More Clear Direction, and "Forum FAQ" rename Options

[StevenUnderwood]

... so just letting you know that things aren't forgotten, just on-hold for a bit ....

It seems to have been quiet here the last few days (before today, that is)...thought you had taken a well deserved rest.

[Wazoo]

It seems to have been quiet here the last few days (before today, that is)...thought you had taken a well deserved rest.

Agree on the quiet bit .. that had me wondering also (the FAQ finally at the point that all questions were answered? <g>)

Break? heh ... have been going round and round with my ISP ... basically, all wiring from the modem to the pole has been replaced, naturally, a section at a time, on different days. That involved moving stuff in the living room to gain access to the incoming cable ..and moving that stuff has ended up filling up the other rooms .. still not recovered from that ...

3 motorcycles, 6 lawnmowers, 2 chainsaws queued up in the garage for repair work .. 90 degrees outside, over 100 in the house, garage is 'hot' .... girl wants pages added for swords/knives she's decided to sell, still trying to figure out how to do the "over 18" thing .... I think "the break" is more "lack of motivation" at present <g>

[Jank1887]

A girl with swords and knives.

You are a far braver man than I.

[dra007]

oh well, just picture him juggling swords and knives on a hot summer day..

[Wazoo]

OK, a few steps forward, many more backwards, JT gave me a bit of a power boost, and as usual, I overstepped a bit. For those that noticed, a couple of days back, I managed to change the comforting blue backgound of this forum to a nice white "you screwed something up SQL error" display. Backed out all the edits I'd done before finding out that I didn't have permissions to add/extend the SQL database ...

Worked for a while to get another file to "work" but it turns out that the only legit way would be to make it live ... didn't want to subject more folks to problems while I ttried to sort things out. Spent the last couple of days beating things up, tinkering with things there, playing with bits elsewhere ... finally figured out a way to stuck my data into the stream of other mystical scri_pt files ...

Fresh start, looking for input .. noting that I'm still chasing code ...
http://forum.spamcop.net/forums/index.php?act=home

[Farelf]

Fresh start, looking for input .. noting that I'm still chasing code ...
http://forum.spamcop.net/forums/index.php?act=home

It works for me. In a post a week or two back I reckoned I needed a map of the map to find my way around. Not now. I think this forums home is very well done, quite a "friendly" entry to most of what is relevant in the venue. Darn fine effort in fact. Will give it more of a tryout and get back with anything specific.

[dbiel]

I would agree with the remarks of Farelf. A great layout.
I am confused as to what the center posts are suppose to represent?
Are they the most recent posts?
Are they a series of the most important such as number 2 "Why Am I Blocked? FAQ" and number 3 "Welcome to the SpamCop Help Forum!" but some of the others do not seems to fall into that catagory.
To me this would be a great place to display some of the most important posts.
It is interesting the amount of comment you are receiving regarding this in the news group.
Thanks for the ongoing effort

[Wazoo]

I would agree with the remarks of Farelf.  A great layout.

Thanks to both of you, but have to admit that this (again) was just something tossed up to offer as an example of what I meant by "portal page" .. (that "jist tossed up" is a bit of a lie .. taking this long to get the permissions needed to manipulate some things, a few days in trying to figure out the code, hours spent converting the Forum FAQ stuff in BBCode to quasi-HTML/BBCode to display correctly, doing dumb stuff like getting occupied elsewhere chasing something down, then finding out that when trying to save the last couple of hours worth of edits, I'd "timed-out" of the secure connection, so that data page got replaced with a "log-in again" page ... cuss words intentionally dropped here <g>)

I am confused as to what the center posts are suppose to represent?
Are they the most recent posts?
Are they a series of the most important such as number 2 "Why Am I Blocked? FAQ" and number 3 "Welcome to the SpamCop Help Forum!" but some of the others do not seems to fall into that catagory.

