TT GOES LATIN!

On http://www.lonelyplanet.com/thorntree/post!reply.jspa?messageID=13456431, I tried inserting some non-ASCII characters: bad news for us who occasionally need to venture outside the 26-letters of the English alphabet. TT didn't successfully interpret Unicode codes for writing letters outside the extended ISO 8859-1 character set (so no more Arabic, Turkish, Greek, Cyrillic etc.).

Even more surprising is that the TT doesn't seem to even support the extended ISO 8859-1 characters which allowed us to directly write the accented characters used in Western Europe. For example: Québec.

At least this is what happens with my browser. Can anyone else get things to work? I realise that it might just be me ...

PS. The old [i] [b] [quote] etc. system doesn't work either.

Chinese worked on the old forum.

Let's try TT4:

大家好！

Nope!

Another fine improvement.

Thank you Lonely Planet.

Just a test:

русский язык ქართული ენა 普通话

It looks like TT is converting all non-ASCII characters to a UTF-8 encoding - which is good - and then interpreting the encoded text as individual ISO 8859 characters - which is bad. Or something like that.

Let's hope they're still working on it.

(What's also irritating, I see now, is that when you click "reply" it brings you to a new page where you can only see the OP, and none of the other posts.)

hi shilgia, this isn't going to be much consolation, but on the right of every message, you can click on the reply icon and then you will see that message (and that message only) when you reply. So you can choose which ONE message you see when replying ...

Testing that feature. Yes, that works. Still, it's very impractical. Also, the posts are not numbered.

(I'm trying to be positive about this new layout, but it's hard.)

Türkçe yok mu?

aaaaah. What's worse, it looked fine when I previewed it!

Let's see: José will be here mañana. He decided to spell his name with a different accent: Josè or maybe Jôse

АДЉӬѬԆ

αήξόὼ

㆟㆜㆓㆕㆗

ฬฎฑฝณ

I found this out:

For Bold, bracket the word with asterisks: asteriskBOLDasterisk give you BOLD
For italics, bracket with a plus sign: plusItalicsplus ITALICS
For Underline, it's an underscore: underscoreUNDERLINEunderscore UNDERLINE

Edited to correct typos and to note that none of the non-roman characters worked. Poor Jose.

I am trying to produce a quote manually
let's see if this works

OK, to manually quote something, you have to put this ">" in front of each line. Yuk. What a pain.

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the >proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are >met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave >their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

Let's see if I can paste that text, highlight it & hit "quote"

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Nope, doesn't work.

How can it be that some non-Latin script shows up fine in older threads? For example in the Turkish question, a few threads down.

Let's see if it stays good when copied:
Sülale damganıza bakınız
Edit: nope.

Ünlü bir Şarkıcıyım

I am editing to add an attempt to just paste the letters in, since the codes only partially worked: Ünlü bir Şarkıcıyım

Edited by: DianaHaddad

"How can it be that some non-Latin script shows up fine in older threads? For example in the Turkish question, a few threads down."

The data is being stored and displayed correctly so all the old posts are cool.

The problem is almost certainly that when we click on the post button, the new TT converts the data improperly (into UTF-8 encoding by the looks of things). But, this shouldn't be happening since it isn't what the back-end of the TT is expecting, so all our lovely accented letters all get stored as unencoded data - and then displayed in the same way.

I'm surprised all their testing didn't uncover something as obviously problematic as this. Even some of the posts by the moderators show that anything outside ASCII is handled improperly.

Dianna, you are henceforth known as the "UNLU SARKICI" ... the "floury singer" (no, not "flowery").

It looks like they didn't do much testing, and rather rely on us to test it. (At least I hope so, because it would mean that they would do something with the feedback that is being thrown at them all over TT right now.)

Letting the users of a site do the testing is fine when the site is free, but it would be nice if there were some communication. Everyone would be much more patient and understanding if they told us "It's in development. Let us know if you run into something that doesn't work." But no.

I got the quote thing wrong.

OK, to manually quote something, you have to put this ">" in front of each paragraph, not each line. If automatically adds a line break after the paragraph. Still a pain.

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

The link feature does not work with Safari. You can add a link by using HTML, however. <a href="http://some URL here">Link Title Here</a> (remove the astrerisks to make it work)

You can also use HTML to bold, italicize, or underline. HTML tags for line breaks also work. Blockquote tag does not

I hope boxxla won't mind that we do some testing in this thread.

bold
underline
italics

strike through? (with html)
> quote?
> another line.

And another line straight after to see if it inserts an blank line right after a quote.

Edit: the strike line (ha! Finally something good that the old TT couldn't do!) is done with <s>text goes here</s> (remove asterisks)

shilgia, you sure got that right! I'll bet everyone would have been pleased if the TT folks had said this was only a BETA version, PLEASE let us now what errors and omissions you guys find. But right now, IT SUCKS! Here's something I had to post on the Mexico branch just now so that the OP would even understand my answer to his question;

Well, dang! This new version of TT is REALLY bad for those of use typing Spanish and Mexican words on what is supposed to be the México (Mexico) branch. I don't know why, but the "preview", which used to show the EXACT WAY the post would appear in a thread, now shows only what SHOULD APPEAR, but DOESN'T, in the thread. When the message is actually posted, the new TT totally garbles all the words containing accent marks, the ñ - enye - the Spanish letter that is an "n" with a tilde over it - etc. That sucks! You can't even write the word A enye O, which means year; you have to write ANO which means A**HOLE! Whoever thought this up (some idiot techie) is a REAL ANO!

Oh, my previous post had the names Mazatlan, Mexcaltitan, and Mexico, written with the proper accent marks, but all that appears in TT is garbled garbage.

Thanks to nutrax I can at least show it as a proper quote! BUT you have to put the > on the paragraph you're quoting AFTER you put it as a separate paragraph. TT won't recognize the > if you just put it in then paste your quotation.

Edited by: mazgringo

Can you put in a horizontal line like the old TT?<hr>Yes you can. the tag is <*hr>(remove asterisk)

We're very lucky to have an HTML expert like nutrax to help us out here on SiT! Those who post on other branches are probably a LOT more frustrated the we are.

But, it still SUCKS to have to become a HTML programmer just to make a post to TT.

So far, the only REALLY good thing about the new TT is the ability to go back and correct your stupid typos. I LIKE that!

Edited by: mazgringo

Actually Maz, the old TT didn't preview exactly what was going to be posted. With accents it might have, but with html codes it just showed the string of numbers. But magically it would display correctly when you actually posted it.

I tried a bunch of symbols. None worked. Gonna thrill the folks who can't post the symbol for pound sterling or yen or euros.

¢

Oh, joy. I can use the HTML tag for "cents"

The Spanish branches but also SiT.

Note that you can't use italics at the end of a sentence. Look: test?

