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BrangdonJ

BrangdonJ

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  • #2,161
    lithven said:
    Any plan to automatically lock very old threads (e.g. 1+ year with no activity)? I've seen that on other forums and find it's useful to avoid, especially new, users necroing threads.
    Click to expand...
    Locking sounds unnecessarily extreme. It might be enough just to warn when it is happening. Ideally for the person doing it, and in advance, so they don't do it by mistake, as well as to warn other people who see that post.

    I have posted to old threads deliberately. Sometimes a follow-up is appropriate. And I don't see accidentally reviving old threads as a real problem anyway.
     
    Skoop

    Skoop

    Ars Legatus Legionis
    33,307
    Moderator
  • #2,162
    BrangdonJ said:
    It might be enough just to warn when it is happening. Ideally for the person doing it, and in advance
    Click to expand...
    You can't warn in advance. Once the post in an old thread is made, it's made.

    I estimate that 90%, maybe more, of necroed thread posts are by direct spammers or those setting up a spam. I've seen this for years as a moderator.

    I'd welcome an automatic lock like we used to have years ago.
     
    BrangdonJ

    BrangdonJ

    Ars Praefectus
    4,659
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  • #2,166
    Skoop said:
    You can't warn in advance. Once the post in an old thread is made, it's made.
    Click to expand...
    By "in advance", I mean before the post is made. If this was an old thread, I could be shown a warning now, as I type this reply.

    I estimate that 90%, maybe more, of necroed thread posts are by direct spammers or those setting up a spam. I've seen this for years as a moderator.

    I'd welcome an automatic lock like we used to have years ago.
    Click to expand...
    Well, OK, that's fair enough. As I say, I've not seen many necroed posts so I wasn't aware. Maybe they are getting noticed, reported and moderated before I can see them. (I'm not in a US timezone.)
     
    DovePig

    DovePig

    Account Banned
    12,027
  • #2,170
    Aurich said:
    At this point it is what it is. I can take away markdown support, or we can live with the minor edge cases. I honestly have no idea how many people are using markdown, I can't go by any data, all I can say is I feel like the downsides are all navigable. Nobody seems to be actually citing footnotes in their posts on a regular basis, and if they are we have lovely support for superscript tags and they work in the editor interface, so I don't think it's a big deal.
    Click to expand...
    Honestly, in my opinion?

    Given how any :/ in e.g. typed https:// URL rendered as 😐 (or whatever emoticon it was) previously (before you very quickly removed it, kudos!) I'd be all for taking down all emoticon markdown myself... ;-) ;-/ ;-\ and similar work just fine, if not actually better.

    Everybody understands ASCII emoticons anyway, they don't break line spacing (as the below xxxD:D: example, which renders at 1.5 lines in some browsers) and for the cases they aren't sufficient, Ars still supports Unicode emoticons (or rather translates them to inline pixel image ones, I believe).

    Otherwise you might run into more and more edge cases that break things, IMHO...

    Case in point:

    PMID: identifier in scientific citations renders as PMID:
    DOGBERT SAID: shouldn't really render as DOGBERT SAID: either...

    When the dumb XenForo parser renders any emoticon markdown shorthand even when not bracketed by spaces or similar characters like EOL, it's the parser itself that's IMHO broken. The Ars forums are often technical, with people quoting scientific papers and other stuff that might have all sorts of : / \ ! characters inside words that don't really belong in code or icode brackets...
     
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    Lew Zealand

    Lew Zealand

    Ars Scholae Palatinae
    1,127
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  • #2,180
    Ecmaster76 said:
    An "Are you sure" prompt might be nice on the "Mark Forums as Read" button.

    Really didn't mean to click that
    Click to expand...

    Aurich said:
    There is one by default actually, we removed it. Once you start using it more often the constant "are you sure" prompt is irritating. I decided it was a power user feature and erring on the side of less irritating was the better approach.
    Click to expand...
    I can understand there are probably more people who use "Mark forums read" frequently who would be annoyed by an "are you sure" prompt than those like Ecmaster76 and me who accidentally clicked it, but would a reasonable compromise be to move "Mark forums read" to the far right side of the horizontal row?
     
    theevilsharpie

    theevilsharpie

    Ars Tribunus Militum
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  • #2,181
    I have seen at least two instances of old accounts being used for spam:

    https://meincmagazine.com/civis/threads/what-did-you-learn-today-part-2.1200379/page-733
    spam-old-accounts.png


    I have reported them to the moderators as being spam. However, whereas the typical spammer is using a brand-new account, these accounts are quite old, and the one with previous posts looks like their past activity was legitimate.

    While this could just come down to users getting pwned because they shared passwords with another site that was compromised, that it happened at least twice within the span of 12 hours make me wonder if something about the new forum makes it more vulnerable to account takeovers. :\
     
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    KD5MDK

    Ars Legatus Legionis
    23,169
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  • #2,182
    theevilsharpie said:
    I have seen at least two instances of old accounts being used for spam:

    https://meincmagazine.com/civis/threads/what-did-you-learn-today-part-2.1200379/page-733
    View attachment 50321

    I have reported them to the moderators as being spam. However, whereas the typical spammer is using a brand-new account, these accounts are quite old, and the one with previous posts looks like their past activity was legitimate.

