• Anything ‘published’ on the web is viewed as intellectual property and, regardless of whether it displays a copyright symbol or not, is therefore copyrighted by the originator. The only exception to this is if there is a “free and unrestricted reuse” statement associated with the work.

    In order to protect our members and TFL from possible litigation, all members must abide by the following new rules:

    1. Copying and pasting entire articles from another site to TFL is strictly prohibited. The same applies to articles from print or other media, and to posting photographs taken of copyrighted pages or other media.

    2. Copyright law provides for “fair use” of portions of a copyrighted work. You can copy no more than a SINGLE paragraph from the article to your post (3 or 4 sentences at most).

    3. You must provide a link to the article along with the name of website. For example: ww.xxx.yyy/zzz (The Lower Thumbsuck Daily News).

    4. You must provide, in your own words, a brief summary of the article AND your reasons for believing it will be of interest to TFL members. Failure to do so may result in the thread being closed or your post being deleted as a “cut and paste drive by.”

    5. Photographs and other images are also copyrighted. "Hotlinking" of images (so that it appears in your message) from other sites is also prohibited unless you own rights to the image. If you wish to share an image, provide a clickable link to it.

    Posts that do not follow these new guidelines will be altered or deleted by staff. Members who continue to violate this policy may lose their posting privileges at TFL.

    Thank you for your cooperation and your participation in TFL, the leading online forum for firearms enthusiasts.

A few suggestions

M

McCarthy

Moderator
1.) I just found out that I can enable photos to be shown in posts, in my user options. I don't recall that I have ever turned this off. If this is off per default I suggest turning it on for new members, and making existing users aware of this.

One reason why I rarely read and partake on TFL is because of the lack of photos.

As the saying goes: "A picture is worth a thousand word." Especially when we can show off our passion for firearms, reloading, shooting, etc.

2.) I have still not figured out how I can quote somebody. I see quotes sometimes, but have no idea how to embed them.

3.) It would be nice if the quotes would show the name of the original poster.

4.) It would be also nice to be notified if somebody quoted one of my posts. This will increase the engagement by a lot. I've seen plenty of people replying to somebody specifically but they never came back to carry on the conversation, because they didn't know about it.

5.) Another tool that increases engagement is a "Like" button. It really makes people come back and see if their posts have been worthwhile to others, or not.


These are options you will find in basically all current forums.

If this is a technical issue, I'm willing to help out. I have a degree in CS and cranked out a lot of projects, including forums.
 
1) You had to have turned it off at some time. The default for all members when registering is to show images (and signatures). That has been the default from day 1 of this forum.

2) See this thread which is a "sticky" thread at the top of this same forum. Post #4 is especially helpful.

3) Again, see post #4 in that same thread.

4) The closest the software comes to that is to subscribe to a thread when you start it or post in it. Most of the newer board systems do have the feature you are talking about.

5) In my opinion, the "Like" feature is of dubious value, but even it wasn't, it isn't available in the vBulletin board system. The closest thing to "Like" that the vBulletin system has is the "User Reputation" system. We have that turned off as it can be abused at times. It's more of a "Like or Don't Like a Member" system.
 
Mal_H said:
1) You had to have turned it off at some time. The default for all members when registering is to show images (and signatures). That has been the default from day 1 of this forum.

2) See this thread which is a "sticky" thread at the top of this same forum. Post #4 is especially helpful.

3) Again, see post #4 in that same thread.

4) The closest the software comes to that is to subscribe to a thread when you start it or post in it. Most of the newer board systems do have the feature you are talking about.

5) In my opinion, the "Like" feature is of dubious value, but even it wasn't, it isn't available in the vBulletin board system. The closest thing to "Like" that the vBulletin system has is the "User Reputation" system. We have that turned off as it can be abused at times. It's more of a "Like or Don't Like a Member" system.
Click to expand...


Testing this right now. I almost forgot about BBcode. Thanks for your reply. Wish there would be a quote button though. Writing the code and past&copy the text manually slows most replies down.

I did a quick google search on the Like button options and found this: https://www.vbulletin.org/forum/showthread.php?t=231666

Should be easy to integrate.

This is not my forum, hence not my rules, but I have seen great usage and acceptance on other boards when it was added.
 
McCarthy said:
Testing this right now. I almost forgot about BBcode. Thanks for your reply. Wish there would be a quote button though. Writing the code and past&copy the text manually slows most replies down.

I did a quick google search on the Like button options and found this: https://www.vbulletin.org/forum/showthread.php?t=231666

Should be easy to integrate.

This is not my forum, hence not my rules, but I have seen great usage and acceptance on other boards when it was added.
Click to expand...
Actually, there is a quote button of sorts associated with each post, and I just used it here. Push the icon at the bottom right of a post to go to the "Quick Reply" window. Then check off "Quote message in reply?" to add the post text to your post. Note the small icon next to the quoted member's name - that is a link to the entire quoted post.

The main problem with a reply-with-quote function is that some members use it all the time whether they really need to quote a post or not. Then they add a short reply. They almost never edit the quote to include only the text they needed to quote. Multiply that 10 or so times per page, and frankly, it gets really annoying.
 
Mal H said:
Actually, there is a quote button of sorts associated with each post, and I just used it here. Push the icon at the bottom right of a post to go to the "Quick Reply" window. Then check off "Quote message in reply?" to add the post text to your post. Note the small icon next to the quoted member's name - that is a link to the entire quoted post.

The main problem with a reply-with-quote function is that some members use it all the time whether they really need to quote a post or not. Then they add a short reply. They almost never edit the quote to include only the text they needed to quote. Multiply that 10 or so times per page, and frankly, it gets really annoying.
Click to expand...


Ok, lets try this.

EDIT: Wow, that really works. I have never "seen" this checkbox because I didn't expect this feature to be in that spot. Most other forums have a direct quote button right next to each post, I'm just so used to this pattern and concluded that this forum doesn't have it all.

Alright, I can work with this. Thanks for digging around.

Photos and quotes are covered. That like button hack would be something, but I won't push it any further. :)

Thanks again Mal!
 
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