Tess Baker

I don't want to be the only "wo is this forum" person, but am I the only one who thinks this thing is tacky? The other board was very simple, much faster, less color-happy, and had a threaded list of messages. Yes, there were a few people who enjoyed exploiting the form of the board, but is it worth it to make everyone else suffer this intolerable format because of a few wayward individuals?

If anything, i'd sure like to have the board threaded and sent out as a digest daily via email. What do you think, John?

Dennis Mitsch

You're not alone. Let's hope some sort of "e-mail as submitted" function can be added at a later date.

Dennis Mitsch
dem911@haphazard.com http://www.haphazard.com/993kb/ - 993 FAQ and Knowledgebase

Bob - 95 993/C2

I'm not sure I understand your proposal, Dennis. Got a second to explain further please? If you are requesting that UBB send a mail digest of postings, I don't believe that is an available software option. The "forum" is a stand alone piece of software...right, John??

I would add that disabling the Message Icons and the smilies does clean up the posts. Unfortunately, there is no way (that I'm aware of) to preclude the "this thread has been edited by" comment which when combined with a "sig block" can really get kinda' cludgy...see following for example.

On another UBB I'm admin on, we closed down the sig block option as some of them were getting longer than the message posted as well as for other issues.

[ 31-05-2001: Message edited by: Bob - 95 993/C2 ]

John D.

Hi Tess and Dennis...!

Over the past couple of days, you bet I have gotten a lot of input about these new Boards - much of it good, along with some constructive critism and suggestions for improvements. For example, on the Rennlist 944 Board, some folks voiced a similiar concern over this new format - so let me re-post here what I said to them.. Hopefully, it will provide some insight as to why this change is necessary... After reading it - please feel free to reply back, as I'm not sure it will address all your comments, OK???

Best to all!

John D.

My Post on the 944 Board:

"Off this Board, a few have asked "why am I changing this format" - so I'd like an opportunity to explain for a bit...

First, this is older Web Board technology, and personally - I LIKE IT A LOT! BUT, while it does simple things very well (like posting messages:-). However, from an administrative standpoint - given the size of Rennlist and the number of hits these Boards take - they are tremendously "at risk".

For example, given some fairly simple tools, folks can "harvest" these lists for posts, e-mail addresses, etc. While I have some fairly advanced programs I've developed to prevent these things from occuring on these Rennlist Boards - it feels like I spend a lot of my extra time lately preventing hackers from gaining entry or folks simply "spamming" Rennlist..

Also - the administrative tools are terrible in this Board technology. They *were* fine when my Boards posted only 100 messages per day - but now, combined - all the Boards I host post nearly 1,000 original messages a day on a busy day. That's a lot to track and try to admiminister in addition to the Rennlist e-mail lists (which post several thousands original messages as well). In total, we are sending about 10,000,000 messages per day from the site, so the importance of the ADMIN tools are critical (well, they are important to me, anyway;^) especially since Rennlist is administered by a team of "one" on a part time basis...

Finally - I'm a firm believer that if your replace something - the replacement technology better be a WHOLE lot better then the existing format and feature sets. I think Rennlist accomplished that fairly well with the new Boards by hacking the UBB code to deliver some unique features (yes - I'm still working on bringing on Digests and porting new messages into the Rennlist News Server:-)..

I hope you all agree that the new technology has been "worth the wait"...

My Best Always!

John D."

+++ End Post

Matt Vaughan

I think we can all say that you're doing a fine job making Rennlist better and better with the new software. I know I, for one, like the change. Keep up the great work!


-Matt