Diana, I don't know about your browser, but on mine the preview ALWAYS appeared EXACTLY like the posted message. Bold, italic, underlined, quotes, and last but not least, ALL the special Spanish letters and diacritics. I'll bet this new TT is driving the posters on the Spain branch and the German branch absolutely NUTS. No acentos graficos (can't even write THAT correctly now), tildes, dieresises, umlauts or what have you. This is something that TT MUST change, and change quickly!

shilgia, never fear, here on SiT, nutrax is going to teach us all to be HTML programmers. We'll be the ONLY branch of the TT that gets it right!

OK. You can use HTML for certain characters.

¿ should I send £200 to José mañana; with my sincere Grüssen?

You will find the list here

Edited a bunch of times to get it right. This ain't a thrill.

что слуцается?
можно? нельзя?
посмотрем!

cyrillic experiment, c&p from translit.com

well, that obviously didn't work.
p.i.t.a.

More tricks: double >> :

makes a block like this. Pretty ugly, but hey, it's another feature.

maz, I agree about the bold and underlined letters. Most French/Spanish letters and umlauts also worked in preview. But that's as far as it went. If that was the extent of your non-English characters, it might have seemed to you that everything showed up the way it did in preview. Any other characters would not work in preview. That includes c with a cedilla, a dotless i, anything Asian, and so on.

Basically, if you go to the Wandel site and put in a bunch of text, the things that got translated into codes would not show up. The things that were translated as themselves (ü=ü, no codes needed) would show up.

haha, that was a u with a umlaut. I got thrown off again by the fact that it showed up ok in preview.

Sorry, I meant to write "you can't use the 'plus method' to put italics at the end of a sentence." Sure, you can insert a space, but who wants a space between the last word and the question mark?

Html then, I guess.

Note that you can't use italics at the end of a sentence. Look: test?

Works with HTML
Note that you can't use italics at the end of a sentence. Look: test?

Or if you put a space after the +
Note that you can't use italics at the end of a sentence. Look: test ?

I am so upset about this!!! Being a Spanish speaker makes me feel I'm not welcome here anymore!

Let's try nutrax's suggestion: ñ, Ñ, Ç, ±, á, é, í, ó, ú

This is so frustrating!

Let me see now: &Ntilde

AAARRRGGGG!!!!!

Can someone explain this stupid guy how to write accented vowels and an n with tilde, please ?

To do those special characters, you have to put a semicolon after the &Ntilde or &oslash or whatever

ø Ñ

Mañana

mazgringo:

The old TT accepted all 256 characters of the ISO 8859-1 standard. That meant you could type all characters used in Western European languages directly into your posts. The new TT doesn't accept anything except the first 128 characters of ASCII so consequently only unaccented Latin letters. Check Wikipedia for the charts ...

The great discovery is that HTML tags work (nice one Nutrax) unlike the old TT. This makes TT4 much more powerful in at least one respect. It also means that we can enter non-ASCII text although it's going to need a bit of longhand:

• for È, type &Egrave; (remove the two *s)

replace "E" by another letter, and "grave" by "acute", "circ", "uml", "tilde" or "ring" and you can make a load of letters.

It's not really practical of course. Actually, this character problem should be a very easy one to fix by the TT staff ... here's hoping they get to it quickly!

Allowing free use of HTML tags probably isn't a good idea though ... let's see if I can abuse it:
look what you can do

Edited by: boxxla

Edited by: boxxla

Oh, a semicolon... yeah, I didn't put that.

let me see: Ñandú

edited: wow, this is not working well.

Edited by: DianaHaddad

edited to remove what I wrote because it related to what boxxla removed...keeping up with the edititng is going to be complicated!

GOOD! Thank you nutrax.

Now, to whom we should write a protest letter in order to have this fixed soon?

Æ Ç £

Special characters. To do it yourself:

Start with an ampersand: &

Add the capital or small letter you want: &A &u

Add one of these:
acute for acute accent &aacute á
grave or grave accent &agrave à
circ for circumlex &acirc â
tilde for tilde &atilde ã
uml for umlaut or diaeresis &auml ä
ring for a ring above the letter (only works for A/a) &aring å
cedil for cedilla &aring å
slash for a letter with a slash (only works for O/o) &oslash ø

Finish with a semicolon

It won't work for just any letter--you can't stick a cedilla on S for Turkish, for instance.

I'm surprised so much HTML works. It was previously disabled to keep people from inserting malicious code--imagine what the duck could do. I'll bet someone disables it again after these discoveries. Lord help us, the image tag works.

<font size=2>Nutrax, it's amazing that they'll let you put anything in there... It won't be long before someone has put in a nasty script that will do all kinds of damage or some porn pics... That was my point Dianna, no need to call me names ;)</font>

I sent an email to the TT administrator to alert her. As fun as it is, it's just too ripe for abuse.

There are obvious security concerns if HTML works more or less freely in TT4.

That glitch alone should be sufficient for LP to ditch this monster and return us all to the safe harbor of TT3.

Egad, boxxla. Was that a bad word? I thought it was "fearless leader" or something. I'm only in Turkish 1, you know. I just believe whatever they tell me. ;-)

Next you'll probably tell me there's no such thing as vowel harmony. Please.

(actually, harmony is not what bothers me. It's things like iyi misin, iyi miyiz BUT iyiler mi. They should have fixed THAT in their language reform. And also all that nonsense with -d changing to -t, as in sokakta. Sheesh.)_

Right. Allowing html is asking for abuse.

It does allow for colors though

And for really irritating stuff

(let's see if that works)

OK, at least blinking and moving text are not allowed.

Gotta try this semicolon trick. If it works, it's a bunch easier than nutrax's HTML coding:.

ñ; á; é; í; ó; ú; ü; ¿; ¡; ñ; —; «; »;

If this works, it's at least even a tad easier than even using the Alt ascii code that you poor guys with English keyboards have to use, but still a real pain in the neck for those like me and Loscar who use Spanish keyboards.

Edited by: mazgringo - Nope, didn't work for a single one for me. ;-(

Edited by: mazgringo - WEIRD! It even displays different garbage every time I edit!

Edited by: mazgringo

Hänsel überlegt Öl zu fördern. I'm just trying to see if the Umlaute are working. Probably not. Perhaps I should heed Nutrax's advice. H&aumlnsel &uumlberlegt &Oumll zu f&oumlrdern. Doesn't work either. Spell Check and the Edit function are cool, though. By the way, why is the line "edited by ..." added, is it possible to edit other users' posts? Funny, I just visited page 2 of this thread and when I clicked on "next page" I suddenly landed in the middle of the Spanish megathread. What a mess!

