Deleting your cookies seems to help to allow you to post, I just delete the GS cookies, it doesn't solve everything (there is still weird stuff going on) but it can help when the forum just won't let you post. Log out > delete cookies with gamesalad in the title > quit Safari, restart Safari > log in > posts will now mostly get accepted for at least 20 minutes or so, when it all starts to lock up again just go through the procedure once more.
I don't even bother wasting my time anymore. Shouldn't need to jump through hoops to help someone. If I'm posting then 95% of the time I'm helping someone or critiquing them on their game, which is also helping. Soo, if i can't login straight away i simply do not bother anymore and just come back later/following day(s) and try then ... meanwhile, someone who wanted help may not of got it!
My account is corrupted...it logs in one day and not the next. I have no profile page (broken link) and no icon appears - see on the left the '?'. I agree with Tynan get an off-shelf forum/board that is proven - they are a pleasure to use, consistent and reliable. This is frustrating and amateurish.
Is there any word if the search function is going to be fixed? It doesn't appear to work at all (by which I mean, it fails to search for search terms), making it difficult to find past forum threads (which despite all efforts, is still a much better learning resource than the cookbook).
"say a user begins to flame or posts an offensive topic. Angry responses ensue. Not long after, the original poster goes back and edits the post so that it appears they did nothing wrong and are being pointlessly attacked by other members. The moderator then has no idea what occurred, why, or when."
In reality this doesn't happen in a well designed forum environment, it's proven (with time, across the internet) an unfounded fear, an indicator of whether a post has been edited (and when it was edited) serves as a timestamp of any manipulation of the original post, I've spent enough time on enough forums to know that you simply cannot brew up controversy and then edit your stance to leave everyone else looking like they are reacting poorly, the very fact that people have reacted in a certain way reifies the controversy of the original post regardless of attempts to edit the history of the conversation . . . . (edited into two parts due to some arbitrary post size inherent in this !@#$% forum platform) . . .
(part two) . . . . . . the idea that this is a credible concern is illustrative of a lack of understanding of how the culture of a healthy forum works, you don't coerce good forum etiquette with a lack of functionality - any more than you beat good manners into a child, good forum etiquette evolves naturally as part of the character of the community rather than edicts from above that say you can't have certain (and elsewhere basic) tools.
Trust your own community to grow and police itself rather than punish and limit - in advance of any wrong doing - due to your own view of what people might get up to if not kept in place with rules and sanctions.
I am hearing all sorts of rationalisations why the Gamesalad forum should remain alone (in a modern internet) in sticking with such a basic and limited format, none of them are convincing.
Been there, Tynan - and can only agree. I created a new forum for free for Gamesalad using the forum software Xenforo. But it wasn't welcome back then (today I changed it totally, and have been creating forums for others instead).
As I've said in earlier threads, this forum sucked before and it sucks now and it's a shame when it can easily be fixed to be a much better experience for the users. A forum needs to be easy, informative, addictive - give the users the feeling of belonging, the ability to create a personal profile and interact with others and offer features which makes it worth being here.
Using members behaviour as an excuse for not making it better or spend some time and money to improve it is really lame and is to talk down to members imo. So far I noticed, most members are grown-ups here. I have created and run several forums - some with thousands of members - and I don't have the problem with over floating 'spam' etc. - besides, when you run a forum you often have people hired to make sure things like that get removed ... and with all the 'moderators' and 'special' members this forum has already, I'm sure they would be able to remove/fix the few issues there might be in a normal, well functional forum.
I can't post long posts, even a couple of paragraphs lock the posting procedure up (I know this is an issue because splitting the posts into two resolves the problem) this is true for Safari and Firefox . . . . . and I can't edit my posts at all now, I can post (after much ****ing around, deleting cookies, emptying caches, logging out, logging in etc etc) but if I hit edit the text is made editable again, I make a couple of changes and hit save comment and then nothing . . . the editable text just sits there forever, it doesn't get posted.
But you must understand the need for moderation, and not simply to eliminate spam.
