I've recently created an account for the forums here. This place is not unlike MANY boards I've become a member of, so I'm pretty familiar with the ins & outs. I've read every bit of the Help topics.

I'm logged in, I have cookies enabled, yet I seem to be unable to make a reply to a blog. I also seem to be unable to view a list of members.

What am I missing here? If this messages posts as it should, well, then, I'm at a loss.

Well, it's clear I can create a post, and I can reply, but for some reason I wasn't able to reply to one of the columnist's blog posts (Specifically, "Old Folks Boogie.")

I'm wondering if I ran up against a character limit (it was a long reply).

If so, I should have received an alert. I didn't.

I submitted the post, and it just disappeared. Could it be awaiting approval before being displayed?

IIRC, posts to blogs must be approved by the blog host. Someone correct me if I'm wrong.

BTW, welcome to TalkBack. Hope to see a lot of you in the future!!

JRM

HmmTest...

Will my personal photo (100 x 115, .jpg, < 8 KB) show up now? I haven't seen photos of anyone else, yet. Control Panel has them (and avatars, and signatures, and smilies) enabled.

[url="java script:add_smilie("] [/url]


(After previewing...things seem to be a little wonky here)

Welcome Phos....!



I do know that there are certain things you can't do here until you have 'X' amount of posts. I'm sure a moderator will check in here soon and provide specific answers to your questions.

Ahh, OK. Now that I know about the "minimum-posts-before-becoming-vetted" rule, I can understand. The problem is though, as far as I've explored, this fact isn't expressed anywhere in the forum documentation.

Mo' Info = Mo' Bettah! But as an admin on some other forums, I know that you guys here may not have access to add that sort of info.

Believe me, I know about the myriad problems that can come with Forum redesign, or from trying to migrate to a new version or to a completely different engine. We've tried to do this twice on the Adobe product forums. You want a nightmare? Think about Adobe trying to merge their existent forums with those they acquired after the Macromedia merger. Both had enormous databases, huge userbases, and were running on two completely different engines.

<Mr. Rogers mode>"Can you say 'horrific disaster'?"</Mr. Rogers mode>

---insert trembling, nail-biting, beaten-down admin gif image here---

Oh, and thanks for the welcome. Here's wishing for a speedy tune-up here!

Cheers!

Welcome Phos.....I'm curious about something. Why would you want to post a picture of yourself? I know of only one poster who has done that.

For one very good reason:

Photos (as opposed to cartoon avatars, or pictures of your dog/cat/car/back yard) go a long way toward reminding each other that we aren't just faceless participants, that there are actual humans on the other side of the electron stream.

Let's see if I have enough juice to post an image within this post:
[img]http://home.comcast.net/%7Ephosphor-digital/bbs/MeForPresident.gif[/img]

---insert big winkie smilicon here---

Oops...seems the board either doesn't want to parse the tilde character in my Comcast server space URL, or I don't have enough juice yet to make an image appear.

It's nice to know you care.

I created that image just before the 2002 election.

I figured I couldn't do any worse than to explicitly make as many things wrong with the banner as possible. At least my foibles were out there for all to view and criticise.

---winkie image here--

(Jeebers, this board needs some help. I hate to jump right in and complain about the new digs, but I've never been on ANY forum where even the default stuff like inserting smilies didn't work for new users)

Welcome to Lancaster

It ain't about "Welcome to Lancaster"

It's about less-than-attentive board management and enabling controls that put manageable power into participants' hands.

Oh, waitaminnit...

---insert LaughingCon image here---

You inserted the dunce smilie so something must work.


I couldn't get my fancy dog avatar until 500 posts.

The lack of info is all part of the initiation - as are name calling and questioning agendas on your first few posts. (slightly sarcastic)


Welcome!



edit:



http://talkback.lancasteronline.com/index....82&#entry295682

I can't see it on my end. Ridiculous.I dunno, that sounds a little like some high-handed insularity to me, and quite frankly, compared to many this forum is barely busy enough to grab and keep very many long-term visitors. 500 posts just to get your avatar to appear? Even more ridiculouserish!How is the lack of info about the way things work here (or don't work, as the case may be) supposed to be construed as welcoming to newcomers? I don't get it...No problem there. I've got about 15 years of 'net use under my belt. I'll put my flamethrower up against the grizzliest of provocateurs.Now that's a sentiment I can cotton to. Thanks!

Have you tried inserting the image using the file attachment feature (2 boxes down in the replying window) or are you cutting a pasting an address. (Sorry I can't remember the proper term right now but hopefully you get what I mean.)

