• Hi all and welcome to TheWoodHaven2 brought into the 21st Century, kicking and screaming! We all have Alasdair to thank for the vast bulk of the heavy lifting to get us here, no more so than me because he's taken away a huge burden of responsibility from my shoulders and brought us to this new shiny home, with all your previous content (hopefully) still intact! Please peruse and feed back. There is still plenty to do, like changing the colour scheme, adding the banner graphic, tweaking the odd setting here and there so I have added a new thread in the 'Technical Issues, Bugs and Feature Requests' forum for you to add any issues you find, any missing settings or just anything you'd like to see added/removed from the feature set that Xenforo offers. We will get to everything over the coming weeks so please be patient, but add anything at all to the thread I mention above and we promise to get to them over the next few days/weeks/months. In the meantime, please enjoy!

New Forum bugs/feature requests/dislikes etc

I was just about to come and ask why I couldn't edit my "Vintage Wood Machining Books" thread, but I can see a discussion is already happening about the edit function. I think it should be unlimited, especially as I do like to amend existing threads to update them from time to time, one of my biggest annoyances about when UKW went commercialised was the removal of the edit function.

I had just assumed the old rules still applied.
 
^^ This. These threads from Dan, the amazing build thread from Mike, the guitar thread from Malc, Dans's saw blade thread, Wallace's Wadkin thread etc are the beating heart of this forum and these are super trustworthy members. Once members have garnered trust in this way, it surely makes sense to allow them freedom to administer their threads?
 
AJB Temple said:
Once members have garnered trust in this way, it surely makes sense to allow them freedom to administer their threads?
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I would say that's a decent compromise, a sort of standalone "Trusted Member" role.

I get the reason behind it is to stop people from wiping posts and making whole threads a mess, but I doubt there will be as much issue with that here as there is over on UKW as things are never allowed to progress to outright slagging matches as often as over there. Did it happen that often when we were on phpBB and had unlimited editing? I don't recall an instance of aggravated post deletion here in the last four years, but I don't read every thread so I might've missed one or two.

Generally speaking, from what I've seen of post deletions over on UKW is that very rarely anything of value is lost, usually it's a new member that didn't take kindly to having different opinions to what they had in mind or a slagging match that's got out of hand. One I remember from UKW that sort of set in stone the edit limitation window was that individual who was looking for "help to spend his money on tools", but he didn't appreciate being told by several people that you needed to develop the core skills and techniques to make the tools work, not spent thousands upon thousands on the best gear in the hopes it automatically makes you good at woodworking.
 
I would say that's a decent compromise, a sort of standalone "Trusted Member" role.
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You might risk a feeling of why aren't I a trusted member?

It wouldn't bother me in the slightest tbh but I do use the edit function due to fat fingers and not checking properly before I press the post button, sometimes not picked up for a while so 24 / 48 hours would benefit me.

I can't think of any member on here who would have a strop severe enough to delete all their posts though you never know for sure of course but it would be an extremely petty act. Maybe a minimum post count to get extended edit facility but I suspect it might cause too much work to an already burdened mod team.
 
Are we not discussing a non-issue? It's never been a problem with this forum.

If we have to have some sort of soultion, how about "delete" making stuff invisible, but still retained somewhere in the bowels of the machine. It would then be up to mods to permanently delete or to restore.
 
Lons said:
.....

It wouldn't bother me in the slightest tbh but I do use the edit function due to fat fingers and not checking properly before I press the post button, sometimes not picked up for a while so 24 / 48 hours would benefit me.
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That timescale makes sense (assuming it's a tweak in the forum parameters ....)
Lons said:
I can't think of any member on here who would have a strop severe enough to delete all their posts though you never know for sure of course but it would be an extremely petty act. Maybe a minimum post count to get extended edit facility but I suspect it might cause too much work to an already burdened mod tea
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It would/should/could be a simple parameter in Xenforo ...
 
