I can't say why, other than familiarity, people would want the First message filter on all the time.
It’s not familiarity for me. It’s finding the post I want to read.
I like this site because it is a very high traffic site. I can ask a question and usually get a answer same day if not within minutes.
Fred post a question of “how do I tighten this bolt”
If I can give a answer I give it and move on.
I’m not really interested in what answer you give as I already gave my answer.
If no one could not give a answer you giving and answer 2 weeks later might help someone using a search but does me or even Fred any good as Fred most likely has moved on and bought a different style bolt by now.
With the way it is now when I come to the site first thing I have to do is dig through post of people giving most often repeat answers to a month old question because it is marked as “New” just to find the actual new post that were posted today.
Heck we had one poster the other day that replied how sorry he was to hear about a death that happened 5 years ago to a person that has not posted on this site in 3 years.
Meanwhile I get frustrated and miss original post from today.
If you guys want to hash out 2 week old post have at it. I just prefer not to get involved.
Like I have said before.
Your job is to sell tractor parts.
Heck even I want you to sell lots of tractor parts.
It is what pays for this free forum I enjoy.
And if installing a new forum that the search engines like and in turn sells more tractor parts then so be it.
Even Kim has posted search hits and traffic is way up since the new forum was installed.
So for some of use that originally came here and got hooked to only this site because you used a older forum and we didn’t like the new forum style others were using we will just have to deal with the change.
Just don’t ask us to like the change.
As a side note.
One has to wonder why this site has become one of the highest traffic tractor forums on the net.
Could it be that a lot of people that work on old tractors are old farts that don’t like modern forums
In a way some of us old farts feel you have put us out to pasture by making a choice that attracts younger people with a modern forum.
We didn't put it up to attract new people. It was a shock to realize people were coming and giving up on registration and posting. New registrations are over triple now what they were, but the only clue I had was the angry notes I'd occasionally get from non-members which I mostly ignored since they weren't a part of the community. Looks like only a few people bother to send a nastygram when they can't figure out a site, so we not clue it would increase traffic.
The new forums were not because of traffic, they were because of classic view (and a little modern view since I'd busted it beyond being able to upgrade, to make it work with classic). Classic was written in a long dead language that only Kim and I could support, but worse, it was not secure. Indeed, the only thing keeping it from being hacked was stuff we put in that broke functionality of real users to make sure the bad guys couldn't do anything either. Modern software is written to standards and in languages that automatically defeat the bad guys (most of the time, you can never say never). Then it's also updated whenever some new threat appears. Even our operating systems were at risk because I was at the end of life on the languages (or versions of languages) our stuff was written in. That meant if I updated to a new version of the OS, it was going to break things, and did sometimes seriously. More than once I spent weeks trying to get stuff to work and in some cases, just had to give up (like with the search in Modern View, depending on how you searched, it would return "error 13", which actually meant I couldn't handle that part of the code that the search ended up in, with the changes in how it was designed and how the language changed). Gradually, we simply could not update the OS, which kept me up every night worrying. The threats out there very constant and real and only those who study the logs and fight the attacks can even comprehend the reality.
The forum upgrade had nothing to do with trying to attract new people or adding flash to the forums, or even selling more parts. It was security and maintainability. It was not maintainable or safe.
On your other comments. We added Modern View because many people couldn't stand Classic View. Most people used classic view because it was the default so all new people ended up there. As a result, it turns out most new people didn't end up staying long enough to even register or post. It's probably like telling someone to use your 38 AC B, they get on and ask where the starter switch is. You hand them the crank. They walk off.
To the second comment, we had no idea it would be received so badly as it has by a few. I tried to meet the requirements people stated, which was to know who replied to who and not have to look at quotes. From the outset, we wanted YT users to have what they wanted, it's most of what we've always cared about. Turns out though, the stated requirement people had was not conceptual, it was specific, and I didn't realize it until we cut over. It was to have a list of usernames under each unchanging (in terms of order) thread name that had no information, just the fact that the username replied and when, plus a limitation that would not allow new posts to be seen after a couple of days (because they'd rolled off the page) which people became accustomed to as how they conceptualized communication (the thread was currency to them, not the post as is in all other communication software, e.g., email, forums, chats). The limitation was leftover from the LISTSERV software of the 90s which classic (wwwboard) was a direct replacement for (and structurally because it couldn't re-sort threads as to currency quickly enough for servers to be responsive with high volumes). Those limitations caused wwwboard to be dropped in the early 2000s because currency, brevity in the thread list and complete information were required by people trying to discuss technical topics, thus modern forums came about and evolved further away from those limits. Parts of the old concepts were reinvented on modern social media (virtually all off-topic or chat type communications) by using indentation to show which post a reply was directed towards. I did this with the threaded view here since many in tales communicate as if social media, and we wanted to support that as best we could, I think it also adds value to technical discussions. We did it (like FB and Reddit do) so people not familiar with quoting would not be so confused and would know "who replied to who" (of course I obviously didn't understand what method they had learned to use to know who replied to who). Of course it didn't meet the basic requirement because they wanted a list of usernames replying, to see if they even wanted to re-read the thread. It quite blindsided me that these could be the real need (versus the conceptual need) because from my perspective, they were simply limitations of old software developed before databases existed (for websites anyway, and everything was stored in text files).
I clearly see now that it was so engrained how the decisions were made on what to read, that the list of usernames was the mental definition of order. Once the realization hit, I have pondered a way to do that, but it's not clear the software will let me without messing it up. It is first, to use the filter this thread is about (which is coming as soon as I have test results back, at this point I won't again say when that is, since I've done so several times and been too impetuous), since that creates statically sorted thread lists which allow new posts to be ignored in (deference to new threads) as they move down the list further. Second, make a change to the thread list (the Forum screen you get when you click on a Forum) that has a + by each thread title (this is the part that is unclear how to do). Then that + can be totally ignored by most people using the forum like a normal forum, yet for those wanting it, be expanded to see the list of users in the thread and the date they posted, indented as it was in classic view. Then the last part which is really iffy (not just unclear), is to only display that "sub thread" surrounding the username they click on without having to see the full thread. Whether I can actually do this, I don't know yet so I can't say it's actually feasible. It is not how modern forums are designed. Beyond this, we are quite busy bringing the rest of the site over and moving it to the new datacenter.
I'm already very concerned about too many changes too fast, which is why the filter persistence isn't in yet. It has to be heavily tested because it can't be backed out (in a way I understand, this software is new to me too) once I put it in. It could be as disastrous as having to shut down and reload from the previous nights backup. So it has to be tested by other people on the development server. As you saw with the highlight on the new posts, I can't see the forest for the trees when I'm making software changes, I only see and test what I'm working on, allowing unforeseen circumstances to arise, some of which could be catastrophic.
Sorry for the length, I know I get too wordy, but I don't have any other way to fully answer these topics but to detail the background of stuff I know people don't really care about.
