Forum functionality issues

[Rothman]

Thanks very much to the admins for all the work done.

My thoughts on the matter are best reserved for elsewhere given what admins have said here.

[webny99]

One small change I've noticed - and I say "change" because I haven't fully judged whether it matters enough to the forum experience to be an "issue" - previously, after clicking on a board, then back to the home page, the green arrow next to that board would turn gray, to represent that board having been viewed. Now, the arrow remains green even after clicking on and off a board several times. My guess would be that the arrow will still turn gray, but only after each individual thread in that board has been viewed, although I haven't tested this yet.

This is just straight-up broken, unfortunately; once lit the green arrow never goes off. There's obviously something stuck in some table or another that isn't supposed to be there, but finding out which table and what needs to be removed is tricky.

The colored arrows were actually working for a short time this afternoon (possibly starting after the short downtime around 2:20). They had stopped working again, but fortunately seem to be working again now.

[Big John]

On the bottom of the page always read "Opinions expressed here on belong solely to the poster and do not represent or reflect the opinions or beliefs of AARoads, its creators and/or associates.".

[Rothman]

I'm finding that Tapatalk missed notifying me of some unread messages.  Might be that 12-hour window mentioned already.

[rickmastfan67]

I'm finding that Tapatalk missed notifying me of some unread messages.  Might be that 12-hour window mentioned already.

Might have to patch Tapatalk as well.  I'll have to make a note to double check to make sure we're on the latest version, and if not, patch it.

[D-Dey65]

So, the present opening of the forum is only temporary?

My only issue was that I never knew of any notification about the forum being shut down for any amount of time.

[rickmastfan67]

My only issue was that I never knew of any notification about the forum being shut down for any amount of time.

That's the problem with legal action.  Sometimes you have to act on it without being able to give others a warning of downtime.

[74/171FAN]

Thanks very much to the admins for all the work done.

My thoughts on the matter are best reserved for elsewhere given what admins have said here.

Time to help and thank the admins at the same time by testing the clapping emoji. 

[Amaury]

The unread/read issue appears to be resolved now.

[Alex]

I suspect a fix targeted just to misparsed characters that exist in ISO-8859-1 may be all we need to fix the encoding issue definitively.  However, I haven't checked whether this reasoning applies to special dashes like the three-byte em-dash in UTF-8.

If there is conversion for characters from one to the other, a series of queries on the database could clean up some of this.

I linked it upwards in the thread; accents are bit more complicated (as there's more of them and they use two-character codes) but this covers the punctuation:

Code Select Expand


" = left quote  = "
"  = right quote = "
"˜ = left single quote  = '
' = right single quote = '
– = en dash = –
— = em dash = —
- = hyphen   = -
... = ellipsis = ...


I overlooked your original post and went back to it, thanks.
I ran some queries on the message bodies and corrected all of the instances listed in the code block above. I then went to do similar on the subject field, and the first query instead truncated the field, causing the subject to display the first part of the body text. Weird error that messed up over 1,100 posts...
Looking at the old database, I copied over the original topic names and corresponding topic id's for those posts, which fell under 44 subjects. I then ran queries to rename the posts on this database, which covered subjects with a left quote - " in them.

So you will notice less garbled text.
There's still more to fix, but not after that sql gaff and definitely no more tonight! 

[Scott5114]

A few more from the Quebec thread:

Code Select Expand


à = a with accent grave = à (warning: see below)
é = e with accent = é
É = E with accent = É
è = e with accent grave = è
ê = e with circumflex = ê
ô = O with circumflex = Ô
û = u with circumflex = û


[J N Winkler]

A few more from the Quebec thread:

Code Select Expand

à = a with accent grave = à
é = e with accent = é
É = E with accent = É
è = e with accent grave = è
ê = e with circumflex = ê
ô = O with circumflex = Ô
û = u with circumflex = û

Careful--I'm also seeing capital A with tilde (on its own) as mojibake for lowercase i with acute accent (as in an old thread dealing with Spanish autopistas and autovías).

[Rothman]

So, the present opening of the forum is only temporary?

My only issue was that I never knew of any notification about the forum being shut down for any amount of time.

They did post it right on the forum's webpage when you tried to log in (?).

[kalvado]

I do now notice that the em dashes in my autosignature are displaying as gibberish.

As has already been mentioned multiple times in this thread, the issue of nonstandard symbols rendering improperly is a known issue.

You should be able to manually fix your own signature, though, by going into your profile.

I didn't think an em dash was a nonstandard symbol.

It's outside this.

Oh, well, of course, obviously. How could anyone be so stupid as not to know such basic information as that. 

I actually enjoy seeing grammar Nazi failing the basics just outside spelling...

[Scott5114]

A few more from the Quebec thread:

Code Select Expand

à = a with accent grave = à
é = e with accent = é
É = E with accent = É
è = e with accent grave = è
ê = e with circumflex = ê
ô = O with circumflex = Ô
û = u with circumflex = û

Careful--I'm also seeing capital A with tilde (on its own) as mojibake for lowercase i with acute accent (as in an old thread dealing with Spanish autopistas and autovías).

There is a non-printing character of some kind after the à (i.e. that is not two spaces between that and the equals signs). I'm guessing that the exact code point of this non-printing character differs between à and í. Care should be taken with the target string in this case...

[GaryV]

The unread/read issue appears to be resolved now.

Do you have to do something to make it work? Because while I'm seeing threads marked as new that actually do have new items (such as this thread), when I click on it it takes me to some posts that I already read yesterday.

