Merging posts

[PeterScott]

Always been bemused why the system sometimes merges posts - if I wanted them merged then I would have edited the earler one. So when it happens, I always unmerge them by editing the combined-post and reposting the second one separately. Today it merged with an 8-hrs-ago posting which I coukldn't then edit. Hmmmm.

 

[RichM]

Typically there's no need to "double post" and it's often frowned upon on many forums. Commonly many forums frown upon or even disallow double posting by means of making it against their rules etc. We have been much more relaxed on this front but equally, facilitating double posts could potentially help bots circumvent anti-spam measures we have in place which we have been victim of recently. For this reason primarily, we have increased the threshold to 24 hours whereby the forum system will merge consecutive/double posts automagically. 

 

It also helps keep the forum tidy by reducing unnecessary database entries by consolidating consecutive posts submitted by the same user where appropriate to do so. 

[PeterScott]

Dear Rich,

10 hours ago, RichM said:

Typically there's no need to "double post" ...

Well, with all due respect, that's an assertion with no evidence.

 

Clearly, if two consecutive posts are on different issues (threads often drift to discuss many issues), then having them separately is helpful and makes the forum easier to read. There are very many consecutive posts all over CWDF which have not been merged.

 

In particular, I often post multiple Tonic pictures from one location and follow it up with another, consecutive, unrelated posting from some completely different time or place. Merging them makes the resulting posting unwieldy,  ...

 

... and for my readers who like to guess the pics' location, before reading the text disclosing it, it makes it less fun by having a change of location in the middle of the post.

 

12 hours ago, PeterScott said:

Today it merged with an 8-hrs-ago posting which I couldn't then edit.

10 hours ago, RichM said:

... we have increased the threshold to 24 hours whereby the forum system will merge consecutive/double posts ...

My point hasn't been answered. Under the previous regime an unwanted merge was a nuisance but could be undone. In yesterday evening's combined post, of which I complained,  the two threshholds of 3-hrs for editing and 24-hrs for the so-called double posting combine to make me post something I didn't intend, and then couldn't control.

 

10 hours ago, RichM said:

"double post" [is] often frowned upon on many forums

I don't see why that is relevant to CWDF ...

 

10 hours ago, RichM said:

...helps keep the forum tidy by reducing unnecessary database entries...

 

Well, CWDF is heading towards the three-millionth post (estimated for 1Nov2023), so is this a material consideration?

 

In any case, even the old regime objected to consecutive posts very infrequently. I always mention it in the edit-box when it happens: "Unmerge a merge" (as below), and of the first 12,330 Tonic posts, 7,253 are mine and 4,787 of those are consecutive; sadly the CWDF-search-function doesn't look in edit-comments, so an exact count of my unmerges needs to look inside the database. My impression is that the old regime, in practice, only merged late-at-night when other forum activity was light. I guessed that it was inaccurately using the post-number (eg 2902858 for my post starting this thread) rather than the thread-number (eg this is #3 in this thread)

 

The best solution would be to save the processing needed for the check: if not that, then ask the user whether they would prefer the current post to be merged with their earlier one.

 

Regards

PeterScott (confused of Sheffield)

 

 

Edited February 27, 2023 by PeterScott
unmerge a merge

[MtB]

10 hours ago, RichM said:

Typically there's no need to "double post" and it's often frowned upon on many forums.

 

I too find the post merging behaviour highly irritating but until now, I hadn't really consciously realised. 

 

I take part in many forums myself as it happens, and I have to disagree it is not "frowned upon" in the other forums I use. Who here "frowns upon" it? No-one, I suggest!

 

 

P.S. Instead of a post merging, could not an inadvertent double post result in a pop-up box saying "Don't double post please. Edit your previous post instead. Thank you."

 

I appreciate this doesn't address Peter's complaint that the merging now happens beyond the post edit deadline. 

[Hudds Lad]

Double posting is the act of posting the same content in rapid succession, usually caused by an iffy internet connection. This is not what Peter is doing as the content is not the same.

Flooding is what you’re trying to stop. When i used to admin many years ago it was easier to just let it happen as it was quite rare, then if it did it was just a ten min job to select and remove all the flood posts. Is it really that commonplace these days?

I can see why the board is set up this way, unfortunately Peter is being caught in the crossfire, can you enable unique permissions for individual users?

 

 

Edited February 27, 2023 by Hudds Lad
add extra guff

[MtB]

The quick and dirty fix for Peter's complaint is to set the post edit deadline to the same as the post merge deadline. 

