Please Post Forums Issues - October 2005

[Cheryl Griffin]

Hi Everyone,

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

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 October at:
http://forums1.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/questionanswer.do?threadId=962104

Thanks to everyone for your continued feedback.

Best regards,
Cheryl and Dan

[Pete Randall]

Dan/Cheryl,

My monthly attempt to summarize familiar, repeating issues. I am aware that some of these items are being worked on but I hesitate to revise the list until we actually see results.

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) When a thread is closed:
...a. No points - no bunny
...b. (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) I thought this was supposed to be fixed but I don't see it!
Allow for formatted text that does not lose spaces, so script snippets can
be understood.

7) 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).

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

9) 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.

10) Now that the new headgear situation has been addressed, I think it's
time to start asking for it to be addressed again. There is really only
room for two stars underneath the wreath. What are you going to do once
Clay hits 80,000 points? How about a wreath of stars? You could probably
fit 5 or six nice gold stars in a wreath and set the value of each succeeding
star high enough that you should be able to have the system ready for "y1m"
(that's 1,000,000, I think). You could award one star at a time or put the
outline in place and color the stars in as they are earned.



Pete

[Borislav Perkov]

Hi Cheryl and Dan,

I am supporting Pete for 3), 8) and 9).

I sugest to not allow answers if the thread is closed, even if the answer rersolve the problem.

Best regards,
Borislav

[Muthukumar_5]

All Pete's points are expected!

a) Can we have search engine to our profile exclusivly. We can give links to repeated questions.

b) It is good to add job's related things with humour and congrats etc.

thx.

[H.Merijn Brand (procura]

Fully subscribe to 1, 2a, 5, 6 (the sooner the better), 7, 8 (of course :),

Personal notes:
2b. IMHO closing a thread is good. It indicates that the poster is satisfied with what he/she has seen and is unlikely to return here (exceptions mark the rule).
3. Yes and no. I have mixed feelings, and you all probably know why.
What is based to this question was the ability to make your own pseudo category, in which you could tick what subjects/threads are to be shown in your personal selection, something I gladly welcome, but this is addressed in Pete's point 7.
5. If we have a real search engine, I'd like to see it extended with *real* search facilities: like PCRE (Perl Compatible Regular Expressions), mulitline search, subject/author/body search
9. With me Opera always opens the link in a new/different window/page/tab, but this is a user-setting. I subscribe wholeheatedly to the idear of dropping the useless javascript wrapper, and just have plain links please.

Don't care: 4, 10

Enjoy, Have FUN! H.Merijn

[Steven E. Protter]

I like the signature idea. It would also help me comply with online guidelines at my new employer without typing the same thing many times over.

Lets this month switch the link to Merjin's stats the same week he posts October Stats.

Have fun in Orlando.

Happy New Year/Shana Tova to all my friends who celebrate.

:-)

SEP
NDS Israel

[Patrick Wallek]

I would like to see an update, line-item by line-item, from someone at HP (Cheryl, Dan, etc.) with a status on each of Pete's suggestions.

[Cheryl Griffin]

Dan & I discussed the list again. Some of you may be questioning why it takes so long to get these items into a release but hopefully you can understand the magnitude of trying to roll changes into a scheduled upgrade, balancing time and resources to fix problems and add functionality.

We've used the monthly issue thread just to keep a viewable rolling list of items to address, but some see this list here and think that the forums management team is not listening, which is simply not the case.

Here's the breakdown for each item.
1, 2b, 3, 8 closed: we suggest removing closed items from the list.

2a, 4, 6, 7, 9, 10 open: we suggest removing these from the list posted here as they are being tracked internally.

5: need more information


>1) Recover the content lost during the 9/20/03 conversion/update -
Based on the information Pete supplied, we determined the amount of data lost was minor. We regret not all of the data made the migration, but we can't commit further resources to this item. This issue is considered closed.

>2) When a thread is closed:
>...a. No points - no bunny
a. There are certain circumstances that can call for no points and a bunny. Revising the points-bunny behavior is on the list of things to do, but is low priority.