No, no one understands the need for moderation, that's the whole point of everyone queuing up in this thread to demand there be no moderation ! Anyhow joking (and moralising-corporate-press-releases) aside ( In good humour !!! : D )moderation is widely understood and widely accepted, no one is arguing against moderation - but the removal of functionality is not moderation, it is prohibition. Forums where they have such new fangled gadgets as quote buttons and the ability to jump straight to the last page of a long thread and edit for as long as you like and other crazy stuff . . . these places also have moderators !! . . . they also don't descend into anarchy !! I have threads on other forums that have proved useful to people (solutions to technical problems gaining upwards of 100,000 views) I can't imagine that kind of growth ever happening in this environment (the platform not the people) - grab SMF or phpBB, you can have all the moderation you want and the users can have a fast, robust, stable and safe* forum platform.
(* seriously, I did find it a little worrying that in this "professional environment" such little concern was expressed for users reporting that they had access to other people's accounts, as Gamesalad's leading supplier of crack cocaine to other Gamesalad users I am put off using the messaging service here for anything too professional knowing that firstly people might find themselves with access to my account and secondly that the moderators didn't seem to see this a big deal, in fact it didn't even appear to warrant a mention).
That's it, I am done complaining now, promise, I think I have complained enough already, my goal was essentially to make the case for the Gamesalad adopting a working (and I don't use the word facetiously) forum platform and from what I can tell the intention is to persevere with this platform, fair enough it probably works for enough people enough of the time to resemble a working forum.
Right, let's hit the 'post comment' button and see what happens . . . .
Right, let's hit the 'post comment' button and see what happens . . . .
What actually happened when I tried to post the above - well firstly I had to split it up to get it to work, then my first post went in fine, then the second wouldn't work at all, I logged out, logged in, still no luck, deleted cookies, emptied cache, still no luck logged out, deleted cookies, emptied cache, quit Safari, then went for it again, it worked ! Second post was posted !!!
Right, now the third part of my post . . . . basically see above for grim details.
: )
Here's a collection of little friends I picked up along the long and painful journey of trying to make a single post:
@Tynan Hi, I'm one of the Vanilla developers. I stumbled on this discussion while I was helping out with a couple bug reports we got.
I can't reproduce your problem with certain categories being missing for you. I'm logged in as a normal user in Chrome, Safari, and Firefox on my Mac and all appears well. I don't know if GameSalad changed permissions recently on this site, but we have no other bug reports related to this. Let us know if it reappears.
The current maximum character limit is set to 8,000 characters which is the Vanilla default. I see other members posting comments far longer than the ones you were forced to split up above. What error were you getting when you attempted to post a longer message?
Your problem with the floating 'X' is terrible, I agree. That should never happen. I've filed a critical bug ticket about this and plan to fix it so that a blank popup cannot be triggered like that. It's likely we had a temporary load problem which caused that error, but it should've clearly informed you of that problem rather than dying like that.
The login issues (inconsistencies & the Xibbe1 spoofing) sound like they were hiccups in the custom single sign-on here and that it's been resolved now by GameSalad.
A lot of work is being put in by Vanilla and GameSalad to make this forum as awesome as possible. I'd appreciate it if we could keep feedback focused on criticism of problems with detailed information for us to follow up on, rather than general "this sucks, get real forum software." That's really counter-productive because it's hurtful to the people dedicating their time to making it right.
Vanilla is indeed fast, robust, stable and safe. Any platform migration encounters bugs and problems as they first get started; older forum systems are not immune to them either. Clearly I'm biased in this regard, but I don't think Vanilla is the finest system because I work there. I work there because, as an owner of several forums, I decided they were the best.
PS: I composed this reply over more than an hour in Chrome for Mac (I took a quick snack break in the middle of it) to check for any saved draft or length-limiting problems and could find none thus far either. I will continue to stop by over the next few weeks to see if I can trigger this or any other bug you mentioned. Hopefully it will be smoother from now on.
I've changed the way searches are done on the forum. They should be a lot faster and much more accurate now, but feedback on it would be useful nonetheless.
I can't reproduce your problem with certain categories being missing for you. I'm logged in as a normal user in Chrome, Safari, and Firefox on my Mac and all appears well. I don't know if GameSalad changed permissions recently on this site, but we have no other bug reports related to this. Let us know if it reappears.
