RPGWW

All right, we mentioned this a while ago, but nothing's come of it yet, so a final poll. This'll be open for 3 days from the time of posting, and when it's done, that'll be the decision.

Testing: Keep or remove?

I say keep it. I'd rather not muddy up the Inn when I screw up my new sig.

Except, sigs should be automatically updated when you change? Unless someone fixed it so it doesn't?

I say nix it

Edit: Yep. I just checked again and it does change when you update your sig.

Just eat it.

(I don't care if it's cooold)

Cement shoes!

I'm surprised at you, Brian. I remember you used the Testing forum to show off some very cool HTML effects on ezBoard.

Which we couldn't do here anyway, because most HTML is disabled.

Apathy! It might still be nice to test out postrank stuff, or whatever else is not handlable by way of a post-edit. I dunno, I guess I don't see a reason to be rid of it.

I think the real strike against it is that it's completely redundant. You can't use it to test your sig without messing up with rest of the forum because sig changes are retroactive and universal, and that also goes for the other editable aspects of your stuff (like postrank).

However, I do suppose that while you're in the process of making things work that you wouldn't want to post a thread in spam or anything for the sheer purpose of making sure your new sig was working correctly. On the other hand, if you wanted to know if it was working, you could just look at any of your old posts...

How in the world are we supposed to edit our own postranks?

PriamNevhausten wrote:How in the world are we supposed to edit our own postranks?

Go to profiles? Anyone can do it from there now.

DM, you avatar is awesome.

Also, the reason I see to be rid of it is because it's useless. Superfluous forum is superfluous.

It's not just for testing avatars and sigs, but for getting people's opinions on them.

Which...can't be done through other means? I mean, I've always left my opinion in whatever thread I first see the avatar which is viable (hi DM!).

This isn't about the testing forum's usefulness, so much as what it can do and do so well that the rest of the forum just can't handle.

I've always seen the testing forum as superfluous, even on the old board.

If you really wanna show off or test your new avamatar, you can post an amusing thread in spamola~

Oh gods, nyoro~n :(

Delete it, sez I. It served its purpose.

*Grabs onto the Test Forum floor*
Noooo! Noooooo!
Don't take it away from me! I promise to use it more! I'll be good. Please! Nooooooo!

Muwahahaha!


Take the Testing forum away-pyo! Let us revel in Choark's misery-pyo! It is more evil that way-pyo!

This is a utilitarian question.

Keep: No one is harmed by keeping it, and some people actually benefit from it. Positive utility.
Remove: No one is really helped by removing it, and some people actually are harmed. Negative utility.

It seems to be clear.

You're overlooking something.

Keep: The threads and data stored on the testing forum remain part of the forum's database and are included in forum backups, consuming extra disk space, which costs money. Negative utility.

The testing forum is going to the great big pile of 1's and 0's in the sky in about four hours.

To be fair, no it doesn't, Brian. The cost of my plan is entirely independent of any conceivable level of hard drive or bandwidth usage we could get. Right now, I am allowed a total of 224.3 gigs of hard drive space and 2681 gigs of annual bandwidth before they start charging me more.

I stand corrected!

If all posts are changed retroactively now (As far as sigs and such), there's not a terribly huge point in keeping it.

Deleting it might actually discourage people from testing their new stuff. Like, who wants to create a spam topic for a change that might not actually take, no matter how you try to work the code? Even if it works, you now have a topic for not-a-damn-thing; and if it doesn't work then it's not-a-damn-thing-plus-brokenness. And who wants to make something like that? Not me. Plus, don't forget that postranks and avatars are not the only things that people have tested in the Testing forum--board code can be messed with, too, in order to learn ways to do things.

I'm with Zem. It doesn't hurt anyone, and there are those who find it useful. Why should we be compelled to destroy it?

Personally, I never used the test forum: I just edited my sig and made a random post somewhere and previewed it without posting.

There is no board code to test, though. phpBB is different from ezBoard in that it is actually documented. There are no hidden features of board code, and the only available HTML code is the HTML code that we explicitly allow.

And you have a point, but it's the opposite one from what you're intending to make, Priam, in that we don't even need any topics to test something anymore. Anything you might want to test is retroactive to every post, including sigs, so you don't need to make a new post to test anything.

Anyway, the results are in, and it's 30/70 in favor of removing it. I'll page through it to see if there's anything that needs archiving, and then I'll remove it.

I highly doubt things in the body of posts are retroactive.

But, while we're on the subject of HTML, I guess, it might be cool if the <a> tags actually worked. I guess they technically do work, but the href parameter gets deleted when the post is applied.

So does this mean the Newcomers forum is the place where folks not accustomed to our norms ask about common sig and avatar size conventions? Because, like, the Testing forum has been used, and recently. Several times.

PriamNevhausten wrote:So does this mean the Newcomers forum is the place where folks not accustomed to our norms ask about common sig and avatar size conventions?

Why not?

Priam, sigs are retroactive, because sigs aren't in the body of posts. The forum parsing software saves signatures and post test separately, and retrieves each signature as it is needed upon displaying the post, placing the signature text in the post after the post text. This is how I was able to disable showing signatures to people that are logged out. It doesn't grab signature text on posting and insert it into the post body; thus why when you edit a post with your signature in it, your signature isn't displayed in the post editing field.

And HTML a tags work fine for me.

Double-posting so I can disable HTML and still show you what I mean. This is the relevant part of the post display code in the forum's template.

Code: Select all

            <td valign="top" nowrap="nowrap">{postrow.QUOTE_IMG} {postrow.EDIT_IMG} {postrow.DELETE_IMG} {postrow.IP_IMG}</td>
         </tr>
         <tr>
            <td colspan="2"><hr /></td>
         </tr>
         <tr>
            <td colspan="2"><span class="postbody">{postrow.MESSAGE}{postrow.SIGNATURE}   </span><span class="gensmall">{postrow.EDITED_MESSAGE}</span>   </td>
         </tr>
      </table></td>


Thus, when the value stored in postrow.SIGNATURE is altered, it's altered retroactively in every post on the board, as the board grabs the signatures on display. It does this because it requires far less database space than it would to store the signature a given poster has with every single post they make.