    While this could just come down to users getting pwned because they shared passwords with another site that was compromised, that it happened at least twice within the span of 12 hours make me wonder if something about the new forum makes it more vulnerable to account takeovers. :\
    Click to expand...
    I have noticed this too, and thought it worth calling out here.
    Now I also want 2FA on the forums, given how much history I have attached to this account.
     
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    The Aloof Alot

    Ars Scholae Palatinae
    3,067
  • #2,188
    Arcturus said:
    Thanks! Glad sanity rules the day.

    Both posters now seem to have non-animated avatars.
    Click to expand...
    With no option to change it again:ROFLMAO:, if I read Aurich's reply in the linked thread above correctly.

    Of course, they really ought to be stuck with their animated avatar permanently set to some embarrassing animation frame...
     
    Yagisama

    Yagisama

    Ars Legatus Legionis
    32,464
    Subscriptor
  • #2,189
    Sometimes I have come across a situation where the keyboard entry stops momentarily while typing a reply here. I haven't read all the comments here so I don't know if anyone else has experienced this or if it's just me. I didn't have any problems wirting this reply so it could just be my BT keyboard. But then again I never have an issue typing anywhere else.
     
    T

    The Aloof Alot

    Ars Scholae Palatinae
    3,067
  • #2,190
    Something is broken in how ignored users are handled (possibly to do with the "hide posts with low score" for the front page, since it appears to be broken since that works again). For me, posts by ignored users in normal threads don't show up at all in a thread, except in quoted posts featuring the ignored user, where I get the 'message not displayed because ignored'-message.
    When I click the link provided in such a quote, all messages by the ignored user suddenly show up, fully visible, instead of only the message I wanted to see.
     
    VirtualWolf

    VirtualWolf

    Ars Legatus Legionis
    11,099
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  • #2,191
    Yagisama said:
    Sometimes I have come across a situation where the keyboard entry stops momentarily while typing a reply here. I haven't read all the comments here so I don't know if anyone else has experienced this or if it's just me. I didn't have any problems wirting this reply so it could just be my BT keyboard. But then again I never have an issue typing anywhere else.
    Click to expand...
    It's not just you, I've had the same thing happen. Seems very rare and I haven't been able to figure out what causes it.
     
    Nevarre

    Nevarre

    Ars Legatus Legionis
    24,417
  • #2,192
    Unrelated to the problem with old accounts being compromised due to password stuffing etc. I remember the old forums had a way to not just restrict new posters from posting too frequently, but to prevent new accounts from posting links.

    I'm seeing and reporting a LOT of spam lately, and all of these one-post accounts are able to drop a link with their very first post. Is there not a way to prevent hotlinking in posts from accounts with less than 5 posts or whatever arbitrary number makes sense? I know those accounts may try to astroturf long enough to be able to post a link and then activate their spam, but that's a higher level of effort and may at least slow some of them down.
     
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    CuriouslySane

    CuriouslySane

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    4,166
    Subscriptor
  • #2,193
    I noticed a construction in front-page comments where someone had wrapped URL around ISPOILER. The result was a link whose destination was obscured but opened when you clicked to reveal the spoiler. It was a normal link, so browser mechanisms like hover still worked, but it's dodgy to have link navigation happen when you're expecting something else.

    The instance in question was not malicious. They probably just spoilered the text first and then added a link. The other way around wouldn't have the same problem.

    ex:
    Code: 
    [URL="https://meincmagazine.com"][ISPOILER]Some Text[/ISPOILER][/URL]
    Some Text

    vs.
    Code: 
    [ISPOILER][URL="https://meincmagazine.com"]Some Text[/URL][/ISPOILER]
    Some Text

    You could probably solve this by just having spoiler reveal preventDefault.
     
    ColinABQ

    ColinABQ

    Ars Tribunus Angusticlavius
    6,368
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  • #2,194
    Is it just me or did all text just get really bold here? Looking at "Threads with posts by..." (My Threads/ego search replacement), ALL the thread titles are bold, going back forever, so I can't tell which ones really have new posts without looking at times in the far right column.
    Meanwhile, ALL text in ALL posts, and even here in the editor, are extra bold now.
    It's like a tweak was made to the typography, and/or a tag was left unclosed somewhere?
    I'll check on another system in a while.
    Edit: that's not the case with the main open forum index page, where the descriptions look normal, as they did before.
     
    ColinABQ

    ColinABQ

    Ars Tribunus Angusticlavius
    6,368
    Subscriptor++
  • #2,199
    ColinABQ said:
    It's also fine with the Chromium Browser, which I tend to only use for Google properties. That's on the original system; Ubuntu 20.04.5 LTS, Firefox 109.0 (64-bit). Still wonky. Cleared cookies, history ...
    It's obviously my problem, so never mind...
    Click to expand...
    I fixed it. The night before encountering this problem, I had installed a number of fonts, some from who-knows-where. I just deleted them and the Open Forum looks normal again.
    Aurich or XenForo must have been using one of the same name but of a different ... parentage.
     
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