Be happy that this is not a Discourse forum!

[#1]

Hi Folks,

Some might have noticed that I've not been around that much over recent months ... that's down to various reasons but the most prominent were the behaviour of some around here and the absence of managing issues, but largely frustration that a multitude of issues with this technology platform (underneath the skin) were simply not getting fixed.

In defence of what is here, I've just popped back to say it could have been worse: PlusNet could have instead chosen Discourse!  An organisation of which I am a member and for which I provide end user support for has recently implemented a Discourse forum.  In comparison it makes this place look pretty darned good.  That must to be taken as a suggestion that I think here is yet as darned good as it should be!

[#2]

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@Townman wrote:

Some might have noticed...

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It has been noted.  

Good to see you back - please stick around.  

[#3]

It had been noticed Townman

Its i think its as good as its ever going to get

eventally people have given UP

[#4]

I probably watch one thread in 50 now which shows my level of involvement and I don't automatically subscribe to any threads and the only time I get an email notification is when I am sent a PM

[#5]

Delphi forums win my prize for the worst on offer!

[#6]

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@Oldjim wrote:

the only time I get an email notification is when I am sent a PM

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That Jim could be because like me you've inhibited the email notifications or possibly because no one writes to you.  Which ever, its all very sad after all the years of service you have given here, you feel so marginalised.  All rather shoddy!

@all the others - thank you for your kind sentiments.

[#7]

I didn't miss you, if that helps

[#8]

I have deliberately ignored almost all the drama about these new forums, and I don't know what other people were told or promised they would be like, but they are pretty much what I expected, it's not been wildly different to what happens when anyone else re-designs their website. The old forums were usable, and these new forums are usable. Whether or not they are perfect or better than the old doesn't really matter that much.

[#9]

 Townman? Whos that? - Were you once a member here or something?

@Oldjim Yes I noticed you're not very active here these days - a great shame considering you are one of our finest members. I didn't always agree with you as a mod but over the years you grew on me and although I wasn't going to admit it, you became my favourite mod once we found a similar wavelength. Its not been the same around here without you.

[#10]

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@ejs wrote:

The old forums were usable, and these new forums are usable. 

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I beg to differ these new forums are a pain in the grass. They don't allow you to multiquote easily, they log you out (when you've selected to stay logged in), quote editing is a pain (you delete nested quotes and end up with the broken side line), the image manager doesn't always work.... and so much more.

The old SMF forum had a bug with attachments and sometimes it was very slow but that was pretty much it. Big difference.

[#11]

Well, it's probably for the best. Quoting people or commenting on what they say may get taken as some gross personal insult. Much safer to mostly disregard what anyone else says and just keep repeating your own opinion until nobody bothers to disagree with you.

[#12]

@7up - age must be impacting your memory - I remember you well from the pre-trials of this "super all singing all dancing" forum technology.

Just dropped back to share a little more of what I really hate over on the discourse forum and a feature I really like a lot.

MARKDOWN - Discourse uses something called markdown to format text - for example **is bold** and according to specification _is italic_ and not specified *is also italic*.  The point is everyone need to be a geek and needs to know that if you really wan to type those characters, you need to know how to escape them, as in \* or \*\* or \_ - that's really crappy unix world exposed to normal real people.

However quoting is a real dream, the likes of which I have not seen before ... the history of the thread is displayed above the post edit box which is fixed at the bottom of the screen.  The thread history can be freely scrolled and highlighted / selected which causes a "QUOTE" tag to appear - clicking the QUOTE tag inserts the highlighted text in to the new post and formats it as a quote.  Such easy quoting would do wonders for @7up's understandable frustrations with quoting reported here.

There is a down side though on Win10 / MS Edge, quotes are always inserted at the top of the new post - I guess that's a bug!