[RFC] user signature modifications for posts

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Pony99CA
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Re: [RFC] user signature modifications for posts

Post by Pony99CA »

drathbun wrote:User preferences should not - in my opinion - ever be stored in a cookie. For example, I use at least three different computers to access various sites. I don't want to have to reset my "ignore this signature" preference on every device.
I agree in general, but if we decided to allow Guests to have user preferences (similar to how topic marking can be turned on for Guests), you pretty much have to store that on the device.
drathbun wrote:Why not use this as a modification of the friend/foe feature? It's already being stored in the database, right? I have not looked at the feature (code) in a very long time, but could you have various levels of foes, meaning the highest level of exclusion is to hide everything, but a lower level of exclusion just hides the semi-foe signature?
I like that idea. It fits in well with my friend/foe level suggestion.

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Jacob
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Re: [RFC] user signature modifications for posts

Post by Jacob »

I think this should be an extension. It's complicated enough and in my opinion not really necesary.

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Re: [RFC] user signature modifications for posts

Post by callumacrae »

Jacob wrote:I think this should be an extension. It's complicated enough and in my opinion not really necesary.
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Pony99CA
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Re: [RFC] user signature modifications for posts

Post by Pony99CA »

Jacob wrote:It's complicated enough and in my opinion not really necesary.
I have no idea what that means. What is complicated enough?

I also don't really understand DavidIQ's comment that signatures will "become that much less useful". I don't find most signatures "useful" at all anyway (although I may find some "interesting").

Is it "necessary"? Of course not. But neither are Soft Delete, Post Revisions or many other features in phpBB 3.1. They're useful to people who want them, and not to those who don't. ;)

I do think that making Friends/Foes more useful (as I linked to above) is a good idea, though, regardless of whether signature support is a feature that you can control from that (but it's certainly a reasonable one).

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Jacob
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Re: [RFC] user signature modifications for posts

Post by Jacob »

Pony99CA wrote:
Jacob wrote:It's complicated enough and in my opinion not really necesary.
I have no idea what that means. What is complicated enough?
Weel, if you need to:
  • use cookies
  • add tables in the db
  • add a global permission
  • add a user permision
  • add a certain amount of code
I would say that this feature is complicated enough, as opposed to really complicated (like Soft Delete) or trivial.
Pony99CA wrote:Is it "necessary"? Of course not. But neither are Soft Delete, Post Revisions or many other features in phpBB 3.1. They're useful to people who want them, and not to those who don't. ;)
You need to take into account two things. One, the number of people who will benefit from the feature. Two, the importance in terms of the problems it solves, the time it saves, the improvement of user experience or whatever.
Soft Delete and Post Revisions will be in my opinion really usefull or necessary. They are going to benefit a lot of users (I'm probably not going to use Soft Delete much, but I recon that many people will). It will save tons of hours/troubles to those who use them.
Can you say the same about this signature modification?
Pony99CA wrote:I don't find most signatures "useful" at all anyway (although I may find some "interesting").
Well, here's your answer. :)

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DavidIQ
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Re: [RFC] user signature modifications for posts

Post by DavidIQ »

Pony99CA wrote:I also don't really understand DavidIQ's comment that signatures will "become that much less useful". I don't find most signatures "useful" at all anyway (although I may find some "interesting").
If you're hiding them then why even have the option to show signatures to begin with? Signatures exist as a way to provide additional information without having to retype that information every time you post. If there are rules a moderator lists in their signature and you're letting users hide signatures, or if a user specifically states to not contact them by PM for whatever reason, and you're a user hiding signatures, how are signatures useful then? Just a few reasons as to why I think signatures would "become that much less useful".
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Pony99CA
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Re: [RFC] user signature modifications for posts

Post by Pony99CA »

