Software Enhancement Requests

Please use this thread to enter brief descriptions of desired software

enhancements - no lengthy commentaries, no conversations between members and no

repeats (plan on swift deletions without explanation for noncompliance).

For moderators:

 

A capability to split threads (saving both pieces as separate topics).

 

The ability to keep key threads on top of the index (phpBB sticky).

 

The ability to place a poll on any thread (to gather votes).

 

For others:

 

I'll be back (but hoping all my ideas will then be posted by others).

The ability to tag a thread as interesting (for future reference).

Change all image sorts in the TRP to include "Photographers Highest".

 

Change the sort from which the PN home page images are randomly selected to "Photographer's Highest / All / minimum twenty rates.

 

Both changes would promote a bit more diversity. If you don't like the results, you can easily change it to something else.

1. Retire "New Answers" (which often hasn't worked properly for me and for others). Label thread activity next to the thread title. You could show # of comments in thread plus timestamp of last comment.

 

2. Not a software enhancement, but a moderator suggestion. A lot of folks don't put a proper subject/title on the thread. The moderator should fix the title and inform the OP.

 

3. When displaying thumbnails, let the user configure how many he wants to see in a page. I'd rather just wait for a long page to load (doing other work in the meanwhile) and scroll down a large list of thumbnails. Others may prefer to click "next page" every so often.

 

4. Make it easy to quote the OP's or other prior responders' text, while you are drafting your response.

 

5. Make it easier to write stuff without having to directly use HTML. That is, have a GUI-based way of generating simple HTML (just a few things, like bold-faced font, italics, paragraph break, hyperlink, imgsrc etc.).

 

Thanks,

 

-Niranjan.

 

PS: OP = 'original poster'

Give us the ability to choose what category of photography to view and rate. For instance, a member enters the critique forum to view and rate photos. He/she first sees a list of all categories and is able to check the ones that appear on their screen. Photos from certain categories that have not been checked will not appear.

 

Make the comments field more visible. This might encourage members to leave written critiques instead of just a drive by rating.

Allow users to change the order of thumbnails in their portfolio without having to reload.

require twelve words of feedback each for a rating to 'count' to encourage critique and exchange of ideas

I would ammend E Walkers suggestion to read twelve "unique" words. (Eliminates "Great! Great! Great! Great!,Etc.....)

 

Bonus points if you can make the code only accept something with a grammatical structure. (Eliminates the trick of using a string of unconnected words. )

1)Have thumbnail pages for the "critiques-only" section of the site.

 

2)Have a very well written software to trace rating abuse.

 

These are the only 2 things that come to my mind right now. More later hopefully, although I know close to nothing at all about softwares - except for digital imaging ones...:-)

An alternative to Marc G's posting, "1)Have thumbnail pages for the "critiques-only" section of the site." . . .

 

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Include "critique only" photos in the rate queue but disable the rating buttons and include a blank comment box for comments. Raters could simply skip these if they didn't want to leave a comment. The blank comment box should also be present for regular ratings.

A tool to make it easy for moderators to email authors when their posts/comments have been edited or deleted by a moderated.

My only little objection to your alternative, Robert, is this: seeing a thumbnail page as a whole takes 3 seconds; and then I can decide which pictures to comment on. Whereas the RR queue presents one picture at once, and it may take edges before I get to the picture that inspires me to write a comment. (That's because I generally comment mostly on pictures that I find good, but which could have been great IF...)

Since this site is geared for learning ,etc. I think the critiques should be promoted more than the rates , so making the critique only photos more visable than the rated ones , will give more substance to the students ,words have far more impact , than ratings that are suspect.

"I think the critiques should be promoted" - Robert Grove.

 

Yes. Add that to my wish list as well. :-) I.e. :

 

a) A recommanded critiques/critics section would be nice.

 

b) Create a "Discussion of the Week forum", where we would study a particular photographic genre with some sample pictures (posted by photonetters) provided to support the discussion. People would say which pictures they like bust in a proposed bunch, and should explain why - a bit like a POW but "genre-oriented" and where we will identify, analyze and compare several approaches to this genre. PS: If you need anyone to organize something like this on the site, I gladly volonteer. If the management likes the idea, let me assemble some shots and submit them to you, so you can see what I'm actually suggesting, and we could do a prototype of a DOW, to see what's the response.

For moderators:

 

Automatic deletion after X time (perhaps 2 weeks) by default, unless the moderator chooses to retain the post for the archives.

 

Alternatively, after X time without further posting activity.

 

The ability to zap threads to other categories/forums - the present software rarely work seems to work

 

A flagging system that informs moderators that no replies have been posted

 

The ability to create new categories

allow members to determine the order of folders and photographs in portfolios

Display which category each photo was submitted in when posted for critique - currently we cant see this.

for users:

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more visibility into photo.net for presentations, eventually with a possibility to rate a presentation.

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use some wysiwyg html editor like FCKEDITOR or TINYHTML integrate both with IBROWSER to allow us to easily load our images into html

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add to TRP the possibility to track "more intresting" photographers by picking them from those who have been added (n-times) to members' "favourite" lists (daily - weekly - monthly - etc)... at this proposal is useless to track those who are favourite by the most, but is better to track those who have been added/removed into a convenient span of time, so to give visibility to those that *REALLY* apport something to the forum.

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create a better and more compact view for the critique forum, so that we don't have to scroll down to the center of the earth searching for older posts manually.

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for administrators:

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create a ban system that stops users that not comply to forums guidelines from posting on specific forums

An ignore button.

Do away with anonymous ratings.

- ability to have follow up - in my workspace - threads in which I participated (putting a thread up the list if new comment posted since last visit, ability to reach directly those new comments when going to the page)

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- ability in the gallery pages to go to page xx directly (without having to press next/before button xx time...) <p>

 

- extend the 'highest photo rated by this member' from the top 300 to all photos rated by this members in each member community page.

The ability to edit posts in the forums after posting. I just made a mistake in "no words" where I forgot to choose HTML instead of Plain Text and of course what is posted is the code and there is no way of fixing the mistake. This happen quite frequently in "no words" and it makes for a sloppy looking page.

James, I initially though that was a good idea too, however, consider this: A member makes a comment and another member responds to his comment, but the firs member decides to edit or even delete his comment. This can really damage the flow of a thread and create chaos. Maybe just an option to convert your last comments to html.

What a beautiful thing it would be to have a slide show of the different TRPs. Hey, I wouldn't complain even if every twenty or thirty pics someone slipped in an advertisement. What do you say? Pretty please.