12 replies to this topic

[brokenportal]

Its really hard to tell who youve responded back to in PM or not. Is there a function in the coding that can be flipped that will show an indicator of who youve responded back to and who you havent? I know Richard is pretty bogged down with programming details. Does anybody else know how to do this? Its a vital peice of information that we need, to be able to make sure we keep communication moving smoothly in PM. I would hate to think that promising communications may be getting cut short around here because of this.

Like James Burke says, "Innovation occurs for many reasons, including greed, ambition, conviction, happenstance, acts of nature, mistakes, and desperation. But one force above all seems to facilitate the process. The easier it is to communicate, the faster change happens."

[Lazarus Long]

Have you tried looking in the *sent* folder?

If you look at the sorting selection box it is defaulted to inbox but one of the drop downs is the sent items folder and everything you have sent with dates will be there. Other than that there is the auto-quote function that will thread multiple messages if you have left them in your exchanges.

[brokenportal]

Ive been having to use the "sent" function, but it can get really confusing when your looking through multiple pm exchanged mixed in with multiple others through multiple dates and on multiple pages.

Im not sure what auto-quote and threading multiple messages is, but Ill check into it right now.

[Lazarus Long]

Autoquote is simple, when you reply to a pm it automatically quotes the original PM, and that continues with each subsequent exchange. I do not find the function particularly useful after about 3-4 exchanges and usually erase all the quoted material.

The threading is just like in posts how a replay will connect multiple PM's into a related sequence.. I agree with you about sent folder getting cumbersome and you can create new folders and files some stuff there by category but a simple return arrow like you see in email would be helpful but unless it is coded to show you who you actually replied to it might not be that useful either.

[brokenportal]

Autoquote is simple, when you reply to a pm it automatically quotes the original PM, and that continues with each subsequent exchange. I do not find the function particularly useful after about 3-4 exchanges and usually erase all the quoted material.

The threading is just like in posts how a replay will connect multiple PM's into a related sequence.. I agree with you about sent folder getting cumbersome and you can create new folders and files some stuff there by category but a simple return arrow like you see in email would be helpful but unless it is coded to show you who you actually replied to it might not be that useful either.

A simple arrow like that would be more than useful. With out it my vast network of daily pm's has all but stalled. I have to be here 12 hours every day in order to remember who I was responding to and who I havent responded back to. Im trying to help get progressive convo going but it seems like every turn I take there is a debilitating obstacle there to try to hurtle and climb over. These are all obstacles that have solutions. Lightowl seems pretty busy, what do you all think of a paid programers spot here at the forums? It may only need to be a temporary thing, it could probably be negotiated for a decent price.

[brokenportal]

Im all but convinced that this is a simple matter of turning this function on. Its such a common staple of internet forums that I cant imagine that the coding wouldnt be readily there or easy to put in. Its probably a matter of just changing it from "off" to "on" in the coding.

Who all has access to that coding? Could we expand that range to 3 or 4 more program minded people? If so, who is willing to be considered for working with that kind of thing, any volunteers?

[davidd]

Lightowl seems pretty busy, what do you all think of a paid programers spot here at the forums? It may only need to be a temporary thing, it could probably be negotiated for a decent price.

It seems like we have a number of people who are willing to volunteer, so I don't think money is the issue. However, if it does come down to money, how about people donating money for various functionality and giving the programmer that money? That may be the best way to prioritize the importance of the requests. If nobody is willing to pay for it, then it may not be all that important?

In addition to the pay per function model, members (have to be a member, not just a registered user) could be given a pool of imaginary money to spend each month. They could decide which enhancements to spend that imaginary money on and that could be used to prioritize the items that didn't have *real* money donated (if real money donations idea is implemented). More priority should be given to real money than fake money.

This type of limited weighting of items is generally a better mechanism than a model that relies on assigning a value of 1 through 5 or 1 through 10 to an item. In those models, you end up with a lot of ties and people never really know what a number in the middle means. A limited voting model serves to show just how important something is compared to other items.

Obviously, there would need to be a number of discussions and expectations laid out, but you get the basic idea.



Until we can get a sandbox environment set up, I don't think we'll make much progress on enhancements/bug fixes/performance tuning. One person just isn't enough, no matter how good they are at what they do. There appears to be a bit of political history on this board (I say that as a newcomer and just witnessing various exchanges in posts). To be blunt (and not making any value judgment, but just calling it as I see it), I get the feeling that some people are worried about those who have access to the system reading private messages or accessing leadership-only data and sharing that information with others. To a lot of people, that would seem like a silly obstacle, but I can see where people might get very close to something (like ImmInst) and get caught up in personal differences of opinion, etc. The somewhat anonymous nature of the Internet can often bring out the worst in people.