Seriously, could it be LP is trying to get rid of the most faithful posters? With all the useful information some of us provide for free, LP can't be selling too many guide books, can they? Quousque tandem abutere, LP, patientia nostra? I don't know how long I can endure this. TT was nice as long as it lasted.

The semicolon thing is part of the HTML coding. I added spaces before the semicolons

&copy ; ©
&plusmn ; ±
&sup2 ; ²
&frac14 ; ¼
&iquest ; ¿
&iexcl ; ¡

All of these are built into the Mac keyboard, but don't work when typed here.
Haven't tried color before

How about "typewriter text? Hello there

OK, nutrax,

I'll test THAT method here:

&á ;

OK, now a couple of others:

&ñ ; &¿ ; &¡ ; &— ;

Edited by: mazgringo

Nope, that didn't work either. Guess I'll bag TT until tomorrow, then come back and see if it's fixed. This isn't the ONLY thing I HATE about this new TT, but I already posted the other on the Mexico branch thread about problems, so I won't hijack this thread by posting it again.

Edited by: mazgringo

As a protest in the name of languages being not english requiring now so much boring things to do to be clear written, I'm trying with a funny html tag, the famous "marquee"....

Hey, did you know that english is not the only languege spoken in the world and that if things were according to number of speakers the TT probably would have to shift to chinese?

haha....didn't worked, it would have been sooooo funny to have a marquee tag working on the TT....maybe the image tag working has been a response to some TTers asking for a way to share pics relevant for the info they are writing...the font tag with the color and hexadecimal code worked...good to put emphasys on some parts of text...but about languages not being possible to be written easily, I've posted with a subject similar to "language discrimination on the thorn tree". With the new search working really good, I think some of you would like to add some supporting answers to that thread, so our complaint can be attended.....but without deactivating the html!!! is funny!!!

I'm guessing......what if style tag is working here and it is possible to format messages using CSS? haha....we could have a CSS art contest, also as a protest about the new strange TT....

H&aumlnsel &uumlberlegt &Oumll zu f&oumlrdern

The problem is no semicolons: replace the asterisks with semicolons and it works
H&aumlnsel &uumlberlegt &Oumll zu f&oumlrdern

Hänsel überlegt Öl zu fördern

I opened TT in Internet Explorer just now, and in that browser it doesn't look that bad actually. A lot better than in Firefox.

If I were a conspiracy theorist I would say they did it on purpose, because ads can blocked in Firefox.

That's an interesting theory shilgia. Though from my point of view, I use Firefox without ad-blocker because it was blocking legitimate stuff on some websites I visited frequently (can't remember which ones now), and I'd be more likely to just cut down on my TT exposure than open up IE just to see it.

But then, a TT addict who opens it occasionally and sees ads when he does is probably still a better proposition for the LP team than one who checks it a couple of times a day and sees no ads (as in TT3).

What did you use to block ads, fear rua?

Adblock Plus (I think that is the standard ad blocker that you can install under FireFox) lets you 'correct' pages, if it removes images that aren't ads by error. It remembers what not to remove, so if you're always going to the same sites, it works very well. I think I've had to use that option once or twice (in a year or so of Adblock use) -- I don't know how it works, but in general it seems to separate the wheat from the ads remarkably well.

Obviously I should have read the instructions. I was using ad-block plus all right but I didn't realize I could do that. I might give it another try now.

I think the site it was chewing up may have been the excellent Middle East affairs blog www.aqoul.com, which by the way I heartily recommend to anyone interested in that part of the world even though it has been pretty quiet lately.

("it" referring obviously to the website, and not, unfortunately, to the Middle East...) Edited by: fear_rua

It shows up perfectly here, including the images that are the menu on the right side.

(I wouldn't have minded if it had blocked that picture of Ayaan Hirsi Ali.)

It must have been something else, then, or maybe it was them and they've fixed it since. I suppose I'll try reimposing adblock sometime soon, whenever I really urgently need to get some piece of real work finished instead probably.

Things that struck me immediately on seeing this new version:

The text of the post and replies appears in a column no more than about two or three inches wide. One original post, even without its replies, can fill my screen from top to bottom.

The title of the thread is repeated at the top of every reply. I don't usually forget the subject of a post as I scroll through the replies, so I wonder if this feature is intended as an improvement.

When a thread had several pages of replies, I simply clicked on "Show all" at the top, then scrolled down. Now I have to click on the next page number each time I get to the bottom of a page.

I started reading this thread, and when I saw that no "foreign" letters were possible (at least not without special effort), I immediately thought of what mazgringo posted above: in Spanish, the difference between "year" and a vulgar term for a part of the human anatomy consists of a tilde over one letter. It surprised me, a poster on the South America branch, that Spanish could not be posted on the new version of TT.

I congratulate Loscar on having made the effort to post Spanish properly here, and I will tell him that he posted by chance the name of an Argentine restaurant in Chicago, El Nandu. I can't do it properly, and am a little too disheartened by the explanations above to even try.

What is the saying? That the mountain labored to bring forth a mouse? That's what I think has happened here, and I'm sorry to say it.

Hey, NorthAmerican, I'm discouraged too. All that effort and just a pile of mierda as a result. The worst thing though, is that the TT folks haven't even bothered to put a "stickie" at the top of each branch asking for problem reports or giving us any feedback about what they are doing about all of the screams of anger and frustration I see here and on the Mexico branch where I also post and where a lot of Spanish (bad Spanish usually, but even that needs all the tildes an other orthographic symbols used in writing Spanish properly).

Oh, well, Australians are known for their version of the Mexican manana doesn't REALLY mean tomorrow attitude. I went to university there and worked there many long years ago and I think it's still the only country in the world where workers ever went on strike for...LESS PAY! NO SHIT! ES VERDAD!

Well, ano isn't REALLY vulgar, it's actually the real Spanish word for anus, not a**hole, but it sure makes the native Spanish speakers laugh when some dumb gringo types anyo as ano. Hey, I figured out a workaround for that one, got the idea from the guys on the German posts who are just inserting an e after what should be an umlauted vowel, i.e., ae, ue, and oe. Not very pretty, but it works. Won't work for the Spanish u with a dieresis, though.

David Bodwell
Editorial Mazatlan

{quote:title=DianaHaddad wrote:}{quote}
(actually, harmony is not what bothers me. It's things like iyi misin, iyi miyiz BUT iyiler mi. They should have fixed THAT in their language reform. And also all that nonsense with -d changing to -t, as in sokakta. Sheesh.)_

c'mon, try and pronounce "sokakDa"! that 'k' just makes you want to say 'Ta' ;)

i agree with the -ler though:
gidiyor
gidiyorlar

gitti
gittiler

gidiyordu
gidiyorlardi NOT gidiyordular !?!?!

