Each to their own - but I find it more logical to have the latest at the “top of the pile”.
Actually is this a user by user configurable setting in discord? (or have I got the name of the software behind the reflector wrong?).
73 Ed.
I’m not against the idea of revoting. This might be like Brexit where once people experience what it actually entailed to implement, they’d change their vote.
Then when Joe Q. Newham signs up and starts to find out what people are saying he finds every thread he looks at is in ass-backwards format and he has to go to the end and read a post then scroll up back over that post and up to the next and then read it and scroll up over that post and then scroll up to the start of the next post and…
The question is why do you need to see that latest post first? It would mean you miss posts which are older and results in posts essentially repeat what was posted earlier they failed to read.
You could actually just use the site as intended. For those who haven’t actually noticed this software keeps a record of every thread you have read. When you log in, and click on the subjects you are taken to the first post you have not read. So by default, merely accessing threads gets you dropped at the next bit relevant to you. As this is on a per user level, it doesn’t matter which device(s) you use for access. If I wander away from the shack and pickup my phone and look at this site it will show me the last view of it, which may not be the same as on the PC. All I do is touch the SOTA logo and the phone will update to synchronise the displays so the thread lists match and when I click, I go to the next post. This requires you log in otherwise the system doesn’t know it’s you and you have to spend redundant effort scrolling about trying to find things that are already automated.
As the logins for SOTAwatch and here are not the same, when you click on a SOTAwatch thread link, it has no idea what your reflector ID is. It cannot then automatically take you to here and to the right place in the threads. Instead of giving a relative link, it has to give an absolute link to the top of the thread. As we move to SSO (single sign on) it should be something that can be implemented.
Use it as designed and it makes things easier.
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Neither am I. The old figures show the relative levels of support for what was implemented.
Should that be the old figures don’t … ?
Ed.
At 52:48, I can understand the calls for a second Brexit referendum after 2.5 years, but also understand the fierce arguments against this.
At 64:18:18, I can not understand the calls for a second reflector vote after 1.2 years.
If only the Brexit result had been as convincing as 64:36 (for either side), it would have spared us a lot of this bickering. Or perhaps not looking at this thread.
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As I said “each to their own” - I have checked and there is no option to change the sequence on a user preference basis supplied, so we have what we have. It’s not THAT bad actually.
What I would like to see improved (I’m probably missing something very obvious!) is that when I am at the bottom of the thread on post 84 and I want to return to the thread overview page (“Latest posts” in my case), I first have to click on the topic title and wait to be returned to the top and then click on SOTA Relector title to return to my overview page. With the posts in reverse order I eliminate one step as the SOTA Reflector title is always present.
Clicking the three bars and then Latest is an option but it is still an extra step.
Coming back to the original topic and looking at the (relatively few) topics that have been extended - a 150 message limit would most likely catch by far the majority of topics that exceed 100 posts. So a limit of 150 or 200 is what I would personally set it to now.
As the Bard would put it, “Much Ado About Nothing”!
Number of threads reaching 100 since the beginning of November 2017 = 28.
Number of threads active since the beginning of November 2017 = 2043
So the percentage of threads terminating at the limit = 1.37%
But by golly, we are a wordy lot!
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Who’s calling? All I can see so far are two comments suggesting the posters of those comments wouldn’t be averse to a re-vote.
Is it so terrible to suggest considering a “tweak” to improve the functionality of the system in the light of 1yr+ experience of implementation of the cap on number of posts per thread?
The fact that relatively few threads are affected is a red herring - in assessing the overall impact you need to take into account the severity as well as the frequency…
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But how do we define “severity”? How many of those threads were just pointless repetition, me-tooism or had suffered terminal drift? How painful is it to start up a part 2 thread? No, I still reckon the Bard nailed it!
Press “backspace”
or
Right click and click the left arrow icon (back one page)
or
Install a gestures plugin and right click and swipe left
You will always need to wait as the page is dynamic AFAIU and is regenerated for you. It’s not a fixed page as everyone who visits it sees something specific to their login and status.
Not you, I think your comments are perfectly valid. When decisions like the one made have been in force for a while, why not revisit them to see if they are still valid?
Brian counted 28 (I counted 27) threads autoclosed at 100 and he got a list for the number of threads in total at 2043. The number autoclosed is fewer than I thought there would be.
It was a total over reaction by the MT, to kill off the long running “Light at the end of the Tunnel” thread, Paul. It got locked at 500 posts. I was informed that the limit was set to 500 posts. However, “The official SOTA 12m Challenge” thread, miraculously run to 667 posts and was never locked
The 12m challenge thread has not been closed because nobody has posted to it since the limit was changed last Nov 2017. You can see the last post was made “Sep 11 2014 11:23am” by Gerald. If someone posts to it now, their post will be accepted and then the system will close the thread. This is as the limit is set to 100 replies, i.e. the original post, 100 replies and 1 close message from system.
Likewise,
“North America <> Europe SOTA S2S Party - 19th November 2016 1400 - 1700 UTC” is open at post 421, last post Jul 16, '17 6:17 PM
“What is the highest QSO total of single activation” is open at post 330, last post Mar 26, '12 3:21 AM
Whereas “Datamode - FT8” was closed at post 220 on Nov 26 2017 after the limit was changed and, in this case, I posted to it.
There are currently 54 threads active with a reply count of 100 or greater. They’ll remain open indefinitely unless someone goes and posts in them. Then after that user post, the system will close the thread.
But hey, that’s nothing but facts and who in their right mind would argue a case using facts.
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Threads with more posts are seen more, so they will be more prominent. Closing a thread with 100 posts will be more noticed than not closing one with four posts. An impressions-oriented metric would be the percentage of posts which are on autoclosed threads.
The thread lengh is almost certainly a power law distribution, the well known “long tail”. The closed threads are part of the very popular “fat head”.
wunder
What may be worth looking at is how many posts a Part-2 continuation garners. My simplistic view is that if 100 is not enough and 500 is too many maybe 250 is right. But I’m guessing that probably only 1 or 2 will have ever gone beyond 200, so maybe 125 or 150 is enough that the subject peters out before being closed.
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Well “B*GGA Me”! That solution is so simple and will do me - thanks!
I think we’re on the same page - see my suggestion earlier - here: Post limit review? - #16 by M1EYP
Coming back to the original topic and looking at the (relatively few) topics that have been extended - a 150 message limit would most likely catch by far the majority of topics that exceed 100 posts. So a limit of 150 or 200 is what I would personally set it to now.
Ed.
I rather enjoyed the Light at the end of the tunnel thread. In my opinion the thread worked well, and it was easy to ignore if you weren’t interested. I also liked the LA1KHA challenge thread.
I’m not one to stir the hornets nest usually but in the case of the post limit restriction I really do believe it was just a stamp of authority.
You forget that after receiving complaints about the unwieldy size of some of the threads, the MT permitted a vote and 64% of the voters plumped for a limit of 100 posts. “Stamp of authority” my ass!
That would be the case if you weren’t allowed to click the link icon and continue it. There’s nothing stopping people doing part 2 etc. and many people have done so. The aim is to make the chunks of posts manageable which it does.