WatchA few useful features which are not obvious:
- Every thread author can delete comments made on his threads, unless the comment was made by a Premium user. But Premium thread authors trump all, and can always delete any comment on a thread they started.
- To submit a newslink, just include it in a new thread or in a comment. If the URL starting with http is the only item in the thread, an excerpt of it should appear automatically.
- To create a poll, just create a thread as usual, but at the end of your thread content, precede each of your poll response options with the new "r" tag I made up: <r>
Each of those response options will get a radio button next to it. If there is only one response option, it will get a text box where people can input a number instead. (It doesn't make sense to have a poll with just one response option, so it's convenient to use that case for a poll where people guess a number.)
Responses are visible as soon as you vote.
You have to be logged in to vote so I can remember that you voted.
- When you "like" a comment, the user gets an email saying that you liked it, unless they turned off that email feature in their profile. Dislikes do not get emailed out.
- Including @username somewhere in a comment will email the user that comment, if the user allows that. For example, @Patrick will cause the comment to get emailed to Patrick. See the bottom of your profile for the switch to turn it off.
- If there are spaces or punctuation in a username, then you have to quote the username to mail them.
For example @"Huntington Moneyworth III, Esq" - If you want to privately converse with someone, click the "Befriend" link next to any comment they made. If they accept, you'll be able to see their real email address.
- You can just leave in the HTML tags when you Quote a comment, to keep the same formatting.
- Any block of text surrounded by
<blockquote></blockquote>will be in greyed out text.
- You'll automatically get that
blockquote thing and a link back to the original comment if you just click Quote above a comment without selecting any text. But some comments are too big to quote, and so you must select a smaller portion first. Just experiment. You can't really hurt anything. - Don't put greater than (>) or less than (URLs that start with http:// automatically get converted to live clickable links.
- Image URLs ending in .gif, .png, .jpg, .jpeg, and .bmp automatically get converted to the image the URL refers to.
- If you want to insert a YouTube video, insert its URL in exactly this format, with "watch?v=(the video ID)":
h t t p://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TwXycwCe6_s (with no spaces in the http of course) - To submit a comment with minimal effort, when you're done typing the comment, just hit tab twice to get to the submit button, then hit Enter.
- If you want to watch the thread's replies by email, click the "Watch this discussion" link at the top of it or tick the "Watch comments by email" button before submitting a comment on it.
- Users that deliberately insult other users will be suspended for a day or more. Please use the dislike link to mark personally insulting comments.
- In general, you can change or delete anything you entered. The exceptions are that you may not delete a whole thread if there are comments on it, because that would also delete comments made by other people. You can erase the thread topic content though. Also, if you delete a comment, that does not delete any quotes other people may have made of your comment.
Please include other tips below, and let me know if there are some more features I should add.
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Patrick says
I'd add ".jpeg" since some people use that for images. Also, the code doesn't handle URLs whose paths end in these suffixes, but then go on to contain URL parameters such as
h t t p : //domain/myImage.jpg?width=500
Darn, the pre-processor ate my example! Had to fool it with spaces.
So remember to strip those params!
Patrick says
So, Hey Username no longer works then, right? I like the @ sign better. It's clearer.
Patrick says
Please note that if any proletarian sends Mr. Moneyworth III, Esq email, he will release the hounds on you.
All letters sent to Mr. Moneyworth should be written on $100 bills in large print.
All letters sent to ApocalyseFuck should be written on unspent 9 mm ammo rounds and unopened canned food.
All letters to Shrekgrinch should be read out loud on Fox News by Glenn Beck.
All letters to live4ever should be sent back in time to the Corinthians or he won't read them.
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Dan8267 says
OK, done. Thread updated.
Dan8267 says
Oops, good point. OK, will do.
Dan8267 says
That's right. @ is the only way to mail someone from a comment now. But users can disable that in their profile.
Also working on summarizing all "like" and "flag" counts for all users. Should be working tomorrow. The "ignored by" counts are working. See:
http://patrick.net/forum/users.php
You can't tell who is ignoring anyone, only the count of people who are ignoring them.
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Patrick says
I didn't realize we had the ability to do that. Sounds like a nice feature. Any reason you took it down?
Also, it's interesting that Shrekgrinch is ignoring more people than he's friends with. I think that says something. I don't know exactly what, but it seems to mean something.
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Ooooo, I just had a brain fart. How about this for a feature. Put the number of users ignoring user X as a column on the users page. Now that would be interesting to know. Sort of like an annoyance meter.
Similarly, you could put the number of liked and disliked votes for the user's comments. It might encourage voting.
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Oh, duh. Just looked at the page. You already have what I suggested. I thought that column was a measurement of the number of people the user was ignoring rather than the number ignoring him.
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It would be interesting to see the graph of what users are ignoring whom. I suspect it's largely on political lines.
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I bet party politics has a lot to do with it, but maybe it's going too far to say who exactly is ignoring whom. I just want people who are being ignored to know that they have managed to offend a lot of people.
I was surprised to see Apocalypsefuck up there in the ignore rankings (click the header again to sort the other way). But then, he has more friends than ignores too. He's a polarizing guy, but I think he's hilarious.
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Patrick says
Which is exactly why I consider it a badge of honor if certain people ignore me, you know, the irrational, emotionally immature types.
Anyone who would ignore Apocalypsefuck is crazy. Most of his posts are facetious, but the serious ones are quite reasonable.
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OK, total number of "likes" and "flags" by user is now also available:
http://patrick.net/users.php
I had a little trouble designing the up and down sort arrows. I just used the logical AND and OR symbols. Anyone got better HTML for that?
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Hey I'm #1 in likes! That's surprising. I'd thought I'd be #1 in dislikes given how much I seem to piss off people.
I'll try not to let it go to my head.
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Touché
I got to give props to any StarWars reference.
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My renter who has bad credit ( forclosed ) but lots of cash is willing to pay a good downpayment ( 40%) but wants me to find a loan for him. I do not have much equity.
Does anybody know how to get a loan for this gentleman
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When you subscribe to future comments on a thread, and then receive an email notification of a new reply, is there some place to click in that email to view the thread. I see "Reply" or when someone is quoted, "XXX says" which are clickable, but no way to just "View on site".
Possible new feature suggestion? I always prefer to just read the comment on the site, and possibly see other earlier and later comments, as well, rather than read the new reply on its lonesome in a text-only email.
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"Reply" really is also "View on site". It shows you that comment on the site, with the reply box under it.
I guess that's not obvious, but I was trying to minimize the number of words. I could add a "View on site" link too, but it would be the same link...
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Patrick says
@patrick: I found this thread while I was looking for information on users. I had just discovered that earlier this week. I wanted to see how bad rooemoore's troll score is. He seems kind of terrible. He and raw are getting stupid on a thread tonight. When I clicked on the link you had posted it isn't working. Not sure if that is my error.
I was also going to look at my troll score. I can't imagine I would be too high, but thought I would check. That reddit guy has me thinking about trolls today.
I was trying not to pester you with an e-mail.
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That was my error.
User list link fixed now: http://patrick.net/users.php