topic Re: Please Post Forums Issues - May 2005 in Operating System - HP-UX

Please Post Forums Issues - May 2005

Cheryl Griffin — Mon, 02 May 2005 08:26:24 GMT

Hi Everyone,

Please provide feedback on any technical issues you may encounter while using the forums during May.

Please include URLs from your browser associated with error messages, and please include the date and time the errors occur.

You can also post your forums **successes** for May at:
http://forums1.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/questionanswer.do?threadId=868795

Thanks to everyone for your continued feedback.

Best regards,
Cheryl and Dan

Re: Please Post Forums Issues - May 2005

Pete Randall — Mon, 02 May 2005 08:29:34 GMT

Dan/Cheryl,

My monthly attempt to summarize the most grievous, most oft-repeated issues

1) Recover the content lost during the 9/20/03 conversion/update - there are
numerous threads which suffered partial content loss, Merijn's statistics
postings being a prime example. Other examples point out that the benefit of
the ITRC database as a resource has been severely compromised. An excellent
dialog on wiping disks via various commands has now been rendered non-sensical
because much of it has been lost.

*Has something been done to fix this? I searched out the disk-wiping thread
( http://forums.itrc.hp.com/cm/QuestionAnswer/1,,0x24b53a7b3682d611abdb0090277a7
78c,00.html )
*and discovered that it seems to read OK now. By the same token, checking a
*couple of my old congratulatory posts shows that parts are still missing???

2) a. Allow a thread to be closed without it being moved to the top of the list.
...b. No points - no bunny
...c. (my personal opinion) Is the close facility really necessary?

3) Create a new category under HP-UX for congratulations, humor and other
miscellaneous off-topic threads so that those who don't wish to view these
items can bypass them.

4) Repeat the bread crumb navigation links at the bottom of the page so we
don't have to page all the way up to the top of long threads. Also, add the
same links to the notification pages.

5) Could we possibly have a real, functional search engine? Please??

6) Other forms of URLs need to be recognized (https, ftp) as the http ones
are.

7) Allow for formatted text that does not lose spaces, so script snippets can
be understood.

8) Provide the ability for a user to customize the forum subjects they view by
setting up their own groupings (like: all of HP-UX, plus Servers (9000), plus
Workstations (hp-ux based), plus all of Storage - well, you get the idea).

9) From Merijn: The ability to have a fixed signature in one's profile.

10) A new hat for the 50,000 point level.

11) Is it possible to fix it so the "javascript.open" function works the
same in different browsers - in Netscape, firefox, Opera, etc., the link
opens in the same window.

Pete

Re: Please Post Forums Issues - May 2005

Jan van den Ende — Tue, 03 May 2005 06:34:33 GMT

Cheryl & Dan,

maybe I should make this a "monthly" as well:

This thread (as well as the "Forums successes" one) does NOT belong to HPUX, but to the "Your questions regarding ITRC Forums" forum.

(Of course, during a resonable migration period the HPUX forum should contain a pointer thread)

Proost.

Have one on me.

jpe

Re: Please Post Forums Issues - May 2005

Steve Post — Tue, 03 May 2005 07:38:53 GMT

Small complaint, but I have a solution too.

Sometimes I am writing a reply, and I ALL my text disappears before I submit the data. What happens is I accidentally hit the escape key (I keep thinking I'm vi).

I don't expect you to fix this. This is because I use vi. It's not because the form is wrong.

The solution?
I type up my question/response in a text editor. That way WHEN I destroy my text, I can get it right back.

steve

Re: Please Post Forums Issues - May 2005

Stephen Keane — Tue, 03 May 2005 07:53:14 GMT

A new 'cap'. If a user has received (say) at least 20 answers and has awarded points for less than (say) 20% of them, they should be awarded a dunce's cap, until they rectify their behaviour.

Re: Please Post Forums Issues - May 2005

Steve Post — Tue, 03 May 2005 07:57:32 GMT

Oooh. The dunce cap is a great idea.

But the person would also need a friendly reason why they have the dunce cap. You don't want to offend them...much. Just enough so they start to use the system properly. The cap would warn people to NOT bother providing an answer to the duncy-guy because they will not provide feedback as to whether the answer is good or bad.

Re: Please Post Forums Issues - May 2005

Devender Khatana — Tue, 03 May 2005 20:56:37 GMT

Hi Cheryl & Dan,

This thread has been posted in wrong area of forum it seems

http://forums1.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/questionanswer.do?threadId=869374

Regards,
Devender

Re: Please Post Forums Issues - May 2005

Gary Cantwell — Wed, 04 May 2005 03:06:35 GMT

Thanks Devender,

moved,

Gary

Re: Please Post Forums Issues - May 2005

Hein van den Heuvel — Wed, 04 May 2005 08:16:38 GMT

The reply is triggered by:

http://forums1.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/questionanswer.do?threadId=870411

Here I happened to spot an easy question 10 minutes after it was entered. So I composed a reply, submit, only to find the topic locked already. Now this one was a minor investment. This has happened to me before, and for longer efforts this is a little painfull.

My first thought was a minimum life for a topic (24 hours?) but then you can get this flurry of 'me too' replies.

Maybe a grace period on the lock (1 hour?). But when folks lock a topic, they obviously don't want to be bothered by it anymore so that feels wrong.

Maybe a way to Email the author with the reply you crafted. But the forums carefully avoid direct Emails and that is goodness.