>...b. (my personal opinion) Is the close facility really necessary?
b. The close facility was incorporated based on user feedback (the author wanted a method to state an issue was resolved). We allow posting to a closed thread, also based on user feedback, because even though an author may feel the issue is resolved the community may want to continue to discuss the topic. Given there are no planned changes at this time, this issue is considered closed.

>3) Create a new category under HP-UX for
This item is currently not being considered because creating a new category will isolate these congratulation threads. Allowing the community to celebrate in each other's successes fosters community spirit. This issue is considered closed.

>4) Repeat the bread crumb navigation links
This item is on the enhancement list but is low priority.

>5) Could we possibly have a real, functional search engine? Please??
Please provide more detail as to what the problems are and what you would like to see changed.

>6) Allow for formatted text that does not lose spaces, so script snippets can be understood.
This item was considered for the last release. It will be in a future release, based on priority.

>7) Provide the ability for a user to customize the forum subjects they
This item is currently on the enhancement list.

>8) From Merijn: The ability to have a fixed signature in one's profile.
This item is not being considered, issue closed.

>9) Is it possible to fix it so the "javascript.open" function works the
This item is currently on the enhancement list.

>10) Now that the new headgear situation has
This item is on the enhancement list.

[MarkSyder]

Please reconsider and re-open 8.

Mark Syder (the member with the longest signature to type)

[Alan Meyer_4]

Please consider my support for item number 8.

[Cheryl Griffin]

If we keep #8 open, what would you like to see? Text only, one line, two lines? Other thoughts?

[Pete Randall]

Inappropriate?

http://forums1.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/questionanswer.do?threadId=962621


Pete

[Alan Meyer_4]

Regarding #8, for me, text only maybe 3 lines. Similiar to

Name
Rank
Serial number

[Pete Randall]

Cheryl,

Thanks for sharing the Issues status. Now that you've responded, I've revised my list but will not be removing items that you are tracking internally until they actually get fixed.

As far as #8 is concerned, I would think two lines of text would be sufficient. That would accomodate Mark Syder, Merijn, and SEP and any others who are "spelt different" or "have fun" or "need to comply with guidelines".


Pete

[Mel Burslan]

My #8 suggestion:
Limited number of characters about 160 like most other bb systems. 2 lines, 80 char.s each fixed size font to allow some formatting. No images or hyperlinks.

Also, please raise the priority of #6. It really is hard to make what a code snipped does with the proportinal pitch characters with no indentation possibility.

[Mel Burslan]

Question posted to wrong unix platform forums. This needs to be moved into Tru64 forums:

http://forums1.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/questionanswer.do?threadId=962699

[H.Merijn Brand (procura]

point 8: one or two lines, max 160 characters

I'd like to see it in the post text box *before* I compose my answer, so I can change it before submit if I want to. But this would just be a nice-to have

Enjoy, Have FUN! H.Merijn [ still typed by hand every time :) ]

[Michael Jorgensen]

I know there's nothing that can technically be done to stop this but this kind of thing cheapens the forum as far as I am concerned:

http://forums1.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/questionanswer.do?threadId=962434

Check out Arunvijai's response in this thread. It is a direct copy and paste, word for word, some 20 mins after Muthukumar's response and looks like a deliberate attempt to score points. The intent of the forum is to help people, not copy and paste other people's responses to get points that help your score.

I mainly post in the OVO forum and thankfully little of this type of behaviour is visible there. But when I branch out from that forum to others, especially the HP-UX forum, I see people repeatedly posting the same info as previous posters (this copy and paste takes the cake though!).

Now some are due to posting at the same time as someone else, but others are hours later and add nothing new to previous answers.

Just wanted to express a grumble, this is not a HP problem and I don't expect it fixed. And it's only bothering me because I'm relatively new to the forums and I realise most of you are not complaining about it due to resigning yourselves to the fact it's an unsolveable problem :)

[MarkSyder]

No. 8: two lines, text only.

