Remove "Delete all board cookies"

[Louis7777]

So much time and energy spent on something so utterly pointless and insignificant...

You both lose.

Why insignificant?

[Pony99CA]

I did reply to each of your points originally. Your responses to mine were weak (in my opinion) and exemplified by the point that I mentioned. Combine that with a lack of time and interest debating such a minor tweak with you further and you got as much as I was willing to give on the second go-around.

So I'll say it again. If that is all that you can comment, I assume that you are simply unable to present any other arguments. When you enter a debate and shoot your big paragraphs away you should better be prepared to reply to the other person with logical arguments.

I did reply with logical arguments. You chose not to accept them. And, as I said, based on your rebuttals of my arguments, I don't see any hope of agreement, so I'm not going to debate those points with you further. I believe that my initial arguments still stand, you don't. Oh well.

Statements like "I replied to you originally" and "I think your responses are weak" don't contribute anything to this discussion. And it seems that for a "minor tweak" you have spent enough time and interest on these pages trying to defend the link, so could you please explain why you think that it is important to have it in general, and why it should be on every page?

More proof that we can't find agreement -- you have completely misstated my argument. I don't know if the link is important to have, nor do I necessarily believe that it should be on every page (I don't know if it should). I just don't think that it's worth the effort to change for such a minor tweak. If you only want it on some pages, it would either have to move out of the footer or you'd have to wrap IFs around the link. That's asking a lot for something so trivial.

You've entered this topic with a negative mindset and I assume with no real interest to discuss:

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"Sorry, but I'm a bit peeved at all of the insignificant tweaks that people are proposing to software that's going live shortly (change this icon color, re-order this menu, etc.). If people can't think of more substantial things, they must think phpBB is almost perfect as-is.

On the other hand, I think that are many substantial changes that phpBB could use, like topics only viewable to the topic starter and staff, a "Can post links" permission, sort by topic creation date view, new profile field types, automatic groups (going to be an official extension at least), etc."

Unless you're psychic, you have no idea what my mindset was. I entered it because I check all new topics out of curiosity. When I saw that it was such a minor request, then I wrote what you quoted (or, technically, wrapped in CODE tags?).

Are you in position to present some logical arguments? Other than "It's at the almost-very-bottom of the board, so I bet very few people even notice it".

Again, I responded to all six of your points with points of my own. If you don't think that those were "logical", that's fine, but I'm sticking with them.

And, while you may view that as a minor point, I view it as a significant gap. If we can't agree that "Delete board cookies" means "Delete all board cookies" (I'm not sure what else it could mean), then how likely are we to agree on more complicated things like what belongs in the page footer? It seems that our two viewpoints are too far apart to yield useful discussion on this issue.

Significant gap. Care to explain the why?

The part that you quoted already explained why. Did you bother reading past the first sentence there?

I should remind you that not everyone has english as his main language and not everyone has your own perception of it.

No, you shouldn't remind me. I'm well aware of it, having worked for multi-national companies and seeing many different levels of English proficiency here. And I do make allowance for non-English speakers.

Also, I will repeat it again - do you really think that it didn't cross the mind of those responsible for the link to not use the "all"?

I choose not to speculate on what might or might not have occurred in somebody else's mind, especially when I have no idea who is responsible for the link. But if you're psychic, please tell us if it crossed their minds.

"Delete all board cookies" means to delete all cookies of the board. Whatever a board is. And if you're wondering now "doesn't everyone know what a board is?", I'll tell you that this is not the case. For instance, an exact translation of it doesn't make much sense in my language, in the context of a forum-based website. Which is why the official phpBB greek translation has a totally different word for it.

You can't have it both ways. One of your arguments for removing it was that it was "probably ridiculously verbose ", but if you don't believe that it can be shortened, it's not verbose at all.

Or maybe not, but your argument still falls flat. Either the link is necessary, in which case it should be a button (to alleviate your professed concerns) or it's not necessary and should be removed. If it is still necessary, it doesn't hurt to have it on every page (or at least it doesn't hurt very much).

So it may hurt... a little? I personally like to have my pages as clean as I can, and the little details and tweaks matter a lot to me. Of course I can remove the specific link from my own sites if I want. But since I have an idea (even a minor one) on how phpBB could be better, I'm making it an RFC.

Apparently it does hurt you a little. As for clean pages, care to provide a link to your site so I can see how "clean" it seems?

As for the RFC, you have posted it. Now people are free to comment on it. I've said that I don't think that it's worth the effort to try to figure out which pages it should be on (if any). I do support making it a button to help indicate that it won't go to another page. However, the button idea might not work well if the link collapses into a menu as was previously shown. I suppose that it could be a button if there was real estate, but a menu item if there wasn't, but that's a bit of a kludge.

