URL Title substitution?

[Pudding4brains]

Hi,

Is there any way to set the defaults for the annoying URL Title substitution? I really don't want to have to click "Edit" (because I forget the first time) then scroll, then click "Advanced" then scroll some more and then do three more clicks every time I give someone a link.

Or do I have to wait until I'm "trusted" enough to edit my profile/preferences (Nice welcome that!). I tend to agree somewhat with the "Stupid Forum" post below. The first impressions are definitely cluttered, unconfigurable and not very user friendly (quite a detour to add an image to a post). All that is "just" look-and-feel of course, but it almost made me run off screaming - sorry.

That said, the principle of building a gallery from all the forum images etc is very good, but it certainly could be achieved more "streamlined" to the forum users and possibly with a higher degree of organization/categorization for the images (browsing the galleries with their current size is "a tad" daunting).

So, now slap me for uttering criticism and tell me I'd better put up with it because there are no better wild life fora around! (maybe the people who came up with nthat in the other thread should learn some other languages )

Cheers!
Arp

[pressld2]

Look, no one here is saying that this forum is perfect and from what I've seen, having been a member for less than a year, constructive suggestions for improvement are always welcome. But carping, sarcastic comments from people who joined yesterday are unlikely to be welcomed with open arms on any forum.

Your post was nowhere near as bad as the "stupid forum" one, in fact your third paragraph was both positive and constructive. Try writing a whole message like that and see what kind of response you get!

Welcome to WAB, by the way!

Dave P.

[Pudding4brains]

Well, sorry, I got a bit carried away in the rant

The question about how to set the default for "Automatically retrieve titles from external links" was serious though (!)

Please consider my remarks above, basically as aiming at options for improvement. I'm an IT-professional and generally internet-savvy enough, but I wasn't kidding when I said that the whole interface almost drove me off within seconds - I'm not that desperate

Also, have a look for example at the French insecte.org (get an account, and upload some images to use in forum posts). They also run a combination of gallery and forum, but you can upload from within the forum edit screen and the image upload screen offers a lot of fields to fill in (family, genus, species, location etc etc) that can hence later be used to categorize images in the gallery too. Their system has other flaws of course, but it could be useful to have a look and see if some of the ideas could be worthwhile to take into consideration.

Friendly greetings nevertheless
Arp

[Pudding4brains]

Okay, took too much time editting the previous post ... so here is a bit more in a seperate one:

There seems to be a campaign going on to get people to upload the images for their forum posts on WAB. There are a few points to consider if you really want that to happen:
* Make it easy!
* Make it damn easy and fast!
* Make it even easier and faster!

Meaning: If people complain about not wanting to "prepare" (resize, recompress etc) their images so they will finally "fit" the requirements, then do it for them: accept any image and have a script resize/recompress it - that sort of thing. If you want people to contribute within pixel/kb limits don't ask them to do spend their time on manually doing that, but let your machine do it for them and make the whole process so that it takes hardly any clicks/time (multiple image upload windows instead of one by one etc).

Then, after a long void, comes the next option: Make it so that people feel it's worth their while by contributing to a very damn useful resource. The image galleries now are a fair resourse but it's usefulness is degrading every day equally to the increase in size. You have the option here of gathering good images from many, many enthousiastic nature buffs, but the images would become much more useful in an (taxonomically) organized manner. Thumbnail pages of families or genera - that sort of thing - preferably with checked/confirmed dets.

This would also give (even) more purpose to uploading here as opposed to Flickr or whatever - people would clearly see "Hey look, that species is still missing - I have images of that!". Stuff like that. Should make people want to contribute as much as possible ... oh yeah, and make it easy - or did I already mention that?

Well 'nough said for now. Again - please consider all this to be constructive criticism!

Friendly greetings
Arp

P.S. BTW I've had to "correct" the URL in this message above several times as clicking on "Advanced" will do the substitution even before I can disable it

[eeyore]

Originally Posted by pressld2

Look, no one here is saying that this forum is perfect and from what I've seen, having been a member for less than a year, constructive suggestions for improvement are always welcome. But carping, sarcastic comments from people who joined yesterday are unlikely to be welcomed with open arms on any forum.

Your post was nowhere near as bad as the "stupid forum" one, in fact your third paragraph was both positive and constructive. Try writing a whole message like that and see what kind of response you get!

Welcome to WAB, by the way!

