Thanks for that. I did know its an open source program, though as a non-programmer I have no idea how hard is to make any changes, including the ones I mentioned. I actually have tried searching a persons username with the word “Introducing” ! So great minds think alike. haha. But it hasn’t worked that well for me…it often shows other responses or posts that the person has made on that introduction thread, but you sometimes have to read a TON of posts and responses before you get to the persons own original entry on the introduction thread telling about themselves. I just tried the method you described using your avatar, then your page, then searching “introducing” and I got several other comments you made on the thread and stopped looking before I found your actual, personal entry about yourself (if you made one). I may have done it wrong, but that goes to show that it isn’t a great way either…though I appreciate that you were just trying to offer a possible solution if a better one can’t be found.
If it isn’t possible to put a link in each person’s profile page to their “introducing” post, then maybe there is a better way…in the end I hope you and scott understand what I’m really trying to get at is I just wish there was a way that (for those who want to share it) we could more easily see each user’s background story-location, zone, trees, etc. I know they could retell their story in their profile paragraph, but most people don’t do that. That why I said if you can’t like to their introduction post then maybe you could just give better instructions to new users on what to tell about themselves (if they want) and maybe a question with answer space would do it? IE :where do you live, what zone is that, how many trees do you have, what kind, how long have you grown fruit, what was the origin of your interest and so on. One suggestion is that when someone enters their personal story on the “introduction thread” that it asks them “can we put this entry on your profile page” and if they said yes, just have it copy onto their profile. But again, I don’t know how hard/impossible that would be
@lhreeves Thank you very much for sharing that- it just exactly what I was saying about the map being so non userfriendly. It’s great that @speedster1 is willing to put people on there when they can’t figure it out themselves (and you should know that is almost everyone) but surely there is a more userfriendly way. Also, most new people don’t even know there is a map, let alone how to get on it or who to ask for help. Maybe Scott or others can find a way to improve both of these related issues.
I didn’t know there was a map until this post. I did a search for map after and found the threads that talk about it and eventually got to the one that had the link to the map. Pretty sure only the map owner can add people to the map. I looked in all the menus and right clicked on everything trying to find hidden menus, but never found anything that would allow me to add myself to the map.
My introduction thread was created prior to me realizing there was a topic for it so mine isn’t where it belongs. Copying and pasting the link to my profile should make it easy to find now though.
just more evidence of what I’m saying. It did use to be possible to add yourself, but by doing so it was also very easy to screw up the whole map and/or other people’s location. People were always writing Dave and saying “I’m sorry, I messed up the map” and he’d have to fix it. So its likely he just made it so he is the only one who can edit it now. Either way, it just goes to show there isn’t a good map system right now!
I like what you did with your introduction very much!!! You just accomplished 90% of what I was asking them to do!!! The only problem I have with what you did is that most people won’t know to do that. If they could automatically do what you just did, or at least ask the person if he/she was ok with that and then doing it, then my suggestion is solved! Nicely done. Its just that most new members that don’t read this current thread won’t know to do what you just did. If they do or if the mods can tell them to or do it for them, we are done! Nice idea. Thanks.
Kevin is right. Initially the map was open to public editing and people were able to add themselves. That created some serious issues in that it was constantly getting compromised. People were getting moved around accidentally and deleted. I actually had to restore it from backups a few times. That is why I had to lock it down. Since then I’ve added everyone manually.
Initially, when I saw a new username I didn’t recognize i would often click on the users profile. If it listed a location I would enter it on the map. But it was spotty and hit or miss. I’ve also looked through the introduction thread and added a few people that way. But I don’t check it religiously enough to make a dent on the new members.
The current way is not ideal that’s for sure. I’m not a programmer so I don’t have an answer. Would be nice if discourse just had an option to enter a lat long coordinate or street address that would auto populate a forum provided map.
I don’t have a personal entry on the intro page. That’s why you couldn’t find it. I figure I’ve posted so much on the fruit forum, and told so many personal stories, people don’t want to hear any more about me I do have a descriptive personal page which includes my location and zone. And of course I’m on Dave’s map.
Your other questions/suggestions are more good ones, but beyond my skill set. I’ll defer to Scott.
No matter how elegant as a solution, the second, hidden scroll bar is unintuitive, but I’m more put off by its color. In my PC browser there’s no contrast at all against the background that I can see.
Uploading images can fail for obscure reasons, I think, like unrecognized or indecipherable file types, incomplete and balky transfers, and oversize pictures. These situations need to be diagnosed in real time for the user’s benefit, and I don’t recall that they are.
Finally, it’s nice to have the backward link from a reply to a previous post, but it’d be really nice to have a forward link from the previous post back to the reply, too. Nobody, it seems, has developed a completely satisfactory way to portray threaded conversations in sequential media, even in two-dimensional media. It must actually require three or more.
Don’t look for any big changes to the Discourse we run unfortunately. Based on past experience with custom mods they end up breaking when there is a new version and then I have to spend a lot of time fixing the now-broken mod. There are plugin extensions available but they also suffer the same problem, future extensions break plugins. So, we only run the vanilla Discourse here. We can change various options in the configuration but any changes not in the standard configuration is not easy.
@CRhode if you are not seeing the colors property you might want to try one of the other themes. Click on your icon in the upper right of your screen, then on the gear wheel, then on “Interface” on the left side menu, then pick a new Theme in the drop-down and hit Save. Browse a few things and see if you like it; if not come back and try another! We can easily edit the colors of the themes so if there is a bad color in there let us know and we can change it.
@Olpea something on how to change the theme could be a good topic for our FAQ!
Ah, I see it now. The interior scroll bar isn’t a bar at all; it’s a thin, vertical, pale blue line, which is perfectly invisible against the pale green of the default background. The GFDark theme shows it off much better.
I’m thinking the scrollbar uses the “highlight” color. The color themes published on the Discourse.com discussion group seem to have the same color for both. I’ll look into this.
Edit: I’ve reached a dead end, not having a live Discourse installation to play with. They have a command-line interface (CLI) for developing color themes, but I can’t run that because it requires a newer Ruby than is available in my current Linux distribution. There’s nothing recent in the Discourse discussion group about how the timeline is colored. Giving up.
I do have a descriptive personal page which includes my location and zone. And of course I’m on Dave’s map.