We did have one member in either TWH1 or TWH2 who had a disagreement over something I cannot recall and he spitefully deleted every post he had made, many of them helpful/instructional and wrecked the flow of so many threads. So I feel a modest editing period would be best and after that if there is good reason for an edit, the mods could make the change and check for continuity in the rest of the thread.
 
Whilst I am sure we all understand and sympathise with your point 9F, it is a bit like saying we've got one criminal in society so we better lock everyone down just in case. :cool:

This surely gives the mods in charge of the asylum extra work to do for no good reason. It also runs the risk of turning the forum operators into publishers if you are editing posts. Probably not desirable for the forum owner from a legal perspective as the concept is extendable.
 
9fingers said:
We did have one member in either TWH1 or TWH2 who had a disagreement over something I cannot recall and he spitefully deleted every post he had made, many of them helpful/instructional and wrecked the flow of so many threads. So I feel a modest editing period would be best and after that if there is good reason for an edit, the mods could make the change and check for continuity in the rest of the thread.
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I would do it myself but if you wish to spend the time fixing all the hyperlinks in my thread that got mangled and now unusable in the forum upgrade, that would be great :D

https://www.thewoodhaven2.co.uk/threads/vintage-wood-machining-books.4812/

... and this one would also be much appreciated :cool:

https://www.thewoodhaven2.co.uk/threads/vintage-carpentry-and-joinery-books.7983/
 
Trevanion said:
I would do it myself but if you wish to spend the time fixing all the hyperlinks in my thread that got mangled and now unusable in the forum upgrade, that would be great :D

https://www.thewoodhaven2.co.uk/threads/vintage-wood-machining-books.4812/

... and this one would also be much appreciated :cool:

https://www.thewoodhaven2.co.uk/threads/vintage-carpentry-and-joinery-books.7983/
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I see your point Dan and I have an idea to kick around with the team that might help with this particular problem. Editing is being discussed already and hopefully will get resolved with a decision one way or the other.
 
AJB Temple said:
Whilst I am sure we all understand and sympathise with your point 9F, it is a bit like saying we've got one criminal in society so we better lock everyone down just in case. :cool:

This surely gives the mods in charge of the asylum extra work to do for no good reason. It also runs the risk of turning the forum operators into publishers if you are editing posts. Probably not desirable for the forum owner from a legal perspective as the concept is extendable.
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I can see both sides Adrian. my reply was more an answer to Lons post above. how ever it only takes one bad apple....
 
I think that this is a topic which will always slightly divide - are we building a community with depth and breadth of knowledge or is it all about what each individual can get out of it therefore it doesn’t matter if they disrupt the content at a later date… of course I am sure we all feel the former, but it only takes one or two with the latter attitude to spoil it for others, and it is not just about their own content but their content promotes discussion which then becomes unintelligible if bits are removed… and then we have to ask the question as to why other people bother adding to that discussion if it might be destroyed and the community falls apart…

So there are genuine reasons why most forums only allow editing for a short period of time etc…

But there are also other valid points being made, so we somehow have to find a balance that is not restrictive but also preserves continuity…

I am enjoying the sunshine and workshop today and am not at my computer, I will have a look at options tomorrow and chat them through with the staff team and then see what folks think! Hope that is okay…
 
9fingers said:
We did have one member in either TWH1 or TWH2 who had a disagreement over something I cannot recall and he spitefully deleted every post he had made, many of them helpful/instructional and wrecked the flow of so many threads. So I feel a modest editing period would be best and after that if there is good reason for an edit, the mods could make the change and check for continuity in the rest of the thread.
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I don't remember that but I guess it only takes one

Not something I would ever even contemplate as I know not even the most volitile arguements would make me that spiteful and apart from that I would assume deleting everything would have taken consederable time and effort. Life is far too short. :D

I suppose we all consider our content belongs to us when in reality as soon as it's posted on an open forum it's fair game for anyone.
 
