Forum Suggestions and Feedback Thread

[Sun Fin]

A sticky would be lovely. Anyone can put that together.

Done

I also finally learnt how to use the URL bar at the top!

I'm not sure what sort of competition might work, though I'm definitely open to suggestions. We've tried to reboot SotM a few times, but the English Three Kingdoms community as a whole is smaller and it seems some momentum is also required for the voting process to pick up. Maybe there's a feature where I can just enable it for people who have been members of the site for x amount of time where they can enter their own title. I haven't checked through all of the board's newer features in this area.

Yeah no doubt SoTM has had its day in the sun. I hadn't got so far as to think of an actual idea!

[Sun Fin]

What is up with what seems to be a new breed of bots; they're posting one line things like: 'I agree with you'. There seems to be no advertising attached to them? Anyone have any idea of their purpose?

[Aaron.K]

What is up with what seems to be a new breed of bots; they're posting one line things like: 'I agree with you'. There seems to be no advertising attached to them? Anyone have any idea of their purpose?

They can potentially have links in their signatures or in places on the profile where a url can be placed to a website (it doesn't work when these options have been disabled, but the bot program is not usually smart enough to notice they're missing, or they just skip that process entirely if the option is not there). It's sort of a sneaky way of spamming sites without openly doing it, in an attempt to not get the posts deleted on sight. Though they're just as easy to spot as brazen spambots.

[James]

They can potentially have links in their signatures or in places on the profile where a url can be placed to a website (it doesn't work when these options have been disabled, but the bot program is not usually smart enough to notice they're missing, or they just skip that process entirely if the option is not there). It's sort of a sneaky way of spamming sites without openly doing it, in an attempt to not get the posts deleted on sight. Though they're just as easy to spot as brazen spambots.

Actually, one thing which has become common is for the bot (or some associated person) to log in sometime down the road and add the signature and links, presumably going unnoticed as the post is no longer being read by forum members.

[Lady Wu]

There is another type of spambots that are less obvious. For example, I just killed a bot in World History who posted a general historical fact, and unless you were following the discussion (or out hunting spambots) you wouldn't have thought too much about it.

Often these bots start by putting their own account name in the signature, probably to test if their signature permission is active.

[Tarrot]

I may have asked this before, and I'm not sure if its possible, but is it possible to have the search feature recognize 2 letter words and not automatically dismiss them, for here and the Sim? There's plenty of times when I'm looking for, putting random words together, Tang Xi, and Xi will be dismissed and it'll only search for Tang.

[James]

I may have asked this before, and I'm not sure if its possible, but is it possible to have the search feature recognize 2 letter words and not automatically dismiss them, for here and the Sim? There's plenty of times when I'm looking for, putting random words together, Tang Xi, and Xi will be dismissed and it'll only search for Tang.

This is a limitation of the phpBB software. If I remember correctly I *can* set it to recognize two letter words, but the size of the database (both here and at SimRTK) basically makes it near impossible to create the search table (at least without a dedicated server), not to mention the search table becomes absolutely massive (which in turn slows search considerably). This is due to English words like 'of', 'if', 'or'.

It would be great if they could offer a feature that allowed those meaningless (at least as far as search is concerned) common words to be excluded, while still allowing search results for the likes of 'zi', 'li', 'hu', 'lu'.

[Sun Fin]

I've started receiving two emails everytime a topic gets posted too. I'm not entirely sure if this is a glitch on my phone, my email or something has gone wrong with the board itself but I though I'd best let you know James.

[James]

I've started receiving two emails everytime a topic gets posted too. I'm not entirely sure if this is a glitch on my phone, my email or something has gone wrong with the board itself but I though I'd best let you know James.

Too? Has anyone else experienced this problem? Do you mind checking your settings to see which email is used on your account and whether it is being forwarded? You might also try disabling the notifications and re-enabling them.

[Sun Fin]

If I was to start compiling a list of all Three Kingdom related sources (both online and in hard copy) split in to different sections (ie: Introductions, Overviews, Biographical, Military History, maps) and write a line or 2 about the source in question would others find it helpful? Also would people be willing to suggest and write a line or 2 about sources that I haven't already found/read?