No paging for long threads, either.

It would be great if a version of phpBB or SMF integrated with BOINC came with the server package. Many features an average forumer would come to expect out of any BB app are missing here. And I doubt that phpBB will be going closed-source any time soon.

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The current system has a great many shortcomings, to list only a few:

No private messages
No preview function
No attachments
No user selectable theme
No thread subscriptions (closest is an e-mail if someone makes a post, only useful if you watch your e-mail all the time)
Very limited quoting

This isn't a social community like MySpace. It's the support forum for a serious scientific project.

No need for preview- Edit message works fine - if ya can't fix it in 60 minutes, you ain't ever going to fix it.

Can't see a reason for attachments - and the security risks are way too great

Themes? Why? You can't read this?

How else would you subscribe to a thread other than email? By coming to the forum?

How many levels of quoting do you NEED? This supports at least 6


Good grief. this works - why waste a whole bunch of time recreating something with useless bells and whistles? If people would learn to use the forum preferences to sort threads, and messages within threads, cut out images, sigs and avatars, control the displayed thread length, and the other configrable features, you'd find the forums a lot easier to use.

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Proudly Banned from Predictator@Home and now Cosmology@home as well. Added SETI to the list today. Temporary ban only - so need to work harder :)



"You can't fix stupid" (Ron White)

This isn't a social community like MySpace. It's the support forum for a serious scientific project.
Yes exactly - it is a forum. And very crappy one. Inconvenient and with almost no functionality. And why ppl forced to use this one? Just because project developers decided to save few hours and decided to go with built in installed by default option. There dozens of open source/GPL options for forum software, and all of them way better and way more convenient.

The only reason things are the way they are is because admins simply do not care...

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This isn't a social community like MySpace. It's the support forum for a serious scientific project.

And yet community is what keeps people on the forum. There's only so much time people will spend on answering the same questions and just telling people to read the FAQ isn't what keeps users crunching. Sometimes a little handholding is required or at least appreciated by the newcomer ;)

Why shouldn't it also serve as a community for those crunching? Certainly not a diary, but at the same time there's nothing to be lost by offering space for off-topic conversations.

No need for preview- Edit message works fine - if ya can't fix it in 60 minutes, you ain't ever going to fix it.

Can't see a reason for attachments - and the security risks are way too great

Picture attachments don't pose a security risk, no one's talking about virus infested zip files. Not everyone has hosting space available and sometimes it's easier to explain a problem if you can just upload a screenshot.

Previews are just convenient, keeps you from having to edit the post because something just doesn't work - like forgetting the {url} tags when you post a link... something the forum doesn't do automatically.

Themes? Why? You can't read this?

How else would you subscribe to a thread other than email? By coming to the forum?

How many levels of quoting do you NEED? This supports at least 6

I don't like reading this, no. Somehow people came up with the idea that since paper is white and printed text black, the same should be true for websites. Nevermind that it's a much bigger strain on the eyes than a dark background and light text. Not everyone's cup of coffee, hence customized themes.

Decent forums have a user control part where 'subscribing' to threads means you get notified when a new post is made while you're on the board. This lets you keep track of multiple posts without the need to receive e-mails that you won't check until later.

Also convenient the option to 'mark all topics read' so new messages pop out more easily.

As for quoting: Including the NAME of the person you're quoting by default would already be nice. I'm not sure if it lets you do it manually, I'll try it now:

edit: nope, didn't work.

Angus wrote:

Good grief. this works - why waste a whole bunch of time recreating something with useless bells and whistles? If people would learn to use the forum preferences to sort threads, and messages within threads, cut out images, sigs and avatars, control the displayed thread length, and the other configrable features, you'd find the forums a lot easier to use.

Cut out images? Like the dog in your signature? ;)
Nothing changes the fact, that it's very inconvenient to use and there's just no reason for it to be like that. We're not talking about days wasted to move to the new system... the phpBB forums are ready to use when downloaded. The addition of credits and RAC shouldn't take that long, since the code already exists in this forum.

