Deactivate Quick Reply?

[Arantor]

Anyone who says 'not to be rude' knows full well they are.

It was removed because we had so many people confused about the 'how to turn it ON' interface.

Also, you should tell the XenForo team, I'm sure they'd love to hear the exact same complaint as they have for the last decade.


Is there a correct way? Not that I've had time or patience to figure out, and frankly with this kind of attitude I'm not overly enthused to try.

[Sir Osis of Liver]

You'd not be doing it for my benefit, Arantor, it's the OP who requested it.  My only interest is for future reference, as this issue will likely come up again in support. 

[FrizzleFried]

Wouldn't it simply be a matter of looking at the old "pre-removal" code ... tweaking it a little ... then offering it up as a mod?

QUESTION: Isn't this site supposed to be for end-users to discuss how to make things better ... for THEM?  I mean,  I am guessing you all aren't putting all this work in for yourselves.  I would think the users of your software are who you write for... no?  Seems anti-productive to DISCOURAGE these kinds of conversation.  It also seems anti-productive to get upset over such discussions.

No one is attacking anyone personally... at all. 

[Arantor]

The devs do run forums themselves, you know.

[FrizzleFried]

BTW... to answer the question asked "Why wasn't this brought up BEFORE 2.1.0?" ....

At least for me... the answer is simple.  You folks DISCOURAGED me from updating my site until 2.1.0.

Over and over again we were told not to use the release candidates for our open forum.  Unfortunately,  I don't have time to "play" with forum software in the background... and most of the complaints that have come up have come up from the USER BASE who wouldn't have access to the release candidate forums anyway.

So yeah,  at least for my users... this last couple weeks have been the users first experience with SMF 2.1.x simply because it was strongly suggested by the SMF team that be the case.

[FrizzleFried]

The devs do run forums themselves, you know.

I do know.  That said,  do you think they are doing the work solely for themselves?  If so,  I stand corrected... but somehow I doubt it.

[Illori]

we have encouraged our users to install 2.1 as a test install prior to it going gold to test it out and provide feedback. nothing stopped anyone from doing that.

[FrizzleFried]

A Test install sure... but test installs aren't live.

What you are getting today is feedback from the folks who use your product who have been getting feedback from THEIR users...

I know I wouldn't be here (nearly as much) if it weren't for my users complaints/suggestions.

[Doug Heffernan]

BTW... to answer the question asked "Why wasn't this brought up BEFORE 2.1.0?" ....

At least for me... the answer is simple.  You folks DISCOURAGED me from updating my site until 2.1.0.

Over and over again we were told not to use the release candidates for our open forum.  Unfortunately,  I don't have time to "play" with forum software in the background... and most of the complaints that have come up have come up from the USER BASE who wouldn't have access to the release candidate forums anyway.

So yeah,  at least for my users... this last couple weeks have been the users first experience with SMF 2.1.x simply because it was strongly suggested by the SMF team that be the case.

That is standard procedure with any software btw, and not only with smf. Betas and rc versions should be avoided being used on a live site, unless you have the required knowledge to deal with any bugs that might pop up along the way. They are not called betas and release candidates for nothing.

[Sesquipedalian]

@FrizzleFried, it may help to know that while Arantor and Sir Osis of Liver both have long histories in this community, neither are on the Simple Machines team. Their discussion is between the two of them, and their views and opinions are their own.

Asking about ways to change and/or disable the quick reply feature is perfectly fine. The proposals so far in this discussion have all been problematic for one reason or another, and knowledgeable folks here have explained why they are problematic precisely in order to protect others from encountering issues if they tried them. But just because the inadequate proposals to date have been "shot down" doesn't mean that discussing the matter is discouraged.


Regarding the matter itself:

It is certainly possible to change and/or disable the quick reply feature, but it will take a fair bit of work by someone knowledgeable enough to do it correctly. This is a good candidate for a mod request.

[FrizzleFried]

BTW... to answer the question asked "Why wasn't this brought up BEFORE 2.1.0?" ....

At least for me... the answer is simple.  You folks DISCOURAGED me from updating my site until 2.1.0.

Over and over again we were told not to use the release candidates for our open forum.  Unfortunately,  I don't have time to "play" with forum software in the background... and most of the complaints that have come up have come up from the USER BASE who wouldn't have access to the release candidate forums anyway.

So yeah,  at least for my users... this last couple weeks have been the users first experience with SMF 2.1.x simply because it was strongly suggested by the SMF team that be the case.

That is standard procedure with any software btw, and not only with smf. Betas and rc versions should be avoided being used on a live site, unless you have the required knowledge to deal with any bugs that might pop up along the way. They are not called betas and release candidates for nothing.