"we have no other bug reports related to this"
Steamworks: (from the first page on this thread) I have been having the same problems as [Tynan] with the posting in random categories
The current maximum character limit is set to 8,000 characters which is the Vanilla default. I see other members posting comments far longer than the ones you were forced to split up above. What error were you getting when you attempted to post a longer message?
Yes, I've seen people post longer (much longer) posts too, so it might be something at my end . . . . . I don't get an error message I just type the stuff in and then hit post comment . . . . . and the page sits there with nothing changing (I've let it sit for half an hour or so as I got on with other things) except for the little grey progress bar boxes - all the obvious things are tried like hitting the post comment once more (after giving it some time), copying the post, quitting Safari/FF . . .
. . . . then trying again pasting the same message into a new post, clearing cache/cookies, logging out and in of GS forums and so on . . . nothing cures it, but chopping the message down to a paragraph (or two at a push) and I am able to post (although after pasting 1 or 2 sections of a longer post into individual posts - I usually hit deadlock and need to do the log-out-log-in-delete-cookies-quit-restart-dance once again)
Your problem with the floating 'X' is terrible, I agree. That should never happen. I've filed a critical bug ticket about this and plan to fix it so that a blank popup cannot be triggered like that. It's likely we had a temporary load problem which caused that error, but it should've clearly informed you of that problem rather than dying like that.
In the end that proved to be one of the lesser issues with this forum software - as once I spotted it and worked out it was a kind orphaned pop up cancel button - I knew to look out for it when things lock up, I think the purple banner the GS forum had over the Christmas holiday threw me off the scent as the blue X was fairly well hidden by the banner.
The login issues (inconsistencies & the Xibbe1 spoofing) sound like they were hiccups in the custom single sign-on here and that it's been resolved now by GameSalad.
A lot of work is being put in by Vanilla and GameSalad to make this forum as awesome as possible. I'd appreciate it if we could keep feedback focused on criticism of problems with detailed information for us to follow up on, rather than general "this sucks, get real forum software." That's really counter-productive because it's hurtful to the people dedicating their time to making it right.
I'm not sure you can reasonably traduce my posts to "this sucks, get real forum software" (even when paraphrasing) - I'd say I took the time to post "criticism of problems with detailed information for [you] to follow up on" - including (where I could) taking the time to grab screen shots, and upload them, sure I can be flippant, but don't expect grace from endlessly frustrated forum users . . . . . (cont)
. . . . plus you might want to remain alive to the differences between English and American culture, over the years I've found it much easier to (unwittingly) offend the sensibilities of Americans when online - I try to remember that most of the English speakers I talk to online are more (how can I put this politely) ''professional'' - and when in contact with a culture that celebrates bad teeth, alcoholism and sarcasm might be offended by stuff that might not bother me.
Anyhow . . criticism, even of the "this sucks" kind, is an invaluable tool, rather than taking it personally or being hurt by it, you should invite it and even thank people for it (seriously) . . . I won't charge.
. . . my request to "get real forum software" was a genuine one, it was not intended to offend anyone, the problems with the forum software are real, rather than imagined, hopefully my comments reflect that.
Anyhow, cheers for taking the time to respond, hopefully the issues will be cleared up in time.
Tynan.
. . . right, let's hit that Post Comment button (685 word post) . . .
A few minutes to bash out a reply and 32 minutes to post it (yes, seriously, 32 minutes of work to post a message) . . . below is this session's favourite posting hurdle (of many). . . I appreciated the splash of colour, red error messages are the best . . . we want more !
Comments
Deleting your cookies seems to help to allow you to post, I just delete the GS cookies, it doesn't solve everything (there is still weird stuff going on) but it can help when the forum just won't let you post. Log out > delete cookies with gamesalad in the title > quit Safari, restart Safari > log in > posts will now mostly get accepted for at least 20 minutes or so, when it all starts to lock up again just go through the procedure once more.
Seems to work for me.
http://vanillaforums.org/
I don't think it is that bad though. I guess a few bugs and glitches here and there.
NOTE: works pretty good on my iPhone
I agree with Tynan get an off-shelf forum/board that is proven - they are a pleasure to use, consistent and reliable. This is frustrating and amateurish.
