The FORT Suggestion Box

[jelle]

Calfgirl ... where is your crow ???

I read lots of threads, but only get really involved in The Bachelor one. I have to ditto Calfgirl and Igotalife on their comments. This series seemed to have the most newbies, the most personally invested and fanatic supporters of one girl or another, the most oblivious posters than any season. For posters who wanted to sleuth out clues and study screencaps, it was incredibly frustrating to wade through pages and pages of .. (I am really trying to be polite here) ... stuff that didn't belong in the thread. Mariner and hepcat and any of you mods that had to wade through the muck ... my hat's off to you. You did the best you could. And I can't believe I am asking for more control.
I love this board. John, I am absolutely amazed by your talent and perserverence. Mods, one and all, thanks for your part in making the board great.

PS - What happened to the listing of who was is on a particular string or forum? And it was cool that everyone had to register to read the board last night

[Jewelsy]

PS - What happened to the listing of who was is on a particular string or forum? And it was cool that everyone had to register to read the board last night

jelle. I believe John temporarily disabled that function to to conserve FORT resources due to the high traffic volume.

[jelle]

Thanks - I just went over to Qboots thread about high volumn and answered my own question. You know "engage brain before opening mouth" well something like that anyway.

[John]

Unfortunately, any thread topic is going to contain some "chatter" not specifically related to the thread topic. And hopefully, we aren't so strict that we don't allow things to wander a little bit (the effect would be to make people afraid to post, and posting is the lifeblood of the site). On a forum as heavily-trafficked as The Bachelor, the result is big huge threads that wander a bit more because people post so quickly. The same thing happens in ANTM.

It's not ideally what we'd like, but it's kind of a happy medium that hopefully everyone can live with, without being too restrictive or restricted.

[jelle]

John, why does it sound so reasonable when you say it?

And so frustrating in the "heat of the season?"

[MsFroggy]

I can say without hesitation that we will never allow images in signatures. Yes, there are many people on high speed internet connections, but there are also still a lot of people on dialup, and those people shouldn't have to wait forever for a page to load because people want an image in their signature. I can't stand sites that allow unrestricted images in their signatures, and I also don't like lengthy signatures even in text.

In my opinion, people should be able to express their love for contestants and shows by posting in those places, and not by spamming it in their signatures, or by having fan images in them.

Thank you! I could say that one of my top 5 reasons why I love this site is that there are no banners in signatures, it's all clean and quick. Not because of the bandwith issue but because they are just a major pain. Imagine a person posting 2-3 times per page, and that banner appearing in each and every post, to the point that all you see is the banner. It is easier to skip posts that way though .

[Leftcoaster]

I'd like a thread on Current Events for items posters run across which either don't have articles or are about something that drew ones attention from an otherwise unnoteworthy story.

Two examples:

The other day there were stories about the full solar eclipse that covered part of the globe. Looking at some images of spectators in different regions, I saw one where people were using CD's as supposed eye protection. I still don't know what to make of that. Were they looking at the sun through the CD itself, and if so, what makes that viewing safe, or were they looking through the hole in the middle, and if so, why bother with the CD to begin with?

Today I read a story in the Christian Science Monitor about the possibilty down the line that people will be allowed to use cell phones on planes. Not truly interesting, I feel sorry for the poor devil's listeningto incessant chatter for hours on end, and anticipate it promoting a new type of air rage, but I ...oops, got sidetracked.

The part of the story which caught my eye was this quoted passage about a couple of researchers who measured radio waves on a number of flights: "He and a colleague are the first to have actually measured the level of radio waves on 37 flights. Their findings were surprising. On average, one to four passengers use a cellphone on each flight, despite regulations forbidding it."

http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0330/p02s02-ussc.html

So even considering a theoretical possibility of wreaking havok to their flight, on average someone on pretty much every flight is willing to risk their life (and yours) because they have an extra special important thought that can't wait a few hours to be shared via cell phone?

Anyhow, thats the sort of thing I'd like to see a thread available for. Thanks

[John]

You can certainly create a thread in Current Events for things that don't have articles. We only ask that if you post an article there, that you include a link to the original source, out of respect for the original author.

The only thing we try to avoid is "news of the weird" - things that make news simply because they're outrageous, but not really newsworthy in the regular sense.

[Leftcoaster]

Thanks (belatedly) for the response, John. I appreciated it.

[burntbrat]

I'd like it if there was an optional space in the user profile for gender. Sometimes when I refer to other posters it would be nice to know if they are a boy or a girl so I can use the proper pronoun. I don't want to unnecessarily offend someone by calling them a he when they're a she and vice versa.