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Forum category specific admin defined circumstance descr.

Posted: Sun Oct 20, 2002 7:10 am
by Heavy
Ran out of title characters, here it is:
Forum category specific admin defined circumstance descriptors

When some post under a very specific subject like PHP, they don't test their code.
It has at least the following effects:
  • * The problem is not understandable / the fix suggestion does not work
    * People make more posts than necessary
    * Development time is delayed for the projects in mind
I went to phpBB to see if there was any development that could help avoiding these occurances.
What I found was this:
http://www.phpbb.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=45029

This, or a variant of this, could be helpful in understanding circumstances for a post.

Say you are about to post a reply to:
this doesn't work, $loggedin is a session var:

Code: Select all

if($loggedin=1){echo "secret";}
There is one error in the example, and a uncertainty whether $loggedin was registered properly in the session.
The one who replies has to guess what system is used where the problem occured.

My suggestion is forum category specific admin defined checkboxes, radio buttons and small text inputs to specify certain circumstances for the post. For example:

Code: Select all

tested code                Yes, No
PHP version                їtextbox]
Platform OS                Linux, MacOS X, Win 98, Win 2000, blah blah
Platform web server        Apache, IIS, blah, blah
PHP installed as           Module, standalone binary
Register globals           On, Off
And so on...

That would not only clarify circumstances. It would make the poster think a bit more before posting.

Of course, all that can be done by typing it manually at every single post.
But people don't work like that... Correct?

I know this is a rather big feature suggestion, but as it is coming up at phpBB as admin configureable user properties, maybe they / we / you should go even further to make these check boxes, radio buttons and textareas go for single posts aswell?

Posted: Sat Dec 28, 2002 5:30 am
by Elmseeker
That's a good idea IMHO, It would make things quite a bit easier. As you said it would keep posts down a bi and therefor reduce the DB bloat since people wouldn't have to play 20 questions to get to the bottom of something just to find out the error that started this 10 meg thread was a missing ; somewhere... :twisted: I have another suggestion for this also, as for a field, not all of the posts in the PHP forum are questions directly about a specific piece of code so if this is done there should be a radio button like "Is this a code specific question?" yes/no...or something similar this would avoid people having to fill out he rest of the form if it has no relevance to their query/comment...it should also only be used on the original post, not replies, etc...Sorry for making this so long...have fun. :)

Posted: Sat Dec 28, 2002 9:45 pm
by evilcoder
half the fun is posting a million replies a day... imagine how bored i would be if the topics were that specific....