Scott =)

On 7/23/2018 at 8:10 AM, dena said:

Looks like I am directed to My Journal if I am in the View Journals view. However, if I am in the View Latest Entries view and choose My Journal, I am not directed to my own. It appears to be an issue in the program and not something I can control. I'll report the issue so that it can be fixed in an upcoming release.

I figured out how to update the "My Journals" link in the main menu so that it'll always bring you to the right place, regardless of what page you were on.

If anyone notices any further issues with that menu item, please let me know!

Update:

We made some adjustments late last week:

1. Posts by new members will show up immediately. They no longer require moderator approval.
2. Members cannot use the chat boards until their email address is verified. This mainly applies to new members, but would also apply to existing members who update their email address on file.
3. New members can only post 3 times in the first 24 hours after initially visiting the boards.

So far, so good. So no Captcha for now 

If we see spammer activity spike back up again, we'll consider additional measures to help keep them at bay.

On 7/12/2018 at 4:01 PM, Get Marwood & I said:

1. Porcupine48's profile page says he last logged in two hours ago, yet he is online now and posting. I am logged in when I see this, not offline.

I see that certain users in my "Online Users" view are listed as "signed in Anonymously". I'm not sure what that means, or how people do it... but I'm assuming it's connected to what you're describing.

I've reached out to the boards vendor to see if they have any advice.

On 7/12/2018 at 4:01 PM, Get Marwood & I said:

2. I just shared posts with Lazyboy in a thread.  At the time, his post was time stamped 'just now' but my subsequent post, which quoted his, showed his post as 14 minutes ago. I've seen this in other places too.

The time stamp is important to sales threads so any indications that it is not accurate should be looked at. It would be more helpful to return to actual timings if possible. 'Just now', 'an hour ago' etc doesn't help anyone. 

The boards shows "just now" for recently created content, and I don't think there's a way to change that. The good news is that hovering over the "just now" text with your mouse will show you the actual date/time, on desktop anyway. I don't see a way to do it on mobile.

Also: I don't see a setting to make it show seconds. Just day/hour/minute.

On 7/12/2018 at 4:01 PM, Get Marwood & I said:

One other point, on my mobile phone the functions at the top have all shrunk considerably in size, which makes them difficult to select. 

Is your experience typically that you try to click an option and nothing happens, or you try to click one thing but get another? Maybe it's a mix...?

What specific device are you using? And have you customized your zoom or text size from the default settings?

Thanks for reporting these things and sorry for the super slow response.

37 minutes ago, BlowUpTheMoon said:

The link referenced in this post is broken.   If the above link isn't correct, it page 15, the FT88 post.

That's another example of a link that's pointing to an unusual URL structure: http://boards.collectors-society.com/showflat.php?Cat=0&Board=comicgen&Number=1185068&Searchpage=2&Main=1149529&Words=ft88&topic=&Search=true#Post1185068

It looks like it's pointing to some kind of search result page rather than a normal thread URL. The redirects don't seem to support it.

I found the thread by looking at the list of topics on his profile page, though: https://www.cgccomics.com/boards/topic/59816-1000-dells-1940-1950/

Yes, that's one of the options we're exploring 

The delicate part is making sure that those types of obstacles aren't too hard for real people. Those puzzles can lead to a lot of frustration / complaints / etc, but newer versions of the technology are better and could make that a non-issue.

Heads up: we've made some additional updates to restrict spam activity, which I announced here: https://www.cgccomics.com/boards/topic/436839-update-on-spam-threads/

Based on the changes in that announcement, we also reverted the change I mentioned in this thread (only allowing new members to post once in the first 24 hours) back to the old value.

Stay tuned! 

Note: You could still see spam thread(s) if a spammer created an account in the past and has already made other posts with it. Possible, but unlikely.

Due to the recent spike in spam activity, we've made an update to the boards that hides posts from new members until a moderator has reviewed and approved them. Once a moderator has approved a post by someone, that person will be able to post freely from that point forward, without a moderator needing to intervene.

Good News: That means you shouldn't see any more Korean / Chinese / etc spam threads! 

Bad News: Making legitimate new users wait to have their posts published isn't our favorite thing in the world.

We're working on other solutions to prevent robots from creating accounts / make posts at all, but those updates will  take longer to get done. Once they're done though, we should be able to remove the restriction on new members and put things back the way they were before 

Thanks for your patience and for doing such a good job of reporting the spammers to us!

Scott

Hey guys!

Thanks for the heads up on this. The spammers who have joined/posted in the last 30 minutes or so have been banned.

We're looking into several options for blocking these spam posts proactively instead of reactively. In the meantime, I've adjusted settings so that new accounts can only post once in the 24 hour period after their chat boards account is initially created. This should help limit the amount of spam threads in the short term, but the downside is that real users will run into this same restriction if they try to post more than once in the first day  

Hopefully we can get a better solution in place fairly quickly so that we don't have to limit posts from new accounts so severely.

Until a better, more permanent solution is in place, you'll probably continue to see spam threads. I can't promise that someone will be available to block them 24 hours a day, but please continue to report them and they'll be cleaned up as quickly as possible.

Thanks for your patience!

Scott

8 minutes ago, Get Marwood & I said:

How will they know they exist?

It's possible that there are "zero posters" who have been chatting via PM for years, long before we were hiding any profiles. Unlikely, but possible

5 minutes ago, Get Marwood & I said:

Zero posters have always been invisible - Arch once told us that thousands of new people were joining every month. When I asked where they all were, he said that they were not visible until they posted.