I tried using the image insertion tool provided for us near the center of the formatting bar above the message composition window. I know BB Code well enough that I could've just coded it in manually, but I figured since I don't know all the little peculiarities of the way this forum works, I'd use it to make sure the insertion was hunky dory. Imagine my surprise when I find out I'm not allowed to (see the results?) until I reach some arbitrarily set number of posts.

As for the "Add Attachment" function...I remember seeing it once last night, but now I don't.

To be honest, I'd rather be able to manually code pure HTML/CSS to format my messages, but I can kind of understand why it's turned off here. I can live with the BB Code, as long as does what it says on the tin.


OK...at least that's cleared up. But in the case of the reply I posted last night, it looks to me like either Ferguson just doesn't pay any attention to approving replies, or else his entries receive so little attention that--as of this writing---there's only been one reply to all of his blog entries.

That's discouraging and a little sad, either way.

I have almost 15 years of Internet experience, also....plus I can spell the

word...."KNOW".



It matters not on here. You must actually look at the joining date to see how long a person has been here. Some who have the most posts on TalkBack have been here only a few years. They dedicate a lot of time to this board. Be patient. Soon you will have all the posting rights available.



Welcome.

Wouldn't it be nice to have a place where eveyone has the same control options without having to "earn" our stripes. What is with this post? Poor Phos wants to come aboard and be a contributor, and he has to wait until he is deemed "worthy" Sorry Phos. Hope they change this mess.

You just keep on posting and before you know it.....you can post pictures.

Excellent. But can you spot visual and grammatical satire at 15 paces? I have to wonder, because you didn't pick on me for "Presidant" while you were at it.

I guess it doesn't help my status if most of the posts I've made have been in this section of the forum. From what I can gather, they aren't counted toward one's total post count.

No you can't, I still can't post photos! Any photos you might have seen by BAG-17 were done by my daughter. Who hovered over the key board and "worked her magic" and there it was. Of course Mom learned nothing!!
So, No, you can't post photos!!

Something else about the permissions granted here that I'm not quite clear about:

Must I also reach a certain number of posts in order to be able to start new topics in many of the sections here? Most of them (haven't visited them all) seem to forbid me from doing so.

Also, there are a whole bunch of topics I wouldn't mind replying to, but so many of them are locked. What's the reason for this?

For example, I in the "Recipes" section I wanted to post a link to sources for wine yeast in the "Hard Champagne Cider" thread. Nope...I cannae do it, Captain; it's locked down tighter than a matted dog's belly.

It just seems I'm missing something about the definition of user friendliness and the encouragement of ongoing participation with this forum.

I think you do need to have a certain number of post to start a new topic. Not sure how many, but I don't think it's alot. Threads are locked after 48 hours of inactivity. I forget the reason for this. I'll see if I can find it.

I'm getting tired of sighing about this. A condition of use this important ought to be writ large, somewhere...and should be presented onscreen during the sign-up/confirmation process, at the very least.I can't for the life of me reckon any good, logical reason for that (though I can think of some good reasons NOT to do this). For example, I just P.M.'ed the user "BeingReal" S/He asked a question a while back about how to resize photos.Yes, I realize the discussion is kind of old, but I noticed that a good answer was never provided. I could've provided all the help s/he needed. Couldn't post to the thread because it's locked. I'm really interested in hearing the reason.Well, as I mentioned before, it seems that posts to this section of the forum aren't counted toward total post count. So far, most of my activity has been in this section, because I'm trying to get a handle on how things are done here.

I'm not much for going round and round arguing politics; and there seems to be a lot of that here. But I would like to discuss other topics, perhaps even start a few threads, as a sort of way to introduce myself and let others know about the things I'm interested in. Take the "Hard Champagne Cider" thread I spoke about above, for example. I can't reply with a bit of relevant info because the thread is locked down, so I get no post count for that. Since my post count is low, I can't start a topic. That feels like a kind of "we're-gonna-make-it-hard-for-you-to-participate" Catch-22 death spiral to me.

To all the long-timers here:
Look, I don't want to sound like my only contribution here is to complain about how things work (or don't). As a 10+ year participant/mentor on the hugely popular Adobe forums, I've done my share of chastizing new visitors to our "house" there who make their entrance with both guns blazing, folks who have failed to do any reading first or who no regard for established protocols. We have an analogy for that: It's like being invited into someone's home, tracking muddy boots all over the place and telling the host they ought to blow out a wall and redecorate. It's just not a cool thing to do. So I'm mindful of that.