Dave P.

well said dave - it might also be worth adding that with over 10,000 members , 32,000 pics in the gallery and over 2 million views of those pics wab must be doing something right and most people dont seem to be having too many problems

that said I'm sure everybody knows that wab isnt perfect but my advice would be rather than moaning about how somebody else should spend their time making things better , perhaps it would be better to spend time doing something constructive to actually improve the site such as helping develop content , uploading pics , identifying pics, providing reviews etc etc

[Pudding4brains]

Originally Posted by eeyore

my advice would be rather than moaning about how somebody else should spend their time making things better , perhaps it would be better to spend time doing something constructive to actually improve the site such as helping develop content , uploading pics , identifying pics, providing reviews etc etc

Wow - thanks eeyore! I was all happy that maybe someone had actually come up with an answer to the question this thread raised in the first place: How do I disable (or change the defaults for) the silly URL-mangling options?.

But of course your advice is of much more help and makes me even way happier as I now realize I'm just a stupid moaning lazy bum who would of course never even think about doing useful things of his own accord and only bitch and moan, and only take and never give. I'm so happy I now finally know this!

Thanks for the mirror eeyore! Best advice I've had today!!!!!
Cheers!
Arp

[eeyore]

the answer to your question , is that you can't as far as i know alter the way Urls are displayed short of editing them manually because text substitution for the url is generally set by the website you are linking too not by wab - a function of html which allows webmasters to chose how their site is id'd on forums and other websites.

I'm not sure what the big deal is anyway as anyone who you are showing the link to can just click on it to get the url - or if you are desperate to show it you can edit it manually without going to the advanced editing page , or when you intially paste it in for that matter.

[StuartDH]

Pudding4all

I think I've sorted it to now show 'nice URLs'

BBC - bbc.co.uk homepage - Home of the BBC on the Internet

I'll take a look over some of your other points

[Pudding4brains]

Hi eeyore,

Thanks for getting back to the point. I was a bit disappointed with you last night as I feel that all I have been trying to do is precisely "being constructive" in the ways you suggested and while doing so ran into problem after problem. Taking the time to indicate these problems (as opposed to shrugging the shoulders and leaving) is also constructive I think.

You may also keep in the back of your head that there is a certain threshold for a newbie to start "moaning" and maybe if a newbie does come to doing so, it might be with good reason. So instead of all wabbers mobbing the newbie like happened in the "Stupid forum" thread it might be an idea to step back a little and wounder why a newbie would become so frustrated so soon that he/she couldn't resist posting something that you may perceive as unjust criticism. I think that would be a way more constructive line of thought than mobbing the newbie with "WAB is great - you must be stupid yourself" posts. As for your advice to me personally, well, let's pretend you didn't okay?

Originally Posted by eeyore

the answer to your question , is that you can't as far as i know alter the way Urls are displayed short of editing them
manually

The point is that I usually do write them manually and that the software mangles that work. I know it's not WAB, but the same software, so have a look at this post on WATW and imagine what it would look like if all the links were automagically "mangled" to either full URLs or whatever page name the remote site may come up with.

Next, try to imagine how truly annoyed you would be if you had to to rework all those links two or three times because the software did mangle them.

If I write something like this:
Bla bla bla, so look at [url=http://some.link.edu]this page[/url] bla bla. then I have fully specified how I want the link to be displayed in the text and the software has no reason to think it's cleverer than me, let's say "Microsoft Style".

If fully specified the parser shouldn't touch the link and if it does the software should be considered to be "broken".

text substitution for the url is generally set by the website you are linking too not by wab - a function of html which allows webmasters to chose how their site is id'd on forums and other websites.

No, that simply isn't right. The software on the WAB server has to make a real effort to first address the site linked, then retrieve the name of the page as specified by the remote site and finally blend this name into the link displayed on the WAB page.

I'm not sure what the big deal is anyway as anyone who you are showing the link to can just click on it to get the url - or if you are desperate to show it.

I'm trying precisely not to show any ugly link or very unpredictable remote page names and make an effort to nicely blend the links into the text. The big deal is that it's annoying without end to find that effort destroyed time and again by some silly piece of software that is just plainly broken.

Not only is it annoying that I have to remember to switch off the options manually almost every time I save a post (as I have links in most), but it also happened at some point (I think it was through "quick reply") that I had to press the "advanced" button first to be able to get to the options in the first place and after pressing that the software already managed to mangle the links before I even had a chance to disable it.

Not very "smart" either: The software doesn't remember the settings, not even for a post where it was already manually disabled. So if I go back and press "Edit" to repair a typo or so (I do that a lot, my English isn't too perfect, sorry) I have to remember to scroll down and do all the extra clicks or be punished immediately with even more work.