Oh,  I'm not complaining.  I'm simply pointing out that the reason these complaints/suggestions are happening NOW (after release) versus during RC...

[Bob La Londe]

FWI:  I was looking for exactly the functionality myself.  To disable Quick Reply.  I perused manuals, searched the admin area, and even hit a few dead ends with old conversations here before doing a search in the correct place only to discover:

"It ain't there no more."    

With 1400+ views I have to assume there are more than a couple of us looking for this functionality.  Yes, I am aware many of those views will be the same people, but the number looking is likely not negligible.

Totally aside, I rather like the new wizzy wig editor. 

[Kindred]

Don't forget, there are the team viewers who read every single post.....

[Arantor]

The reality is that a non-trivial percentage of those views are search engines gathering the topic for search purposes. Wouldn't surprise me if 90% or more are such.

[Antechinus]

You would probably also find that a non-trivial percentage are just members who see this on the unread posts page every day, and are wondering what the latest popcorn is.

[Bob La Londe]

Its clear a significant portion of them are people who want to trivialize what other people want if its not something they want. 

[Arantor]

No, it's really not clear.

I know for a fact that bots visit this site thousands of times a day, every day. I guarantee that the topic getting replies will get it seen by the bots over and over, artificially inflating the view count, distorting the real number of views.

In any case, views has never been a reliable metric for judging importance or relevance of a topic. Let's take a look at the top 10 viewed topics on this site, as of right now:

Simple Machines Forum Conference Survey - 3,717,913 views - posted in 2012
PHP security warning - 3,663,657 views - posted in 2012
SMF 1.0 Beta 1 Released! - 2,980,935 views - posted in 2003
SMF 2.0.3, 1.1.17 and 1.0.23 security patches released - 2,917,758 views - posted in 2012
End of life of SMF 1.0 - 2,874,272 views - posted in 2012
SMF Big Boards - 2,798,568 views - posted in 2008
General support topic for Aeva Media (Latest release: July 28, 2010) - 2,673,019 views - posted in 2007
SMF 2.0.1 and 1.1.15 critical security patches released - 2,530,201 views - posted in 2011
Server maintenance - 2,491,797 views - posted in 2011
SMF's ban policy and how to "appeal" it. - 2,432,542 views - posted in 2007

As you can see, there's not really a particularly great correlation with the value of a post and the number of likes it has, especially given that the most viewed topic is a discussion about a conference that was maybe going to happen if people were interested, and that was 10 years ago.

Number of views does not correlate to meaningfulness.

Also, I would point out that I am the person responsible for making the decision you are currently unhappy with and that at the time I made it in 2013, it made a lot of sense. You can be angry about it, but the decision was made with the best of intentions at the time.

I have thought about making it a mod to reinstate it but I'm fairly certain I will get a lot of hassle if I make it as a mod, more than I currently get for having removed the option in the first place.

[Bob La Londe]

Lets put it in a different perspective.  Almost none of my users are even remotely techy.  Some struggle with basic things like setting their own time zone and time display format.  Quick reply is not a benefit for those people because then I get questions about how to do things that are not options with quick reply.  Now I am sure because I took the time explain that there are those who will attack my premise or rationalize that its a stupid premise.  If you are one of those people your feedback on that is irrelevant. 

If it were a forum full of techies, programmers & nerds like this one my argument would be invalid, but it is not. 

[Bob La Londe]

I have thought about making it a mod to reinstate it but I'm fairly certain I will get a lot of hassle if I make it as a mod, more than I currently get for having removed the option in the first place.

I am sure folks will argue about anything, but personally I don't care if its built in or addon as long as its clean. 

As to the correlation.  Are you saying there are a couple or less people interested in this functionality.  I just said I assumed there are more than a couple. Of course there is the old saw about for every X number of people who speak up there are Y more people who didn't.  Again I have to make an assumption that if you refuse any credibility to my previous assumption that there must be more than a couple interested then I am sure this one won't carry much weight either. 

[Arantor]

Did I say it was a stupid premise? Did I, at any point, tell you that you wanting to disable quick reply was a bad thing? No, I did not. Please don't put words in my mouth.

In any case I am saying that thinking 1600 views on a topic is a lot of support for the topic at hand. I am saying that probably 1400+ of those views are by robots who simply don't care, and some amount of the rest is the people replying to it and those eating popcorn.

Your premise on the nature of quick reply is sound. It was not a use case I considered very strongly in 2013 when I made the decision to remove that option from SMF - there were other use cases that were more pressing to me at the time that felt more important to address, namely how much confusion there seemed to be *because* there was an option.

However, I still get asked to fix things I made 10 years ago. If I made a mod of this, I'm certain I will still be asked to support it 10 years from now. That is problematic for me, even though I am coming around to your position in general.