Is there any word if the search function is going to be fixed? It doesn't appear to work at all (by which I mean, it fails to search for search terms), making it difficult to find past forum threads (which despite all efforts, is still a much better learning resource than the cookbook).
Excellent. Thanks for the quick reply.
"say a user begins to flame or posts an offensive topic. Angry responses ensue. Not long after, the original poster goes back and edits the post so that it appears they did nothing wrong and are being pointlessly attacked by other members. The moderator then has no idea what occurred, why, or when."
In reality this doesn't happen in a well designed forum environment, it's proven (with time, across the internet) an unfounded fear, an indicator of whether a post has been edited (and when it was edited) serves as a timestamp of any manipulation of the original post, I've spent enough time on enough forums to know that you simply cannot brew up controversy and then edit your stance to leave everyone else looking like they are reacting poorly, the very fact that people have reacted in a certain way reifies the controversy of the original post regardless of attempts to edit the history of the conversation . . . . (edited into two parts due to some arbitrary post size inherent in this !@#$% forum platform) . . .
Trust your own community to grow and police itself rather than punish and limit - in advance of any wrong doing - due to your own view of what people might get up to if not kept in place with rules and sanctions.
I am hearing all sorts of rationalisations why the Gamesalad forum should remain alone (in a modern internet) in sticking with such a basic and limited format, none of them are convincing.
Been there, Tynan - and can only agree. I created a new forum for free for Gamesalad using the forum software Xenforo. But it wasn't welcome back then (today I changed it totally, and have been creating forums for others instead).
As I've said in earlier threads, this forum sucked before and it sucks now and it's a shame when it can easily be fixed to be a much better experience for the users. A forum needs to be easy, informative, addictive - give the users the feeling of belonging, the ability to create a personal profile and interact with others and offer features which makes it worth being here.
Using members behaviour as an excuse for not making it better or spend some time and money to improve it is really lame and is to talk down to members imo. So far I noticed, most members are grown-ups here. I have created and run several forums - some with thousands of members - and I don't have the problem with over floating 'spam' etc. - besides, when you run a forum you often have people hired to make sure things like that get removed ... and with all the 'moderators' and 'special' members this forum has already, I'm sure they would be able to remove/fix the few issues there might be in a normal, well functional forum.
Anyway, Happy New Year to all!
Guru Video Channel | Lost Oasis Games | FRYING BACON STUDIOS
I can't post long posts, even a couple of paragraphs lock the posting procedure up (I know this is an issue because splitting the posts into two resolves the problem) this is true for Safari and Firefox . . . . . and I can't edit my posts at all now, I can post (after much ****ing around, deleting cookies, emptying caches, logging out, logging in etc etc) but if I hit edit the text is made editable again, I make a couple of changes and hit save comment and then nothing . . . the editable text just sits there forever, it doesn't get posted.
No, no one understands the need for moderation, that's the whole point of everyone queuing up in this thread to demand there be no moderation ! Anyhow joking (and moralising-corporate-press-releases) aside ( In good humour !!! : D )moderation is widely understood and widely accepted, no one is arguing against moderation - but the removal of functionality is not moderation, it is prohibition. Forums where they have such new fangled gadgets as quote buttons and the ability to jump straight to the last page of a long thread and edit for as long as you like and other crazy stuff . . . these places also have moderators !! . . . they also don't descend into anarchy !! I have threads on other forums that have proved useful to people (solutions to technical problems gaining upwards of 100,000 views) I can't imagine that kind of growth ever happening in this environment (the platform not the people) - grab SMF or phpBB, you can have all the moderation you want and the users can have a fast, robust, stable and safe* forum platform.
(* seriously, I did find it a little worrying that in this "professional environment" such little concern was expressed for users reporting that they had access to other people's accounts, as Gamesalad's leading supplier of crack cocaine to other Gamesalad users I am put off using the messaging service here for anything too professional knowing that firstly people might find themselves with access to my account and secondly that the moderators didn't seem to see this a big deal, in fact it didn't even appear to warrant a mention).
Right, let's hit the 'post comment' button and see what happens . . . .
What actually happened when I tried to post the above - well firstly I had to split it up to get it to work, then my first post went in fine, then the second wouldn't work at all, I logged out, logged in, still no luck, deleted cookies, emptied cache, still no luck logged out, deleted cookies, emptied cache, quit Safari, then went for it again, it worked ! Second post was posted !!!