9fingers said:
I can see both sides Adrian. my reply was more an answer to Lons post above. how ever it only takes one bad apple....
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Out of curiosity, if the concern is the "one bad apple doing something bad once" instance, how big a deal is it to revert "one bad apple"'s changes? If it's something that's quite a bit of work but not impossible, it might be less onerous for the mods to do that once in a blue moon when a bad apple comes along than it would be to keep doing lots of editing on behalf of the "good apples".

My vote would definitely be for longer edit times (even if it's just 24 hours), although I completely understand that this is the mods' call and not a democracy!
 
Dr.Al said:
Out of curiosity, if the concern is the "one bad apple doing something bad once" instance, how big a deal is it to revert "one bad apple"'s changes? If it's something that's quite a bit of work but not impossible, it might be less onerous for the mods to do that once in a blue moon when a bad apple comes along than it would be to keep doing lots of editing on behalf of the "good apples".

My vote would definitely be for longer edit times (even if it's just 24 hours), although I completely understand that this is the mods' call and not a democracy!
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Dr.Al, I think deletes are permanent. one example of a significant delete over on UKW never got reinstated despite the agro it raised so I assume it would be the same here. As I said earlier the discussion is being had although so mods admin have deserted their computers and enjoying the sun family time and even in the workshop! We are one the case- slowly! Bob
 
Not trying to be controversial at all - just thinking that this forum at the moment is more like a virtual mens's shed, with relatively few active contributors. This barrel is kept pretty clean and there are thus few bad apples. Is is such a loss really if one bad apple deletes their content, when their are still dozens of good ones who post day in and day out?

Apart from penalising everyone and making work for mods, there is also the risk that if people can't edit their multi part threads, they just don't bother to post them in the first place.

Over the years I have deleted a few posts: usually because I've said something stupid and thought better of it overnight, or made a mistake (once posted a whole section of a letter carving WIP in the wrong order and took 2 days to realise)or posted something that I later realised was wrong. But I have apparently posted 5500+ times on this forum and I doubt if I've deleted more than 20 things. Others have posted far more than me. It must be a miniscule problem here at the moment.

But I agree with Dr Al, it's not a democracy, and the site owner can do whatever he wants.
 
9F our posts crossed. Unless XF has changed since I last administered a forum a couple of years ago, deleted posts are archived and permanently available to admin. Admins can permanently delete (and sometimes do if they think they have a future potential discovery risk (see comment about being a publisher above) and hence make this policy to cover themselves. More common with US owned forums I suspect.
 
The ability to recover deleted content relies on the life of the edit history log. By default, the "editHistory" option in XF is set to 0, which means the edit history log is available until the sun explodes and any deleted content can be restored by the Moderators and Adminstrators. However, if the option is set to anything except zero, then the edit history will be purged from the logs at the end of the time period. When that happens, the only chance of recovering the data is by diving into the database tables with SQL queries.
 
Not that it is my place to say – your forum, do what you like – but I think I am rather with Trevanion on this. Why shouldn’t we be able to edit our submissions infinitely? If you are worried about ‘slash and burn’ withdrawals, well, maybe, the posts weren’t worth it in the first place.

UKW did it to lock in a monetizable commodity. Which is why a lot of people left.

Anyway, I am but a sapling.
 
Tiresias said:
Not that it is my place to say – your forum, do what you like – but I think I am rather with Trevanion on this. Why shouldn’t we be able to edit our submissions infinitely? If you are worried about ‘slash and burn’ withdrawals, well, maybe, the posts weren’t worth it in the first place.

UKW did it to lock in a monetizable commodity. Which is why a lot of people left.

Anyway, I am but a sapling.
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Thank you...