Man, you think you're confused <g> My first shot included most of the "main" sections, but the results seemed to be all Announcement stuff. Maybe this will help explain my lack of education and easy 'fixing' of this ... that whole centrer section is developed in the 'main' scri_pt by the following lines;
<!--MAIN-->
<!--CS.TEMPLATE.ARTICLES-->
<!--END MAIN-->
That center line turns out to be a pointer / placeholder to 'something' that pulls in over a half-dozen other scripts (which invoke other scripts), a number of Template files to handle the HTML layout, which also include much .css data ....

Documentation up to version 1.3 wasn't too bad, 2.0 made massive changes, but just like SpamCop, "the" programmer didn't spend time documenting stuff, he promises to do a better job for the upcoming version 2.1 ... so trust me, there's been a lot of 'experimenting' going on here <g>

To me this would be a great place to display some of the most important posts.

Agreed, now if I could sort out how that "one line" works <g>

It is interesting the amount of comment you are receiving regarding this in the news group.

I'm not sure that the two most-vocal at this point have actually "visited" the link yet, suspecting that they are looking at the forum.spamcop.net address and still factoring in their distaste for the forum experience ...??? I also note that neither seems to want to invoke the wrath of those that already have me kill-filed and re-post the actual URL <g>

Thanks for the ongoing effort

Funny, an e-mail this morning from an Army acquaintance from the 70s, referred to SpamCop for her spam problems, made mention of the money I must be making for all the time spent, then wondering why I continued doing it after reading a number of those bits of dialog on what a *&^%$# I am. Had to take a bit of a break to get over the laughing spasns <g>

That said, thanks again, and back to whacking some more code before I time out again ...

Later: Ha! hacked into that center section a bit <g> Now if I was a graphics guy, I could change the background of that graphic to match the color shades here, huh?

[qjvgpuryy]

those that already have me kill-filed

Sounds like an ID Ten T error, or perhaps a PEBKAC problem (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif) . It would serve them right if you became a BOFH (IMG:style_emoticons/default/ph34r.gif) (but please don't (IMG:style_emoticons/default/laugh.gif) ).

[Wazoo]

I'm still in the dark on some of those mind-sets. I agree that (most) Forums suck. But what I don't understand is the "problem" with alternate resources for help. I do newsgtoups, I do mailing-lists, I do web-site searches, I do support Forums, ... bottom line, if I need help, I try to find the answers whereever they are. Yet the bottom line of some of the posters "over there" seems to be that if anyone needs help with the SpamCop resource, then they need to find the newsgroups, figure out how to fire up / configure a newsreader, and post correctly, just so these same folks can either re-type (for the millionth time) or cut/paste a canned reply. I got tired of this approach over in the Microsoft peer-to-peer support newsgroups years ago, seeing the same questions asked 100 times a day, day after day, month after month ... by those folks that "weren't about to read through 3,000 posts to see those previous questions/answers" (although noting that 'great' Subject titles like "HELP!!!" "OE6" "It's BROKE" don't suggest that the issue might be the same problem the new poster is going to ask about <g>) ...

Complaints through the years that the Faq-o-Matic thing at www.spamcop.net wasn't complete, always behind, hard to use, etc., etc., etc. ... The Forum FAQ was a Saturday morning hack for an interim thing to try to resolve a bunch of issues like the above. However, this was done in the Forum, using the Forum app .. So here we are, one recent newsgroup poster stating;

OK, well I was a little concerned that you might expect us here to link to
the forum FAQ to answer FAQs here, I can't do that only because we may
never hear from them again; they may start using the forum which isn't much
help to use here.

Strange attitude when the thought process was to provide answers to people posing questions.

So with all the controversy about "the Forum" ... the effort on a "portal page" began. Thoughts included tings like;

Solving the issue for those that thought "Help" meant "help for that web-page"
Providing the immediate links for the first-time visitor, one of my characterizations was;

• e-mail blocked message
  
  
• spam report recipient
  
  
• search engine or some other referal

The same poster as above countered with;

• Got the "blocked by Spamcop" message.
  
  
• Looking for help with their spam problem
  
  
• Want to use the Spamcop block list.
  