But, having read most of the documentation here, and having explored the way these forums operate, I can't recollect any forum I've ever frequented in which there seemed to be so many roadblocks being thrown up to get in the way of comfortable, intuitive user participation, compared to this one. Making things as smooth as possible is especially important where newcomers like myself are concerned. If newcomers don't feel welcomed, either by the technology or the other members, they're not likely to stick around. Not very conducive to the continued vitality and growth of an online community, is it?

Having said that, though, I'm perfectly willing to engage in dialogue with the folks who are in charge of administering this place. It would be worth discussing how things could be made more friendly for all visitors. I do have some technical and sociological experience in this area, and would be happy to share what I've learned over the past 15 years or so.

All anyone has to do is ask.

Cheers.

Unfortunately for you Phos, you came to TalkBack after the actions of a few (and I mean very few) ruined things for all newbies. Those of us who've been around a while will know of what I speak. I know the mods made some considerable changes to the forum quite a while ago to try to alleviate the problems they were having with a couple of people who were constantly signing up with new usernames. The mods were trying to keep these two people from doing damage to the forum and the participating members.

You may want to try contacting the mods to see if they'd be willing to loosen the reigns, so to speak. But it's entirely up to you.



JRM

I think you need 10 posts to use the pm function.



I think 10 posts may be needed to start a topic as well.



Your smileys do come through so I don't know where the prob is with that on you side.



Try to post some stuff in three different topics and you've made your ten post minimum.

I doubt the mods would be willing to change the controls that have been put in place.

The main problem was actually a single poster who was attempting to do strange things by posting code and other goodies to gain access to people's personal information. The poster continued to attack the board by registering under different aliases.

Hence the lock down of features and tight controls on posting.

ISn't it odd that said poster found the resize photo and wanted to help by PM'ing Being ReaL Yet didn't find the stipulations regarding post requirements for posting pics and starting topics.



seems a bit peculiar

Oh, now, don't be so hard on the newbie. His agenda at least so far seems to me to be figuring out the board and not bashing dems or repubs.



Where are the stipulations at anyway?

That type of exploit can't be carried out using BB Code. So that's part of the equation is bricked in.

And though I haven't yet gone to the website of the creators of this forum's software to examine what capbilities it has under the hood, here's something I do know:

Most modern Forum software--where it will allow users to use HTML--almost always will offer the administrators a way to enable the use of only the specified set of tags of their choosing, and a way to disallow any malicious scripting.

However, that doesn't prevent a clever dick from posting a BB Code link to a site which will then attempt to work some further nasty tricks, as delivered by a site other than this one.

All this to say that the reason why 99% of all phishing scams and scripting exploits (duping users into installing malware) work is because of (and I mean no offense) user ignorance and/or greed and/or insatiable curiosity in the face of encountering any of a number of well-publicised pitfalls. Called social engineering, this type of trickery is the reason SPAM works, and keeps on working. If people didn't click through unsolicited email links for fake Rolexes, and Prada handbags, and no-prescription drugs, etc. it would effectively end the practice because it wouldn't be profitable. But hey...people are curious, greedy beasts.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_engine..._%28security%29

It's really pretty simple: If you aren't reasonably sure that you know and and can trust the party posting or sending you a link, just don't bloody click on it.

Um, why exactly are you here? We didn't call the forum repair line.

It's a nice change from the kindergarten "debates" going on elsewhere though.

Before you get your conspiracy-scented panties in a wad, Buff, understand this:

Nowhere in my digging did I see any info regarding the restriction on when users could use the Private Messaging system. I just gave it a try, not long after I signed up. And it worked, and I got a pretty quick reply.

My first attempt at a post was in reply to Ferguson's "Everybody Knows This is Nowhere" entry under the Old Folks Boogie blog. My long and well-considered reply didn't appear after I submitted it. I tried sending a note to "LancasterOnline", ignorantly expecting that I might be sending a request for help to a problem I didn't see addressed anywhere I looked...neither in this Help section nor in the Forum's documentation.

After receiving a "Mailbox Full" alert, I P.M.ed a user to ask whether they--or another LOL Forum-savvy member--might provide some more specific answers. That person and I traded a couple of P.M.s. They suggested that I try to P.M. "area man"/Palmer, who I knew from reading was a past admin on these forums. I just received a reply from him this morning.

Simple, and innocent.