By having a sandbox environment (that's a non-production environment used for testing), it would be possible to develop a mechanism to restore the production data to this environment, run some SQL to remove sensitive data (but leave the rest there, because real data is often needed for testing and really needed for performance tuning) and then let the developers have access to work on the enhancements. This is the general mechanism that thousands of companies use with their corporate systems. They have truly valid concerns about the data in production systems falling into the wrong hands, because it often contains customer data.

Once a piece of development is done, it can be tested in the sandbox environment and then put into the production environment if it is working well. If it is found that it has some adverse effect on the production environment after being migrated, it can be taken back out and worked on more or (if it isn't causing a huge issue) can be worked on in the sandbox to fix the issue and pushed to production again.

Invision Power Board (and Gallery and Blog, etc.), the software we use, does come with a production license and at least one test license. We may even be able to negotiate for more test licenses, which would make it even easier for multiple developers to work in their own sandboxes and improve the efficiency of development efforts.

This test environment could be set up on the same hardware as the production environment. This may still worry those who worry, because the developers would still have access to the machines (operating system access), even if they didn't have a login to the production database instance. Alternatively, another system could be put together and the test instance(s) could be installed on that system. It would not need to be as powerful as the production system (meaning cheaper). It could even be run from one of the developer's computers, provided they have the required network setup to allow access. Or maybe our hosting company would even allow doing this on some other machine in their arsenal.

David

[Mariusz]

 It could even be run from one of the developer's computers, provided they have the required network setup to allow access. Or maybe our hosting company would even allow doing this on some other machine in their arsenal.

if someone who wants to be a web developer and doesn't have php,apache and mysql installed on their computer or other computer they have access to, then they are not developers, just wannabes:D


Mariusz

[brokenportal]

David,

Im not sure exactly what you mean by "imaginary money" but I think I get the jist of it. If you get access and you think it will work then unless somebody objects or has a better idea, then If you want, try that out.

Ive asked about the sandbox, Im trying to help convince people to set one up. More test licenses sound like a good idea too. Even if a test area isnt the same because we dont have all the data and integrations set up with the sandbox, it seems to me it should still be good for at least some things, like checking out this pm reply function deal. Im still swamped in pm's and have all but given up on using it.

Its a very important tool and I would hate to see it disabled but for one small function. Its kind of like having a shot gun and an ak 47 in a war, but the trigger on the ak needs some wd40 and I cant get it so Im stuck with the shot gun.

[davidd]

David,

Im not sure exactly what you mean by "imaginary money" but I think I get the jist of it. If you get access and you think it will work then unless somebody objects or has a better idea, then If you want, try that out.

I mean we could add a feature to the board (could be managed manually for now) where each user is given $100 in their bank account per month to "spend" on enhancements. These would be enhancements that would be listed in some document/page/post somewhere and all requests would be put into that list (unless there is some request that management won't allow for some reason). If a user doesn't use the $100 in a month, then they lose it, but get another $100 for the next month. So if I decide to "spend" $10 for enhancement number 10 and have $90 left and don't spend it, then it goes unspent and the next month I'm back to $100 in my account.

This $100 is not real money. It is just another form of voting, where each person gets 100 units to split up among the various requested enhancements. It is a way to prioritize the work.

Ive asked about the sandbox, Im trying to help convince people to set one up. More test licenses sound like a good idea too. Even if a test area isnt the same because we dont have all the data and integrations set up with the sandbox, it seems to me it should still be good for at least some things, like checking out this pm reply function deal. Im still swamped in pm's and have all but given up on using it.

Yep, that is true. The full data volume is not needed for most work. It can help with some functionality and definitely helps with performance testing, but for most of the functional enhancements, developers can enter their own data to test against.

Its a very important tool and I would hate to see it disabled but for one small function. Its kind of like having a shot gun and an ak 47 in a war, but the trigger on the ak needs some wd40 and I cant get it so Im stuck with the shot gun.

I'm unclear about the "disabled" comment. Does that mean someone is thinking of shutting off private message functionality on the boards?

One option is to add to the existing functionality. The other option is to plug in another piece of software that does the same thing. Of course, that may still require work to make all the links (PM this user, etc.) point to the new functionality.