DavidIQ wrote:
Pony99CA wrote:I also don't really understand DavidIQ's comment that signatures will "become that much less useful". I don't find most signatures "useful" at all anyway (although I may find some "interesting").
If you're hiding them then why even have the option to show signatures to begin with?
Remember, this feature wouldn't hide all signatures; the user can already do that in the UCP today. Depending on how this is implemented, it would hide multiple signatures from the same user in the topic (except for the first) or it would allow hiding all signatures for users with signatures that the user decided were annoying.
DavidIQ wrote:Signatures exist as a way to provide additional information without having to retype that information every time you post. If there are rules a moderator lists in their signature and you're letting users hide signatures, or if a user specifically states to not contact them by PM for whatever reason, and you're a user hiding signatures, how are signatures useful then? Just a few reasons as to why I think signatures would "become that much less useful".
That's a fair point. However, if you take the friend/foe approach, and hide signatures of foes, it's not likely that you'd PM them anyway. (I hope people can't/won't hide Moderator's signatures. ;))

Plus, as mentioned above, the UCP already allows hiding all signatures, so users can already make signatures "useless". The requested feature is making that more granular, which seems to be better than an all-or-nothing approach, doesn't it?

For example, I just turned the Display signatures option off in the UCP and Callum's signature above didn't display. If he's a moderator on this board/forum, haven't I just made his signature useless (even though I don't consider him a "foe" :))?

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Pony99CA
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Re: [RFC] user signature modifications for posts

Post by Pony99CA »

Jacob wrote:
Pony99CA wrote:
Jacob wrote:It's complicated enough and in my opinion not really necesary.
I have no idea what that means. What is complicated enough?
Weel, if you need to:
  • use cookies
  • add tables in the db
  • add a global permission
  • add a user permision
  • add a certain amount of code
I would say that this feature is complicated enough, as opposed to really complicated (like Soft Delete) or trivial.
When I see "complicated enough", it generally means that the current implementation is complicated enough already (in this case, the phpBB 3.0 implementation). So I wondered what you found so complicated about phpBB 3.0 signature management. ;)

If you meant that the proposed implementation was too complicated, I would have expected you to say something more like "the proposal is too complicated to justify this minor feature" or something. But that's just semantics; I see what you mean now.
Jacob wrote:
Pony99CA wrote:Is it "necessary"? Of course not. But neither are Soft Delete, Post Revisions or many other features in phpBB 3.1. They're useful to people who want them, and not to those who don't. ;)
You need to take into account two things. One, the number of people who will benefit from the feature. Two, the importance in terms of the problems it solves, the time it saves, the improvement of user experience or whatever.
Soft Delete and Post Revisions will be in my opinion really usefull or necessary. They are going to benefit a lot of users (I'm probably not going to use Soft Delete much, but I recon that many people will). It will save tons of hours/troubles to those who use them.
Can you say the same about this signature modification?
I agree that it's probably not the biggest feature. However, I suspect that it will benefit end users more than soft delete and post revisions will (at least directly) -- the latter are aimed more for moderators and admins than end users. I've visited boards where I would have loved to turn off some users' signatures, but I rarely wanted to see how a post was revised or soft delete my own post (presuming that I could also undelete it, which isn't in the RFC, if I recall correctly).
Jacob wrote:
Pony99CA wrote:I don't find most signatures "useful" at all anyway (although I may find some "interesting").
Well, here's your answer. :)
Exactly -- I want to see most people's signatures once and that's enough. I don't need to see them on every post. ;)

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Re: [RFC] user signature modifications for posts

Post by drathbun »

There are definitely use cases for this. On my largest board some folks have bible references in their signatures. Completely within the rules, but there are always some folks that find it "inappropriate" or something. Giving them the option to hide selective signatures (as opposed to all signatures, board wide) addresses this.
Pony99CA wrote:Exactly -- I want to see most people's signatures once and that's enough. I don't need to see them on every post.
There was a MOD for phpBB2 that kept signatures from being displayed more than once per page. Is that an option for phpBB3 (default) or if not it could address this. I happen to agree with this; when the same person posts frequently in a particular topic, I only need to be "reminded" what their signature looks like once at the beginning of a page. I don't need to see it repeated. For phpBB2 it also saves parsing time, since the signature wasn't cached as I believe it is in phpBB3.
Yes, still using phpbb2 here. Doesn't stop me from being interested in following phpBB3 development...
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