{quote:title=nutraxfornerves wrote:}{quote}
I'm surprised so much HTML works. It was previously disabled to keep people from inserting malicious code--imagine what the duck could do. I'll bet someone disables it again after these discoveries. Lord help us, the image tag works.

Well they've taken out img tag support. That's a step in the right direction.

ç

Jeez, boxxla, they should be putting in things that we desperately need, not just taking out stuff most of us non-programmers don't understand anyway. Who the h**l is prioritizing these changes anyway? Whoever it is has his head up his ano! I really meant to type year in Spanish, but this actually works better!

Those Spanish things like á é í ó ú ü without which you can't even pronounce the words properly...let alone type them properly!

And WOW, has anyone actually read the list of "frequently used tags in this community"? What a joke!

And just why, since only the poster can edit his own stuff, does the "Edited by:" line even have to exist? It's nobody's business but the poster's that he/she had to go back and edit a bunch of dumb typos or stupid grammar, is it?

Edited by: mazgringo - Nope, they still don't work. Oh well, maybe later this week.

Edited by: mazgringo

{quote:title=mazgringo wrote:}{quote}
Jeez, boxxla, they should be putting in things that we desperately need, not just taking out stuff most of us non-programmers don't understand anyway. Who the h**l is prioritizing these changes anyway? Whoever it is has his head up his ano! I really meant to type year in Spanish, but this actually works better!

The sad thing is they need to start putting stuff back in!

I posted my complaints about the new TT on the dedicated post -- wherever it is.

Of course on SiT, the complaints and corrections are more technical, but I'm damned if I have to start remembering to type asterisks or semicolons or other nonsense to make legible posts. I reminds me of those awful days of using DOS and having to type F3 F5 to do things. I was so happy when all that ended.

I realized yesterday that I spent much less time on TT than I used to, so maybe it's not such a bad thing after all. I'll miss it though.

Need basic help from you specialists...

What is this "semicolon" thing? (to me, it only sounds like something slightly far up my...ano)?
How can I use HTML?

Posting here now is as frustrating as typing in french on a qwerty keyboard!

Well, lets see if anyone has been listening:

á é í ó ú ü

NOPE!! But at least I figured out how to get rid of the annoying Edited by: thing, so that's one small step for mankind!

Goodbye from me. I am abandoning TT4 until further notice.

Thank you nutrax.

A¨e¨i¨o¨u¨
Still annoying, but these might only be teething problems that can be mended. There have been far too many structural changes for my liking.

CarolBatLP has posted a list of changes they plan to make. One of them is to fix the non-Latin character issue. "The first mini release will take place later this week." She doesn't say which things will be implemented then. Thank goodness they disabled images; the YC crowd was going nuts. Fortunately no porn. I cannot get any links to wrk right now, but here is what she posted:

Font changes (or clearer communication about how you can increase it yourself).
Changes to the colour, particularly the blue
Increase the number of posts viewable in your profile page
Breadcrumb size fix
Number posts
Hide the reply to all line
Hyperlinks in threads opening to a new window
Html rendering issues in profiles and posts
Show all posts option
Watch lists delivery options expansion to include immediately, daily or weekly digests.
Character encoding
Drop down list in all branches
Quick reply box
Select branches to filter out
Your historical # of posts (the current count does not include those that have been deleted or expired).
Speed of page rendering (especially in Internet Explorer)
Size of private message edit box.
Filter most recent reply / most recent thread
Sticky topic icon
Today page

Thanks for your patience (and thanks to those feeding back in a calm, reasoned manner. Sigh....).

[www.lonelyplanet.com/thorntree/thread.jspa?threadID=1518030&tstart=0]

Edited because I figured out how to at least post the link. You have to just post the URL, not the full http stuff, with brackets [] around it,

c'mon, try and pronounce "sokakDa"! that 'k' just makes you want to say 'Ta' ;)

Ok Kutu-La (that's so unharmonic it's killing me. I hereby proclaim you are now Kutulu) You just found my biggest language-learning pet peeve. Well, until another one comes up, anyway. It drives me nuts when our teacher says "you can't say sokakda, it's too difficult." Dude, it's all+ difficult. It's difficult for you guys, I get it. But when you're asking people to make all kinds of sounds that are strange to them, it's really weird to start calling some of them impossible, especially when some of us speak languages where that stuff is common. There is no reason that "sokakda" can't be pronounced! So don't use +that as the reason why it's not like that!

[/abartIlI konushma]

Edited by: DianaHaddad

Let's see what has been disabled

mañana
£
naïve
<hr>

OK, so the character codes and the horzontal rule still work.
So does colored font

{quote:title=DianaHaddad wrote:}{quote}
>>c'mon, try and pronounce "sokakDa"! that 'k' just makes you want to say 'Ta' ;)

Ok Kutu-La (that's so unharmonic it's killing me. I hereby proclaim you are now Kutulu) You just found my biggest language-learning pet peeve. Well, until another one comes up, anyway. It drives me nuts when our teacher says "you can't say sokakda, it's too difficult." Dude, it's all+ difficult. It's difficult for you guys, I get it. </b> But when you're asking people to make all kinds of sounds that are strange to them, it's really weird to start calling some of them impossible, especially when some of us speak languages where that stuff is common. There is no reason that "sokakda" can't be pronounced! So don't use +that as the reason why it's not like that!

haklIsIn haklIsIn :) ama, let me try and convince you another way: we have the same thing in english. when you add -ed to "work", you pronounce it "workT" not "workD" for the same reason. but if it's a voiced consonant (jogged = "jogD"). turkish reflects this in pronunciation as well as spelling.

hope it helped ...

Hmm, very interesting point, stud. You are certainly right.

I definitely never thought about that, probably because I try to wipe other languages from my brain when I am studying, until something comes up that I recognize. I never learned any rules about that in English, so nothing came to mind.

I just found one of those words that takes the illogical plural form, I wish I could remember what it was. It began with an H. I feel like saying "all the times you tell people 'you can't say "sandalyelar" you should remember that it's perfectly easy for you to say "saatler" so what gives?!?' :-)"

Anyway, Turkish class is such a blast. We have a test coming up in a few weeks and I really want to do well on it.

micolett: I have no clue either of what a semi-colon could be ... so all the useful tips from nutrax are useless to me : ( I feel very much in the same mood as Kerouac, who just said goodbye ...

If some of you get headaches at the sight of the bold title of the thread repeated on every post, just replace it with a simple period.

Good idea about the period, saskja!

This is a semicolon ; and this is a colon :

Hope that helps!

Thanks for posting that here, nutrax. It looks like they're working on just about all the major issues that people are complaining about.

I just cannot help but think that all the screaming and shouting and people 'threatening' to leave would have been a lot less if they had posted a list like this before. "We are aware that there are problems with A, B, C, . . ., Z. These will be fixed later this week." Everyone can understand that, and wait for a few days before complaining.