[Jim]

The unread/read issue appears to be resolved now.

Do you have to do something to make it work? Because while I'm seeing threads marked as new that actually do have new items (such as this thread), when I click on it it takes me to some posts that I already read yesterday.

I did a hard reload when it looked like things were being marked read again and the forum has been behaving normally for me since.

[hotdogPi]

The unread/read issue appears to be resolved now.

Do you have to do something to make it work? Because while I'm seeing threads marked as new that actually do have new items (such as this thread), when I click on it it takes me to some posts that I already read yesterday.

Posts that were generated during the bugged times won't be read during that time, so if you read them at say, 5 PM yesterday, it will still be unread. Reading them now will mark them read, though.

[1995hoo]

User threatened DMCA to remove all his posts. Forum was down, and they were all removed via script. This caused some threads to no longer have a most recent post, breaking things. To fix it, some issues regarding non-ASCII encoding happened.

I would have thought that the terms of service cover that. If you post here, it's public domain. At least that's the way most social media works.

You overlook the potential cost and hassle of fighting someone over it, regardless of who's right. In the legal field, the term "nuisance value" settlement describes how a defendant (or putative defendant) will often settle a plaintiff's weak case just to avoid that problem.

[Alex]

A few more from the Quebec thread:

Code Select Expand

à = a with accent grave = à
é = e with accent = é
É = E with accent = É
è = e with accent grave = è
ê = e with circumflex = ê
ô = O with circumflex = Ô
û = u with circumflex = û

Careful--I'm also seeing capital A with tilde (on its own) as mojibake for lowercase i with acute accent (as in an old thread dealing with Spanish autopistas and autovías).

There is a non-printing character of some kind after the à (i.e. that is not two spaces between that and the equals signs). I'm guessing that the exact code point of this non-printing character differs between à and í. Care should be taken with the target string in this case...

I am slowly replacing a number of these bad characters with queries, however, searches cannot distinguish between characters with ~ and ^. So I am relegated to find another aspect of a text string to single out ones with tildas versus ones with carets. A recent example:

Code Select Expand

§ -> §

ç -> ç

Thus far I have dealt with all of the ones mentioned upthread, and fixed Mr. Matté's name in quoted posts and on his profile.

I'm also finding many instances of these below, which Bard explains is part of the Latin Extended-B range of Unicode.



So I am trying to single these characters out to correct or in the case of the one that regularly appears beyond ", remove them.

My post count here says 892, but on my posts page, it shows 894. I believe it may be my last two posts before the forum shutdown. I am thinking about deleting them and reposting them.

Were those last two posts made on Tuesday morning? If so, I can look on the previous database and extract those based upon your member ID. If you already remade them, then that is just as good.

[TempoNick]

User threatened DMCA to remove all his posts. Forum was down, and they were all removed via script. This caused some threads to no longer have a most recent post, breaking things. To fix it, some issues regarding non-ASCII encoding happened.

I would have thought that the terms of service cover that. If you post here, it's public domain. At least that's the way most social media works.

You overlook the potential cost and hassle of fighting someone over it, regardless of who's right. In the legal field, the term "nuisance value" settlement describes how a defendant (or putative defendant) will often settle a plaintiff's weak case just to avoid that problem.

That's something to consider, of course. Maybe you can force somebody to agree to a "loser pays legal fees" provision in the TOS. Maybe you can require them to post bond to cover any legal fees, in order to sue you. That's above my pay grade. Talk to a real attorney, but in some states you have to post bond before you can appeal. Maybe you can do that contractually as well.

[Alex]

You overlook the potential cost and hassle of fighting someone over it, regardless of who's right. In the legal field, the term "nuisance value" settlement describes how a defendant (or putative defendant) will often settle a plaintiff's weak case just to avoid that problem.

That's something to consider, of course. Maybe you can force somebody to agree to a "loser pays legal fees" provision in the TOS. Maybe you can require them to post bond to cover any legal fees, in order to sue you. That's above my pay grade. Talk to a real attorney, but in some states you have to post bond before you can appeal. Maybe you can do that contractually as well.

It was easier for me to delete his posts, act like he never existed, and move on. It is not as if his posts from 2014-21 added all that much value to the board, and I doubt many will be too disappointed that they realized some posts are missing from old threads that are otherwise buried.

The bulk of the forum database clean up from the deletion queries is now complete. The remaining collation/character issue is because I opted to switch databases from mySQL 5.5 to MariaDB 10.6 when implementing the reimport process from the backup I made on Tuesday morning. Ionos does not offer mySQL 5.5 as an option for databases anymore, so we would have eventually needed to change that anyway.

I would have thought that the terms of service cover that. If you post here, it's public domain. At least that's the way most social media works.

We will be expanding the verbiage in the Terms of Service to address this copyright issue. We do not have a problem with removing posts on requests if it warrants it (personal information divulged, threats, blatant name calling, etc.). But when a member demands that all of their posts be removed, it is usually because someone or a group set them off, and their reaction was an absolute response to it (something akin to "I want nothing to do this this forum!"). This has happened about 3 or 4 times to my recollection in the 14+ years of the forum's existence.

[TheRhodeGeek]

Don't know if this has been said before but the simple machines copyright and 2.0.19 text on the bottom of each page is overlaid with text featuring a $ sign

[Amaury]

That's been an issue from before this happened, but I have also noticed it.

[Alex]

Don't know if this has been said before but the simple machines copyright and 2.0.19 text on the bottom of each page is overlaid with text featuring a $ sign

I will look into it when I'm back home. Thanks.