RiderSite.com - Motorcycle Forums

I may be alone here but a couple of things that bother me about this site.

My main gripe because it annoys me regularly is the having to wait between searches. Why?

Secondly, I mainly use the forum via the "view posts since your last visit" link in the top right. Is it me or does this refresh too quickly. Sometimes there will be quite a few new posts but I won't have time to read all of the topics that are of interest to me but next time I have a spare 5 minutes they're all gone, marked as read and I cannot remember where or what they were to go back and read them. Maybe there's something in my personal settings that could be changed??

Thirdly I'm not that fussed about this but others (non members) have mentioned it to me. They've seen the site but given up on trying to register as its a right pita. It does a great job at keeping out spammers and bots but does it really need to be so complicated? I think it puts a few people off bothering.

Food for thought or sommat like that.

The only thing that bothers me is squid ;)

Just thought I'd get in first :)

re the spammers

until we brought the current system in, we were dealing with between 20 to 100 spam accounts a day.... and we have to deal with each one individually

I and other admins would like to move to php 3 - currently we are stuck with what we have....

the search parameter restriction is - I believe - hard coded - does not apply to us but back in the day it could be used on large php forums etc to mount dos attacks

I will have have a look at the view topics option to see if it can be tinkered with

Never had to go through the registration process as it is now, but I've just been to take a look. CAPTCHA code, emailed confirmation code, and a "Look at the 8 photos in a particular post, and add up the number of cylinders each bike has". Does seem slightly excessive (especially to someone looking in from the outside), however I'm not the one wading through all the spammer requests...

As for the read posts job, I've sat at home for an hour or more and the same "new" posts are available (or even the last one I posted the night before, so longer periods) - at work they're gone in minutes. think it's more a function of your ISP, or whether your browser has reset connection with the site

I never use the 'new posts since last visit' thing - I just use the orange blobs at the left that tell me where there are posts that I've read. Works for me.

BikerGran wrote:I never use the 'new posts since last visit' thing - I just use the orange blobs at the left that tell me where there are posts that I've read. Works for me.

+1

I use the new posts link, because I'm lazy :) Never really had a problem with it though.

With regards the search, this does annoy me too, but I think most forums are the same, so I've always accepted it's just something you have to live with.

squadron Nero wrote:I may be alone here but a couple of things that bother me about this site.

My main gripe because it annoys me regularly is the having to wait between searches. Why?

It annoys me too but TBH it's only a minor issue and a few moments later the required time is passed and you're away.
I've not found anything that lets you adjust this .... but not looked that hard.

squadron Nero wrote: Secondly, I mainly use the forum via the "view posts since your last visit" link in the top right. Is it me or does this refresh too quickly. Sometimes there will be quite a few new posts but I won't have time to read all of the topics that are of interest to me but next time I have a spare 5 minutes they're all gone, marked as read and I cannot remember where or what they were to go back and read them. Maybe there's something in my personal settings that could be changed??

I've never used that feature as I use the orange blobs (if I've actually bothered to log in). This has a similar issue and this is an infrequent annoyance to me but again, have not seen anything that gives us control over it. I think it's just how our forum platform is designed.

What annoys me more is when I'm looking at a thread and someone posts on that thread at the same time, the unread flag will never disappear. The only way I have found to clear this is to clear cookies for Ridersite ... which clears them all for the site .....
Again, not much can be done while we're on this platform

squadron Nero wrote:
Thirdly I'm not that fussed about this but others (non members) have mentioned it to me. They've seen the site but given up on trying to register as its a right pita. It does a great job at keeping out spammers and bots but does it really need to be so complicated? I think it puts a few people off bothering.

As others have said, this was put in place to protect against the huge volume of non-genuine applications we were receiving. It's no exaggeration to say that the forum was close to collapse due to this.
I'm the culprit for putting the current system in place and despite scepticism it would be effective, it has proved to work really well. I don't think it's been breached.
Now of course we don't want to put off new joiners but it really isn't difficult - all people have to do is look at pictures and do a bit of primary school arithmetic. If they can't be bothered to do that are they really going to contribute anything positive to the forum?
We should remember that those that only want to view stuff have fairly broad access to the forum as non-members.
I guess I do have a bit of sympathy for anyone joining for whom English is difficult due to their language upbringing or those with issues with dyslexia or dyscalculia etc but I would be very reluctant to drop our defences.
Maybe we could make the calculation a bit more simple but I don't really want to change the current strategy that works well.

squadron Nero wrote:
Food for thought or sommat like that.

Indeed - and we do want the forum to be user friendly - though I think there is little we can do on the current platform to address these niggles.

Thanks for the replies. I would just like to add I do like this forum. It's one of the best I've been a member of. Everyone is friendly and helpful and the admins do a great job of keeping it running smoothly.

Roll on summer so I can come and chat to you all in person

D-Rider wrote:.
What annoys me more is when I'm looking at a thread and someone posts on that thread at the same time, the unread flag will never disappear. The only way I have found to clear this is to clear cookies for Ridersite ... which clears them all for the site .....

I use the "Mark all forums read" at the bottom of the forum index, just above the 'who is online' section, if there's a thread that persistently says it's unread. I can't say for sure if this works in the case you mention but I've never had it not work.

BikerGran wrote:

D-Rider wrote:.
What annoys me more is when I'm looking at a thread and someone posts on that thread at the same time, the unread flag will never disappear. The only way I have found to clear this is to clear cookies for Ridersite ... which clears them all for the site .....

I use the "Mark all forums read" at the bottom of the forum index, just above the 'who is online' section, if there's a thread that persistently says it's unread. I can't say for sure if this works in the case you mention but I've never had it not work.

Cheers BG - I'll give it a go next time I have this problem

Instead of changing anything, just keep kicking Nero out so he has to repeatedly re-register :)

wayno wrote:Instead of changing anything, just keep kicking Nero out so he has to repeatedly re-register :)

LOL - now there's a plan !



.... bur seriously, feedback is good.

• Where we can't easily change things we can at least explain the difficulty
  
  Where things are done a certain way, we can explain the background and consider whether that way is still valid
  
  Where things haven't been realised, we can look at how they might be improved.

squadron Nero wrote: Roll on summer so I can come and chat to you all in person

We've already met you.
We're going to hide.

randomsquid wrote:

squadron Nero wrote: Roll on summer so I can come and chat to you all in person

We've already met you.
We're going to hide.

I don't mind you hiding squid, talking to anyone from the Black county is considered a charitable act. [/i]