Edit: This is interesting. Looks like I'm still able edit this post, even though three posts have been added to this thread after this one. Strange.
Edit2: Ah, figured it out: saskja's post below is a reply to DianaHaddad above, and the subsequent two posts are replies to saskja's post, so in a tree structure, this post would still be the bottom post.

Thanks shilgia. Much appreciated :)

Wow! Amazing: all that was working fine was removed from TT, but we are still able to :)

That was DianaH, not me, saskja! :)

Oh! Thanks a lot, Diana :)

Ian posted thoughtful comments on another branch. Not sure I am able to hyperlink it though. I try:

Sheesh: I clicked on the link icon, pasted it, clicked on Post Message ... and got the message:

This message contains content that isn't allowed in this forum.

Same thing happened to me yesterday when I tried to post a list of houseboats in Amsterdam : (

test

Edit: OK, that works. You can still make links using HTML. Here's how:
{a href="http etc"}text of your link{/a}

Replace the curly brackets with triangular ones, and "http etc" with the address of your link. (I can't give the example with a real address, because TT doesn't allow us to post that.)

More positive news: Have you all seen the new search function (the one on the the white part of the screen, not the one in the blue bar at the top)?

It is a big improvement over the old one: it lets you search by user name and keyword at the same time, and you can limit to a branch and a period.

{quote:title=DianaHaddad wrote:}{quote}

I just found one of those words that takes the illogical plural form, I wish I could remember what it was. It began with an H. I feel like saying "all the times you tell people 'you can't say "sandalyelar" you should remember that it's perfectly easy for you to say "saatler" so what gives?!?' :-)"

Selam. There are reasons for the irregular plurals in fact ... sometimes it seems like Turkish is too regular for its own good: even the exceptions are all explainable :)

Nearly 12 MORE hours, let's see if anything has been done.

á é í ó ú ü

Nope! Guess no one is listening. Bye, guys and gals, it's been great...while it lasted!

I NEVER did find out what the hell a "crumpler bag" was. I guess the Aussies...or is it the Limeys now?...are definitely back in charge. Well, they can play at being a KING...or QUEEN...like their so-called rich twit in London. Me, I'm a republican (well, really a Democrat, but that's something only a Yank would understand!). I don't really care to be ruled by DESPOTS!

Well Diana, here is another try

á and here is the html method Loscar explained á

what about the enye by the Loscar method ñ

Selam. There are reasons for the irregular plurals in fact ... sometimes it seems like Turkish is too regular for its own good: even the exceptions are all explainable :)

Selam sana! Yes, I knew there were reasons, and I actually think it's cool that they have some of those exceptions...it's just funny that the teacher uses this logic that it's "impossible to pronouce something" that he will later be teaching us is correct, in another case. Just amusing. It all adds to the charm of the language and if you can remember to do it, it makes you look extra smart in class! I did the T thing with sokak the other day and I felt quite studly for 10 seconds or so :-)

Mazgringo, there are worse things in the world than spending a few days without ASCII support, aren't there? Sure, it's annoying to have to write Spanish without accents, but after overhauling a complete system and being overwhelmed with complaints, it's not surprising that they didn't get to this particular issue within 12 hours.

More general point: Those who stamp their feet and say they're out of here should take notice of the new stalker function that allows us all to see continuing posting behavior across branches.

From shilgia:

OK, that works. You can still make links... (sample link shown). Replace the curly brackets with triangular ones, and "http etc" with the address of your link....

It seems to me that creating a link was simpler before the recent changes. I could go to a site (perhaps one that I had among my bookmarked pages), right-click on it, and copy the URL. Then I would come back to the TT page on which I was writing my post or reply, click on the icon for link, and paste the copied URL there.

I liked the fact that replies were numbered before, especially in long threads, because I could have referred to shilgia's comment by number. In this thread, I wish that I could refer to bjd's comment above by number, in which she referred critically to the "old days" of DOS. I am probably the oldest poster here, and was very accomplished, and fast, in using DOS. For someone like me, who could create and use macros to accomplish actions that tended to be repetitive, DOS could do it a lot faster than the earliest version of Windows. But relearning those skills 20 years later is something that I DON'T want to do.

I'm sure I sound like a crybaby, but some of the changes I see strike me as changes made by people with no history of using TT. If they used it as often as some of the regular posters here do, I think that they might have avoided making changes that in some ways take us back to the Stone Age.

Sorry, folks. On rereading my post, I see that I didn't make clear which text was from shilgia's post and which was my own. Hers was the first paragraph, mine was all that followed.

NorthAmerican: there is a link button above the reply box. It isn't working currently, but the fact that it is there suggests that eventually they'll get around to fixing it and giving us the option to post links in an easier way.
They've also announced the return of post numbers.

I think it would be good idea to try to keep together all those tips so people can print it or copy it. Here some of the few things I've found working. Copy and paste each time someone wants to add more tips would be also the way to make this "quick guide" grow...

{b} and {/b} for bold text
{i} and {/i] for italics

{a href="http://....}text{/a} for links

{font face="name of a font" size=number code or name} {/font} for changing font, size and color

{br} for line breaking

{hr} to put a horizontal line all across the post

<h2>test</h2> this is an experiment to see if html heading tags work

The kind of brackets used here has to be replaced by the triangular brackets ("mayor" y "menor" in spanish)

Edited by: Bad_Hiker
<hr>

Yes, the Heading tags (h1, h2, h3...h6) of html are working

ok shilgia, I am going to try your method for linking:

Error This message contains a unbroken word string that is outside our maximum limit. Please remove the word and try again

I do not understand what I could have done wrong: I followed exactly what you suggested, and got the error message above.

The link I was trying to make was to Ian s comments about TT4: http://www.lonelyplanet.com / thorntree / thread.jspa? threadID=1517938 &tstart=0

<hr>

Tel je vis, tel je voyage: sans attaches, sans attentes, et avec bonheur ...

I don't think you were doing anything wrong. I tried it just now, and apparently it only works if the links are not too long. For long links, the word-length cap kicks in, and the link is not accepted.

Testing it with a short link now:
Google

shilgia, that was 12 more hours so more like 36. And Spanish is really nearly the simplest of the languages. How about those where folks can no longer write anything at all? Yeah, the ASCII support is VERY important! but &¡;ni modo! I suppose that, in the long term, TT will survive this stupidity.

The thing that will drive me away is the inability to find ANY of the threads on SiT or the México branch that I was interested in, e.g., the ones on my Today list. Even without ASCII support, I could probably have muddled through answers, if needed, on those. And new posts/questions? Forget it! Wading through hundreds of old posts in an attempt to find those is hopeless. I'm sure it has appeared that I spend more time on TT than many, but it's really not so. I just stayed signed in (can't do that either, any longer) and whenever I took a break, took a quick look at the things I was interested in.