[RichM]

2 hours ago, PeterScott said:

Dear Rich,

Well, with all due respect, that's an assertion with no evidence.

 

Clearly, if two consecutive posts are on different issues (threads often drift to discuss many issues), then having them separately is helpful and makes the forum easier to read. There are very many consecutive posts all over CWDF which have not been merged.

 

In particular, I often post multiple Tonic pictures from one location and follow it up with another, consecutive, unrelated posting from some completely different time or place. Merging them makes the resulting posting unwieldy,  ...

 

... and for my readers who like to guess the pics' location, before reading the text disclosing it, it makes it less fun by having a change of location in the middle of the post.

 

My point hasn't been answered. Under the previous regime an unwanted merge was a nuisance but could be undone. In yesterday evening's combined post, of which I complained,  the two threshholds of 3-hrs for editing and 24-hrs for the so-called double posting combine to make me post something I didn't intend, and then couldn't control.

 

I don't see why that is relevant to CWDF ...

 

Well, CWDF is heading towards the three-millionth post (estimated for 1Nov2023), so is this a material consideration?

 

In any case, even the old regime objected to consecutive posts very infrequently. I always mention it in the edit-box when it happens: "Unmerge a merge" (as below), and of the first 12,330 Tonic posts, 7,253 are mine and 4,787 of those are consecutive; sadly the CWDF-search-function doesn't look in edit-comments, so an exact count of my unmerges needs to look inside the database. My impression is that the old regime, in practice, only merged late-at-night when other forum activity was light. I guessed that it was inaccurately using the post-number (eg 2902858 for my post starting this thread) rather than the thread-number (eg this is #3 in this thread)

 

The best solution would be to save the processing needed for the check: if not that, then ask the user whether they would prefer the current post to be merged with their earlier one.

 

Regards

PeterScott (confused of Sheffield)

 

 

 

If it's regarding two or more matters, why not multi-quote in the same post? This should make it easy to distinguish that you're replying to a different individual and thus potentially a different sub-topic within a topic. I suppose it doesn't help that topics do drift off topic but this is another matter entirely and I'm not sure the answer to this is consecutive posts.

 

You may use the formatting tools available to format the post in such a way to make it easy for users to differentiate between one or more entities. I'm still not sure why it warrants a new consecutive post. Please see answer to MtB's question at the very bottom of this post. This should also help in this regard.

 

 

2 hours ago, MtB said:

 

I too find the post merging behaviour highly irritating but until now, I hadn't really consciously realised. 

 

I take part in many forums myself as it happens, and I have to disagree it is not "frowned upon" in the other forums I use. Who here "frowns upon" it? No-one, I suggest!

 

 

P.S. Instead of a post merging, could not an inadvertent double post result in a pop-up box saying "Don't double post please. Edit your previous post instead. Thank you."

 

I appreciate this doesn't address Peter's complaint that the merging now happens beyond the post edit deadline. 

 

This could risk making it less user friendly by forcing the user to edit the previous post manually instead. We've taken out the burden of this by making it so the forum system do it automatically. Members can of course edit it themselves manually if they wish to update the formatting and structure of the post.

 

 

1 hour ago, Hudds Lad said:

Double posting is the act of posting the same content in rapid succession, usually caused by an iffy internet connection. This is not what Peter is doing as the content is not the same.

Flooding is what you’re trying to stop. When i used to admin many years ago it was easier to just let it happen as it was quite rare, then if it did it was just a ten min job to select and remove all the flood posts. Is it really that commonplace these days?

I can see why the board is set up this way, unfortunately Peter is being caught in the crossfire, can you enable unique permissions for individual users?

 

 

 

I have checked several definitions online, while there is no official dictionary definition for the term there are several that also suggest it is for more than one consecutive post regardless of intent. But yes, maybe I should have used the term "consecutive posts" as to remove any ambiguity. 

 

1 hour ago, MtB said:

The quick and dirty fix for Peter's complaint is to set the post edit deadline to the same as the post merge deadline. 

 

Thanks for the suggestion and this highlights a good point. This is now in place. 

[David Mack]

2 hours ago, PeterScott said:

I always mention it in the edit-box when it happens: "Unmerge a merge"

I often wondered how you did that , as I couldn't see any way to insert a 'post break' into a continuous stream of content. 

 

9 minutes ago, RichM said:

Thanks for the suggestion and this highlights a good point. This is now in place. 

