Traffic volume on FF's new board

[Don Petter]

As for the options, the changed settings (no pictures, more post per page etc.) only work when you are online. I found out after much consternation not trusting my IT skills which is next to nil.

I'm being thick here - when you're not on line nothings exists for you to see anyway? Where do these pictures rematerialise?

[Curalach]

I think it is "logged-in" that is meant, rather than "on-line. Personal settings, for example - number of posts per page, only work if you are logged in.
If you access the forum without logging in the default settings will apply.

[doversoul1]

Don msg 16
Here I go again. Told you me and IT techs don’t see eye to eye. I meant ‘when you are not logged in’.

Curalach
Thanks!!

[salymap]

Morning doversoul, Bet I'm more non-techie than you but I've found everything straightforward except the avatar thing. I didn't really want it but tried umpteen times to get the black cat to appear. I'm glad it didn't and I want no more truck with little pictures or groups. It works well without the trimmings and it's a message board after all. Having said which, FF has done a marvellous job.

[Dave2002]

catch with all the inessential fluff is that it costs quite a bit more in bandwidth - how is the site paid for ? afterall the Beeb claimed they shut down the R3 site to save money.
Quite why atavars + signature lines are needed defeats me - for most once seen preferably forgotten, for the rest repetition is just like R3 trailers and might well serve the same function of ego stroking the perpetrator.

Frances

I think that for small message boards the bandwidth costs are really minimal, but for larger sites, with a lot of hits there would be significant costs. I'm guessing that this site is currently really quite small as far as the ISPs and storage providers are concerned, so the cost for running it should be small, and for a user who already has accounts with such providers might effectively be done at no marginal cost. Of course that argument should also have applied to the BBC.

Other costs which would be incurred would be due to administration, and the need to pay employees or contractors to keep things working. Perhaps that's where the BBC may be going to save money. This MB is presumably running due to the good will of a few volunteers, and the main commitment is likely to be time and expertise - though they should not be thought of as insignificant.

Many thanks to those who have set this up and are keeping it running!

[pilamenon]

Thanks for the reminder about being able to change settings. I've decided the avatars are a nice feature, especially the simple designs. I like 3VS's very much!

But the signatures and coloured or enlarged writing clutter things up or distract too much for me. One of the main virtues of the BBC board was its simple, easy to read design.

[Donnie Essen]

Strikes me that the settings for this board are the bog-standard among message-boards, so I got no problem with avatars and sigs. It's boards run by folks other than than from the communities (like the BBC) that have stricter rules, where you can't clothe yourself up in some decent duds. Besides, the avatars here are of a fixed size, and that is pretty darn small and limited, compared to many other boards where they distract too much.

I'm unused (and still slightly bemused) by the existence of a social-network element to a message-board, but I don't have a problem with it. I figure it just creates an official setting for what kinda happens anyway, but it keeps a lot of personal chat off the sub-forums themselves and anyone's free to look in and say stuff if they want. I don't know about closed-access groups and what that would involve though.

Besides, check out the amount of people viewing the boards here and the size of the memberlist. With that size, it is large enough to encompass all kinds of interaction without harming the main tone of the forums. Only if it was a smaller community, might it pose a problem.

Gotta question, though - why do five stars appear next to some threads (like this one)?

[Petrushka]

Gotta question, though - why do five stars appear next to some threads (like this one)?

Yes, this puzzles me as well. Is it an award for a particularly good post?

[Bryn]

Petrushka, where do you see these stars? I've not encountered them as yet.

[johnb]

If you go to the top of a thread you will see an option to 'Rate this thread' where you can give it a number of stars as a rating.

I guess that, were a thread has stars, someone has used that option. (What some people regard as a 5 star thread, some others might regard as a 'Nul points' thread, of course.)

[Stillhomewardbound]

Trouble is, including enormous pictures (however pretty they might be - or relevant) in your post means that one post fills the screen.

I will bear that in mind, Flosshilde. You see, I have one of the widescreen monitors where such things appear in proportion, but that is not everyone, so good point!

SHB

[Don Petter]

Don msg 16
Here I go again. Told you me and IT techs don’t see eye to eye. I meant ‘when you are not logged in’.

Curalach
Thanks!!

Ah! I should have guessed that is what you meant. Because I never log out at all, I forget there are, in effect, two levels. Though why would you ever want to log out - where others have use of the same PC I suppose?

[doversoul1]

salymap #19
We must be a good match when it comes to a non-IT competition but as you say, I found most things here straightforward and did not cause me much trouble. I was a bit bothered when I tried to change the settings and found that every time I opened the forum, everything was unchanged. But that has been solved now.

Don #27
There is absolutely no point in trying to talk sense to me when it comes to IT. I have this absurd and irrational mini-phobia about being connected to this unfathomable thing called the Internet when I am not using it. I’m not sure if this makes life simpler or more complicated but there you are

[french frank]

Yes, this puzzles me as well. Is it an award for a particularly good post?

Only the person who has done the rating knows that! This is being discussed elsewhere. My preference would be to turn off rating altogether, since it means different things to different people - and I haven't yet found a way of discovering whether one person has voted or 100, which makes a difference ...

[Don Petter]

Don #27
There is absolutely no point in trying to talk sense to me when it comes to IT. I have this absurd and irrational mini-phobia about being connected to this unfathomable thing called the Internet when I am not using it. I’m not sure if this makes life simpler or more complicated but there you are

I tempted fate with my post. I've just come back from lunch, switched on the PC as normal, to find I have been logged out, and I've had to log on again. Never happened before!

But to pick up on your point above, logging out doesn't disconnect you from the internet, and if you do disconnect as you say, there's no point in having logged out anyway? Someone may come well along with a good reason, and put us both right.

(I seem to recall in another thread that ff implied that being logged on does use some extra resources 'at the other end' and so it may be antisocial to remain logged on without active use. Hence the time out mechanism that was being discussed.)