All this is just thick and very, very annoying - the software should be doing me a favour by leaving my work well enough alone - it shouldn't be me doing the software a favour by having to scroll down and doing all sorts of extra clicks every time I want to save my edits (or be punished by getting my work ruined!).

So, at the very least I should have the option to set the defaults for this "feature", but the smarter way would be to repair the software.

* Automatically parse links in text
- should only "do it's thing" if a "url type text" is not already located within URL-tags

* Automatically retrieve titles from external links
- should only be allowed to come into action on "url type plain text" substituted by the previous function and never touch the text to be displayed in already fully specified URLs.

But of course, that's just me "moaning" without reason

Thanks for the answer to the question anyway, at least now I don't have to live with the feeling that maybe it can be switched off and I'm just to daft to find it

Cheers!
Arp

[StuartDH]

Originally Posted by Pudding4brains

Hi,

Is there any way to set the defaults for the annoying URL Title substitution? I really don't want to have to click "Edit" (because I forget the first time) then scroll, then click "Advanced" then scroll some more and then do three more clicks every time I give someone a link.

Originally Posted by Pudding4brains

Or do I have to wait until I'm "trusted" enough to edit my profile/preferences (Nice welcome that!).

If you've got any suggestions on how else we could easily stop the thousands of spammers who join forums to post one link to their site then disappear again, then I'm all ears.

Originally Posted by Pudding4brains

I tend to agree somewhat with the "Stupid Forum" post below. The first impressions are definitely cluttered, unconfigurable and not very user friendly (quite a detour to add an image to a post). All that is "just" look-and-feel of course, but it almost made me run off screaming - sorry.

Agreed. I'd love to improve the system in hundreds of ways, but unless you've got a spare £30k for a full-time developer it'll take a bit of time.

Originally Posted by Pudding4brains

That said, the principle of building a gallery from all the forum images etc is very good, but it certainly could be achieved more "streamlined" to the forum users and possibly with a higher degree of organization/categorization for the images (browsing the galleries with their current size is "a tad" daunting).

Streamlined and more categories for organisation? - seems a bit less and more at the same time. Do you mean more categories for members to have to choose from to make sure their images are in the right places?

Originally Posted by Pudding4brains

So, now slap me for uttering criticism and tell me I'd better put up with it because there are no better wild life fora around! (maybe the people who came up with nthat in the other thread should learn some other languages )

I must admit, I thought that fora was the plural of forum as well

Stuart

P.S. Personally, I don't mind the criticism, but when so many other members have put in hundreds/thousands of hours of work, it'd be a big help if you could be a bit more diplomatic when asking for features or fixes or picking holes in the site. It's also worth noting that we're not Flickr, Google or any charity/organisation with a multi-million pound budget...but we're still doing our best.

If you could also keep your replies brief and to the point then it would be a big help as there's a lot to read here, and elsewhere, and not nearly enough hours I'm afraid.

[Seajay]

For people who are not particularly au fait with computers (me) the first time on the site is not easy. Remember many of us did not grow up with computer technology. I didn't know what a thread was or how to post let alone upload (and what's a url anyway). I know people on this site are very friendly and helpful and will freely give advice but sometimes it can be over a person's head and you feel silly to ask again.
Now I know how, uploading to the gallery is easy. I am not aware of any step by step insructions and if there are the fact I could not find them means the system is not working effectively.
I still cannot download to my posts which is a great pity as it mars the effectiveness of any imput I give. All I want to do is download small pics to illustrate points. Are instructions for that available somewhere? If they are then why can't I find them? Now if I am reading the posts correctly I then have to put them in the gallery?
So in all fairness the gentleman does have a valid point about making things easier though perhaps it could have been presented with more tact?
The 10,000 members are not all going to be computer whizz kids. I also see many posts from members who are struggling as much as I though admittedly they seem to work it out. I must be thick

My sons just told me what a url is! Simple when you know.

Colin

[Pudding4brains]

Ah - Hi Stu, I think we crossed ...

Originally Posted by StuartDH

I think I've sorted it to now show 'nice URLs'
BBC - bbc.co.uk homepage - Home of the BBC on the Internet

That is a very nice way of showing page names as substitution goes (!)

But, as explained with more detail in my answer to eyoore above, my personal problem with it is that I would really like the software to not do any substituting at all on my already fully specified URLs

The point of the question however was not that you should be doing extra work on it just to make me happy, but that I wanted to know if I had missed some setting somewhere. Apparently not ... so for now, that's just the way it is.

