Are these observations correct?:
It looks like green icons mean new (not necessarily unread), and yellow icons mean old (not necessarily read), and thumbs up/down don’t follow this convention. New means within the last day and old means older than a day.
If this is correct does anyone know how to tell whether a thread has been read/unread?
Lyman,
I’m learning the details of this software along with the rest of you guys, but this is what I believe to be true:
Green means that message (or a “parent” of that message) is a post which has been posted since the last time you looked at the site
Yellow means that message is a post which was posted BEFORE you last looked at the site.
So Green does mean “new” in the sense that it’s appeared since the last time you saw the site. Yellow means old in the sense that it was there before the last time you saw the site.
Thumbs up/down follow this convension, with the slight exception that a tan-colored thumb is the same as a yellow icon. A green thumb is a green thumb.
There is no way to tell whether a particular message has been read or not read before. (The technical reason is that with 10,000 messages [so far] and 200 members & registered guests [so far], that would require recording 2,000,000 data values – whether each registered user has read each message. And the amount of data required would grow as the messages and the number of users grow.)
Hopefully that helped and didn’t add confusion!
Thanks,
Steve
“There is no way to tell whether a particular message has been read or not read before. (The technical reason is that with 10,000 messages [so far] and 200 members & registered guests [so far], that would require recording 2,000,000 data values – whether each registered user has read each message. And the amount of data required would grow as the messages and the number of users grow.)”
That sounds like a good application for cookies; put the burden of storage of that particular state on the client’s computer. A 5 letter cookie could store the state for 7million or so messages (52^5).
Ah, its so easy to kibbutz someone else’s hard work… 
-Curt
A 5 letter cookie could store the state for 7million or so messages (52^5).
Not so - a 5 letter cookie could store the state of ONE of 7 million or so (I’m assuming your arithmetic is correct). To store the state of multiple messages would require one bit per message, so a 5 letter cookie could store the read state of at most 40 (5 bytes by 8 bits) messages.
Cookie storage is limited, so there would be an upper limit on the number of messages that you could store the state of. Given the number of messages in the forums already, I don’t think it’s practical.
Cookie storage is limited, so there would be an upper limit on the number of messages that you could store the state of. Given the number of messages in the forums already, I don’t think it’s practical.
The SR20 board used the cookie for storage. All you need is the date of the newest message you saw stored. Then by definition anything older you saw, anything newer you haven’t.
Cookies or no Cookies. I just hate to be forced into something when Clyde’s place was great. I would gladdly donated funds to our old place. But here I have to pay to do this… it just is not as much fun as Clyde’s. I think I am just going way and give this up… This will be a sad Cirrus day. Bottom line. I don’t like being forced into something that has not proved its self, and then I have to pay for it. I sure miss SR20.org
I could even live without the speel check. Will someone tell me when we go back so I can come back to life…
That is exactly the algorithm used by this new software, too – anything posted since the date/time of the last time you viewed messages is “new” (green icon); anything older is “old” (yellow/tan icons).
The only problem occurs when you log on, read some (but not ALL) new messages. Then, the next time you log on, even the ones you did not read the previous time are marked as “old” this time around. This is the same problem the sr20.org board suffered from as well.
One difference between the two is that, as you pointed out, the sr20.org board used cookies to save this state. For me, that meant that when I logged on at work vs. logging on at home, the “new” messages were not consistent. (i.e. first thing monday morning at work, a bunch of messages were marked “new” even though I’d read them at home over the weekend).
The new s/w stores the state in your account, so no matter where you log in from, it knows what’s new and old. For me personally, this works better. (Note that I realize it doesn’t work better for everybody – if you read at work and your spouse [for example] reads at home, you might PREFER the “new” vs “old” state to be kept per machine rather than per account).
Steve
Well, I can’t respond to all your concerns, but I do want to point out that what you said about “But here I have to pay to do this” is not correct.
No one has to pay anyone anything to use this public message board. We will always keep this public forum free to all users, in the great spirit that Clyde started on sr20.org.
You posted this message anonymously which means that you didn’t pay anything to post it. If you want to get a few more features like the ability to keep track of old vs. new posts, get daily email subscriptions to the message boards, etc. you can “Register” (click the link at the top of the page) so that the system can send stuff to your email address. Again, no charge for these services. The only time you’d need to pay anything is to access the Member’s-only forums. or take advantage of COPAs other services. These members-only areas do not include anything that was on SR20.ORG; in fact, we dliberately kept everything that was on SR20.ORG free of charge.
Please feel free to contact me if you’re having any problems accessing the public areas of the site, or if you have any other concerns.
Thanks,
Steve
Steve,
Since I started this thread, I felt like I needed to reply. Thanks for the quick response to my questions, I believe you answered them fully.
Anything new or different has a learning curve and when something works well (like Clyde’s site) and is changed, there are bound to be questions. I think that this software shows some promise of being more powerful but at the risk of less simplicity.
Thank you Clyde for the original site, and thank you Steve for the time you are putting into making this site as good or better than the original.
Paul SR22 #250