And cripes, except for my initiating a dialogue here about how things work, and why they work the way they do, getting any detailed help without "bothering" anyone is about as easy as perfoming a T-Rex root canal.

Now then...it was with a similar measures of innocense and helpfulness, that--during my perusal of older posts--that I saw BeingReal's plea for image resizing help.

Let's stop for a boastful, but true, fact: I AM LORD KING GOD of PHOTOSHOP

So, I sent her (I think it's a her, anyway) a P.M. offering to guide her through it using whatever software she had access to, and an explanation of how I found her old post and why I was sending her a private message. She replied, thanking me for the offer, but declining for now, because of some bad experiences she'd had because of the bastard interloper(s) who had previously been tearing up the sanity and sanctity of these forums.

That sort of chaos just isn't my nature, nor modus operandi.

Now, I can be a brilliantly helpful, friendly, thought-provoking asset to the established userbase here, or not.

Gnash at me with ill-informed aspersions of nefarious behavior, and don't be surprised if I tear you a new universe. I'd rather not feel cause to do that.

I prefer instead to yack about food & drink, music, the sciences, TV, books, art, computers, gadgets, and curiously neato stuff in general.

Click on my username, check my profile and go see my crappy little MySpace presence if you'd like to get a better handle on who I am. And who I am online is who I am in real life. No façade, no fakery, no bu||$hit.

Dig it?

So you think. However, it can be done.

checked out your myspace page, just the front page. you were so disappointed that you couldn't post your photo here...is that you on your page with the horns holding a baby the the exposed heart?

I didn't go deeper than the first page. that myspace stuff is too creepy for me (an old broad and all). some things are meant to be personal.

I'm catching some "British" phrases in your posts. Is that where you're from? or is this really Brittany Spears?

Because I chose to walk in the door after exploring the front end of LNP's newly redesigned site. My daily newspaper commanded me to, and I obeyed.Clearly, somebody needs to make some noise about how things could be MUCH better here. Are you familiar with the old tale about the Emperor's new clothes? I'm the 49-year-old kid who's just the newbie fellow to kick this place in the pants!

Boy is that the truth. I think they should just put up a link to the previous thread on the same issue. It would save a lot of time posting and reading the same junk all over again for the umpteenth time.

You are not the first and won't be the last. Hence part of the reason there are so many rules.

MY oh my, you are an exceedingly curious one, aren't you? That was a portrait done for me done by an old friend who has since passed away. I like it because it's provocative. Of course, like most people, I only have one picture of myself, and that's the one. Seriously, though...If you would have explored a bit, you'd've seen another dozen or more photos of me, taken at various times in my life. Less than half of them show me viciously biting the hearts out of naked infants. If you won't go see for yourself you'll just have to trust me on this one."Old" is a relative term. Some days I feel like I'm 95, others, 25. All my aches and enthusiasm manages to average me out to my actual age of 49. "Personal" is also a relative attribute. If I consider something so personally sacred, I wouldn't post it online. I have learned a little bit of discretion. What I post there are things I'm happy to reveal to people. And by your blanket "creepy" assessment of all things concerning MySpace, it sounds to me like all the "predator/sex perv/bullying" horror stories being fed to all of us by the media has grabbed you, hook, line, sinker, worm and all. That crap makes for eyeball-grabbing sensationalistic news, but it's hardly the whole truth, not by a long stretch.

Want some truth? Here's the story of my involvement with MySpace (not that I should really have to explain, but it might help counter some of the negative vibe you catch from it):

Back in March of 2006 I advertised a guitar amp for sale on the Lancaster CraigsList. A nice 25-year-old kid--grad student at TempleU.--answered my advert, and came up to check it out. His amp was dead, and his band had a bunch of gigs coming up. He played, he liked, he bought, and we went to have a couple tall frosty pops to cement the deal. I asked if he had a website, and he gave me his MySpace address.

I went to his band's page, listened to some of their original music, and really liked it. I wanted to post a compliment to their page, but discovered I had to register as a MySpace user first. So I did--using an obscure web mail address I employ for just such a situation. Then I got distracted by work and promptly forgot about it. A coup[le months later I was checking that obsure webmail account's Inbox, and discovered the confirmation email sent by MySpace's administration.

I signed up, and set about building my page. Tossed on some photos, poured in a couple old stories I'd written, created some custom graphics to trick the whole thing out. Then I set about exploring the MySpace universe.