Thanks for all your work though Stu!
Arp

[StuartDH]

Originally Posted by Pudding4brains

Okay, took too much time editting the previous post ... so here is a bit more in a seperate one:

There seems to be a campaign going on to get people to upload the images for their forum posts on WAB. There are a few points to consider if you really want that to happen:
* Make it easy!
* Make it damn easy and fast!
* Make it even easier and faster!

* Make it easy! - that'll be about £5,000
* Make it damn easy and fast! - add a zero
* Make it even easier and faster! - add another zero

Originally Posted by Pudding4brains

Meaning: If people complain about not wanting to "prepare" (resize, recompress etc) their images so they will finally "fit" the requirements, then do it for them: accept any image and have a script resize/recompress it - that sort of thing. If you want people to contribute within pixel/kb limits don't ask them to do spend their time on manually doing that, but let your machine do it for them and make the whole process so that it takes hardly any clicks/time (multiple image upload windows instead of one by one etc).

We do resize images to a point, but then when you get some new members posting 10x13mb images (yes this really does happen) they wonder why it takes until a week on tuesday to upload.

If we allow 5mb images, we invariably get lots of 5mb images and that takes a lot of space, processing and downloading, when in fact a 1mb image would look just as good and save a lot of hassle for us.

Originally Posted by Pudding4brains

Then, after a long void, comes the next option: Make it so that people feel it's worth their while by contributing to a very damn useful resource. The image galleries now are a fair resourse but it's usefulness is degrading every day equally to the increase in size. You have the option here of gathering good images from many, many enthousiastic nature buffs, but the images would become much more useful in an (taxonomically) organized manner. Thumbnail pages of families or genera - that sort of thing - preferably with checked/confirmed dets.

It's a gallery, not just a reference section. It's also worth adding that the site in general is for people who know very little about wildlife. We think they're probably more interested in seeing great pictures than knowing order, sub-order, family etc.

that said, we are also building a reference section

Originally Posted by Pudding4brains

This would also give (even) more purpose to uploading here as opposed to Flickr or whatever - people would clearly see "Hey look, that species is still missing - I have images of that!". Stuff like that. Should make people want to contribute as much as possible ... oh yeah, and make it easy - or did I already mention that?

http://www.wildaboutbritain.co.uk/list/british_fungi
http://www.wildaboutbritain.co.uk/list/british_birds

[Pudding4brains]

Hi Stu, crossed again

I'll be brief.

Originally Posted by StuartDH

If you've got any suggestions on how else we could easily stop the thousands of spammers who join forums to post one link to their site then disappear again, then I'm all ears.

Not sure how not having the control panel would prevent spammers from posting. The confusing thing about is, as mentioned by someone else too, is that the first page you get (got?) was an invitation to edit the profile (which you then can't).

Agreed. I'd love to improve the system in hundreds of ways, but unless you've got a spare £30k for a full-time developer it'll take a bit of time.

Stu, I'm not saying you should have it all fixed by yesterday, I think you're doing a fine job, you've been very responsive and quick to "fix". As said before, please consider my "criticism" to be aimed at helping by letting you know what it is that confuses/annoys newbies. If at times I have not been fully diplomatic about it that must have been because I was somewhat annoyed with some of the features on the site. Sorry for making that a bit too obvious than

Streamlined and more categories for organisation? - seems a bit less and more at the same time.

Well, streamlined as in uploading from the forum edit window and as in being offered choices/quidance for keywords and/or other data that would make the galleries better searchable (as detailed on WATW).

I must admit, I thought that fora was the plural of forum as well

I frankly wouldn't know what it is supposed to be in English, but I think/hope my "English" is not too confusing anyway

P.S. Personally, I don't mind the criticism, but when so many other members have put in hundreds/thousands of hours of work, it'd be a big help if you could be a bit more diplomatic when asking for features or fixes or picking holes in the site.

I'll keep that in mind.

Thanks again Stu
Arp

[StuartDH]

Originally Posted by Pudding4brains

Hi eeyore,

Thanks for getting back to the point. I was a bit disappointed with you last night as I feel that all I have been trying to do is precisely "being constructive" in the ways you suggested and while doing so ran into problem after problem. Taking the time to indicate these problems (as opposed to shrugging the shoulders and leaving) is also constructive I think.

I'd go with that, it's just that the way we say something is often as important as to what we say, as in...