I'm not sure if you fully got it, but my problem is with its existence on every page, especially for guest view.

I don't think that was too difficult to understand.

However, I am curious about why you think that it hurts guests. I went back through your posts, and the only place that you specifically said it would be a problem for guests was "Members will care to click it hoping it will fix their problem, but guests will most likely abandon the site if it doesn't work for them. The attention span on the Internet is very short." I'm not sure what that meant -- what problems would a guest have that would necessitate them clicking that link? If your site has a problem that the link doesn't fix (because it's not related to phpBB cookies), that's a problem with your site, not phpBB. If you site isn't guest friendly, who would blame them for abandoning it?

You did mention that your members and guests didn't understand what the link did, but that's not specific to guests.

If the link is necessary on every page then it should stay there as a link.

If it is not necessary on every page - which is what I'd like us to discuss - perhaps we could show it whenever it is needed.

And maybe it is not that necessary and we can do without it. Because it is rarely used, if ever.

That all sounds very reasonable. The next question is who do you expect to help answer how necessary it is. Have you researched whether it's necessary or do you expect the developers to do that research?

Care to help with that? Can you present any arguments on how necessary it is?

Ah, so you expect me to help, despite my continued statements that I don't feel that this is worth addressing. Sorry, but I suspect that you'll have to find somebody who finds it at least as important as you do. And, given the tenor of the topic, nobody else seems to.

Steve

[Pony99CA]

So much time and energy spent on something so utterly pointless and insignificant...

I agree that it's insignificant (and said so). I'm just trying to help Louis understand why.

By the way, I'll choose how I spend my time and energy. You worry about yours, OK?

You both lose.

No, you do for a pointless post. The whole point of an RFC is do debate whether or not a feature is necessary and to suggest how to implement or improve the feature. Louis and I have been on topic with that. You've chosen to attack us without really adding anything (other than sort of agreeing with me that this is insignificant, but you could have said that without the personal comments).

Steve

[Louis7777]

I did reply with logical arguments. You chose not to accept them. And, as I said, based on your rebuttals of my arguments, I don't see any hope of agreement, so I'm not going to debate those points with you further. I believe that my initial arguments still stand, you don't. Oh well.

Although there is no logic at all in #3 and #5 (as replies to my points), it was your only post where you actually tried to discuss.

And what exactly do you mean by "You chose not to accept them"? You can't just shoot away paragraphs and expect the other person to agree with you. You chose to attack my entire opinion instead of carrying on the debate.

Statements like "I replied to you originally" and "I think your responses are weak" don't contribute anything to this discussion. And it seems that for a "minor tweak" you have spent enough time and interest on these pages trying to defend the link, so could you please explain why you think that it is important to have it in general, and why it should be on every page?

More proof that we can't find agreement -- you have completely misstated my argument. I don't know if the link is important to have, nor do I necessarily believe that it should be on every page (I don't know if it should). I just don't think that it's worth the effort to change for such a minor tweak. If you only want it on some pages, it would either have to move out of the footer or you'd have to wrap IFs around the link. That's asking a lot for something so trivial.

I'd like you to point out exactly what was completely misstated. Which one was not your statement?

So far in this discussion you've shown that you don't mind if no other website has such link and if it is rarely used here.

Also, you don't know anything about the importance and necessity of the link (see mainly the above quote), and you simply believe that since it is a "minor tweak" - according to you - then it is not worth discussing it (see your first post).

In other words, I should assume that you're fine with phpBB carrying this link for another decade, even though other websites don't have it, even though it is rarely used here (if ever), and even though you don't really know if it is important and necessary to have.

You've entered this topic with a negative mindset and I assume with no real interest to discuss:

Code: Select all

"Sorry, but I'm a bit peeved at all of the insignificant tweaks that people are proposing to software that's going live shortly (change this icon color, re-order this menu, etc.). If people can't think of more substantial things, they must think phpBB is almost perfect as-is.

On the other hand, I think that are many substantial changes that phpBB could use, like topics only viewable to the topic starter and staff, a "Can post links" permission, sort by topic creation date view, new profile field types, automatic groups (going to be an official extension at least), etc."

Unless you're psychic, you have no idea what my mindset was. I entered it because I check all new topics out of curiosity. When I saw that it was such a minor request, then I wrote what you quoted (or, technically, wrapped in CODE tags?).

Your text is there for everyone to see. Anyone with eyes and common sense doesn't have to be a psychic to understand what you gave away yourself.

Are you in position to present some logical arguments? Other than "It's at the almost-very-bottom of the board, so I bet very few people even notice it".

Again, I responded to all six of your points with points of my own. If you don't think that those were "logical", that's fine, but I'm sticking with them.