In the past 22 months or so I've discovered some amazing music by relatively unknown artists, stumbled upon the pages built by old friends I hadn't talked to in 20-30 years and longer; had terrific, long-missed old friends contact me out of the blue. I've been working on some long-distance recording projects with a bass player from one of my old bands, and with a drummer from one of his old bands...were all geographically separated by 1000's of miles. I've gotten a few dozen graphic design jobs from people I've had MySpace-initiated confabs with. I helped prevent the son of one of my best friends from dropping out of school, and later, from possibly attempting suicide.

Pretty fulfilling from such a "creepy" site, eh?You'd have a better clue about that if you'd only deign to pay attention to what I posted on my MySpace page.Oh, my. I hope you don't shave your lags with that rapier. Best go buy some goo instead.

Hey you wondered, I told. I throw in the snarky replies gratis.

Phos...I like you

I'm one year younger than you.

I'll check out your page soon. All those computer bugs and all.

you crack me up.

We needed someone like you here.

thanks baby!

Upon a little deeper investigation...

I thought maybe because I make extensive use of Firefox's AdBlock extension, I was being prevented from viewing the emoticons. I disable it, but it makes no difference. I have a look at the actual source URL for the emoticons.

For the example of:
http://talkback.lancasteronline.com/style_...fault/dunce.gif

I enter that address in my browser, and the following alert is returned:

Forbidden
You don't have permission to access /style_emoticons/default/dunce.gif on this server.

I try to view the Memberlist--No go. I get a warning. Shoot, I can't even click on my own username without getting the same alert:


Board Message
Sorry, an error occurred. If you are unsure on how to use a feature, or don't know why you got this error message, try looking through the help files for more information.


The error returned was:
Sorry, but you do not have permission to use this feature. If you are not logged in, you may do so using the form below if available.



I feel soooo much love here!

)

Your browser is probably not sending a referer. There is a no hotlinking rule in effect that will block anything without a talkback referer.



25 posts will clear that up for you.

Nice bit of serendipity with your reply, Skillz. In the wee small hours today, just before hittin' the sack, I discovered that disabling browser referrers was the reason I wasn't able to view emoticons here. While that, in itself, doesn't completely kill the L.O.L. experience, it was titanically annoying. I did, indeed, have the sending of browser refferals disabled. So, mea culpa, and I extend apologies for my bluster. Well, in regards to this one issue, anyway.

Some further explanation to the head-scratching masses:
I use Chris Pederick's brilliant WebDeveloper add-on (extension, plugin, what-ev-errrr) with Firefox. Among 100 other uses, it gives the user the ability to disable referrers.

For others here who are just looking on...you may ask what that means, and why would I want to do that? Well, besides some reasons that might be obvious to the security-minded and to web developers (and which I won't bore you with unless pressed on it), disabling referrers allows me to efficiently search--all in one go--for items across a range of cities on CraigsList.

Rather than navigating to and searching each locality's pages separately, I go to the independenly-created CrazedList.org, select the cities and category I want to search, enter a keyword and hit the "Search" button. Say I'm looking for a vintage guitar. I enter "Stratocaster", for example, select a range of cities within reasonable driving distance (say, every city from Harrisburg, east to NJ and south to the MD line, then north to Scranton-Wilkes Barre) and hit the "Search" button. Search results for all of the cities I selected are returned in one scrollable window. Nice!

The takeaway lesson for casual surfers: If you like and use CraigsList regularly, you really ought to look into CrazedList.org. It's a (safe & secure) beauty!

Regarding not being able to view profiles and the Memberlist:
Thanks for that bit of "secret" info. It sure would be nice if that--along with some other forum-specific peculiarities--was spelled out prominently somewhere. Knowing that would have helped obviate a nice chunk of the reason I started this thread. Perhaps it might be a good idea to provide the details on a page that new registrants are forced to view? Or maybe it could be added to an FAQ page? Just a thought...

And a note to Skillz and other admins/L.O.L. developers...I've begun to become familiar with the problems this Forum had with spoofing and general mayhem from a few folks who were less than socially-adept. And I understand why things have gotten locked down a little tighter here. But as a security measure, feature-blocking visitors who have referrers disabled might not be the best way to go. Have a look-see at the following...

From an article entitled "Browser referrer insecurities" on michaeldaw.org:What it boils down to is that--with a bit of tweaking--security could be improved without tossing a spanner in the works.[character limit reached]

Speaking of old problems, check out the tons of posts by a newbie called TexasGe0rge. What a dipwad. Either that dude is completely clueless or has the brain of a 5 year old.

What was so bad about him? Didn't your personal views align with his?