I think the right balance is one that doesn't inconvenience people in any direction (if at all possible!). I have a lot of experience of running and owning forums and the reality is that while not frequent, there are always people who at some point have a huff and leave having wiped their content on the way... The issue is not in that affecting the forum per se, but also affecting other users who then wonder why they bothered contributing - it makes their contributions feel under-valued if the thread now makes no sense... and I have seen groups leave as a result because they felt the mods were not doing enough to protect the conversations in which they had been involved - so it is not just about the original author, it impacts everyone.

I do appreciate that this group of members might feel that they would never do that, but we are constantly getting new members, and we have no idea of what the future holds - if we can find the right settings to not be obstructive or make it hard to use the forum, then it feels right to also include in that thoughts ref. protecting content - after all, it is volunteers as the team who have to spend time sorting it out!

Anyway - some thought are being discussed by the team and once there is a view that it is the right balance there we will post it for compliments / flack / suggestions to everyone :D
 
RogerS said:
That timescale makes sense (assuming it's a tweak in the forum parameters ....)
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A 24/ 48hr time limit would kill my Renovation thread dead......and any others like it. Editing the OP is the only way of altering the title, which is the only way people have of knowing that there is an update, as opposed to just a bit more chat. That would be 10 years of a thread done, ending on a whimper.
 
Mike G said:
A 24/ 48hr time limit would kill my Renovation thread dead......and any others like it. Editing the OP is the only way of altering the title, which is the only way people have of knowing that there is an update, as opposed to just a bit more chat. That would be 10 years of a thread done, ending on a whimper.
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I agree with Mike.

Because I work slow and only build two instruments a year, I manage my WIP by modifying the OP title to notify members of an update on the build, or a change in the build process. How would members following the build understand that this post was a build update, rather than a chat or response to a question etc.?
 
^^ These are the very points I tried to make above. We are not UKW, we do not have money focussed owners based in Panama and the ethos here is different. If in the future we get disruptive members then the editing timeframe could be changed then (if warnings don't work) - there is surely no need to anticipate problems now that inconvenience or put off the smallish number of very active members we have who make such a huge contribution to this forum. It seems a real shame to make WIPS much easier to post with the new forum software, then partially cripple the enthusiasm of contributors buy preventing periodic tidying up by the originators.

Just out of curiosity has the ownership of the forum now been transferred to Alasdair?
 
I had an ongoing thread in the other place that actually depended on continual updating to be of use. The edit function was withdrawn because of one ........ yes, one, member's abusing it. The thread is dormant, basically because I refuse to go to a mod. like a naughty schoolboy every time it needs additions. Surely the way to go is remove the offending threads in their entirety (ban the member?) and let everyone else get on with it.
 
no-one is suggesting making the forum unworkable ;) so let's not chase hares that are not running!

As mentioned above - we are looking at all the various options and while there are a few vocal people arguing one way, there are also other views which are being shared which might not be as obvious - the aim of the setup of the forum is to:
- maximise the ease in maintaining threads
- minimise the disruption when tempers rise (and let's not pretend that will never happen on here - hopefully rare, but it can happen :))
- minimise the workload for those who look after the behind the scenes...

The software now running the forum is very different to the previous software - we already have some big changes (hopefully positive), a simple example being the ability to build draft threads 'off-camera' before they go live - the aim is to keep tweaking to get it better and better.
 
Phil Pascoe said:
I had an ongoing thread in the other place that actually depended on continual updating to be of use. The edit function was withdrawn because of one ........ yes, one, member's abusing it. The thread is dormant, basically because I refuse to go to a mod. like a naughty schoolboy every time it needs additions. Surely the way to go is remove the offending threads in their entirety (ban the member?) and let everyone else get on with it.
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Likewise myself and a few others, yours was one of several long running threads over there that enabled members willing to contribute their own time providing reference links and useful thread listings that were wrecked.

The imposition of the editing restrictions certainly put a stop to the correction of the numerous thread links scrambled due to the software change there, it made it impractical to help/contribute to any updating.
 
Just a heads up to anyone else thinking the top section of the forum looks a bit cluttered with the new server? change information....
I've just clicked on a little x by it and it's gone... hoorah.
Cheers, Andy
 
Just to change topic away from editing timeouts...