Right, now the third part of my post . . . . basically see above for grim details.
: )
Here's a collection of little friends I picked up along the long and painful journey of trying to make a single post:
@Tynan thanx for bringing up the our problems with this Forum.
MH
I can't reproduce your problem with certain categories being missing for you. I'm logged in as a normal user in Chrome, Safari, and Firefox on my Mac and all appears well. I don't know if GameSalad changed permissions recently on this site, but we have no other bug reports related to this. Let us know if it reappears.
The current maximum character limit is set to 8,000 characters which is the Vanilla default. I see other members posting comments far longer than the ones you were forced to split up above. What error were you getting when you attempted to post a longer message?
Your problem with the floating 'X' is terrible, I agree. That should never happen. I've filed a critical bug ticket about this and plan to fix it so that a blank popup cannot be triggered like that. It's likely we had a temporary load problem which caused that error, but it should've clearly informed you of that problem rather than dying like that.
The login issues (inconsistencies & the Xibbe1 spoofing) sound like they were hiccups in the custom single sign-on here and that it's been resolved now by GameSalad.
A lot of work is being put in by Vanilla and GameSalad to make this forum as awesome as possible. I'd appreciate it if we could keep feedback focused on criticism of problems with detailed information for us to follow up on, rather than general "this sucks, get real forum software." That's really counter-productive because it's hurtful to the people dedicating their time to making it right.
Vanilla is indeed fast, robust, stable and safe. Any platform migration encounters bugs and problems as they first get started; older forum systems are not immune to them either. Clearly I'm biased in this regard, but I don't think Vanilla is the finest system because I work there. I work there because, as an owner of several forums, I decided they were the best.
PS: I composed this reply over more than an hour in Chrome for Mac (I took a quick snack break in the middle of it) to check for any saved draft or length-limiting problems and could find none thus far either. I will continue to stop by over the next few weeks to see if I can trigger this or any other bug you mentioned. Hopefully it will be smoother from now on.
Thanks for your input, much appreciated.
. . . . . . . . . . . .
I can't reproduce your problem with certain categories being missing for you. I'm logged in as a normal user in Chrome, Safari, and Firefox on my Mac and all appears well. I don't know if GameSalad changed permissions recently on this site, but we have no other bug reports related to this. Let us know if it reappears.
"we have no other bug reports related to this"
Steamworks: (from the first page on this thread) I have been having the same problems as [Tynan] with the posting in random categories
. . . . . . . . . . . .
Yes, I've seen people post longer (much longer) posts too, so it might be something at my end . . . . . I don't get an error message I just type the stuff in and then hit post comment . . . . . and the page sits there with nothing changing (I've let it sit for half an hour or so as I got on with other things) except for the little grey progress bar boxes - all the obvious things are tried like hitting the post comment once more (after giving it some time), copying the post, quitting Safari/FF . . .
(cont)
In the end that proved to be one of the lesser issues with this forum software - as once I spotted it and worked out it was a kind orphaned pop up cancel button - I knew to look out for it when things lock up, I think the purple banner the GS forum had over the Christmas holiday threw me off the scent as the blue X was fairly well hidden by the banner.
Good stuff ! : )
I'm not sure you can reasonably traduce my posts to "this sucks, get real forum software" (even when paraphrasing) - I'd say I took the time to post "criticism of problems with detailed information for [you] to follow up on" - including (where I could) taking the time to grab screen shots, and upload them, sure I can be flippant, but don't expect grace from endlessly frustrated forum users . . . . . (cont)
Anyhow . . criticism, even of the "this sucks" kind, is an invaluable tool, rather than taking it personally or being hurt by it, you should invite it and even thank people for it (seriously) . . . I won't charge.
Anyhow, cheers for taking the time to respond, hopefully the issues will be cleared up in time.
Tynan.
. . . right, let's hit that Post Comment button (685 word post) . . .
: s
: )
A few minutes to bash out a reply and 32 minutes to post it (yes, seriously, 32 minutes of work to post a message) . . . below is this session's favourite posting hurdle (of many). . . I appreciated the splash of colour, red error messages are the best . . . we want more !