I am sitting in front of the computer nearly all the time at the moment, as I'm trying to complete a MAJOR editing job--details later--if I'm still here. But staring at THAT MS for hours on end requires periodic breaks, so I would just go to my TT tab and quickly check what was new. Since I can no longer do that, TT is somewhat of a dead loss for me. It's no longer a rest break, it's a chore. And using the html encoding to get the Spanish tildes and (maybe) the orthographic characters (often a must on the México branch) is really, really tiresome.

I'm going to try the html method for the Spanish leading interrogative mark now &¿;

Mazgringo, have you tried the search function (the one under Private Messages) to search for the threads you're interested in? (Restricting your search to the Mexico branch, and to the more recent posts?)

i wonder if this works

Dōngchéng

shilgia, Oh, I'm certain that by signing back in (TT kicked me off while I was elsewhere), going to the private messages and using the new, super-duper search function, I could eventually find all those posts on Sit and the Mexico branch that I had an interest in. Of course, my break time would be up by then and I would have to go back to work without reading any of them and who knows if they would still be displayed after TT signed me off an hour later but before my next break? And that still wouldn't help the new OP who asked a question I could answer, but whose topic had drifted way, way down due to other, later posts to older topics, would it?

Here is something I tried to post as an edit to my previous post, but you answered it too quickly, so the TT wouldn't allow me to post it even though it had allowed me write it.

Well it looks as if the html method as I understand it only "sort of" works. But with editing I can make it look nice! What tickles me is that even the simple English words like naive and fiancee can't be correctly written and the TT's own dictionary says that fiancee without the acute accent mark is incorrect. It's really a big joke, shilgia. Twenty years ago I worked in a programming job where we had to install a new program MORE complex than TT in hundreds of businesses and convert millions of data bits to new formats. We never had a tiny fraction of the problems that have occurred in this conversion and not one of those business was offline for more than a few hours. Why, because we tested, and tested and tested and tweaked and tweaked and tweaked some more until it was near perfect. The very minor problems that did come up only affected a small fraction of the users, and were in seldom used parts of the program only used by those users who had chosen really weird combinations of defaults that we just missed checking. I have NO sympathy at all and little patience with a company as large as LP allowing such a piece of sloppy programming to EVER be installed without MONTHS of behind the scenes testing in advance. It's totally inexcusable.

Edited by: mazgringo

mazgringo - I think we've done as much as we can by pointing out the problems with non-ASCII characters*. TT is aware of their oversight. Don't be mistaken: it was not something consciously taken out, but rather a mix up with encodings, which can be a tricky subject in computing. This doesn't absolve them for the lack of testing, someone definitely dropped the ball. But it's a free service, hey?

It'll get fixed or it won't get fixed. I'm putting my money on it being resolved fairly quickly. In the meantime, let's relax and enjoy the TT, whatever the annoyances may be ... like getting logged out so quickly, which is a real nuisance!

• ASCII encompasses all 26 English letters, both majuscule and minuscule, punctuation marks and typographic codes.

{quote:title=nutraxfornerves wrote:}{quote}
I tried a bunch of symbols. None worked. Gonna thrill the folks who can't post the symbol for pound sterling or yen or euros.

¢

Oh, joy. I can use the HTML tag for "cents"

Do you mean that I can't make any ¢ out of this? The usual way is Alt/Option $
Let me see if I can make a Euro symbol from my Mac Character Palette. €
Pound Sterling: £
<hr> I guess not. It looked fine in Preview.

Edited by: Anonimo to note results

<<signing back in (TT kicked me off while I was elsewhere)>>

yeah, and that's another thing - on TT3 I could sign in once a day
plus, I can't figure out how to use the quote feature.

Rather than repeat all the above gripes, with which I agree wholeheartedly, I'll just hope that non-Latin, and especially Latin but non-English, characters get restored pretty soon.

boxxla, Sorry I don't buy the "mix up of encodings" argument. I know how these things work and know that it was the concious decision of some twit of a programmer. Since, apparently, there was no testing at all, no one found out that he had made such an uninformed decision. That's what has made me so upset about the issue. But that's not the thing that will absolutely drive me away. There are other very serious concerns that will cause that. The special character thing is just the "straw that broke the camel's back".

I have both posted in the TT management forum and PM'd the "powers-that-be" some very calm, rational, technical arguments and suggestions. I, like all others, (apparently) have received no response whatsoever. Not even a curt "Noted" message. Now that's irritating!

If I were a LP management type, I'd be most alarmed at the enabling of HTML. They are very lucky that the worst that happened was the YC crowd posting huge images of flow charts. Lousy functionality is one thing; opening up your employer's website for abuse and hacking is another.
*******

Teamwork rules! I have enjoyed the challenge to learn someting new. I 'll have to remember the psych word for that kind of learning that is not knowledge though. I now know how to press a series of keys to get a key I can't even see until I go back to the post. Wonderful. Actually, I'm feeling a little paranoid. What if every day I come back to the TT and the keys I just learned don't work? I do remember what that is called. Extinguish a behavior.

Mazgringo, I sent you a quick fix through PM :)

After the beginning of some tiny fixes having been pushed by thousands of complaints in all the branches of the Thorn Tree, it is clear that someone at Lonely Planet decided to go the Microsoft's way, using all of us TTers as their lab rats with the release of a totally untested product like this TT4....

If it is an evidence of which is going to be the new behaviour of the company, it sounds bad....

The problem of the post column being so narrow, which some TTers had been giving a solution by means of writing a so long chain of characters with no blank spaces in between has been now solved, but not to attend the TTers complain about the space to read being too small, but to attend advertisers' need to have their ads always showing: Now, if you type a long chain of characters without a blank space, a scrolling bar will automatically appear an the post column will keep its width.

Congratulations, Developing Team of the Thorn Tree, these days you have clearly showed that you are always taking care of the advertisers' needs, but you also showed that you don't want to care about the needs of the TT posters, nor you care care about making a calculation of the money value of the info we post. (In the specific case of my country, i know the contribution of a group of some 10 people including me who could write an alternative and far more usual guidebook about Peru...)

TEST: čćžšđ şİğĞüÜıöÖçÇ ñóï¡¿ ελληνικά ϊώΰς ~řťĎâăůąęŻýőëłß €¤÷×@{}§[]|

Doesn't work, disaster

new test: čćžšđ δσαηξκρεςθι έ ϋ ΐ ς

ok, it seems that after my long absence character encoding now works? (8th Feb 08)

You know, the more I think about it, the more I believe it's not a case of "we need ads; users be damned." It reminds me of all sorts of disastrous rollouts of software or computer-based stuff that I have seen in the business world. There are invariably three problems:
insufficient planning
insufficient oversight
insufficient communication

I think LP started with an acceptable premise: we have a couple of things we have to address. TT software has a lot of problems and much as we hate it, we are going to have to permit some advertising. Then the did what IT folks all over the world do, to guarantee a screw up: they asked for user input, then retreated into geekdom and did the programming. Then they presented it with a flourish--TAA DAA!