How does that work? If you edit the post to remove the second chunk of content and paste that into a new post, doesn't the software then just merge those two posts again (if nobody else has posted in that thread in the interim)?

Edited February 27, 2023 by David Mack

[PeterScott]

5 hours ago, David Mack said:

...If you edit the post to remove the second chunk of content and paste that into a new post, doesn't the software then just merge those two posts again (if nobody else has posted in that thread in the interim)?

Yes, it would do if the code worked properly, which it didn't.

For example, the post here  (#2080 in the thread on Tonic p84, and number 2487620 overall) is followed by four successive posts (#2081, #2082, #2083, #2084) and there were no other posts on any thread on the forum. None of them were merged. More recently this Tonic post here was consecutive with the previous post here, there were no intervening posts anywhere on CWDF, and there were just five minutes between them, with no auto-merging. Let's hope this turns out to behave sensibly:

5 hours ago, RichM said:

Thanks for the suggestion [set the post edit deadline to the same as the post merge deadline] . This is now in place.

 

 

... and

7 hours ago, Hudds Lad said:

Double posting is the act of posting the same content in rapid succession, usually caused by an iffy internet connection

 

 

Yes: there's a Tonic post here (of Brighouse Basin) that seems to have suffered from some such confusion. But I don't see how merging the posts has helped to resolve it. Or made it easier to read. Hmmmmm.

 

 

Edited February 27, 2023 by PeterScott

[MtB]

It strikes me the whole issue arises due to the flawed assertion that people "frown upon" consecutive posts by the same poster. 

 

I posit that no-one here "frowns upon" double posting, so the solution to the whole problem is to allow it. 

 

Does anyone reading this thread find double posting a problem? 

 

I can feel a poll coming on! 

 

 

[Smiles]

15 hours ago, MtB said:

Does anyone reading this thread find double posting a problem? 

I don’t 🤖

[PeterScott]

Dear @RichM,

On 27/02/2023 at 11:12, MtB said:

The quick and dirty fix for Peter's complaint is to set the post edit deadline to the same as the post merge deadline. 

On 27/02/2023 at 12:23, RichM said:

... Thanks for the suggestion and this highlights a good point. This is now in place.  ..

Further to your contribution yesterday (my emphasis) thanks for trying, but sadly it didn't work.

 

The thread link is here

and with your forebearance, I'll also post the whole thing here below. There was a response in Tonic to my posting yesterday, and at 0820 I posted, what in context seemed a lighthearted response - a road in Holland, taken in 1983.

 

Nobody else had anything to say about it, and I duly waited my three hours to make an unrelated post - expriring the edit-time as your posting yesterday said was the same time to expire the merging-action. The unrelated post is of the BT Tower in Birmingham, maybe pretending to be a light-filament, and some other surrounding pics to give context. As your amendment-of-yesterday failed to address my original point, the system merged the posts, and it now being beyond the edit-time, I can't now make it look sensible.

19 hours ago, MtB said:

... the whole issue arises due to the flawed assertion that people "frown upon" consecutive posts by the same poster.

And hear hear to that.

 

Regards

Peter Scott

And here's the messed-up post in all its now-nessed-up lightheartedness:

 

  

 

6 hours ago, Karen Lea Rainey said:

I've often thought when passing this landmark [at Whittington Brook], that whoever carved the inscription did it the wrong way round, if you did it on a road sign everybody would end up going the wrong way.Could this have been an early case of stonemasons dyslexia?

Expand  

 

 

 

Holland, 1983

On this day in 2008

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

BCN  B+F

Farmers Bridge Top Lock  and hereabouts and an interpretation board/map

Compare  1Jun1987  25Jun2001 30Oct2006  21Feb2007  28Feb2008  19May2011 14Nov2015 23Aug2016  23Sep2017  23Feb2019

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Rob-M]

To add to the annoyance your new post Peter did not appear in VNC, I presume this was because it was merged with your last post that I had already viewed.

Not being able to unmerge posts is a bad change.

[David Mack]

I can't see any problem at all with two successive but different posts on a thread by the same poster.

 

What is a problem is the same content repreated (sometimes multiple times) in a single post (or occasionally miultiple posts if someone else has posted in the meantime). In my experience this occurs when I have a poor connection, I press submit and the content is uploaded to the server, but my computer or phone doesn't get the message that the upload has been successful, so the Submit button remains on screen, and thinking the message hasn't gone I click on Submit again, and that results in a second identical post being received by the server (and then merged with the previous post).  Preventing that happening would either require a minimum time interval between successive posts, or the software would have to compare the latest post with the previous one and reject it if identical. I imagine that could be done, but probably only by the software provider rather than a user administrator.

