Jack Posted May 20, 2011 Share Posted May 20, 2011 I say, old chap! People's fave prototype, like their religion or their politics, is their business and we shouldn't mock them! On the contrary, if you don't mock religious leaders or politicians then their egos swell and wars start ... same goes for prototypes ... if you don't mock the GWR types then the next thing you know the place is swamped by clones of Ashburton Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Gold Oldddudders Posted May 20, 2011 RMweb Gold Share Posted May 20, 2011 On the contrary, if you don't mock religious leaders or politicians then their egos swell and wars start ... same goes for prototypes ... if you don't mock the GWR types then the next thing you know the place is swamped by clones of Ashburton Good models of Ashburton, Chorlton-come-Hardy* or Hampton-in-Arden, I don't care as long as they are well-modelled. *The auto-censor doesn't like the real spelling - too much pleasure! Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Coombe Barton Posted May 20, 2011 Share Posted May 20, 2011 Challenge anyone to shunt Ashburton in model form as they did it prototypically Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Premium BluenGreyAnorak Posted May 21, 2011 RMweb Premium Share Posted May 21, 2011 No, I think you misunderstand me. I am not suggesting that anyone "should not" join a group - in fact I am suggesting quite the opposite. I wish to join every group so far started as I have a very broad interest in RM not just one tiny niche aspect. I believe that one day I may even have an interest in any area that at the moment I do not have so much time for. I would encourage everyone to join every group and hence my earlier suggestion that to save all those clicks a default opt-in might be better. I am still missing the (very) subtle differences between Groups and sub-Forums. <snip> Perhaps the solution should be that the entire board should comprise a series of specific groups rather than a mix of groups and standalone forums (fora?)? Having just looked at the main index with it's slightly revised layout, I can see a newcomer being very confused as to where to start, as there's the potential for huge overlaps between some of the general forums and the more tightly focused groups. Whilst I'm a big admirer of Andy for his continuing efforts to develop RMweb, and a big fan of the board as a whole due to the friendly membership and breadth of knowledge, it does feel somewhat fragmented in its' current form. If you know what you're looking for, then I guess it may be easier to find something specific. Casual browsing is much more tricky though, which is a shame as some of the most interesting stuff are things I didn't know that I didn't know, if you see what I mean? Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Gold Oldddudders Posted May 21, 2011 RMweb Gold Share Posted May 21, 2011 I continue to find Active Content keeps me in touch with anything in the last 24 hours, or New Content if I'm away for longer periods. I think every newcomer should be encouraged to look there first, then they will quickly identify the way the Forum works, and home in on areas of interest to them. Since Group contributions appear there, and the good ship RSS Fetcher brings news of every blog update, there's no reason to miss much. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kenton Posted May 21, 2011 Share Posted May 21, 2011 I continue to find Active Content keeps me in touch with anything in the last 24 hours, or New Content if I'm away for longer periods. I think every newcomer should be encouraged to look there first, then they will quickly identify the way the Forum works, and home in on areas of interest to them. Since Group contributions appear there, and the good ship RSS Fetcher brings news of every blog update, there's no reason to miss much. Absolutely agree. The one deficiency id that good hip "RSS Fetcher" is a bit underdeveloped ... It would be much better if it collected the blog comments as well as the blog author's posts. There may well be big and really important conversations happening in the blogs, but no one has any inkling of it happening unless they keep opening every page in every blog. I still think that this omission is the biggest reason why so many have problems working with and interacting on the blogs. Layout issues aside it is probably the only reason why I no longer participate in the blogs. It is a shame as I get the impression that there is a great deal of good content there - but it might as well be on another planet (aka web site). Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
trisonic Posted May 21, 2011 Share Posted May 21, 2011 I think we should give Groups a chance to settle down. I know I'm biased but the USA & Canadian Railroads Group (incl. Mexico) will be useful because this subject was lumped together under "Overseas Railways" or "Overseas Prototypes" - which always reminded me of that old newspaper headline: "Fog in English Channel, Continent Cut Off". Best, Pete. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pennine MC Posted May 21, 2011 Share Posted May 21, 2011 There may well be big and really important conversations happening in the blogs, but no one has any inkling of it happening unless they keep opening every page in every blog. I still think that this omission is the biggest reason why so many have problems working with and interacting on the blogs. Uncannily, I find myself agreeing with you again (up to a point). I dont know that I'd call it an 'omission' though, rightly or wrongly, the forum is what it is. You and I have been trading similar points for years now K, but my (perhaps too philosophical) view now is to accept the changes, and modify my own degree of interaction accordingly. I'm not sure there is really any way of simplifying something that just continues to get bigger and more complex. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jamie Posted May 21, 2011 Share Posted May 21, 2011 Absolutely agree. The one deficiency id that good hip "RSS Fetcher" is a bit underdeveloped ... It would be much better if it collected the blog comments as well as the blog author's posts. There may well be big and really important conversations happening in the blogs, but no one has any inkling of it happening unless they keep opening every page in every blog. I still think that this omission is the biggest reason why so many have problems working with and interacting on the blogs. Layout issues aside it is probably the only reason why I no longer participate in the blogs. It is a shame as I get the impression that there is a great deal of good content there - but it might as well be on another planet (aka web site). This is way off topic, but: - each blog shows you recent comments unless (can't recall any instances in those blogs I read) the OP turns it off. - each blog offers various means to be notified (inline, by PM, by email as you prefer - I think) of new content, a function previously called "suscribe" now called "like". I appreciate this is probably a javascript function, and I'm not going to reopen that subject... - if you miss something, it's not the end of the world. I didn't take the time to go to WHSmiths for MRJ 205 therefore didn't get to read the content (which sounded particularly appealing). Various RMWeb sections, such as Blogs, Galleries and Showcase are just like that - if you don't take the time to look you might never see. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kenton Posted May 21, 2011 Share Posted May 21, 2011 Uncannily, I find myself agreeing with you again That is just too scary I was under the, perhaps misguided, impression tha "RSS Fether" was an internal (ie Andy's) development rather than a IPB component. That in itself would explain why it doesn't appear to have developed further. It was, I believe, a work around to get the base activity of the blogs onto the "Active Contents". I can also understand why Andy would be reluctant to develop it further. This is way off topic, but: - each blog shows you recent comments unless (can't recall any instances in those blogs I read) the OP turns it off. - each blog offers various means to be notified (inline, by PM, by email as you prefer - I think) of new content, a function previously called "suscribe" now called "like". I appreciate this is probably a javascript function, and I'm not going to reopen that subject... - if you miss something, it's not the end of the world. I didn't take the time to go to WHSmiths for MRJ 205 therefore didn't get to read the content (which sounded particularly appealing). Various RMWeb sections, such as Blogs, Galleries and Showcase are just like that - if you don't take the time to look you might never see. Not quite so far off-topic. The topics within groups are behaving in very much the same way as topics within Forums. If someone posts to either type of topic then "Active Contents" picks it up. Blogs are totally different. You have to go into a blog and even worse its specific post/page before you get to read the comments. The email system indeed does not work (not even for the blog owner) which makes absolutely no sense as the email notification on topics (both Forum and Group) does work. There is no logic in duplicating a function and then making them work differently for the same task. (then- it doesn't surprise me with the IPB software that they use poor software design) I am not against blogs, I even started and tried to keep it operational. But since a number of updates ago it has become unworkable with layout and function issues. Although the Groups appears to use some of the blog elements (there are layout issues and some function issues creeping in - teething problems I hope) Overall I think they are much better than both blogs and sub-forums. I would even go as far as to say with Layouts and On Workbench topis that they might be better as a Group for each member (optional) I think it could br much better organised than some of the Workbench threads that seem to cover multiple kits/projects. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Andy Y Posted May 21, 2011 Author Share Posted May 21, 2011 This is intended more as an observational comment than a criticism but I think it's only fair to say that, particularly when I make any changes/improvements, negative comments come out about a functional or layout issue (balanced my numerous positive ones of support) but it is extremely rare virtually unknown for anyone to proffer a solution to a problem either in concept or detail (with scripting suggestions). I have never professed to be competent in the scripting; my skills relate more to managing an application and its functions than any technical competencies. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Andy Y Posted May 21, 2011 Author Share Posted May 21, 2011 I was under the, perhaps misguided, impression tha "RSS Fether" was an internal (ie Andy's) development rather than a IPB component. That in itself would explain why it doesn't appear to have developed further. It was, I believe, a work around to get the base activity of the blogs onto the "Active Contents". I can also understand why Andy would be reluctant to develop it further. IPB included the RSS capabilities in the Blog module; all I did was to facilitate a function to use the feed to create a topic entry within the forum. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pennine MC Posted May 21, 2011 Share Posted May 21, 2011 ..."RSS Fether" ... was, I believe, a work around to get the base activity of the blogs onto the "Active Contents". I can also understand why Andy would be reluctant to develop it further. I think my reservation (about any way of being notified of new activity for that matter), would be being swamped with advice of new material that wasnt necessarily of interest. This is why I dont use 'active content' or 'view new posts' - it would be information overload, just like junk e-mail. I've always been of the view that I'd rather actively go looking for what interests me, and (as Jamie suggests) just take the chance of missing something. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
coachmann Posted May 21, 2011 Share Posted May 21, 2011 In support of Groups.......Having seen how my Carriage blogs and threads developed, I consider the 'Group' thing a better idea because it will (hopefully) not disappear off the radar as the aforementioned tended to do. A good deal of useful information was provided by contributors over time and yet, if I have difficulty finding it when I want it then others must to. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kenton Posted May 21, 2011 Share Posted May 21, 2011 being swamped with advice of new material that wasn't necessarily of interest. This is why I don't use 'active content' or 'view new posts' and that is a perfect point of view and alternate way of determining what is happening on RMWeb. A member, who has for example a very focused interest, or priority of interests, for example on Blue Pullmans could quite rightly confine all their viewing and postings to topics within such a group and never or rarely visit any other group. I, like some others, have a much wider and yet still focused interest and do not use the sub forums or the new Groups in that way relying on the "Active Content" as the always on index to what is happening over the entire site. I can see that from a software perspective (not an Andy add on) it should be simple to produce an individualised "Active Content" based on all activity within the user's joined groups. Perhaps IPB are even thinking along those lines. Of course the problem with letting users actually join a group in the first place has to be resolved beforehand. Taking it even further into the nice to have would be to have user filters set up on these Groups controlled by say a named drop list so you could set up a filter say to cut out the Groups that a user only occasionally participates in. I would still probably join every group perhaps with the exception of the "Blue Pullman" and "Class 37" group Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kenton Posted May 21, 2011 Share Posted May 21, 2011 This is intended more as an observational comment than a criticism but I think it's only fair to say that, particularly when I make any changes/improvements, negative comments come out about a functional or layout issue (balanced my numerous positive ones of support) but it is extremely rare virtually unknown for anyone to proffer a solution to a problem either in concept or detail (with scripting suggestions). I have never professed to be competent in the scripting; my skills relate more to managing an application and its functions than any technical competencies. Andy. I can appreciate that you would not want to make adjustments to the code, after all the IPB product has been purchased and should work out of the box completely without you fixing coding errors. But, I presume there is some feedback mechanism to the developers to report errors, design improvements and hacks, that should/could be included in a "approved" software revision? Going into the code in depth, particularly in the somewhat disorganised fashion that it stands in, should not be the province of users - the rather blunt fact is it should be tested to work before users ever get to use it. This is certainly not apparent with IPB. On the other-hand if some of us made suggestions of coding corrections - how well would they be received? Can you really be bothered? and will IPB give a damn that there is a user work-around to a fault they evidently don't care about? I pointed out above the problem with the "Join Button" where the code has no href value - which seems on the surface to be a simple fix but I appreciate that finding and fixing the actual function in the code is far from simple and would be overwritten by the next upgrade as IPB have not swallowed the error's existence. IPB included the RSS capabilities in the Blog module; all I did was to facilitate a function to use the feed to create a topic entry within the forum. Does that mean that it "could" be possible to switch on the same RSS Feeder for "Blog Comments" and it is purely a reluctance to throw the switch? Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dave777 Posted May 21, 2011 Share Posted May 21, 2011 Interested to see where the concept goes (although I don't recall any change to RMWeb being removed again, so I guess it's here to stay ), and I'll make one observation at this early stay - already I can some layout threads appearing in groups such as 'large layouts' and 'boxfile and micro layouts', and that might be a backward step via splitting of content. The 'larger layouts' group has been defined as for the discussion of the exhibiting, wiring, transportation, etc, aspects of larger layouts, but one layout thread has seemingly been moved wholesale into the group (and having searched, I can't seem to find it in the Layouts forum so I don't think it's merely a mirror thread, for example). So instead now of being able to browse through Layouts and see a variety of layouts being built, in future I might have to trawl through several different parts of the forum to see what is, effectively, the same sort of thing. I'm not sure about that yet. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pennine MC Posted May 21, 2011 Share Posted May 21, 2011 So instead now of being able to browse through Layouts and see a variety of layouts being built, in future I might have to trawl through several different parts of the forum to see what is, effectively, the same sort of thing. I'm not sure yet about that. I suppose that's down to the group owner, but I dont blame you for not being sure. In the RofSC group, for instance, Jamie has suggested that layouts stay where they are, with just a few pics and a link (as a sort of 'trailer' I suppose) in the group itself Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
kevpeo Posted May 21, 2011 Share Posted May 21, 2011 I've just added my layout to Jamie's Scottish layout group but really struggled to ''fit'' the photo's to the narrower group page layout. Resizing didn't seem to work so I had to reduce them to thumbnails with a large reduction in quality! Have I missed something? Kev. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Andy Y Posted May 21, 2011 Author Share Posted May 21, 2011 Interested to see where the concept goes (although I don't recall any change to RMWeb being removed again, so I guess it's here to stay ), On a macro scale, yes. On a micro scale? It depends on the support for a Group but it's content can always be re-integrated in the relevant forum area by agreement if didn't wash it's face. On where the concept heads? There are more parts to the jigsaw which I'm still working on which will lead to something akin to a digest format where worthy content gains a higher profile thus alongside quality content from other genres which will facilitate a form of browsing that goes of in different directions or loops. An example of this thinking is to open up Wikipedia, enter the name of a favourite band and follow hyperlinks within that article through to other pages which spark interest and so on from page to page. n.b. I'm not building a Wiki! Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Andy Y Posted May 21, 2011 Author Share Posted May 21, 2011 Have I missed something? No, it's something that's still being reviewed. It does of course depend on the reader's display settings too. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
buffalo Posted May 21, 2011 Share Posted May 21, 2011 Whilst it is convenient to have certain buttons/links in known places, the current use of the right hand column in the group forum pages is a waste of space. Some folk have gone to three columns in their blogs with similar results, either wasted space or masked content. I know that many people maximise their current window on a landscape screen but that only works well on small to medium laptops and similar sized displays. In some cases, the narrowing of content in the central column may even be beneficial as shorter text lines are usually easier to follow. However, for those like me who invariably work on either a large landscape screen with a couple of browser windows side by side, or a very small portrait screen on a mobile, blank space is wasted space. Nick Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kenton Posted May 21, 2011 Share Posted May 21, 2011 Perhaps it should be an agreement between coth the topic OP and the Group owner. I certainly would not like to see a wholesale hijacking by group owners of topics like layouts and workbench - it could get very nasty. Jamie's solution seems a very amicable one. I think there is scope for WB topics becoming an individual Group - to facilitate those WB that have multiple builds that can get very muddled. typical examples are Mozzer's WB and Jazz's WB to name but two which are of popular interest though not everything built in them might have the same overall appeal. But, hasten to add I am not suggesting any form of compulsion to change format - just to make it an option ... in fact could we even optionally move content from the blog to the Group format? (suggested with tongue firmly in cheek) Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
buffalo Posted May 21, 2011 Share Posted May 21, 2011 Now here is something rather odd -- group postings not appearing in Active Posts under IE9 and Chrome Following my earlier rant about wasted space in the third column, I found a particularly bad example of content truncation in Arthur's Locomotives & Rolling Stock Manufacturers thread in the 'UK Standard Gauge Industrial' group. Wondering whether any other browser would do a better job than Firefox (unlikely, I know...) I fired up IE9 and Chrome. I then went to Active Posts in each of these and discovered that whilst Firefox showed recent group posts just like any other, there is no sign of them in the other browsers... Nick Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Andy Y Posted May 21, 2011 Author Share Posted May 21, 2011 They seem to show fine for me in Chrome bu not IE9 (Chrome sample below) IE 9 sample below. Does anyone have any brainwaves on how that can be so as I certainly don't! I do see what you mean about the r/h column though in that instance and I am looking into alternatives and compromises. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
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