Use the text to create a topic of your own, linking back to the topic that started it? Too much clutter.

Maybe the initiation of a reply could leave a (generally invisible) mark on the topic. On closure the author could get an warning that 'X replies to this topic have been initiated but not submitted yet'. The problem with that is that it is too easy to start a reply and walk away from it after all.

So far now I can not come up with a good solution.

Is this big enough a problem to worry about, or is it just me whining?

oh... my reply to that ps -ef | grep xxx question finding itself?
- sometimes just drop the -f
- make the search string a simple regular expresion. In sh: ps -ef | grep xx[x]
- re-grep to exclude grep: ... | grep -v grep

Hein.

Re: Please Post Forums Issues - May 2005

Pete Randall — Wed, 04 May 2005 08:24:15 GMT

Hein,

Alternatively we could just get rid of the thread closing "feature". We lived just fine for all those years before we had it. Sure there were a few people who whined that they wanted to be able to close a thread but I don't believe the majority was in favor of such a thing. I, for one, will never close a thread unless it is with my own, home-grown close feature:

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Thanks to all for your help. The problem has been identified and the
solution has been found. Therefore this thread is:

_CCC______L__________OOO_______SSS______EEEEE_____DDDD
C___C_____L_________O____O_____S___S_____E__________D___D
C_________.L_________O____O_____S_________E__________D___D
C_________.L_________O____O______SSS______EEEE______D___D
C_________.L_________O____O_________S_____E__________D___D
C___C_____L_________O____O_____S___S_____E__________D___D
_CCC______LLLLL______OOO_______SSS______EEEEE_____DDDD

No further points will be awarded (unless, of course, I feel like it).

Pete

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Pete

Re: Please Post Forums Issues - May 2005

Stuart Browne — Wed, 04 May 2005 08:48:40 GMT

I had the thread-closing issue a few days ago as well.

Possibly have a timestamp as to when a response starts to get penned, and if it's before the closing time, still allow it, but show it after the thread closing?

Re: Please Post Forums Issues - May 2005

Jan van den Ende — Thu, 05 May 2005 05:39:30 GMT

I sympathise with Hein!

Certainly on non-trivial questions, I have a habit of (trying to) compose accurate, therefor usually rather lengthy answers. And I am not that great a typist :-(

I think Stuarts' solution would please me VERY much!

Proost.

Have one on me.

jpe

Re: Please Post Forums Issues - May 2005

Pete Randall — Thu, 05 May 2005 06:03:42 GMT

While it would require considerable work for the developers, I think the close feature should work like this:

1. A banner similar to my CLOSED (above) should be appended to the bottom of the thread, explaining that the author is satisfied and no further points will necessarily be awarded.

2. Once the author elects to "close" a thread and the banner has been added, zero points will automatically be applied to any further responses.

3. The author can over-ride the zero points assignment if he feels a response is deserving enough.

4. After the thread has been "closed", points assignment will no longer count for (or against) the author, unless the author has over-ridden the automatic zero.

Pete

Re: Please Post Forums Issues - May 2005

Cheryl Griffin — Thu, 05 May 2005 07:50:16 GMT

This thread is located here due to the amount of feedback that we get in this section.

This has been discussed previously, but there are no plans now or in the near future to move its placement.

Thank you for your continued feedback.

*****

Pete, The developers are working on something very similar to what you documented. The thread may be "closed" but responses will still be allowed. However the "assigned points" count will not be incremented to posts thereafter.

This is in the works now.

Re: Please Post Forums Issues - May 2005

Pete Randall — Thu, 05 May 2005 07:56:49 GMT

Cheryl,

For me, at least, that's great news! I'm looking forward to the debut.

Pete

Re: Please Post Forums Issues - May 2005

Steven E. Protter — Fri, 06 May 2005 09:34:44 GMT

Cheryl & Dan,

Just thought you should know I got caught with the famous bunny without solution level points "feature"

The good news is after I figured it out I was able to reopen and close the thread and make the bunny go away. Did that on principle.

Since that sequence probably doesn't happen very often I thought the crew should know that it all works right.

SEP

Re: Please Post Forums Issues - May 2005

Steven E. Protter — Fri, 06 May 2005 09:42:02 GMT

Did anyone notice when my two most current threads are next to each other on the hpux board that one of my (what are those leafy things?) Salad hats has a star next to it and one dos not.

A minor inconsistency. Maybe because the thread is closed?

I was thinking of removing the star from my profile anyway, but more to the point the display should be consistent.

Just another thing for development to look at.

Unless its a feature.

SEP

Re: Please Post Forums Issues - May 2005

Gary Cantwell — Fri, 06 May 2005 09:51:23 GMT

Hi SEP,

It's because you've selected expertise in HP-UX General and not in the HP-UX Networking sub category,

Cheers,

Gary

Re: Please Post Forums Issues - May 2005

Steven E. Protter — Fri, 06 May 2005 09:58:50 GMT

Oh.

I stand corrected once again. Perfectly logical Captain.

SEP

Re: Please Post Forums Issues - May 2005

Jan van den Ende — Fri, 06 May 2005 11:33:34 GMT

Cheryl, Dan,

this thread

http://forums1.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/questionanswer.do?threadId=872678

by the authors own remark, may be removed.
It is active under a slightly different title.

Proost.

Have one on me.

jpe