Ohh: no smileys here either :(

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SIMAP is a boinc project, it uses phpBB

- and lacks integration of accounts,
- will never have "forum preferences" set centraly (ok. - Boinc now doesn't replicate them, but you could wish),
- fights with spammers (because not being able to grant post permission only to active crunchers)
There's always two sides.

Norbert

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This isn't a social community like MySpace. It's the support forum for a serious scientific project.

No need for preview- Edit message works fine - if ya can't fix it in 60 minutes, you ain't ever going to fix it.

Can't see a reason for attachments - and the security risks are way too great

Themes? Why? You can't read this?

How else would you subscribe to a thread other than email? By coming to the forum?

How many levels of quoting do you NEED? This supports at least 6

Good grief. this works - why waste a whole bunch of time recreating something with useless bells and whistles? If people would learn to use the forum preferences to sort threads, and messages within threads, cut out images, sigs and avatars, control the displayed thread length, and the other configrable features, you'd find the forums a lot easier to use.

OMG I'm agreeing with everything Angus says :) lol!!

The current system has a great many shortcomings, to list only a few:

No private messages
No preview function
No attachments
No user selectable theme
No thread subscriptions (closest is an e-mail if someone makes a post, only useful if you watch your e-mail all the time)
Very limited quoting

PVT messages, one it takes up valuable server room and puts an extra load on to the servers (imagine all those hundreds of people with PVT messages), it would be open to abuse (yes you can switch it off on most forums) just imagine some poor sole getting abused through PVT messages. The projects need to see everything that is happening on in the forum having PVT messages takes that away from them. (you want PVT messages then you can always sign up to someones team board and use PM there)

Preview function, there is a facility already on 1 BOINC project for this, all Rosetta need to do is ask that project for the code if they wanted to upgrade

Attachments, we don't need it again opens up the forum to a whole new issue (Copyright) The mods have enough to do already.

Themes, not needed it works fine as it is, the team can change the theme again if they want to.

No thread subscriptions so what are the emails I get every day in my inbox from the project if I subscribe??

quoting, works fine and dandy here, and as people have already said there is already the facility to put a quote in and say who it is from, most projects don't have this switched on.

And finally the forum code here is old its not up to date with the latest BOINC forum code as yet

Edit:

Forgot to say you don't run away from a problem you get it fixed, same as what phpbb are doing now by developing there new version of there boards to keep people happy. All it needs at BOINC is php devs to recode everything

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[/quote]

SIMAP is a boinc project, it uses phpBB - there's no one forcing Rosetta@Home to use the provided forum software.

The current system has a great many shortcomings, to list only a few:

No private messages
No preview function
No attachments
No user selectable theme
No thread subscriptions (closest is an e-mail if someone makes a post, only useful if you watch your e-mail all the time)
Very limited quoting

And did I mention no preview function? ;)[/quote]

This forum is simple and funtional..........all that is needed.

I don't even bother to read the forums in SIMAP because of the "non-BOINC" forum software, although I crunch for SIMAP.

If anyone is interested then go over to Pirates@Home there current mission is to play with the BOINC forum code

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Carl
Could you elaborate a little on what you envision for the teaming area of the forum? I mean, crued as it may be, why not create threads in the cafe with the team name at start of the subject line, and then a topic description? I know you're probably picturing something much more sophisticated, but wouldn't that be a rough draft of what you're suggesting? That way everyone could review, and participate, and perhaps find a team more to their liking or whatever.

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Running Microsoft's "System Idle Process" will never help cure cancer, AIDS nor Alzheimer's. But running Rosetta@home just might!
https://boinc.bakerlab.org/rosetta/

Carl
Could you elaborate a little on what you envision for the teaming area of the forum? I mean, crued as it may be, why not create threads in the cafe with the team name at start of the subject line, and then a topic description? I know you're probably picturing something much more sophisticated, but wouldn't that be a rough draft of what you're suggesting? That way everyone could review, and participate, and perhaps find a team more to their liking or whatever.

I think what he means is to have all the team talk in a forum section for teams so then each team can have there own thread, similar to SETI or QMC rather than hogging the cafe

Link to QMC forum Just makes it easier for people who don't want to look at team stuff, if there was a separate area then people could avoid it if they are not interested

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This isn't a social community like MySpace. It's the support forum for a serious scientific project. ....