  
• Abuse report recipient (mail admins)

Silly me thought I had a handle on just that with the current (right-hand column) display at http://forum.spamcop.net/forums/index.php?act=home .... but then see another posting by the same person;

On 05 Jul 2005 WazoO entered spamcop.help and left
news:daef5e$5gg$1[at]news.spamcop.net:

> Well, again, the focus of this exercise is on access to
> the FAQ data.

Maybe it will evolve into something a little less cryptic

I'm lost.

Anyway, have worked that code a bit more, fixed a screw-up (that PEBKAC issue, trying to ignore the ID10T scenario <g>) in my "jump to" links in the Forum FAQ (FireFox 1.04 can now follow the links and actually arrive at the correct destination) ... worked with dbiel on the Glossary (and had to make the same fixes there after leading dbiel astray by letting him use my bad data as an example to work with .. apologies sent <g>)

I find it a bit on the insane side that I keep asking for input on "building a better tool" over there in an attempt to resolve the years of bitching, yet .... one person stating that "he's watching the page development closely" and another basically harping on the page display ... I'll even go further .... nothing from the SpamCop staff (as I'm not one, I suppose that's not unexpected, and working "outside" the IronPort umbrella, perhaps required?) ... hard to get beyond that "working in a vacuum" feeling <g>

Big post, actually forgot why I started it .... just bringing status up to date ..???

[Miss Betsy]

I'm still in the dark on some of those mind-sets.  <snip>

Some people want everything handed to them on a silver platter; others just want it their way; and others just like to complain. It's their problem; not yours or mine. If they want to repeat themselves or cut/paste an answer, they can. Probably the link you post to the FAQ will help a lot more people find the particular answer they wanted plus perhaps finding the answers to other questions. As long as the questioner is not unhappy (excluding those who are either too dumb or too arrogant to be helped), then who cares what others think? Like the parser itself, no one else has come up with a better way and it works pretty good most of the time!

Although there are still questions about things that are in the FAQ (sometimes people just miss it; others just don't know what to look for), ISTM that there are fewer simple questions being asked. Every once in a while I look at how many people have read the 'Why Am I Blocked FAQ' - there are a lot! And presumably some of those would have asked a question if it wasn't there to read. I haven't looked but probably there are lots of people (by the reader statistics) who /have/ read the FAQ and found what they were looking for.

It's like being a teacher - there are lots of seeds planted, but someone else sees the results. Even back in biblical days, only one of ten bothered to say thank you.

Miss Betsy

[Wazoo]

Thanks Miss Betsy .. actually laughing a bit right now ... had the newsgroup archives opened up for another discussion, noted the July's capture stated with this thread (need to open up June's collection to see the start of this discussion) .. but .... that first post definitly sets the stage for here I was headed .. note how soon things start getting off-track ..
http://news.spamcop.net/pipermail/spamcop-...read.html#65052

Actually, I have to point out that there's a lot of traffic missing, some folks using the X-No-Archive bit and the archiver is honoring that flag. Technically better to hit the newsgtoup directly at news://news.spamcop.net/spamcop.help

[Wazoo]

Almost want to cry, but laughing too hard ... from the spamcop newsgroup ...

From: "WazoO"
Newsgroups: spamcop
Subject: Re: New tactics blocking too much.
Date: Fri, 8 Jul 2005 20:44:26 -0500

"PEF" wrote in message
news:dan46i$9gl$1[at]news.spamcop.net...
> Thanks. I will try to not
> be paranoid about it. I
> still think hosting a web
> page might be more effective
> for this group anyway.
> We'll see how it goes.

My head hurts <g> I'm not sure what you mean
by "hosting a web page" .. but ... one of my last
attempts at creating a web page for 'new visitors'
is found at http://forum.spamcop.net/forums/index.php?act=home
still a work in progress, still accepting input ...
Take a look at some traffic in the spamcop.help
newsgroups for the background ...24 June looks
like a good entry spot ...

The Forums exist at http://forum.spamcop.net/forums/