open source then KitMaker is free to alter and/or remove certain features.

One PITA: (RE: Pain In The A$$) ~ I wanted to compliment someone on their model work. I am not allowed to just say “Great” or “Kudos” and keep it short and simple. I will get the warning “your reply must be in the form of a sentence.”

Two PITA: I want to use a well know short phrase, quotation, (whatever,) I get the same warning. “your reply must be in the form of a sentence.”

Three PITA: I posted something accidentally in the wrong place and wanted to delete it. I CAN delete the text but I CANNOT (to my knowledge) delete the entire post itself. Ah, but then I get the warning “you cannot make a blank post.” I am therefore left having to type “Post deleted by author.”

Four PITA: I delete and then leave the above post as instructed. Then I go to the thread where I wanted to post in the first place. I cut and paste the text I now want into the correct place and I get the warning “your post is identical to another posted elsewhere.” Surprise, it’s talking about the blank post I have JUST DELETED!

Five PITA: I wanted to post an announcement in more than one forum. In this case I was trying to direct folks to (as in to advertise) a survey that Fred was hosting regarding the model railroad section and military scale, of course when I tried to paste the same copy into the second thread I got the warning: “your post is identical to another posted elsewhere.”
I still managed to get the job done I just had to rewrite the text to provide enough “contextual change” to squeak past the Discourse programming.

As I said: “Not just stupid but inane!”

Great :+1:

Yeah, right

Pita 3 and Pita 4 makes me believe that you managed to locate the trash bin icon
image

Deleted post stay in storage for some time, not sure if the final delete is done automatically or if some admin needs to do a manual trash collection.
The ability to change ones mind and undelete can be useful sometimes …

The restriction on similar posts could be motivated by the desire to prevent spammers from carpet bombing every single forum and forum topic.
There is also a “speed limit” which notifies admins when a new user types suspiciously fast.
Those who use translation services like Google Translate often get caught in this, type
in own language, translate to English, copy-paste and then some admin has to read & approve.

No, I have not located the trash bin icon of which you speak.

I simply select all the text in the post and cut it out.

It is then that I have to type “Post deleted by author.”

Good to know. I guess.

Could’a just put a garbage can icon somewhere within the post editing window. (Since deletion IS an edit function!)

But I guess everyone is just SUPPOSED to now know that “3 dots” means more functions/options just like on our phones.

~ And now voila I see the garbage can! ~

Old dog, new tricks, I suppose.

Woof, woof :wink:

three dots, three lines,
a cogwheel, a spanner
there are many icons …

Oh well now that helps a lot. Multiple graphic icons all meaning the same thing.

Well,
You go out there in the world and teach the programmers,
GUI or HMI designers, trademark and copyright lawyers what
a proper human-to-machine interface should look like.
Some silly bugger may think that they own the intellectual property rights
to a specific icon and all others better beware lest the “owner” sets his
hounds (err, lawyers) on them.
Just one example:

And now back to the original topic of this thread.

My contention is that this post/feature/thread was keyed to the incorrect subject topic which caused it to be viewed LESS (my opinion) than it would be if filed properly. I strongly feel that see this happening frequently on this site.

Such things are exactly within the purview of the Admin staff. So . . . .

IF we could multiple list a thread that would solve the problem.

I look at this discussion entirely from a marketing/maximum exposure point of view. A view point free from the restrictive framework of how the programmers might want to make the function fit their form. (i.e. Program)


Robin as to your remark about setting my homepage to view ALL new posts within the KitMaker site that makes total sense for a member of the Admin staff like yourself. However as an end user I model Armor, Railroading and the occasional Aircraft so I have no interest in being inundated with every new post for all areas of the KitMaker world. I may venture into these areas occasionally when I want to see something totally different but I do this rarely.

There are multiple ways to draw a garbage can icon and still have it be perceived by the end user as a garbage can so let’s not get into a discussion about violating artistic and intellectual property rights. (Copyright).

Umm… hello… it even tells you what the icon is when you put your mouse over it.
image

The original question was why are site content posts put in their own section. The answer to that is because that is where I decided (after much consideration) to put them. There are different kinds of users in this community regarding behavior. Some visit the forums, some visit the forums and click through to the various content sites to see and discover news and other articles, and some only visit the content sites (like Armorama) and if they do reach the forum it is via a discussion thread on the article pages. The point of moving the site related posts into it’s own sub-section in the forums was to allow forum users to find all the recent content related posts, but not have to sift through them in the main Armor forum. Many have zero replies. This means that if we are showing 20 topics on someone’s screen they could be 15 topics with zero interactions and 5 with. This makes for a dead forum on most sites and even caused problems on the old forum (which is why I coded a way to turn content related posts on or off in the forum topic display views).

There are no ‘perfect’ solutions for topics being in places they might not be seen by. If people who like Armor want to see ALL the topics related to armor they MUST visit more than one forum. Period. The campaigns forum is another perfect example of this.

However there are keyword options for things like 1:35 that would build a page of potentially different results from topics across the whole forum.