You are sticking with them means that they are a one-time statements. Even if someone else provides you with counter-arguments (which I did) I should assume that you choose to ignore them, isn't that so?

Because that's what you did. And instead of defending your original arguments you chose to attack my entire opinion, probably because you were unable to produce more logical arguments.

And, while you may view that as a minor point, I view it as a significant gap. If we can't agree that "Delete board cookies" means "Delete all board cookies" (I'm not sure what else it could mean), then how likely are we to agree on more complicated things like what belongs in the page footer? It seems that our two viewpoints are too far apart to yield useful discussion on this issue.

Significant gap. Care to explain the why?

The part that you quoted already explained why. Did you bother reading past the first sentence there?

You don't explain at all why it is specifically significant. You are making it significant in order to avoid replying to my points. And you have been successful since those posts are like a thing of the past now.

Also, I will repeat it again - do you really think that it didn't cross the mind of those responsible for the link to not use the "all"?

I choose not to speculate on what might or might not have occurred in somebody else's mind, especially when I have no idea who is responsible for the link. But if you're psychic, please tell us if it crossed their minds.

Please, choose to speculate. Make that effort. Use common sense and probability.

"Delete all board cookies" means to delete all cookies of the board. Whatever a board is. And if you're wondering now "doesn't everyone know what a board is?", I'll tell you that this is not the case. For instance, an exact translation of it doesn't make much sense in my language, in the context of a forum-based website. Which is why the official phpBB greek translation has a totally different word for it.

You can't have it both ways. One of your arguments for removing it was that it was "probably ridiculously verbose ", but if you don't believe that it can be shortened, it's not verbose at all.

There's no logic at all in what you wrote.

Or maybe not, but your argument still falls flat. Either the link is necessary, in which case it should be a button (to alleviate your professed concerns) or it's not necessary and should be removed. If it is still necessary, it doesn't hurt to have it on every page (or at least it doesn't hurt very much).

So it may hurt... a little? I personally like to have my pages as clean as I can, and the little details and tweaks matter a lot to me. Of course I can remove the specific link from my own sites if I want. But since I have an idea (even a minor one) on how phpBB could be better, I'm making it an RFC.

Apparently it does hurt you a little. As for clean pages, care to provide a link to your site so I can see how "clean" it seems?

Making it personal again? "Your arguments are weak" and now "it does hurt you a little"? Classy.

Aren't you uncertain about whether it hurts or not? See again what you wrote.

And nope. I don't care about that.

I'm not sure if you fully got it, but my problem is with its existence on every page, especially for guest view.

I don't think that was too difficult to understand.

However, I am curious about why you think that it hurts guests. I went back through your posts, and the only place that you specifically said it would be a problem for guests was "Members will care to click it hoping it will fix their problem, but guests will most likely abandon the site if it doesn't work for them. The attention span on the Internet is very short." I'm not sure what that meant -- what problems would a guest have that would necessitate them clicking that link? If your site has a problem that the link doesn't fix (because it's not related to phpBB cookies), that's a problem with your site, not phpBB. If you site isn't guest friendly, who would blame them for abandoning it?

You did mention that your members and guests didn't understand what the link did, but that's not specific to guests.

How are you asking me "what problems would a guest have that would necessitate them clicking that link" when that link is visible to guests exactly for that reason???

I didn't invent its necessity.

Obviously those who implemented it thought it should be visible for guests in order to fix their problems, because that's what that link does. It fixes problems with cookies. By removing them all.

You want me to name those problems? For what? There could be a problem - for guests - in changing the language or style. And if such thing happened it could be a problem with phpBB.

And I explained that guests (who are not members) will most likely abandon the site if it doesn't work for them rather than click on links and buttons trying to fix their problem. I don't see what is so hard to understand?

If the link is necessary on every page then it should stay there as a link.

If it is not necessary on every page - which is what I'd like us to discuss - perhaps we could show it whenever it is needed.

And maybe it is not that necessary and we can do without it. Because it is rarely used, if ever.

That all sounds very reasonable. The next question is who do you expect to help answer how necessary it is. Have you researched whether it's necessary or do you expect the developers to do that research?

Care to help with that? Can you present any arguments on how necessary it is?

Ah, so you expect me to help, despite my continued statements that I don't feel that this is worth addressing. Sorry, but I suspect that you'll have to find somebody who finds it at least as important as you do. And, given the tenor of the topic, nobody else seems to.

You are a rude one, aren't you? First you join the discussion, saying that we shouldn't be discussing this and now you're mocking my topic? Once again, classy.

If you didn't feel like this was worth addressing, then you should had left a simple statement saying so: "-1, I'm against this etc." and then leave this topic to its certain death since you didn't believe in it... rather than steadily screwing the discussion in all these pages.