Compsci.ca Glitches

[andrew.]

So for the time I've been coming here, I've seen a few glitches with the site. I decided to make this post because I haven't actually seen a thread about this before. So I'm just going to state a couple of glitches that I've seen and I hope that others will post as well so that the mods can try to fix it whenever they have time.

1. Wrong thread in the wrong forum
Sometimes you will see stuff like a Turing submission showing up as the newest topic in the general discussion forum. If you click it, it takes you to the right page, but it's listed under the incorrect forum.

2. Missing thread as the newest thread
Today, I noticed that the newest thread in a forum had no title and the date was Unix epoch.

[SNIPERDUDE]

For me I never see post times. So the top of someone's post will say:
"Posted today at Post subject: Compsci.ca Glitches" (using the above as an example)

The same goes for when I quote someone.

[rdrake]

When v3 was being beta tested there was a thread on this. I'm not sure if any such thread still exists.

1. It's a feature. Mods can leave shadow topics in the old forum if they wish. It's not there by default, but it can be done.
   
2. Common bug. I forget why it exists but it hasn't been fixed in years. Perhaps Dan can elaborate.
   

v3 was basically a ton of modding done to phpBB by Dan. v4 (ETA unknown) is supposed to be a complete rewrite. In what? No idea. When? Again, no idea.

[andrew.]

rdrake @ Mon Nov 16, 2009 7:33 pm wrote:

1. Common bug. I forget why it exists but it hasn't been fixed in years. Perhaps Dan can elaborate.

I've noticed that Gamespot also has this glitch and they haven't fixed it either (happened years ago). Right now, it says that I joined Gamespot in 1969. Anyways, if they haven't fixed it/given up on it, maybe it's a lot harder than it looks and it's not really serious enough to have to fix.

[Dan]

V3 was based on phpbb fully moded (a perhacked copy of phpbb). Unfrontly it truns out alot of those hacks where very poorly writen and it was a poor choice of platform witch we where stuck with due to v2 being in phpbb and we wanted to keep combality (v2 was in phpbb as v1 was and v1 was in phpbb becuse i was in high school at the time running the site on a home computer and did not know better).

Long sotry short, it is a legecay system that neither rembeles phpbb or phpbb fully moded under the hood witch has become exteramly hard to maintain. We would love to move to somthing better however it would have to keep the content from v3 and no one has time to make a soultion.

There is a topic for v3 bugs here: http://compsci.ca/v3/viewtopic.php?t=14709


TL;DR Version: Softwares hard, no one has time to fix.

[Tony]

I still hold a strong opinion towards locking all of v3, keep it frozen as an archive, and start clean from a new minimalistic system. Though there are some objections to doing so.

[md]

Those objections are silly. I support using PunBB and starting a new V4; of course, I do believe there is a way of transferring the data as well...

[Dan]

The problem with PunBB is that it is missing a few imporant featuers the last time i checked into it. For example file attachments.

Also both times i have ever seen PunBB used it has been flooded with spammers and bots to death.

I am for moving to an off the shelf minimlastic system as long as it meets some basic requerments and has features we need to keep the site running (file attachments, syntax high lighting, user accounts, means to block spam and basic admin controls).

It might be usefull to come up with a list of basic requerments we are looking for and see if there are any existcing well made soultions that fit.

[andrew.]

I agree with Tony, I think you should freeze v3 and completely rewrite v4. If anyone wants older posts, you can have the search engine allow them to choose whether they want to search the archive, the current system, or both systems.

[Dan]

andrew. @ 17th November 2009, 3:57 pm wrote:

and completely rewrite v4.

Are you volunteering?

[andrew.]

I definitely cannot help with this as I lack the mental ability to do this kind of task and I wasn't saying that it should be done now. I'm just saying, whenever you geniuses start, just consider what I posted.

[DemonWasp]

I'd volunteer to help write some code, but I don't know PHP and I'm not inclined to learn that particular language...I've heard way too many horror stories about apps written in PHP to want to wade into that.

[rdrake]

I don't think many of us want it in PHP.

[md]

You don't want to use PHP. Some of us like PHP... some of us even dream in PHP.

Mmm... php...

Dan, I've gone some ideas for V4 - but I'll work on them and show them to you when they are beyond the "dream" stage.