First issue: they asked what features do users like, dislike or not care about. They did not ask how do you use TT? Of the features, what do you do with them? The first problem with not thinking about how users approach TT is that they asked the questions on the All About Thorntree Branch. Most users never go there, so most never saw the request for input.

Second issue: communication. An example: They said "we are thinking of getting rid of the Today page, do you care?" They did not say "we are thinking of getting rid of the Today page. That means the following things will go away: blah, blah." Had they worded it that way, people would have come out of the woodwork screaming about wanting the feature about "recent replies to my threads." I saw the request, but assumed that they meant that the physical web site called "Today" would go away, but that its features would appear elsewhere.

Another example, look at the "Help" page. Some questions, such as how to quote something, are never addressed. Some of the stuff in there makes no sense. Some is wrong. There was no page of "comparing TT3 to TT4." When the uproar began, no one was out front saying "my goodness, we are listening your concerns, those bugs never should have happened, we apologize for that." You can apologize for the bugs without having to apologize for features that users dislike, but which are nonnegotiable. Notice that one big complaint has been "you aren't responding to your complaints. You don't have to fix everything right now; just tel us you hear us."

Third issue: you must get constant feedback as you do a big redesign. I know there are LP employees who regularly surf TT looking for ideas for new books and what not. I've met some of them. These folks could have been the alpha testers. They could have been told--think like a TT user. How does this work? Like it, hate it? How do you think the users will respond? They probably would have spotted problems with font size, background colors and such.

They cold also have come back with questions or small test pages of certain features. Here, TT users. This is what a new page would look like. Although they did have some users do a beta test, as I understand it, the users were not encouraged to try everything, look at every page, try to abuse it or crash it.

Fourth issue: oversight. How on earth was it released with major, easy-to-spot bugs like the broken "link" icon? How was it that no one noticed the lack of support for non standard characters? How on earth did it get released with full HTML supported? Who was asking all along--how are you testing it? How are you making sure it will be functional? Before we release, tell me all the complaints you think we will get, reasonable and unreasonable? How are you going to answer?

One thing that says to me that a lot of this was done in a vacuum is the tag feature. It's one thing that works beautifully. It looks like the kind of thing that geeky types would love--getting the program perfect for the "tag cloud," for instance, was probably a lot of fun. The fact that the tag feature is silly, useless, and adds no value to TT seems to have been overlooked.

If you have ever found yourself doing damage control after the rollout of some internal corporate computer program, you'll recognize all of this.

Edited by: nutraxfornerves

You hit the nail on the head, nutrax. I've written this in many threads all over the tree in the past few days, but I'll repeat it: their biggest mistake (IMHO) is not the broken and missing functionality, but their communication.

After a day or two of complaints, CarolBatLP finally gave an official response. Did she say "We hear you. We're going to fix A and B, but not C and D, and you'll have to live with that."? Did she say "We hear you. We're currently discussing what to do."? Or "We hear you, but we can't do anything right now. Please be patient."? No. What she said was: "I removed some of the complaints. They were repetitive."

I agree with nutrax and shilgia, both of you had very good points. Great point about how nobody uses All About, so that's a bad place to ask for feedback. And I do wonder what happened to the QA process. Were the beta testers actually replacing that function? If so, perhaps they were chosen for reasons other than the fact that they represented different branch home-bases, and that's how the non-Latin character problem was missed. If it was all YCers, they probably never needed a foreign character in any post.

My own concerns are about privacy (the whole beta tester issue.) People have posted polite questions asking for more information, and have been outright ignored.

Also, I find the navigation to be miserable. It's not at all easy to jump around from branch to branch.

I don't mind advertising at all, but I do marvel at the way it was thrown on the site, in such a way that there is almost more white space on the page than anything else. That isn't good for anyone. Working ads into sites is something I do professionally, and I could think of several ways this could have been done more nicely.

I have often been on the receiving end of abuse from clients or members of the public, and, though I can identify with Carol's position, I thought her comment "thanks to those of you who responded politely. Sheesh" was inappropriate, even though I know how it feels to be her. Well no, I don't, I have never been at the center of anything half as big as this complaint fest, but I do take it personally when I get yelled at. But angry complainers only become more upset when the focus is taken off their anger. It's hard to swallow the pride, but sometimes you just have to say "we screwed up."

Meta tags can be great things, but it's odd to see the users being able to create them. My company is installing a new web CMS (content management system) and I just spent two days in training, where we were all told that even our editors shouldn't have access to set up new tags. It should really only be done by an admin. All of the usefulness goes away when someone can put in St. Petersburg, someone else puts in St Petersburg and someone else puts in Saint Petersburg. I do always laugh at "crumpler_bags_almost_killed_me" though.

Right. I once spoke to a woman who works at the complaints desk of a big department store, and she told me about the training they get. What they are trained to do, before doing anything else, is say things like "Oh, I see. I understand you are upset." "Your new toaster doesn't work? Oh, that is very annoying!" etc. Only after the customer has calmed down do they start asking questions to determine whether they can give a refund or enter into a discussion with the dissatisfied customer. She said that many customers just want to make their point and be taken seriously and don't care that much about the refund itself. If you hear them out and then explain you can't help them, they will generally accept it. If you tell them right away that they are out of luck, a big scene can be the result.

(It seems to be the case here on TT4 as well. For entertainment, you can click on the profiles of some of the biggest complainers, and you will see that they go from branch to branch to complain about TT4.)

When I was a senior policy person for a government agency, one of the things I did was to handle calls thatthe recptionists couldn't, either because the questioj was too obscure or the caller was too irate. (Our policy was, the recptionists were not required to deal with idiots; that's what they pay managers for).

Most irate citizens needed ot vent, some more tha others. I learned to open a solitaire game on my computer and play that while murmuring "Oh, really? My goodness. I'd feel terrible if that happened to me," and taking occasional notes if the person said something useful. It might take 5 minutes or 45 minutes before we could discuss the problem, but once the person had vented and/or told me thier life story, only then could we move on. Much of time, as noted, the most important thing was to feel that someone actualy listened. On our part, it was equally important to know that somewill never be satisfied and will call their Congressman (one person was going to call the president and have me fired from a local governemtn agecny over which the Pres. had no jurisdictions. . I never heard from Mr. Carter, so I assume he decided I coild keep my job)

Our PR staff made a point of training people in pubic contact positions on how to deal with such things. The result was, I often had people thanking me even after I had told them that the only pssible answer was "no." But we also knew tha tnot everyone was suited for this. Some people don't have the patience; some can't help getting angry back or becomeing defensive. We learned it was a two-pronged thing. You can't teach patience or thick skin or tact, so you must select people who already have that. You can teach what to say and how to find answers and all of that.