Originally Posted by Pudding4brains

You may also keep in the back of your head that there is a certain threshold for a newbie to start "moaning" and maybe if a newbie does come to doing so, it might be with good reason. So instead of all wabbers mobbing the newbie like happened in the "Stupid forum" thread it might be an idea to step back a little and wounder why a newbie would become so frustrated so soon that he/she couldn't resist posting something that you may perceive as unjust criticism. I think that would be a way more constructive line of thought than mobbing the newbie with "WAB is great - you must be stupid yourself" posts. As for your advice to me personally, well, let's pretend you didn't okay?

that member must have known the sort of reaction they'd get, and sadly there are some people who troll websites looking to wind people up and start a fight

Originally Posted by Pudding4brains

The point is that I usually do write them manually and that the software mangles that work. I know it's not WAB, but the same software, so have a look at this post on WATW and imagine what it would look like if all the links were automagically "mangled" to either full URLs or whatever page name the remote site may come up with.

Next, try to imagine how truly annoyed you would be if you had to to rework all those links two or three times because the software did mangle them.

If I write something like this:
Bla bla bla, so look at [url=http://some.link.edu]this page[/url] bla bla. then I have fully specified how I want the link to be displayed in the text and the software has no reason to think it's cleverer than me, let's say "Microsoft Style".

If fully specified the parser shouldn't touch the link and if it does the software should be considered to be "broken".

No, that simply isn't right. The software on the WAB server has to make a real effort to first address the site linked, then retrieve the name of the page as specified by the remote site and finally blend this name into the link displayed on the WAB page.

That happens in a fraction of heartbeat and it's no problem for WAB. What it does do however, is ensure that all links are uniform and you can't the link to a porn site under your own link title of 'Blue Tits'

Originally Posted by Pudding4brains

I'm trying precisely not to show any ugly link or very unpredictable remote page names and make an effort to nicely blend the links into the text. The big deal is that it's annoying without end to find that effort destroyed time and again by some silly piece of software that is just plainly broken.

see above

Originally Posted by Pudding4brains

Not only is it annoying that I have to remember to switch off the options manually almost every time I save a post (as I have links in most), but it also happened at some point (I think it was through "quick reply") that I had to press the "advanced" button first to be able to get to the options in the first place and after pressing that the software already managed to mangle the links before I even had a chance to disable it.

Not very "smart" either: The software doesn't remember the settings, not even for a post where it was already manually disabled. So if I go back and press "Edit" to repair a typo or so (I do that a lot, my English isn't too perfect, sorry) I have to remember to scroll down and do all the extra clicks or be punished immediately with even more work.

I think we also have to consider how many people want to do what you're doing and how much time and money we should spend on it. If it's jsut you and half a dozen others then I'm afraid you might be in for a long wait

Originally Posted by Pudding4brains

All this is just thick and very, very annoying - the software should be doing me a favour by leaving my work well enough alone - it shouldn't be me doing the software a favour by having to scroll down and doing all sorts of extra clicks every time I want to save my edits (or be punished by getting my work ruined!).

So, at the very least I should have the option to set the defaults for this "feature", but the smarter way would be to repair the software.

* Automatically parse links in text
- should only "do it's thing" if a "url type text" is not already located within URL-tags

unless the title is trying to hide a porn site

Originally Posted by Pudding4brains

* Automatically retrieve titles from external links
- should only be allowed to come into action on "url type plain text" substituted by the previous function and never touch the text to be displayed in already fully specified URLs.

The very basics of it all is that the system shows the title that the website owner chose to have shown when they build the webpage. So if you link to a site and the title says "Butterfly Photography in Devon", our link does the site owner a big favour by titling the link exactly as they wanted it. It produces a far better search engine listing for them than having their link overidden by a title by a member choosing an alternative title of something like "see here".

So the website owner is happy. WAB's is happy because the title doesn't hide something. And so it's only the poster who's not so happy...can't please all the people all the time

Stu

[eeyore]

on all this stuff I'm going to now bow out and leave the debate of policy to stu cos its his site not mine anyway - suffice to say that yes i could have been more tactful but then so perhaps could you, and also my reply to dave was a general point not soley directed at you, but yes i could have made that clearer too.

anyway it is nothing personal and i'm still happy to give advice (if asked) to you or indeed any new member.

[eeyore]

Originally Posted by Seajay

I still cannot download to my posts which is a great pity as it mars the effectiveness of any imput I give. All I want to do is download small pics to illustrate points. Are instructi