This was true in many places, but zero posters were unintentionally still findable in private messages. That's what we've now locked down.

The logic I described above may seem a little complicated, but the goal is relatively simple and straightforward: Keep people private until they do something that implies they're OK with being public.

If I send you a private message, it's implied that I'm OK with receiving a response. So the general objective was to prevent zero posters from getting messages, but we made an exception for the 3rd scenario I described above.

Let me try to further clarify.

There are 3 different things you can do with private messages:

1. Start a new PM conversation
2. Add someone to an existing PM conversation
3. Reply to an existing PM conversation

Lets say your desired recipient has never posted anything. You'll be unable to do #1 or #2 with that person going forward, but #3 will still work. So if you already have an open conversation with someone who has never posted, you'll be able to continue it.

You would be able to do all 3 with people who have posted.

---

Now let's say YOU'RE a person who has never posted anything. The same rules apply; IE, you can do #1, #2, and #3 with people who have posted, but only #3 with people who have not posted.

For privacy reasons, members are now hidden on the chat boards until they make a post in the forums, journals, or galleries. They're hidden from the following areas:

1. Search
2. Online users
3. Profile pages
4. Private messages

Members with 0 posts CAN send private messages to other members and receive replies, so existing PM conversations should be unaffected. But going forward, you won't be able to start a new PM conversation with a member until they post in one of those areas.

Thanks!
Scott

I've been seeing those issues/errors again. I've reopened the support ticket.

9 minutes ago, BlowUpTheMoon said:

These were the errors I was getting for the last ten minutes:

Thanks! I saw the same errors, and entered a support ticket for the boards host. I don't think this is related to the redirects.

They say it's fixed now. Let me know if you see anything else.

38 minutes ago, BlowUpTheMoon said:

Also, that GIF isn't present in the post.

It's not present in the OP, but it's present in a different post in that thread (halfway down on the 1st page)

When you post an embedded link to a THREAD / TOPIC, the preview seems to pull an image from within that thread (not necessarily the 1st post). I'm not sure of the exact logic it uses to determine which image to use.

If you post an embedded link to a specific post, the preview doesn't seem to include an image even if that post included one. Ex:

47 minutes ago, BlowUpTheMoon said:

This is weird as it's a "new" link.

Check out the first link in the first post of this thread:

 

Like @thunsicker mentioned, it looks like the content of that post is copy/pasted from old iterations of that thread. If you look at the 5th annual thread, 4th annual thread, 3rd annual thread, etc you'll see that they point to the same old URL. That URL may have been valid when it was initially created, but its an atypical URL structure and the redirect engine doesn't seem to know what to do with it.

 I've updated the link in the 6th annual thread to point directly to the correct place on the new boards, so this won't be an issue in future years

10 minutes ago, thunsicker said:

Used to.  Haven't tried recently.  But almost every time I used google (with site:boards.collectors-society.com or site:www.cgccomics.com/boards) it would take me to the home page of the boards.

Cool. Let me know if you still have that same experience moving forward.

Our testing showed that links in search engines and on the boards are redirecting much better now, but I'm sure there will still be a few links here and there with issues (as described in OP).

2 hours ago, thunsicker said:

I noticed quite a few when I did a google search for old threads that would redirect to the home page of the boards.  

Are you saying you used to see this? Or you still do now?

28 minutes ago, Jerkfro said:

I get random 502 errors when clicking on some old links. I'll try to provide some examples

Anyone else seeing the same thing?

Examples would be great!

Once you encounter a link that errors, it would be interesting to know whether it errors consistently or inconsistently for you. For example, if you click the link again after seeing the error, does it error again?

I'm guessing you'll find that it's inconsistent. I think those errors are more a symptom of general boards performance than something being "wrong" with redirects.

Changes have been made recently to boost performance (particularly for logged in users), but there is still room for improvement and we're actively exploring several options.

Scott

This is fixed!

The boards host implemented a fix for old broken links on the Chat Boards. While most types of old links were already redirecting to the equivalent URL on the new boards correctly, links to SPECIFIC POSTS on the old boards were not redirecting reliably until this fix was made.

For example: if you click links in this old post, you'll wind up on the correct page of the new boards even though the links point to old URLs: https://www.cgccomics.com/boards/topic/89717-updated-probation-list-only-no-discussions/?do=findComment&comment=7306829

If you notice issues related to old links, please let us know by replying to this thread! That could be anything from links bringing you to the wrong place, redirects being slow, or any errors you might see 

---

A couple quick notes:

• There ARE situations where old links will not redirect to the content you expect, such as deleted posts or threads. Not much we can do about that.
• You may encounter links that bring you to the NGC Chat Boards or PMG Chat Boards, if that's where the relevant content now resides.
• We noticed emoticons are not displaying correctly in many old posts. We're working with the boards host to see if this can be resolved, so stay tuned.

Scott

The boards host must think that more people want the list to be sorted on recency than alphabetical, because they're generally trying to build something that people will like and find useful. I see pros and cons for both options.

Galleries are more prominent in the main menu now. We've also made the 3 most recent gallery images more prominent in the sidebar on a variety of pages.

The boards do not have a built in method for searching within one thread. You CAN limit the search to one specific subforum though, and you can also filter by date created, last updated,  number of replies, number of views, etc. Check out the Advanced Search for the full set of features.