State of the forum

[Vladimir Panteleev]

On Wednesday, 10 April 2013 at 16:25:03 UTC, ixid wrote:
> The forum has a number of issues, is there anything practical 
> that can be done to address them? A forum should really work.

You can collect more information about the issues you're 
experiencing, and file an issue, or even better, send a pull 
request to the forum's GitHub repository:

https://github.com/CyberShadow/DFeed

> Regular forum errors (XHR error)
> Posts disappearing after getting stuck in a waiting for message 
> response loop

I have not experienced these issues. The next time it happens, 
please make a note of the exact time and the post you're 
attempting to send, and file an issue or contact me directly.

> Broken up threads with the same title

The core issue is caused by Mailman rewriting Message-IDs. I know 
how to implement a workaround, but it requires reengineering the 
database (I need to store two IDs for each message, and account 
for both when reconstructing threads). This is planned for the 
next major update.

> Often has layout errors when loading that require a refresh

Which web browser? If the HTML doesn't change (and I don't know 
why it would), it sounds like a bug with your browser's layout 
engine.

> Works poorly/buggily on mobile browers (Android Stock/Android 
> Chrome)

Please list some specific issues. Note that there is a limit to 
the post width, since many mail/news clients send text in a 
non-reflowable (pre-wrapped) format.

> Also the user habit due to the combined use of the forum as an 
> email discussion and as a website forum of repeating the whole 
> of a post, often to respond with a one-liner. Posts without the 
> whole email/context repeated receive complaints that people do 
> not know what it is in response to.

I'll implement some warnings when a user attempts to post a 
message not conforming to netiquette.