And like Michael I am sick of seeing copied answers! Or "please see these threads where someone else had the same problem (but didn't get a solution)".

Mark Syder (like the drink but spelt different)

[H.Merijn Brand (procura]

Like Michael and Mark, I also very much dislike copied answers (even if spelt differently :) ), but there's nothing we can do about it, expect look at the post time/date.

If posted in less than 20 minutes (arbitrary bound), you can blame network lag, browser problems, or typing speed.
For more complicated answers, you can even hope that the duplicate took a bit longer because the poster actually took the time to *test* his/her answer, which should be a good sign. But even if the poster adds "tested", there is no guarantee at all that he/she actually did :)

I note however that some dup answers are an answer to the question, but the poster didn't read the answers already given. At that point they might just think: well, I took the time to give an answer after reading the question, lets just do it anyway.

Some people are soooo bloody fast in giviing the correct (or almost correct) answer that it is sometimes frustrating to get your points if you are not that fast. I bet that some of the dup posters just feel it as unfair that the olymp's post their answers first. Experience counts in coming up with the answer, and finding an answer in the docs takes time, belief me.

What *realy* bugs me is if people copy *wrong* answers that got (a lot of) points, and /obviously/ are hunting for points.

There is no excuse however to posting dup answers days after the right answer was given.
One exception to this rule.

Q: How do I do blah
A: Use foo
Q: Foo?
A: Yes foo
Q: Just foo?
A: Yes, just foo
Q: But how do I use foo?
A: Just type 'foo'
Q: foo?

A: Yes, plain 'foo'. It's harmless, just do foo
Q: But I already tried Foo
A: But Foo is not foo, there is no capital in foo
Q: But why should I use foo then?
A: To do blah
Q: blah?
A: Yes, see your original Q


Enjoy, Have FUN! H.Merijn

[Andrew Merritt_2]

I think there are still problems with the email notification of new threads. I didn't get one for yesterday (Tuesday).

Andrew

[Andrew Merritt_2]

Regarding the outstanding items list, the main one for me would be a search engine that works - i.e. finds articles that match the strings you supply.

Cheryl, you ask:
Please provide more detail as to what the problems are and what you would like to see changed.

Well, just try using the search engine to find something that you know is there. You get a few hits, but miss an awful lot. As someone else suggested, it is much more efficient to use google (and here's a case in point, I searched for 'google' with the search engine, but did not find http://forums1.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/questionanswer.do?threadId=952980 which had the reference to google.)

An additional nuisance is that the search box at the top of the page of results from the initial search is for searching the whole of the ITRC, not just the ITRC forums, although that is not immediately obvious. I'd expect it to be the same, so you can do a new search of the same data, not for it to search a different set by default.

Andrew

[Andrew Merritt_2]

(Sorry to follow up on my own posts.)

Just in case anyone's interested, my last two points are actually connected. I look for questions regarding the HPUX OnlineDiags, and check through the email of new postings to find them (of course, the subjects are not very clear sometimes, but you get a feel for what people might specify for diags related questions). If I don't get that email, I need to do a search to make sure I didn't miss any (but of course the search is broken :-( ).

I genuinely don't understand how some people appear to be able to sit watching the forums all day; am I missing some way of working that makes it easy to scan new threads? Cna you list new threads in order, rather than recently updated ones?

Andrew

[Andrew Merritt_2]

Forgive me once again, another example of the search engine. (Perhaps another enhancement for this forum would be to allow posters to edit previous responses. Some forums allow this, and it would enable fixing of typos, adding afterthoughts, etc.)

Searching for 'onlinediags' in the ITRC forums brings back 2 results.

Searching google with "+onlinediags +site:itrc.hp.com" brings back 145 results.

I know which is more useful to me.

Do you want any more examples, Cheryl? :-)

Andrew

[Pete Randall]

Cheryl,

Here's a search engine failure example for you:

http://forums1.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/questionanswer.do?threadId=13482

Searching on "enema", either in the message or in the subject (and why can't we check both?) produces "no results!", yet you can see from the thread that there should be at least one result.


Pete