I would say you are wrong, (apart from the serious science bit ;-)
It is a community (it's even called it)
https://boinc.bakerlab.org/rosetta/rah_community.php

and this area is the social area of the project,
Message boards
Converse with other participants on a wide range of topics
coupled with the naming and description of these forum sections. ?

The actual 'Support' area is the not particularly used Q&A section seperated away from here
Questions and answers
Get (or provide) advice about Rosetta@home
Set out and named and such.

Just because the project & member choose not to use the Q&A support area does not mean that this is not a community.

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Team mauisun.org

Carl
Could you elaborate a little on what you envision for the teaming area of the forum? I mean, crued as it may be, why not create threads in the cafe with the team name at start of the subject line, and then a topic description? I know you're probably picturing something much more sophisticated, but wouldn't that be a rough draft of what you're suggesting? That way everyone could review, and participate, and perhaps find a team more to their liking or whatever.

I think what he means is to have all the team talk in a forum section for teams so then each team can have there own thread, similar to SETI or QMC rather than hogging the cafe

Link to QMC forum Just makes it easier for people who don't want to look at team stuff, if there was a separate area then people could avoid it if they are not interested

Why should the project have to consume precious bandwidth and database space for team forums?

If the teams need a forum so badly, they can start their own.

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Proudly Banned from Predictator@Home and now Cosmology@home as well. Added SETI to the list today. Temporary ban only - so need to work harder :)



"You can't fix stupid" (Ron White)

its one section for all teams to use it keeps the clutter out of the rest of the boards

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Feet1st, I believe Nec of Fadbeens tried the Cafe his post`s were deleted for some reason. As UBT suggested a seperate section is ideal, you would know it`s purely team talk then.

Pirates has a section I like, though I wouldn`t make it postable by all. The "Announcement" section, I would like to see a section like this as I know a lot do not visit science in which can be found pertinent information as well as the highbrow talk. A seperate section in the forum for announcements by Admin would make it easier to find out what is going and avoid nights like when the new points system was put in. Not everyone goes to the news page, most, who visit, link directly to here.

We have a random mix of people and only three sections, two if you`re not into molecules and boing boings as in Science.

The admin need better badges too, quite often it is hard to discern who you`re talking to, it just doesn`t stand out until you look closely. I spoke with Ethan for quite a while realising he was a mod but failed to see the Dev tag for a long time.

If we boiled it down as Feet1st suggests, the Science area would be highbrow, few visit, the Cafe would be teams which leaves what...Crunching which would be full of all sorts and let`s face it most people look only at the top half dozen threads, so it`s first come first served. I may have enjoyed your thread but I missed it due to a busy night !

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Not all Czech`s bounce but I`d like to try with Barbar ;-)

Make no mistake This IS the TEDDIES TEAM.

Angus said

Why should the project have to consume precious bandwidth and database space for team forums?

Good question Angus !

Does the project want my machines, my money, my favour and my loyalty ?

Outside of here in other forums, it is thought that Seti and ex-Seti own this place and infact the project, I`m not saying this is true or that we should argue that point here. The crunchers are out there, rarely here, how many XS visitors were there ? Very few, they never had their own little bit of Rosetta so they kept out. It`s not a welcoming place and many teams will feel and act like mercenaries !

Just one machines bill for a month buy`s you plenty of space for a team forum.The Teddies, yes about 16 of us run a BIG forum, we get lost there really. We`re not rich infact it`s donated by one cruncher alone. I seriously do not think bandwidth and space is the problem. After all if Angus were to post a 1,000,000 post`s a night in here would the place fall down and crash ?

Keep people outside and they`ll never feel part of the family or give you wholehearted loyalty.


And this just about say`s it all.....
Angus said

If the teams need a forum so badly, they can start their own.

The attitude of "Yeah go on bogg off, we don`t need ya."

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Not all Czech`s bounce but I`d like to try with Barbar ;-)

Make no mistake This IS the TEDDIES TEAM.