I thought I'd throw a few things out there for John to consider if the appropriate options exist to make these changes or enable these features on the site and he likes the changes proposed.
Since they essentially would be reversions to the behavior of some previous versions of vbulletin, I thought they might still exist as options or extensions for site administrators to try if they want to.
Obviously, John should only pursue them if they seem like a good idea to them. It's his site, and I can get used to the new way it works pretty fast. This is some pretty sweet software. I'm just mentioning these ideaa because doing things the old way might be easier on people coming over from the old Yesfans or elsewhere on the web that does things the same way.
I try to boil down each suggestion to something concrete that can be stated in one sentence, which I put at the bottom of each number and bold.
If anyone skips to that and it doesn't make sense, though, or it's not clear why I'd suggest it, that's why I wrote all that stuff above it- to explain. I figure being very specific might also help if there is some sort of forum for vbulletin site owners or support system and they aren't sure what John is getting at if he can't find an option and asks if it exists the simple way without much luck.
1. Commenting vs. quoting. Henry and I noticed on another thread that if a user clicks "comment" and types a message, it appears in unquotable text right below what it is replying to instead of at the bottom of the thread, which differs from the way other options work.
So, imagine a thread of 20 posts. If I want to reply to post #3, my comment goes right under post #3 and above the rest of the thread (In this hypothetical, that's above 17 posts), can not be quoted, and is labeled as post "3.1" in the thread. The person I am replying to might get a notification (And *perhaps* someone checking for my latest posts through my profile or who clicks the "follow" button- I'm not sure on that point), and someone browsing the thread for the first time and reading from the beginning might read it, but people who've already read the the first 10 or 20 posts would probably never see it.
If, on the other hand, I click "quote" or just type in the text box at the bottom of the page in the same hypothetical thread of 20 posts, my new post becomes post #21 instead of #3.1, and goes where everyone looking for new posts in the thread will see it .
I think what the user expects is generally the behavior described in the last paragraph that comes from quoting or replying in the box and not what happens when they hit "comment" and are probably mostly also in the habit of looking at the bottom of the thread for new content.
If the comment button weren't there, it might be easier to avoid confusion or users picking an option they did not attend. On the other hand, there may be advantages to allowing it that would become more apparent once everyone gets used to it- It just isn't my thing so far.
So, tangible idea: Turn off the "comment" feature on posts. Only allow standard replies with quotes, standard replies without quotes, and whatever else (if there is anything) that go to the bottom of the thread when posted.
2. This may be a situation where there is a way to do what I am asking about with site settings as they are currently and I just haven't figured it out yet.
However, as things stand, I don't see a way to multi-quote.
Multi-quote is where there was a button under each post and you could go down a thread clicking it for every post you wanted to quote.
Eventually, you'd hit another button, and get a box to type in that included all the posts you intended to reply to in it.
As things stand, it appears unless one wants to do things manually, there is no Graphical User Interface Option to multi-quote. The average user replying to two separate posts in the same thread would thus wind up making a separate post in reply to each individual post he/she/they reply to even one after the other in the same thread.
It's not a big deal to have to do separate posts, it might even be better, in some respects. However, multi-quote did tend to create an easy way to remember the stuff I intended to reply to by marking posts as aide read a thread, instead of having to remember or reread to try to find the second or third post.
Tangible suggestion: Enable multi-quote.
3. On the old site, there were several themes users could choose from that world dictate the color scheme and the artwork (At least 1 or two of themes used fan art) the site as viewed while they were logged in.
I read somewhere that more recent versions of Vbulletin Connect has full theming support and that Vbulletin Cloud has partial theming support (It wasn't immediately clear to me what partial is missing relative to full).
Old Yesfans had "VBR4 Default Style" (which despite the name was clearly modified for a more Yes-like look than regular VabR. This could become "Old Yesfans theme" or "Yesfans Classic theme on the new Yesfans, as the current theme would be the default for anyone who doesn't select an option.), "Yesred2" (Which went it's own direction complete with a cool silloute of a DJ in a Yes short spinning tunes, and various holiday or seasonal scenes.
I don't know if those themes would be things that Tim could share (If he wants to) that this site could adopt by just uploading them and making them user options, or if the different versions of the software would make them incompatible.
Alternately, or in addition to, that, there is a possibility that VB has some free standard themes for owners to add as site options like a dark theme.
There's no problem with the current theme, I'm just thinking options are good. Some people probably change which theme they are using every so often just for some variety, like people switch PC wallpaper every so often.
