Help, Suggestions, Future of The D-Word

David, see here ...

In reply to Ben Kempas's post on Mon 10 Sep 2007 :

Uh oh... something broke already?! I guess I'll have to fix it...

Yes, I'm getting them all the time, but only with the "after yours" link. Am I the only one?

Just fixed it!

Peter, "the fixer" Gerard. Only thing I don't like is being called member. Kind of makes me self conscious and wonder what a female member should be called.

Yes, I'm the fixer all right, and I can even fix your post so there's an "r" at the end of my first name!

OK I read the instructions, and now I see that the links are to the posts that are in the various topics.

So far so good. THANK YOU PETER! AND BEN. AND DOUG. AND EVERYONE ELSE WHO WAS A PART OF MAKING THE NEW D-WORD HAPPEN. Sorry I'm yelling. I'm just so bloody excited.

It could be that I need to look a little further, but are you going to have instructions, or panels that show the tools you can use - on the posting pages? It would be wonderful.
Thanks,
Milt

Click on the little blue ? icon above the posting box for posting instructions. Or click "Help" in the menu at the top of the page for general instructions. Anything else, just ask here!

Erica, Glad you like it!

Long live the search function!

Milt, there's also the Help page that you can access from the top menu. You'll find a "Quick Guide" that I wrote very quickly, so it still lacks sophistication and illustration. (Volunteers needed to improve it.)

Peter (& Ben), thanks so much for the new version. I love it already... Methinks the updated site will save me at least 15 minutes of D-word browsing a day; of course, since it's so easy, I'll probably be wasting time, er, posting even more than before. Great job!

Thanks Peter, Ben, Doug, John, and everybody else!!! This is addictive. RIP Facebook, lol

Okay, a couple of other questions that come up for me -- just suggestions for the future "to-do" list, perhaps?

1. spell check for postings (I think we had talked about this at one point)]
2. when email notification of posting following yours occurs, can it tell you who posted after you instead of just saying "someone"?

Most modern browsers will provide automatic spell check - and who's to decide the default spelling for an inbuilt D-Word checker - "color" or "colour"?

You say tomato...

Got the error the first time I tried to upload my photo. Was trying to do 3 different things at once, I'm sure it was because it was way too big and a TIFF. When I reduced it and converted to JPEG it was fine, but might be nice to give the specs for photos. Otherwise, a fabulous job, congratulations.

It would be nice if everybody could upload a picture than we can easily identify them with.

This doesn't have to be a portrait of yourself, it can as well be a picture of your camera, your cat, or a still from a film you made.

I'm not sure if this was covered already-- but i noticed in my first post when i tried to use a couple sets of dashes ( - ) it did a strike-thru thingie. I previewed the post first and changed it to single dashes. Is that a bug or are you not s'posed to use double-dashes? Cuz god knows-me-- and Emily Dickinson-we loves-the long-dash. -

oh look i did it again!

p.s. Peter et al: you guys rock! this was a LOT of work. wow.

Margot, welcome back! I think I'm going to upload your eye surgery picture as your user profile picture...

I think we should get rid of the strike-through feature altogether. It's kind of a leftover from other markup tools, and it'll be more painful than useful.

Margot, is that an art piece by your friend you are using for your image? I was kind of hoping for the eyelid picture, but this one's pretty cool.

I think you can do the double dash without it crossing things out, but only if there's a space between the dashes and the word -- like this.

Banana installation? The search function is your friend

John with a better memory than Erica? I'm impressed (by the search function).

where are the instructions for how to do markup? i can't find them....perhaps i have a bug

i like the -strike-through-! Don't get rid of it! it reminds me of jacques derrida

See the blue question mark icon above the post, to the right of your location?

And who's Jaques Derrida?

A Frenchman famous for his ability to -(censored)-

Derrida

I -like- love the strikethrough too. Please don't get rid of it.

I thought Margot's picture was maggots, not bananas.

About help: Still having problems making the "link to another topic" work using cut and paste from the blue formatting questions mark thing.

{Doc Bar & Grill}

2 questions.
i try to make my photo my default so you can actually see me at left, and it is now my default photo, but doesn't seem to have the intended effect (does the system need some time to update?)

2 i can't seem to change my password from the d-word created random one. when i try to on my profile page, and hit 'save' it tells me that my email is already in use.

other than that, i'm absolutely blown away by the new d-word. soooo great!

whoah! that's cool.

Marj - as I said elsewhere, I think it doesn't like the "&" sign. We might have to rename the topic the Doc Bar and Grill.

Riley - I suspect this has to do with your sign-up for a third account after we already imported two different ones. Seems like Peter needs to do some database clean-up...

you are probably right, Ben.
sorry about the headache.

bigger photo didn't work.

Ben I don't see the blue question mark... maybe only the hosts have it? I see the reply, link, and tag icons only.

Also, I'm all for a strikethrough function, but could it be changed to some other code-- so peeps using dashes don't do it accidentally?

Last but not least, D-Worders got mad memory skillz!!!! Yes, that's a pile of bananas my artist pal Doug Fishbone assembled in NY. (He's done them all over the world, actually.) It was a photo I had handy on my desktop. But if the peeps want the eyelid pictures, I can certainly oblige.....

Margot - blue questions mark in the top right hand corner of this yellow posting box

Ahhh! thanks Marj

I'll fix the formatting thing in due time. It's not meant to strikethrough unless there's white-space on either side so that you can still have a double-dash.

(Hidden section for the technically interested...)

So, this is a question re: public/private topics. This topic is public, right... but if there's a link in here to another thread that's in the private area, what happens when non-members click on that link?

is there only a "Public" "introduce yourself" topic. Perhaps a private one would be good?

In reply to Margot Roth's post on Thu 13 Sep 2007 :

If Enthusiasts visit a link to a Members-only topic they will not be allowed in.

Chris - Two "Introduce Yourself" topics would be too confusing for everyone. That's what we agreed on back in March when we discussed the specs with the community. And I think it works really well the way it is now.

Having said this, we didn't just merge the Intro topics of the previous Forum and Community conferences and made it public. We've always said that everything that was originally posted in a private topic will stay private. So if you need to access the old "private" Intros, they are here: OLD D-Word Community: Introduce (members-only link)

peter and ben thought of evvvvvverythinggggg...

Are you all aware of the My Topics options? You can totally customise your D-Word experience now by having an individual selection of topics and receiving email disgests (which still look a bit rough right now but we'll improve that).

Awesome that links automatically get created, without having to do this anymore: <link>. Well done!

The <> was only to prevent long links from breaking when being wrapped.

I think you should upload a photo of the Westy as your profile pic, Danielle.

You think so? Kind of small. But it is the only photo I have that is recent. Truthfully I'm not ready to put up a photo. Maybe later this week though...

Suggestion: on each particular topic page (like here, in Help) a little pop-up menu that lets gives you a list of all topics so you can jump directly to another one without going back to the Topics List Page.

I would also suggest, though I know it's been discussed, that a private intro topic would be nice nonetheless...i don't want to read every into from the enthusiasts and i imagine not everyone wants to introduce themselves to the enthusiasts; i don't know. i don't think it'd be confusing--it could appear in the social topics for the private one and in the public space for the public one.....

But frankly, as it all is now, this is very cool and i'd be happy with it with no changes at all..............

Peter, Ben, don't see anything in the Help section about doing html within a post. So, how does one do things like bold and italicize within the posts here?

Click the blue question mark immediately to the right of your location >>>

Sweeeeeet!