[Hudds Lad]

13 minutes ago, David Mack said:

I can't see any problem at all with two successive but different posts on a thread by the same poster.

 

What is a problem is the same content repreated (sometimes multiple times) in a single post (or occasionally miultiple posts if someone else has posted in the meantime). In my experience this occurs when I have a poor connection, I press submit and the content is uploaded to the server, but my computer or phone doesn't get the message that the upload has been successful, so the Submit button remains on screen, and thinking the message hasn't gone I click on Submit again, and that results in a second identical post being received by the server (and then merged with the previous post).  Preventing that happening would either require a minimum time interval between successive posts, or the software would have to compare the latest post with the previous one and reject it if identical. I imagine that could be done, but probably only by the software provider rather than a user administrator.

If i hit Submit and it doesn't look like its worked, i open View New Content in a new window first to see if it has actually gone before trying again, this way you don't lose what you typed in the original window if it was just human error  

[RichM]

Following the feedback, we have reduced the automatic merging of concurrent posts from 24 hours to a 1 hour threshold. I hope this is seen to be a reasonable compromise while also allowing us to prevent circumvention of some of the anti-spam measures we have in place.

 

Additionally, the edit window is set to 24 hours. (it was previously set at 1 hour until recently)

[PeterScott]

OK thanks. We'll give it a whirl ...

[PeterScott]

On 01/03/2023 at 18:43, RichM said:

the edit window is set to 24 hours. (it was previously set at ...

 

Attempting to amend the post above within the 24hours gives a menu without the Edit option.

 

Simlarly a later Tonic  post from 22 hours ago

 

Whereas editing this post gives the Edit option in the menu ..... Hmmmm

 

Edited March 2, 2023 by PeterScott
to show screenshot of the edit menu

[RichM]

1 hour ago, PeterScott said:

 

Attempting to amend the post above within the 24hours gives a menu without the Edit option.

 

Simlarly a later Tonic  post from 22 hours ago

 

 

Whereas editing this post gives the Edit option in the menu ..... Hmmmm

 

 

 

Is it possible to try again for me?

[PeterScott]

23 minutes ago, RichM said:

Is it possible to try again for me?

Posting after 2hrs didn't merge   🙂 : I'll check the 24hr edit tomorrow ....

Peter

PS it did merge this smiley 🙂 afer just a few minutes

PPS having done the merge,  it deleted the "edited because" box comment. Hmmm every day is a learning-day ...

Edited March 2, 2023 by PeterScott
:-)

[PeterScott]

13hrs later now allows an edit  🙂

[MtB]

18 minutes ago, PeterScott said:

13hrs later now allows an edit  🙂

 

 

All this trouble and grief inflicted on us just because it is alleged (with no evidence!) that double posting is 'frowned upon' in other, unspecified forums! 

 

 

 

I'd post a poll to see who here finds double posting a problem, but the poll doesn't work any more either and mods are ignoring my thread about that, too! 

 

 

[rusty69]

16 minutes ago, MtB said:

 

I'd post a poll to see who here finds double posting a problem, but the poll doesn't work any more either and mods are ignoring my thread about that, too! 

What is required is a wiki to explain how to setup a poll. 

[RichM]

9 hours ago, MtB said:

 

 

All this trouble and grief inflicted on us just because it is alleged (with no evidence!) that double posting is 'frowned upon' in other, unspecified forums! 

 

 

 

No.

[Willonaboat]

This issue seems to be a case of techies knowing what's best for us. Or to be more accurate, thinking they know what's best for us. And, from one of the posts above, trying to solve one problem (spam) by creating another. I came to this thread after just having two of my posts merged. The problem is, my two posts were in response to two different things entirely. One was purely in jest. The other, not. So to my mind it is not appropriate to merge them, and, as someone else said, if I wanted to merge them I would have done it myself.

 

On a different note, having been Admin on a forum (no longer online) I found that by trying to implement 'features' that people didn't want, just because I could and I thought from a technical point of view was the best thing to do, I ended up alienating some of the members and I think (I don't know for sure) it resulting in fewer posts and forum activity. For what it's worth, if people complain, you can bet your bottom dollar that the complainants are representative of the problem and not the sum total - most people don't complain. The lesson (for me) was to listen to what people wanted and take heed of what they didn't and change things accordingly.

 

Sermon over.

 

Here is my (inappropriately merged) post(s).