Hey boxxla, I just came across that unharmonic word I was thinking of...hayaller. Both times I have heard it, it's been in a song. A girl in my class just recommended the group Badem to me, and I have been listening to clips of their songs. Too bad they're not on iTunes, but another singer she recommended is.

Edited by: DianaHaddad...eew, I don't like that other singer.

This moderator reaction is how it should be done. (I didn't see that thread earlier.)

hayal - that's the Arabic "l" for you. It's always followed by e,i or ü and never by a, ı or u!

It looks like they didn't do much testing, and rather rely on us to test it.

This was obvious to me from day one, and I'm glad others are noticing and calling out LP on it.

From reading Carol's posts, I gather there was an imposed deadline. So it's a combination of poor planning (leaving out important TT3 features), absolute lack of testing and haste.

Somewhere Carol mentions a code-freeze over the Christmas holidays, so I suppose they had to roll out TT4, regardless, before everyone takes off. Way back when, the whole Tree used to go down for a couple of weeks, with Stacks of Festive Fun the one open and unmoderated branch. At least they are not doing that any more. Yeah, why do I have to keep being grateful for small favors? (end of rant.)

Since this thread has morhped into The Noble Tradition Of Complaining About TT4, I thought I'd alert you to this thread Feedback on the Today Page wherein Carol asks what people want on a Today page.

The responses are interesting, almost unanimously for "forget the bells and whistles, just give me that list of threads I posted to." (Do, please, go & add to the chorus) Which made me think. In the AATT threads about possible changes, there was a lot of stuff about "community." Looks like someone discovered that TT was a community and how could they make it more so. It occurs to me that TT is a community because the users have made it so, not because of the design. Unlike Facebook users, we don't need help. Below is part of what I posted to that Today thread. I'd be interested in your thoughts, either here or on that thread

Carol wrote this as a possible thing for the Today page:
>It didn’t indicate what was really happening in the community. What are people talking about? What are the most common questions? Who do I want to get to know? etc

I replied:
>All of the new stuff like tags and tag clouds and "Most popular threads" makes me think that TT designers feel this is the kind of stuff that is important to making TT a community. I disagree. I have no interest in such features and I'll bet many others don't either. One thing that makes TT a community is it actslike a community--we tell each other what's happening and point each other to interesting threads. No one else, and certainly no machine or peice of software does it for us. We do it ourselves. That's what makes it a community--people topeople.

I'll respond here, because they are trying to keep the feedback threads on topic, which is probably a good idea.

I agree with you, nutrax. Tags, "helpful answer" buttons, "popular thread" sidebars are not necessary to make a community.

It seems to me that they have misjudged who the people are who use TT. One of the great things about TT is that it attracts such a diverse bunch of people, not only from different countries, but also of a very wide age range -- as far as I'm aware at least 16 to 90 -- and background. Many internet forums are inhabited by young tech-savvy hip groups of people. People who not only use internet technology to do whatever it is they want to do online, but are also interested in that technology for the technology itself and aware of what techniques exist out there. Looking at all the bells and whistles of TT4 gives the impression that it was intended for a group just like that.

There are many forums that attract the kind of group for which TT4 seems to have been designed. But this isn't one of them. I'm willing to bet that TT has many users who aren't regular users of any other forum. Who aren't the kind of people who hang out on the internet hopping from one forum to the other, and who really don't care that much for the wonders of 'Web 2.0' (that's tag clouds, wikis, plugins, extensions.) All these kinds of advanced user options are great add-ons for those who like that kind of thing, but (a) they should detract from the basics; and (b) they shouldn't be implemented before those basics are operative.

Already in the days of TT3, there were always questions from people who didn't understand changes in thread order (recently replied on top vs. recent posts on top), how to change time settings, how to put a link in a profile, etc. Not everyone knows how to do these things, and not everyone has grown up in a world with internet and is used to clicking around looking for the right menu options. And why should they know? An interface should be intuitive, especially when you want it to be open and easy for everyone.

There are some functions that are the bare minimum for a functioning forum. Anything beyond that, that isn't immediately obvious might add a bit to the enjoyment of those in the know, but at the cost of losing users who feel intimidated by this technology. And so I'll argue that all these so-called community-building features have the opposite effect of creating a community. If anything, they can cause divisions. They create a class of users who go crazy gaming the system with tags and links, and a class of people who are left behind like a hitchhiker on a highway watching the fast cars race by.

It's interesting that the very first poll on TT4 asks "are you a member of Facebook". I think that fits with what has already been said, that the designers were thinking along the lines of that kind of "community".

Rather depressingly, more than 60% of respondents are Facebook members. Apparently I am old.

I completely agree with shilgia, a couple of posts above on this unnumbered (!!!) thread.

The cluelessness about how this board operates is crystalized in the new "answered" vs. "unanswered" options, which I have no intention of learning how to use. Good questions spark discussions, not absolute single answers, and that's where the community comes in. True, there may be only one bus a week on Tuesdays to get from A to B, but there could be a whole discussion of the area, etc. You can all supply your own examples. So many questions are open-ended. Some are impossibly vague and general, but that's another issue, and in fact can force the OP-er to focus in order to get help.

I also am a non-techie, and really try to avoid sites made by geeks, for geeks. I am frantically learning about coding, UTF, etc., right now, and I shouldn't have to. If I want to drive a car, I don't need to know how to build one. That's the model. K-I-S-S, keep it simple, stupid, has gome out the window.

A couple of people on the "Today page" thread have summarized what seems to have happened. TT3 needed revamping and someone decided that it was stodgy and should be jazzed up, somehow missing that the simple functionality was what made it popular.

Roadwarrior wrote:
>You are trying to develop a complex manual camera with a million individual settings for an audience that would actually prefer an easy point-and-shoot box that takes nice photos. Focus on ease-of-use and good aesthetics, not adding features and data that virtually nobody wants.

betsy (something; I forgot to copy the handle) added:
>The new clutter is distracting and irritating. The unnecessary repetition is unbearable. I do not need excessive "bells and whistles".
>I want to be able to post easily and quickly. I want to keep track of my posts and their responses. And that's it.
>I came to TT for its CONTENT.

And sarah55 finished:
>These quotes are what should be written large for all to see, at your next meeting with the web site developers. Given that it encapsulates just about everything that was said a while ago, when we were asked what we wanted from the new Thorn Tree, it beggars belief that we got this mess.
>We knew what we wanted, but you ignored our feedback at that time. Please don't continue to do so. You do not have the 'audience' for the flashy new site you seem to want to have.