Tangible suggestion: Consider adding some theme options.
Since they essentially would be reversions to the behavior of some previous versions of vbulletin, I thought they might still exist as options or extensions for site administrators to try if they want to.
Obviously, John should only pursue them if they seem like a good idea to them. It's his site, and I can get used to the new way it works pretty fast. This is some pretty sweet software. I'm just mentioning these ideaa because doing things the old way might be easier on people coming over from the old Yesfans or elsewhere on the web that does things the same way.
I try to boil down each suggestion to something concrete that can be stated in one sentence, which I put at the bottom of each number and bold.
If anyone skips to that and it doesn't make sense, though, or it's not clear why I'd suggest it, that's why I wrote all that stuff above it- to explain. I figure being very specific might also help if there is some sort of forum for vbulletin site owners or support system and they aren't sure what John is getting at if he can't find an option and asks if it exists the simple way without much luck.
1. Commenting vs. quoting. Henry and I noticed on another thread that if a user clicks "comment" and types a message, it appears in unquotable text right below what it is replying to instead of at the bottom of the thread, which differs from the way other options work.
So, imagine a thread of 20 posts. If I want to reply to post #3, my comment goes right under post #3 and above the rest of the thread (In this hypothetical, that's above 17 posts), can not be quoted, and is labeled as post "3.1" in the thread. The person I am replying to might get a notification (And *perhaps* someone checking for my latest posts through my profile or who clicks the "follow" button- I'm not sure on that point), and someone browsing the thread for the first time and reading from the beginning might read it, but people who've already read the the first 10 or 20 posts would probably never see it.
If, on the other hand, I click "quote" or just type in the text box at the bottom of the page in the same hypothetical thread of 20 posts, my new post becomes post #21 instead of #3.1, and goes where everyone looking for new posts in the thread will see it .
I think what the user expects is generally the behavior described in the last paragraph that comes from quoting or replying in the box and not what happens when they hit "comment" and are probably mostly also in the habit of looking at the bottom of the thread for new content.
If the comment button weren't there, it might be easier to avoid confusion or users picking an option they did not attend. On the other hand, there may be advantages to allowing it that would become more apparent once everyone gets used to it- It just isn't my thing so far.
So, tangible idea: Turn off the "comment" feature on posts. Only allow standard replies with quotes, standard replies without quotes, and whatever else (if there is anything) that go to the bottom of the thread when posted.
2. This may be a situation where there is a way to do what I am asking about with site settings as they are currently and I just haven't figured it out yet.
However, as things stand, I don't see a way to multi-quote.
Multi-quote is where there was a button under each post and you could go down a thread clicking it for every post you wanted to quote.
Eventually, you'd hit another button, and get a box to type in that included all the posts you intended to reply to in it.
As things stand, it appears unless one wants to do things manually, there is no Graphical User Interface Option to multi-quote. The average user replying to two separate posts in the same thread would thus wind up making a separate post in reply to each individual post he/she/they reply to even one after the other in the same thread.
It's not a big deal to have to do separate posts, it might even be better, in some respects. However, multi-quote did tend to create an easy way to remember the stuff I intended to reply to by marking posts as aide read a thread, instead of having to remember or reread to try to find the second or third post.
Tangible suggestion: Enable multi-quote.
3. On the old site, there were several themes users could choose from that world dictate the color scheme and the artwork (At least 1 or two of themes used fan art) the site as viewed while they were logged in.
I read somewhere that more recent versions of Vbulletin Connect has full theming support and that Vbulletin Cloud has partial theming support (It wasn't immediately clear to me what partial is missing relative to full).
Old Yesfans had "VBR4 Default Style" (which despite the name was clearly modified for a more Yes-like look than regular VabR. This could become "Old Yesfans theme" or "Yesfans Classic theme on the new Yesfans, as the current theme would be the default for anyone who doesn't select an option.), "Yesred2" (Which went it's own direction complete with a cool silloute of a DJ in a Yes short spinning tunes, and various holiday or seasonal scenes.
I don't know if those themes would be things that Tim could share (If he wants to) that this site could adopt by just uploading them and making them user options, or if the different versions of the software would make them incompatible.
Alternately, or in addition to, that, there is a possibility that VB has some free standard themes for owners to add as site options like a dark theme.
There's no problem with the current theme, I'm just thinking options are good. Some people probably change which theme they are using every so often just for some variety, like people switch PC wallpaper every so often.
Tangible suggestion: Consider adding some theme options.
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