The site is quite happy to serve up the forum pages at either https://thewoodhaven2.co.uk or https://www.thewoodhaven2.co.uk, but logged in status doesn't transfer from one to the other. I usually open it without the www, which means when I click a link inside the site (like the logo in the header) that does have the www in it, that page loads the logged out version.

It's probably a good idea to pick one of the variants to be canonical, and have the webserver redirect the other version to the canonical one. Alternatively configure it to set session cookies to be valid across both subdomains, but I'm not sure how you'd convince XF to do that.
 
I've just had a typical edit experience.
I posted a reply to a question which included the number 5 as part of a description however unknowingly I had accidently pressed % instead. I pressed send just as my wife called me to help with the dog, got back 10 minutes later, the edit button was still there I couldn't edit my post because the "edit time of 10 minutes has expired" so the only thing I could do was write another post.

10 minutes just isn't enough.
 
Lons said:
10 minutes just isn't enough.
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I just don’t understand why we can’t simply go back to the way it was, at least whilst the gang sort out some kind of compromise or whatever the plan is. It has presumably worked fine for the last ten years since WH2 was set up, there doesn’t really appear to be a very good reason for it now after the update.

I understand post deletions might have happened once or twice, but to quote Bob:

9fingers said:
We did have one member in either TWH1 or TWH2 who had a disagreement over something I cannot recall and he spitefully deleted every post he had made
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If you can’t remember exactly what it was, or where it exactly was, was it really that important? If it was on the original Woodhaven which would be over ten years ago, it’s kind of a silly point because absolutely everything is gone from there isn’t it?

It’s beginning to feel like a repeat of what happened with UKW and their edit restrictions, which lead to several members calling it a day and coming here.
 
Guy please, I said we're discussing it and it will be sorted, just relax.

We've changed the software, it works in different ways and we're trying to get grips with all that plus tweak a couple of things to egt the balance right between good user experience and protecting the content.

We also have lives to live, so conversations are happening and it will be sorted in the next few days. Just give us a bit of time please, and in the words of Douglas Adams...Don't Panic!

;)
 
Cabinetman said:
Strange, I can edit last February but not yesterday’s, on the other site it seems to be within 3-4 days that it stops.
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As both you and MikeG have observed, posts that have been migrated from PHPBB have brought their editable status in the process.
Please give us some time to address the whole editing issue.
Bob
 
Trevanion said:
I just don’t understand why we can’t simply go back to the way it was, at least whilst the gang sort out some kind of compromise or whatever the plan is. It has presumably worked fine for the last ten years since WH2 was set up, there doesn’t really appear to be a very good reason for it now after the update.

I understand post deletions might have happened once or twice, but to quote Bob:



If you can’t remember exactly what it was, or where it exactly was, was it really that important? If it was on the original Woodhaven which would be over ten years ago, it’s kind of a silly point because absolutely everything is gone from there isn’t it?

It’s beginning to feel like a repeat of what happened with UKW and their edit restrictions, which lead to several members calling it a day and coming here.
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I know exactly what it was, who it was and when it was, I'm just not prepared to go into that on here.

As per previous message, give us a few days and it will be sorted. I appreciate it's not ideal right now but also it is hardly the biggest issue in the world, and we have lives as well as this so just give us a bit of time to agree a couple of other points in the background and implement the changes. Cheer.
 
Lons said:
I've just had a typical edit experience.
I posted a reply to a question which included the number 5 as part of a description however unknowingly I had accidently pressed % instead. I pressed send just as my wife called me to help with the dog, got back 10 minutes later, the edit button was still there I couldn't edit my post because the "edit time of 10 minutes has expired" so the only thing I could do was write another post.

10 minutes just isn't enough.
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Please bear with us whilst we get this sorted. In the mean time I have found your erroneous post and corrected it. Bob
 
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