David

[davidd]

It could even be run from one of the developer's computers, provided they have the required network setup to allow access. Or maybe our hosting company would even allow doing this on some other machine in their arsenal.

if someone who wants to be a web developer and doesn't have php,apache and mysql installed on their computer or other computer they have access to, then they are not developers, just wannabes:D

I meant that they have their ports open for others to access the systems remotely. Each developer having their own set-up would be even better. Ideally, one main sandbox at our hosting company and then each developer with their own set-up to unit test their work before putting it into the "real" sandbox and then from there to the production instance.

Maybe someone can negotiate this with Invision Power Services (IPS), the company that owns IPB?

David

[brokenportal]

The using the money for this stuff like that is the part I understand. I guess the only part I dont understand is how "This $100 is not real money."

I'm unclear about the "disabled" comment. Does that mean someone is thinking of shutting off private message functionality on the boards?

I guess I didnt word that right. What I meant is, "Its a very important tool, and I hate to think it may continue to be hard to use for people with large amounts of incoming pm's."

[davidd]

The using the money for this stuff like that is the part I understand. I guess the only part I dont understand is how "This $100 is not real money."

Have you played the board game Monopoly before? You are given fake money to play with. You use that money to buy fake properties to place on the board. The other players must pay you (again with fake money) if they land on your property after rolling the dice.

That's what I'm talking about. It wouldn't be real money. We'd have 100 units of voting power per month to put toward whatever enhancements are on the list of requested enhancements. For instance, let's say we have 10 enhancements on the list:

A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J

Now I have 100 units of voting power in March. I decide to put 90 votes towards D and 5 votes towards H. I was stupid and let March go by without using my final 5 votes. If 2 other people voted the same way as I did and nobody else voted, then we would have the following prioritization at the end of March (assuming we started this whole idea at the beginning of March and there was no voting in February):

D = 270
H = 15
A = 0
B = 0
C = 0
E = 0
F = 0
G = 0
I = 0
J = 0

Now, the developers would have a pretty good idea that the most important piece to work on is D, because it got the most votes. After that, comes H. After that, it is a toss up, because nobody voted for the other items. I'm sure in reality, there would be some votes cast for nearly all options, since everyone has their own likes/dislikes about the site.

Now, I'm not suggesting that the developers should *only* be allowed to work on those items at the top of the list. I'm just saying it gives them an idea of what most peope want to see implemented. D may be extremely hard to implement and a given developer may not feel they are qualified. But maybe G is right up their alley, so they would work on that instead and leave D to some other developer.

The other thing that needs to be worked out is how to keep more than one developer from working on the same item. In some cases, the item may be big enough that it can be split out, but I'm speaking of two people not knowing the other person is working on it and each person spends the time to fix the same issue. That's inefficient. On the other hand, we don't want a developer to take an item off the list to work on and then not work on it for months either. There may need to be a time limit for one person to work on something before turning it over to someone else, hopefully giving the second person all the work that has been done by the first person, if they have managed to put in some time toward it.

I'm unclear about the "disabled" comment. Does that mean someone is thinking of shutting off private message functionality on the boards?

I guess I didnt word that right. What I meant is, "Its a very important tool, and I hate to think it may continue to be hard to use for people with large amounts of incoming pm's."

Ah, yes. I agree. It doesn't have nearly the feature set as most email programs do. I wonder what the benefits are of using it vs a real email system? I mean we can all create gmail accounts and use those instead. Of course, then it isn't integrated in with the system (like being able to click on a person's name and send them a message).

One option would be an enhancement for adding an email "gateway" to the boards. What I mean by this is that a user could pick whether they want to use the IPB email or they want to use their own email account on another system (gmail, hotmail, etc.). Let's say I decide to use my gmail account. I would enter that email address into the system and enable the gateway option for my account. Now, when another user sends me a private message on here, the system would send the message to my gmail account. It would come from a system generated email account on our system (we'd have to work this out with our hosting company). When I reply to the message, it would be sent to that system generated email account and then the board would read the message and put it into their private messages as coming from my board ID.

There are some downsides to this approach (no standard mechanism for quoting...you'd have to manually put the quote tags in the gmail message, etc.). SPAM is another consideration, but there are ways around that (the system can use throwaway email accounts for the system generated ones and periodically change them). We'd want the user ID to be part of the email address though, so you would know who the email is from. Of course, it would be up to the person whether they like that option vs the regular option. They could stick with the current PM functionality if that is better for them.

Another option is to plug in a completely different messaging product with more robust functionality and allow that option for online (non-email) messaging.

David